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–Posted: 16 Oct 2010 11:37 AM PDT–

**This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

Search is always evolving, and we’re excited to share the latest this week—from Google Auto complete to our fun homepage doodles—as well as a glimpse at what the U.S. is searching for. Here’s this week’s round up of updates:

A birthday surprise
Because doodles are such a fun part of the search experience, we thought we’d share a fun little way Google will help celebrate your birthday. When you include your date of birth on your Google profile, you may notice a special treat on the Google homepage on your birthday (be sure to sign in). Click on the doodle for another birthday surprise!

Renaming Google Suggest
We first launched Google Suggest in 2004 in Labs to help people enter their searches faster. Suggest has been a very popular feature, and some people have been asking what happened to it. Never fear, it hasn’t gone anywhere—we just renamed it to “Google Autocomplete.” As part of our launch of Google Instant, we thought “Autocomplete” fit better with the new functionality—automatic queries and automatic results.

Google Instant in new countries across Asia
We’ve been rapidly expanding Google Instant around the globe. Last week we launched Instant in Australia, India, Korea, New Zealand and Singapore. Now that it’s been a few weeks since our initial release, we’ve been finding that people are really learning how to get the most out of Instant. For example, in just two weeks, we saw an increase in the fraction of searches performed without hitting enter or clicking search. This is a very demanding launch for our infrastructure and we’re expanding around the globe as soon as we can.

Eurostat data in search
We’ve also rolled out some improvements our public data search features. We’ve been working closely with Eurostat to surface some really useful and interesting data about unemployment rates, government debt, minimum wage and broadband penetration across Europe. Try searching for [arbeitslosenstatistik deutschland], [smic france] or [deuda publica españa] to see examples of this data visualisation in action. The data is available across 34 languages. We’ve also internationalized data from the World Bank. You can learn more on our European policy blog.

The week in searches
Curious to know what Google Searches skyrocketed in the U.S. this week? Check out the Google Beat, where you’ll find an inside look into what people are clicking on Google. This week, we cover everything from Columbus Day to Brett Favre and the buzz around “Cigar Guy.”

We hope you find these updates useful. Stay tuned for more next week.

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director, Search Product Management

AlterNet: Best of the Week

Why Germany Has It So Good — and Why America Is Going Down the Drain  By Terrence McNally, AlterNet Germans have six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free university tuition, and nursing care. Why the US pales in comparison. READ MORE » 6 Revolting Breakfasts That Just Might Kill You Before Lunch  By Brad Reed, AlterNet From candy cereals to dead pigs piled onto biscuits, Americans start their days with some deadly concoctions. READ MORE » Conservatives Push Absurd Lie that Wall Street Hustlers Were Innocent Victims … of Poor People  By Joshua Holland, AlterNet Deregulation allowed Wall Street to build a house of cards on America’s mortgage industry, but many conservatives live in a parallel universe in which the banks are blameless. READ MORE » Why the U.S. Has Launched a New Financial World War — and How the Rest of the World Will Fight Back   By Michael Hudson, CounterPunch Finance is the new form of warfare — without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. READ MORE » How Radical Christian Conservatives May Succeed in Destroying Democracy  By Chris Hedges, Truthdig There will be no swastikas this time but seas of red, white and blue flags and Christian crosses. There will be no stiff-armed salutes, but recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. READ MORE » 10 Things You Really, Really Don’t Need  By Katherine Butler, EcoSalon The Great Recession has shifted our shopping habits. Here are some items you might want to do without. READ MORE » Violent Hunter of Progressives Tips His Hat to Glenn Beck for Inspiration – He ‘Blew My Mind’  By John Hamilton, Media Matters for America Byron Williams’ stated intention “was to start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.” READ MORE » Are We Giving Our Soldiers Drugs That May Make Them Kill Themselves?  By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet More soldiers than ever are on drugs that have been linked to suicide and violent behavior. READ MORE » Exposing the GOP’s Shameful Historical Role in the Native American Genocide  By Thomas DeLorenzo, Consortium News How the Native American extermination campaigns merged the dangerous forces of a standing army with the business/political interests of the Republican Party. READ MORE » Shocking: College Rapists Almost Always Get Off the Hook  By Catherine Traywick, Campus Progress While a man who rapes off-campus could face years in jail for his crime, a man who rapes on-campus is unlikely to even be expelled. READ MORE »

Google …

Official Google Blog

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Clean water for those who need it

 

Posted: 15 Oct 2010 12:52 PM PDT —by Matt Cutts—

In August, I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro—the highest mountain in Africa, at 19,340 feet (5895 meters). I practiced by going for a three-day hike along the “Lost Coast” of California. One thing I noticed while hiking is that you’re continually thinking about water. How much do you need to carry on your back? Do you have enough water to last until you can refill your supply? How do you take water from a stream and make it safe to drink?

When I left for Tanzania, I ran a campaign to raise money for charity:water, a non-profit that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Many of us take water for granted: you turn on the tap, or buy a bottle at the store, and there it is. But it’s not like that for everyone. Many people in the world have to think about water all the time. People often walk miles to get water and miles to carry it back, and worry about whether it’s safe to drink. More than a billion people lack access to clean drinking water. As a result of unsafe water and bad sanitation, people in some developing countries are more likely to contract illnesses that are basically preventable but still kill thousands of people, including many children, every day.

Organizations are stepping up to the plate to focus on this issue. While there is much more work to do, the United Nations is on track to meet its Millennium Development Goal of halving, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. This year’s Blog Action Day theme is water, and with that in mind, we thought we’d share a bit about Google’s efforts to conserve water, in a variety of ways.

One of key area where we can make a contribution is through our data center operations. On average, two gallons of water is consumed for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced in the U.S., because water is needed for power plants to operate. That means that by building what we believe to be the most efficient data centers in the industry, we’re saving fresh water. Every year, our data centers save hundreds of millions of gallons of drinking water simply by consuming 50% less electricity than the industry average for technology companies.

A major reason why our data centers are so energy efficient is that we use evaporation to cool our facilities, rather than a more traditional chiller. Evaporative cooling uses far less power than a chiller—so by using a fraction of a gallon of water for evaporative cooling, we save a gallon of water at the power plant. We’ve also made an effort to minimize the amount of fresh water directly consumed by our facilities by using recycled water. Rather than use clean, potable water, we treat wastewater until it’s clean enough to be used for cooling. Two of our data centers run on 100% recycled water already—one by filtering water taken from an industrial canal, and one by taking “greywater” from a city wastewater treatment plant and cleaning it before using it in our cooling towers. We’re also working on new, geographically appropriate systems, like large rainwater capture ponds at one site and a seawater cooling system at a data center that is currently under construction. We set an aggressive goal a few years ago to use recycled water for 80% of our total data center water consumption by the end of 2010. Although we’re unlikely to meet that stretch goal, we believe we’ve made a lot of progress and are hopeful that by the end of this year recycled water will account for almost half of our total consumption.

We’ve also made some small changes at the Googleplex in Mountain View. Earlier this spring, we worked with the city of Mountain View to become the first commercial customer of recycled water for irrigation. We’re using it now on our sports fields as well as in a few of our buildings here in Mountain View. A few years ago we did water audits of our buildings to determine where we could make changes to save more water. We’ve since refreshed several of our buildings with new, very low-water use fixtures. And we’ve also experimented with phasing out the use of bottled water on campus, replacing plastic bottles with water filters and reusable cups. Not only does bottled water use up more energy in production and transportation, and create waste through plastic bottles (many of which are never recycled)—the Sierra Club estimates (PDF) that it takes three liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water.

This Blog Action Day, I hope you’ll take a moment to reflect on your own water use, and on what you might be able to do to make a difference. You don’t have to climb a mountain to help others gain access to clean water.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Software Engineer

Media Matters: Saving the country, Murdoch-style

	October 15, 2010
Media Matters: Saving the country, Murdoch-style  At the annual News Corp. shareholders meeting in New York this morning, CEO Rupert Murdoch was forced to answer a battery of questions from frustrated shareholders regarding the company’s controversial contributions of $1 million to both the Republican Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Asked to explain the reasoning behind the contributions, Murdoch said they were made “in the interest of the country and of all the shareholders … that there be a fair amount of change in Washington.” According to Murdoch, the donations, while “unusual,” had “nothing to do with the editorial policies” of News Corp.’s media properties. He also brushed off his widely reported comment that News Corp.’s donation to the RGA was a result of his friendship with former Fox News employee and current GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, calling it a “throwaway line.” However, Sir Rod Eddington, chairman of the audit committee, did tell a representative from the Nathan Cummings Foundation — which sent a letter to the board of directors earlier this week calling for full disclosure of News Corp.’s political contributions — that the foundation’s proposal would be reviewed and that News Corp. would “act expeditiously.” Whether or not a disclosure policy is actually implemented, Murdoch made one thing clear: Shareholders will not select recipients of donations. If shareholders disagreed with directors’ decisions, Murdoch said, “you have the right to vote us off the board.” Fox News: “simply unstoppable” Murdoch may not agree with everything that’s said on Fox News or know who exactly is advertising on Beck these days, but there is one thing he does know: Fox News is “simply unstoppable.” In his letter to shareholders this year, Murdoch wrote: “The Cable Network Programming segment was again our biggest growth driver. In 2010, operating income increased 37% over the prior year to a record $2.3 billion. All major networks showed impressive growth and, in the U.S., the FOX News Channel is simply unstoppable. FNC led the increase in affiliate revenue growth and outperformed CNN, MSNBC and CNBC combined in total viewers, for both prime time and total day categories.” In 2010, Fox News’ revenues increased 23 percent from 2009. Now, admittedly, 2009 was a rough year for News Corp. Overall, the company’s revenues decreased 8 percent, and according to Murdoch, it was “among the most challenging in our Company’s 56-year history.” Yet there was a bright spot. In 2009, Fox News’ revenues increased 26 percent from 2008. In 2008, Fox News’ revenues increased 21 percent from 2007. In 2007, Fox News’ revenues increased 19 percent from 2006. In 2006, Fox News’ revenues increased 13 percent from 2005. In 2005, Fox News’ revenues increased 20 percent from 2004. You get the picture. Rupert Murdoch is cashing in big on hate and lies. Beck’s big Chamber bailout This week, Fox News host Glenn Beck joined News Corp. as a major backer of the Chamber of Commerce: Beck’s call for donations to the Chamber on the October 14 edition of his radio show earned him on-air praise from the group’s top brass and drove so much traffic to the Chamber’s contribution website that it crashed. Apparently an adherent of the view that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” so-called populist warrior Beck implored his audience to fork over their hard-earned cash to corporate darling Chamber of Commerce, “just because the Obama administration hates them.” (The White House’s request that the Chamber disclose its anonymous campaign donors evidently qualifies as “hating” them.) “I don’t agree with everything the Chamber does,” Beck said, citing the Chamber’s pro-immigration reform position, but that hardly hampered his newfound solidarity. Any reservations anti-TARP, anti-stimulus Beck may have had about the pro-TARP, pro-stimulus Chamber were tossed aside. Declaring the Chamber “our parents, our grandparents — they are us,” Beck ponied up $10,000 and told his listeners, “I would like to make this the biggest fundraising day in the Chamber’s history.” Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice president for government affairs, even went on Beck’s show that day to thank Beck personally for his efforts. “Glenn, just so you know, as a result of you,” Josten said, “[our website has had] the single highest contribution we’ve ever received for an entire day, and that’s just for the first hour.” Indeed, a Chamber official later told Politico: “I don’t have exact numbers, because money is continuing to pour in. It even crashed our servers. The phones blew up today — people were calling all day long. Bottom line: Today was the single largest day of online fundraising that we have ever had in the history of the Chamber.” Rupert Murdoch’s other speech Murdoch gave another speech in New York this week. Two days before he spoke to News Corp. shareholders, he stood before the Anti-Defamation League and said: “Today it seems that the most virulent strains” of anti-Semitism “come from the left.” There was no acknowledgment that his own Fox News personalities have a history of promoting anti-Semitic sources and mainstreaming people who have associations with anti-Semitic groups. Last week, we pointed out that “[o]ver the past few months, several anti-Semitic authors and theories have popped up in Glenn Beck’s TV and radio monologues, and Beck’s audience of millions is, unwittingly or not, being exposed to some of the most hateful rhetoric of the last century.” And according to the Anti-Defamation League, Beck historian and frequent Glenn Beck guest David Barton has spoken at events hosted by the Christian Identity movement, which “asserts that Jews are ‘the synagogue of Satan’; that Blacks and other people of color are subhuman; and that northern European whites and their American descendants are the ‘chosen people’ of scriptural prophesy.” That’s Murdoch’s Fox News: simply unstoppable.

FORECAST: Right-wing money to rain on Mass – severe flooding expected

Today, the Washington Post reported that “the final two weeks of the campaign will not be for the faint of heart.  A torrent of money, much of it from outside groups whose donors are not disclosed, will rain down on states and congressional districts, disproportionately for Republican candidates. The money will underwrite a barrage of ads, almost all of them wholly negative and highly personal.”

The congressional district I represent will not escape this gloomy forecast of right-wing “rain.”  Yesterday, a shadowy political organization based in Nevada announced that it will spend approximately $200,000 to defeat me and one of my Democratic colleagues in Massachusetts.  Last week, the Tea Party Express announced that I would be one of their top targets in the entire country.  Can outside right-wing organizations rain enough money on Massachusetts to alter the outcome of an election?  Sadly, they can.

You can help me fight this dark, threatening storm which threatens free elections.

The right is not only trying to defeat me personally; it wants to undermine many of the things I have spent my career fighting for.  It would like to roll back a new law to prevent abusive practices by credit card companies, eliminate safeguards against predatory lending, revoke new regulations on risky practices by large financial firms, block new rules on executive compensation, privatize Social Security, prevent reductions in excessive military spending, and restrict a woman’s right to choose.

Please help me ride out this storm so I can continue to fight for the things we care about most.  I will be grateful for your help.

From the Field Updates …a message from Jon Vogel

I can’t thank you enough — because of you Democrats are surging in these final weeks.

With your help, we reached our goal of $500,000 for rapid response and wired urgent support to our campaigns for television ads for next week and to send even more on-the-ground support.

While shadowy outside GOP front groups continue to barrage our candidates with attack ads, we have planned for the final two weeks, a $40 million wave of television ads for Democratic campaigns nationwide and to continue our $20 million voter contact program.

So far, our efforts are paying off and we are seeing poll numbers move, BUT we can take nothing for granted. The margin of victory on many of these races are small and this is the time to go all in.

For the final two weeks, my strategists and I see about a $300,000 gap for what we need before Tuesday’s two weeks out deadline. Can you help us again with another generous gift? Your gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

Some other updates from the field:

Another Bad Week for the GOP

This week, Republican candidates have been consumed by one media firestorm after another:

• First, there was news that police are investigating one of their most highly-touted candidates for an alleged sexual assault of a potential campaign volunteer.
• Then, photos surfaced of one of their tea party candidates dressed as a Nazi in World War II reenactments.
• Lastly, NBC News reported that GOP candidate Allen West has ties to an infamous motorcycle gang and crime syndicate, the Outlaws.The Department of Justice has said the Outlaws are a gang known for making and distributing meth, committing homicide, and prostitution. The Outlaws have a history of denigrating women and considering women property – actually branding women like cattle.

What’s worse? These are just a couple of the Republican extremists running in battleground races. Early voting has already started in many states so we have to act fast to expose the troubling records of the Republicans’ radical “Young Gun” candidates before Tuesday’s TV ad buy deadline.

Check out our GOPMisfires.com website and help us expose these Republicans’ radical records.

Early Voting and Voter Outreach Continues

Your dollars have enabled Democrats in hard-fought races to fight back with ads and launch their state-of-the-art voter contact efforts. But it’s too close for comfort with so many like these running in battleground races.

There is no margin for error and every dollar you give has an impact. We have already been on the air with over $17 million in television ads and it’s working. Our poll numbers in key districts are moving!

Early voting has started and so has our voter outreach programs. Phone banks are 7 days a week here at headquarters and voter outreach programs continue over in 75 districts across the country. It costs $28 to outfit a grassroots canvasser with the proper supplies — consider sponsoring 1 or even 2 canvassers today. Contribute today >>

Together, we can be the difference between victory and defeat for Democrats and keeping these and many other right-wing extremists out of Congress. But we must raise $300,000 before Tuesday’s deadline to wire money to the field to fund next week’s campaign activities.

Just days left: Contribute before Tuesday’s two weeks out deadline so we can raise the $300,000 we need to fund next week’s activities for Democrats in too-close-to-call races.

Onward to Victory,

Jon Vogel
DCCC Executive Director

The St. Cloud Times -Endorses Tarryl Clark !

–A message from Carrie –

I just read this and wanted to share it with you! The St. Cloud Times, the largest daily newspaper in Minnesota’s 6th District, today endorsed Tarryl Clark for Congress. This conservative-leaning paper is widely read in the district, and their endorsement means a great deal. They know what you know – Michele Bachmann is serving the special interests, not her constituents. And as the newspaper that knows Tarryl the best, they know that Tarryl will be on OUR side in Congress.

Read it for yourself here or read it below, and if you can, make a contribution to help keep our momentum going!

-Carrie

Sent from my BlackBerry®

*******************************************************************************************

Our View: Bachmann isn’t serving district’s best interests

St. Cloud Times Editorial Board
October 17, 2010

Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District is diverse. It features rural, agricultural edges; vast stretches of exurban areas; an overload of suburbs; and enough urban pockets to raise eyebrows.

Growth-related challenges abound, and this recession – fomented by the bursting housing bubble – didn’t help.

All of that is why the district needs a U.S. House member who puts constituent service first. Sadly, after four years in office, Michele Bachmann has proved with unabashed consistency that serving 6th District constituents is essentially her last priority.

Come Nov. 2, voters should replace her with Tarryl Clark.

Regular Our View readers shouldn’t be surprised by this endorsement. This board in April of 2009 wrote off Bachmann’s desire to serve the voters who elect her.

We cited then three years worth of her rash, ridiculous, unsubstantiated, misleading and fear-mongering statements about national issues. We also noted – and this is important – her lack of any realistic solutions. In the 19 months since then, Bachmann has only refined an age-old political recipe: mix equal parts of fear and blame that raise your personal profile yet yield only sound bites, not solutions.

She does it so effectively (and relentlessly) that she’s become a grass-roots tea party heroine even while supporting a public policy agenda that helps entities that are anything but grass roots. Best example: In the wake of America’s financial collapse, do you really think Bachmann’s push to leave Wall Street alone was in the best interests of 6th District voters?

Also, look districtwide and we challenge you to find something – anything – that Bachmann has helped achieve or a cause she has helped advance. Much like her legislative ideas, we see nothing of substance. In fact, these past four years renew our appreciation for House representation that provided this area with voices like Collin Peterson and Mark Kennedy. Sure, they have their partisan allegiances, but they realized when it was time to set those aside and do what was best for the district, not themselves.

Residents of the 6th District deserve a return to that philosophy. Clark is the person to provide it because in four years, Bachmann has proved she is incapable of such efforts.

Weekend review &some News -The Heritage Foundation

President Obama and Mrs O will be in Ohio “Moving America forward”  Rally !!!

You can catch the President and First Lady starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. A pre-program featuring musical guest John Legend will begin at 6:00 p.m. OFA

Watch it live here:

http://barackobama.com/live

 

***Lately, cableheads have been giving out sources for their various claims with the preface of who and where they got their accurate, good or great News info lately and for a news junkie it slightly amused me, definitely annoyed me so the rant is on. I watch and listen to all things Political on the tele but i rarely feel any group, single person or guest on cable is truly giving me the truth.  It is all opinion News and while we all know this the News just seems different  since the first African-American President was elected by 53%. I get the impression from some stations that they are still having a tough time with it and quite possibly the stations who probably are folks leaning to the right of all issues paying folks to those of us left of center tidbits that seems reasonable, fair and balance though i still am not drinking the kool-aid. If you are paying attention you hear what talkingheads consider then spew the news over the course of a 15minute set and all of a sudden a jab, a knock or personal complaint is thrown at President Obama or “The Government” without naming names… which is not just offensive to me but the viewer should get it most cableheads lean right .

The article below was first written February of 2009. I only included a portion of it, so if you want to read the complete article i guess you have to go to their website but it is apparent the article was intended for fellow members of the Heritage Foundation. The problem for me is that this group was on just about every News station all during the 2008 election campaign  giving out information that the public was asked to absorb and believe as the truth …We are now about 2 years later and while they are not on main stream tv as much the rhetoric has become nastier and they  have taken to CSPAN with what I consider dangerous rhetoric.   The point is that the Heritage Foundation is not a neutral organization as many have claimed and even ed shultz had to question their intent last week as well as a few other cableheads.  If you are listening to Republicans on any given day on any talk show all you hear are talking points given to them by the Heritage Foundation and these candidates are spewing them almost verbatim…it is offensive. This article grabbed my attention in 2/2009 and it just keeps being played over and over verbally by the right even now.

Welfare Spendathon

Stimulus Bill Abolishes Welfare Reform and Adds New Welfare Spending …

by Robert E. Rector and Katherine Bradley … To heritage foundation members

But overturning welfare reform is just the beginning. In his recent press conference, President Obama explained that the stimulus bill would provide “tax relief” and “direct investment” in infrastructure. He neglected to mention that of the $816 billion in new spending and tax cuts in the House stimulus bill–32 percent or $264 billion–is new means-tested welfare spending, providing cash, food, housing, and medical care to poor and low income Americans.[5] (The figure in the Senate bill is about 15 percent lower.)

I have to ask is what the Heritage Foundation saying truly an American attitude?

jus sayin

Other News …

UW Husky -35  Oregon -34 Dbl OT

Did you know that Olympic College in Wa.State decided they did not like the 1st amendment so they banned it… when will this action be challenged?

Several Hilton Hotels are experiencing worker strikes -3rd day of strikes

11thousand cribs, made in China have rail hardware problems sold in JCP 2003-2007 models

NOW backs candidate Jerry Brown for Gov of California

Candidate Conway Vs. Rand Paul live on CSPAN at 7pm ET

Federal Tax Credit for improvements ends on 12/31

The debate: Sen. Patty Murray V Dino Rossi at 7pm on komo4 online: komonews.com

President Obama and Mrs. O will be in Ohio campaigning

CSPAN …

Texas Book Festival 2010 Saturday	Weekly Addresses Saturday
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to the Commonwealth Club of California Friday

Pres. Obama & Vice Pres. Biden Remarks at Chris Coons (D) Campaign Event Friday	Hudson Institute Discussion on U.S.-Japan Relations Friday
Fed Chair Ben Bernanke Addresses Boston Fed. Reserve Conference Friday	Fmr. Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice Remarks at National Press Club Luncheon Friday
CSIS Discussion on the Year Ahead in Space Friday	Urban Land Institute Conference on the Real Estate Market & the Economy Friday