Feed aggregator

​Every week, the Google Apps gang here in New York organizes a movie night. It’s always a lot of fun, but organizing it is chaotic! Naturally, we use a spreadsheet to keep a list of movies we’d like to see (that’s the easy part!), and then on Tuesday evening there’s a storm of email as we try to pick a winner.

Always fans of logic and the democratic process, the team wrote a script — to first collate a list of movie showtimes, then invite everyone to vote. The script automates the process, eliminating the drudgery and leaving us more time to canvas and cajole support for our favorite films.

Google Apps Script has been available to businesses, schools and other organizations using Google Apps since January, and today we’re excited to bring it to all Google spreadsheets, along with a new Apps Script Gallery that let’s everyone — not just those who are JavaScript-savvy — reap the benefits of Apps Script. You can see just how easy it is to make use of a script in the video below:
​


​
To kick things off in the gallery, we put together some wacky demos showing what’s possible with a script: you’ll find games of hangman and sudoku, some fractal art and a very practical unit conversion script.
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You can find these scripts, and more, in the Apps Script gallery by going to Insert and then selecting Script... in any Google spreadsheet.



For more details on the Movie Night script, and to get started writing your own scripts, be sure to check out today’s Google Apps Script announcement on the Google Apps Developer Blog.

Posted by: Evin Levey, Product Manager, Google Apps

Posted by Grace Kwak, Product Manager

Today, we're happy to announce three new features in Calendar Labs. To try them out, just go to the Labs tab under Calendar Settings.

1. Event flair by Dave Marmaros
Want a little airplane icon next to information about your upcoming flight? Or stars next to meetings with your boss? This experiment lets you choose from forty different icons and add one to each Calendar event. Even better, if you invite people to your events, they'll be able to see the icon you added too. After you enable this feature, click on an event and look for the "Event flair" gadget to activate.





2. Gentle reminders by Sorin Mocanu
If you keep Google Calendar open all day long, you probably end up seeing quite a few reminders every day. Browser alerts are okay, but I tried to find a way for Calendar notifications to integrate smoothly with everything else.

Turn on "Gentle Reminders," and when you get a notification, the title of your Calendar window or tab will start blinking and the event details will stay in Calendar.



If you're using this lab in a supported browser (currently Google Chrome for Windows and Google Chrome beta for Linux), you'll also have the option to get your reminders in the next generation of floating desktop notifications:



After you enable this feature, you can configure notification options on the Settings page.

3. Automatically declining events by Lucia Fedorova and Miguel García
Have you ever checked your calendar and noticed that someone scheduled a really important meeting during your vacation or at a time when you're not available? Now there's a way to automatically decline events when you're not around. Turn on "Automatically declining events," block off times when you're unavailable, and event invitations during this period will get automatically declined.

In my recent trip to Brazil I took a picture of this shirt, which I think vividly exemplifies a very important attribute of great brands: their ability to generate clear and consistent mental associations as soon as somebody hears their name. 

The words on this shirt are exactly what comes to mind when we hear “Brazil”.  This immediate connection is one of the reasons why Brazil is a strong brand.  Other countries, like Paraguay or Honduras, for example, are weak brands because most people are not able to easily associate any meaning to them.

My country, Peru, is beginning to position itself as a brand.  Whenever I tell people that I am from Peru, the most common reaction is: “Oh, Peruvian fooooood”, it’s the best!!!.”  Peru is slowly but surely becoming known for its fascinating cuisine.  Another strong association is Machu Picchu, and the iconic image that has been seen by millions of people all over the world. 

There are other associations that can be exploited, but they need a little marketing help.  For example: “surfing”.  Peru’s beaches are great for surfing, but that hasn’t yet been communicated as effectively as the country’s reputation for great food.  Another association that can probably work for Peru is “rain forest”.

Companies, products and people are also brands, and they must work on developing strong mental associations in order to differentiate themselves and break through the clutter, which is the biggest obstacle to making it in today’s marketplace. 

What do you want people to think when they hear your name or the name of your product?  Identify a few (five or six) positive and memorable words that go well with you and what you want to project, and work hard to live up to them.  You will then be on your way to building a strong brand.

Posted via email from Mario Sanchez Carrion | Posterous

Posted by Emmanuel Pellereau, Software Engineer

My little sister recently setup her Gmail account to retrieve messages from her school address, so she can check all of her email accounts in one place. She no longer has to constantly log in to two email programs, and she likes using Gmail's powerful interface for all her mail.

However, sometimes she knows an email has already been sent to her school address, and she just can't wait for the next scheduled fetch to have it show up in her Gmail inbox. As any big brother would, I tried to solve this issue for her and millions of Gmail users.

Turn on "Refresh POP accounts" from the Labs tab under Settings, and the refresh link at the top of your inbox will not only update your inbox with your new Gmail messages, it will also fetch messages from any other accounts which you have set up.



Try it out, and let us know if you have any feedback.

Cross posted on the Google Enterprise Blog

​While feedback and revision are crucial steps to successful writing, it’s not always easy to do in practice. Keeping track of revisions, deciphering edits, and arranging reviews can keep us from repeating this editing cycle more often.

The collaborative nature of Google Apps can help evolve the writing process with easy sharing and anytime, anywhere collaboration. Add in built-in reference tools, autosave and revision history, and ready-made templates, and Google Docs – part of the Google Apps suite – becomes a powerful platform for writing.

We’ve developed our first Google Apps Topic Review to highlight some of these features and stories from teachers in the classroom, and we shared and revised this paper using the same principles of collaboration.

If you’re attending this year’s ASCD conference (held from March 6-8 in San Antonio, Texas) we’ll be featuring presentations from Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps Education Edition customers, and Google Apps Education team members about other ways Google Apps can help in the classroom. View our teaching theater schedule and stop by to visit us in Booth #626.

For more information about how to start using Google Apps Education Edition at your school, visit www.google.com/a/edu.

Posted by: ​​Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education team

Last year, I planned an OSCARS® viewing party with my friends. To add some friendly competition and figure out who was coming, I collected people's predictions for the winners and their RSVP information with a Google form ahead of time. I found the process really easy, so this year I created a Google form for the 2010 OSCARS® and made it a template that anyone can use to plan their own viewing parties:


If you're getting together with friends for OSCAR NIGHT® tomorrow, check out this template in the Google Docs Template Gallery. Happy viewing!

Posted by: Natalie Schwartz, Google Creative Lab

“OSCAR®,” “OSCARS®,” “ACADEMY AWARD®,” “ACADEMY AWARDS®,” “OSCAR NIGHT®,” “A.M.P.A.S.®” and the “Oscar” design mark are trademarks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.

[ Hear movie clip by clicking on audio podcast above. ]

That’s a scene from the 1968 movie The Party with Peter Sellers attempting small talk. And sometimes small talk can lead to interesting connections.

[More]


(author unknown)074459380582983600000163974574658880728513486451433277745108

(Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog)

The future of productivity applications is in the cloud. We've always believed the web is the best platform for creating and sharing information, and Google Docs has already helped millions of people become more productive. But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So as we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we’re also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office.
​
For example, we recently made it possible to use Google Docs to store and share any type of file that you have on your computer, not just the ones you create online. Today we’re excited to announce another step towards seamless interoperability: we have acquired DocVerse.

DocVerse is a small, nimble team of talented developers who share our vision, and they’ve enabled true collaboration right within Microsoft Office. With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications.

A huge "welcome" to the DocVerse team and their customers! Current DocVerse users can keep using the product as usual, though we’ve suspended new sign-ups until we’re ready to share what's next. Stay tuned!

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Group Product Manager

En Français

Late last month, nearly 50,000 people converged in Barcelona for the GSMA Mobile World Congress, the world's largest mobile conference. There was an outstanding lineup of speakers from the mobile industry, 1,300 companies represented in the exhibition halls, showcasing new devices, technologies, applications, operating systems, accessories and much more. Google hosted a number of events and meetings, including the inaugural App Planet event held by GSMA with Google and other sponsors, which included application developer conferences and an Android Developer Lab. Google CEO Eric Schmidt delivered the keynote address, in which he emphasized the priority of mobile in Google's engineering and product development approach, the opportunity for enhanced services that fully utilize the robust capabilities of new mobile devices, and highlighted some of the major trends in the mobile industry, such as user demand for device and service connectivity, the increasing importance of cloud services, and improved capacity and computing power.

At the Global Mobile Awards 2010, Google Africa was nominated for two awards in the awards in the category for "Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development." The first nomination we received was for our role in establishing the Application Laboratory (AppLab) with Grameen Foundation and MTN Uganda, where Google served as angel investor and major contributor of technology, product and management expertise. Through this unique collaboration among partners Grameen Foundation (AppLab Uganda), Google, and MTN Uganda, we launched a suite of mobile services that help address issues of poverty, distance (rural) and vulnerability in Uganda, including Google SMS Health Tips, Farmer's Friend agriculture tips and Google Trader, an SMS and web-based service that promotes greater access to markets and trade. It was our work in providing the Google SMS Health Tips service in Uganda that earned the Google Africa team a second nomination for the Global Mobile Awards, also for "Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development." We were delighted to be announced as the winner in this category, an honor amongst such an impressive set of nominees.


With our partners Grameen Foundation and MTN Uganda, we were awarded this prize for providing the first mobile phone health application that combines natural language search technology with locally relevant, timely, trusted and actionable content. The service includes a local clinic finder, which helps people find nearby clinics that offer services they need and information that enables better health-seeking behavior and access to critical health treatments. We launched the Health Tips service so that critically-needed sexual and reproductive health information can be made available to anyone with access to a mobile phone. Health Tips improves people’s access to important health information that empowers them and enhance their lives, especially among the poor.

These nominations and the award demonstrate the increasing awareness of the value of services that focus on users needs and serve the majority of people across Africa. We hope that this award helps catalyze new innovations and lasting impact for anyone using a mobile phone.

Posted by Rachel Payne, Country Manager Uganda, and Fiona Lee, Technical Program Manager, Google Africa Team

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Mobile World Congress et Google Ouganda

Le mois dernier, près de 50 000 visiteurs se sont rendu à Barcelone pour visiter plus grand salon international de téléphonie mobile, GSMA Mobile World Congress. Ils ont pu assister aux interventions de nombreux acteurs du secteur de la téléphonie et visiter les stands de 1300 entreprises proposant leurs nouveaux appareils, technologies, applications, systèmes d’exploitation, accessoires et autres. Google a accueilli un certain nombre de manifestations et de réunions, dont l’événement inaugural App Planet organisé par GSMA avec Google et d’autres sponsors, ainsi que des conférences d’éditeurs d’applications et un Android Developer Lab (ADL). C’est à Eric Schmidt, PDG de Google, qu’est revenu l’honneur de prononcer le discours d’ouverture. Ce fut pour lui l’occasion de mettre l’accent sur la priorité donnée au mobile par Google en termes d’ingénierie et de développement produit, et de rappeler l’opportunité offerte par les services évolués qui exploitent pleinement les capacités des nouveaux appareils mobiles. Il a également abordé quelques-unes des grandes tendances du secteur : la demande des utilisateurs pour une plus grande connectivité des appareils et des services, l’importance croissante des services en nuage, et l’amélioration des capacités et de la puissance informatiques.

Aux Global Mobile Awards 2010, Google Afrique a été nominé pour deux prix dans la catégorie "Meilleur usage du mobile pour le développement socio-économique." La première nomination récompense notre rôle dans la mise en place du Application Laboratory (AppLab) avec la Fondation Grameen et MTN Ouganda, où Google a servi de business angel et de contributeur majeur de technologie, produit et expertise de gestion. Par le biais de ce partenariat unique entre la Fondation Grameen (AppLab Ouganda), Google et MTN Ouganda, nous avons lancé une série de services mobiles qui aident à apporter des réponses aux problèmes de pauvreté, de distance (zones rurales) et de précarité en Ouganda, avec par exemple Google SMS Health Tips, Farmer's Friend (service destiné aux cultivateurs) et Google Trader, un service basé sur Internet et les SMS qui assure un meilleur accès aux marchés et aux échanges. C’est notre travail sur le service Google SMS Health Tips en Ouganda qui nous a valu notre deuxième nomination aux Global Mobile Awards, toujours dans la catégorie "Meilleur usage du mobile pour le développement socio-économique." « Nous avons été ravis d’apprendre que nous étions lauréats de cette catégorie, un grand honneur compte tenu de la qualité et du nombre des autres nominés. »

Avec nos partenaires, la Fondation Grameen et MTN Ouganda, ce prix nous a été décerné pour avoir fourni la première application de santé sur mobile qui combine une technologie de recherche en langage naturel avec un contenu pertinent localement, en temps utile, fiable et concret. Le service comprend un localisateur de centres médicaux locales, qui aide les gens à trouver la clinique la plus proche offrant les services dont ils ont besoin, et des informations permettant d’améliorer ses habitudes en matière d'hygiène et de santé et d’avoir accès aux soins fondamentaux. Nous avons lancé le service Health Tips pour que les informations de santé en matière de sexualité et la procréation soient à disposition de tous ceux qui ont accès à un téléphone mobile. Health Tips améliore l’accès de tous à des informations de santé essentielles, qui les responsabilisent et améliorent leur vie, notamment celle des plus pauvres.

Ces nominations et ce prix montrent combien la valeur des services centrés sur les besoins des utilisateurs et servant la majorité des peuples d’Afrique est de plus en plus reconnue. Nous espérons que ce prix aidera à concrétiser d’autres innovations et aura un impact durable pour améliorer la vie de tous ceux qui se servent d’un téléphone mobile.

Posté par Rachel Payne, Directrice Pays Ouganda, et Fiona Lee, Directrice Programme technique, équipe Google Afrique

Download Drupal 6.16
Download Drupal 5.22

Drupal 6.16 and 5.22, maintenance releases which fix issues reported through the bug tracking system, as well as security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. Drupal 6.16 also fixes other smaller issues.

Upgrading your existing Drupal 5 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 6.x release series, consult the Drupal 6.0 release announcement, more information on the 5.x releases can be found in the Drupal 5.0 release announcement. Drupal 5 will no longer be maintained when Drupal 7 is released. Upgrading to Drupal 6 is recommended.

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Drupal 6 Attachment Views, by me, J. Ayen Green, is my second title from Packt Publishing. It is aimed at Drupal web site developers who want to build more functionality and interaction into their views, but aren’t ready quite yet to take on panels. As a reader of drupal.org, you can receive a 15% discount (see below) and benefit the Drupal Association!

I wrote this to be a fun, informative, hands-on learning guide. It uses actual case study that was developed in parallel with the book’s writing. This guide presents purposeful and interactive examples that build on each other. Clear, concise instructions and practical examples help you to learn quickly to use this exciting feature of views.

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Posted by Michael Davidson, Software Engineer

One of the lesser-known features of Gmail is its ability to help with multitasking. Frequently, I find that I need to find an old message while I'm composing an email. When this happens, I click on the "new window" icon to pop my compose area into its own window:


There's only one problem — it's been slow! Today, we're rolling out a change that will fix this (reload your account to make sure you get this change). Now, popping out a window is much, much faster. No more "Loading..." progress bar.

There are a number of places you can pop up new windows in Gmail.

• In chat, there's the little upward arrow in the title bar:
  
  


• When writing a message, hold the "Shift" key while you click on the Compose Mail, Reply, Reply All or Forward links and you'll get a new window for your new message. (Holding the "Shift" key while typing the keyboard shortcut — in other words typing "C" "R" or "F" — has the same effect.)


• When you're reading your mail, hold the "Shift" key while you click on a message to open the conversation in a new window. (Same holds true for the "Shift" key and the "o" or "Enter" shortcuts.)


• If you're reading an email and want to save it for later, you can click the "New window" link in the upper-right hand corner of the conversation view:
  
  

Keep in mind that the popped out window does not outlive the closing of the original Gmail window, although we're working on a way to make that better. Unfortunately, we weren't able to make this work in Internet Explorer, so to see the speed-up, you'll need to be using Mozilla Firefox, Apple's Safari, or Google Chrome.

Over 400 session submissions have been submitted for DrupalCon San Francisco, which will be held April 19-21, 2010. We need your help in deciding which of those sessions will be included in the conference program. Please come review the list of sessions and vote on the ones you'd like to see most.

Voting ends Monday, March 1st at 23:59 PST.

DrupalCon is a community-driven event. You've shared with us a vast array of exciting new ideas, proven recipes for success, case studies, best practices, new solutions to old problems, and other gems of knowledge. Now help us narrow down the selection. Your opinions are what shapes what happens at DrupalCon. Remember, every vote counts!

If you're a business, organization, or individual interested in helping to sponsor DrupalCon San Francisco, opportunities are still available. Contact us via the Web site, via e-mail at fundraising@drupal.com or phone at 415-894-9320 today!

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Posted by Mark Knichel, Software Engineer

We launched Gmail Labs over a year and a half ago as a playground where engineers can come up with new features and let your input help decide which are good ideas and which don't quite work out. Any engineer at Google can come up with a feature, code it, and launch it quickly to tens of millions of users.

Labs started out with 13 features and quickly grew to 60, with even more on the way. We've received countless comments and kept an eye on our stats: some of these experimental features were adopted by millions and others trickled along with little usage. A couple have already graduated from Labs and we've already retired one: Tasks was the first to become a regular part of Gmail, Right-side Labels was retired when we updated the way labels work, and Offline Gmail graduated a couple months back. Today, true to the original intent of Gmail Labs, we're graduating six more features and retiring five.

Graduating:

1. Search Autocomplete
2. Go To Label
3. Forgotten Attachment Detector
4. YouTube Previews
5. Custom Label Colors
6. Vacation Dates

Retiring:

1. Muzzle
2. Fixed Width Font
3. Email Addict
4. Location in Signature
5. Random Signature

These decisions were made based based mainly on usage, taking feature polish and your feedback into account. We've also tweaked some of the graduating features to improve them before making them default Gmail features. For example, we've combined Go To Label with Search Autocomplete, making it easier than ever for you to find what you're looking for.

Search Autocomplete and Go To Label
Start typing in the Gmail search box (English only for now), and Gmail suggests terms that might help you find what you're looking for — from contact names to labels and advanced search operators.


We've integrated Go To Label into this search box as well. If you have keyboard shortcuts turned on, type "g" then "l" and instead of getting the old "Go to label" pop-up, you'll be in the search box with the "label:" operator filled in for you. Start typing the label you want to go to, and autocomplete will take it from there. All you have to do is hit enter. If you want to send your cursor to the blank search field, the keyboard shortcut "/" will do it.

Forgotten Attachment Detector
From time to time, we all forget to attach a file and sheepishly send another email with the forgotten attachment. To help save you from that embarrassment, Gmail looks for phrases in your email that suggest you meant to attach a file and alerts you if it looks like you forgot an attachment.


YouTube Previews
If you're like me, your friends probably often email you links to YouTube videos. Instead of having to click on the link and wait for a new window to load before you can watch the video, Gmail now shows YouTube previews right below the message. All you have to do is click the play button and enjoy.


Custom Label Colors
Why settle for a restrictive palette when you can choose from over 4000 possible color combinations to help distinguish and organize your labels? Just click on "Add custom color" from the regular labels interface.


Vacation Dates
If you specify which dates you'll be away in advance, you won't have to remember to turn on the vacation responder when when you're actually on vacation. Set your dates in advance, and let Gmail do the rest.


Retiring features is always a tough decision — we invest in building and maintaining them and we realize some of you are probably fans of some of Gmail's lesser-used features. But Labs are experimental features, and from time to time they may break (that's why there's a quick way to disable them), or even disappear. Over the next few days, you'll see Muzzle, Fixed Width Font, Email Addict, Location in Signature, and Random Signature stop working and disappear from the Labs tab.

We'll keep working on new Labs to help make your Gmail experience even better, and we'll continue to graduate successful features and retire the ones that don’t work out to make room for new ones. Thank you to all the engineers who have worked on Labs features — especially Bruce, Darick, Jon (the intern), Ibrahim, Chris, Keith, Chad, Michael, and Marco! Please continue to send us feedback and remember that you vote for your favorite Labs features by using them and leaving comments.

Guest post: Tony Hirst is a lecturer in the Department of Communication and Systems at the UK's Open University, co-founder of document discussion platform WriteToReply.org and member of the JISC's DevCSI Developer Focus Group. An aspiring "mashup artist", he blogs regularly at OUseful.info.

For several years, I have been exploring various ways of using online applications to grab and display data from around the web and represent it in a visual form. One fertile source of near-live data, particularly for sports results, is Wikipedia; but how can you get data out of Wikipedia and then display it in a chart, or on a map?


For the 2008 Olympics, I looked at how to create a map-based view of the overall medal tables using Google spreadsheets. With the Olympics coming round again - this time the 2010 Winter Olympics - I thought I'd take the opportunity to update that original mashup with a few tricks I've learned since then. In part as a teaching example, I came up with a recipe that illustrates a lot of functionality many people are unaware of, in a self-contained and hopefully coherent way - how to import data into a spreadsheet, how to write an application script, and how to use a spreadsheet as a database. The aim is to create a heat map of the current state of the medals table for the 2010 Winter Olympics that I can add to iGoogle.

The recipe runs as follows:

- Take one Winter Olympics Medal table on Wikipedia
- Use the importHTML function to import the table into a Google spreadsheet
- Filter out the name of each country from the imported table using either a Google Apps script function containing a regular expression or a SPLIT() formula; return the country name to the medal table spreadsheet
- Take one ISO country code table, found via a web search, and copy and paste it into a second spreadsheet worksheet. You will use this sheet as a database
- Using a =QUERY() formula applied to the ISO country code sheet, find the ISO country code for each country in the medal table. (Note that some extraneous space characters in the SPLIT country name require the trailing space to be recognized)
- Arrange the columns, by copying cells if necessary, so that you have a column of ISO country codes followed by number of medals. For example, ISO country code, number of gold medals, ISO country code, number of silver medals, and so on.
- Highlight a country code column and a medal tally column that are side by side, select a heatmap widget from the tools menu and configure it as required
- Embed your Winter Olympics 2010 Live Medals Table Heatmap in your blog or iGoogle from the Gadget menu.


As the Wikipedia medals table is updated, your medals table heatmap should be too. To preview the spreadsheet, please visit here.

A complete recipe is given in the OUseful.info blog post "Creating a Winter Olympics 2010 Medal Map In Google Spreadsheets."

Posted by: Tony Hirst, Dept of Communication and Systems, The Open University, UK & OUseful.info

The Augusta Chronicle, the flagship newspaper of Morris Publishing Group, recently relaunched its website on the outstanding Drupal framework.

Morris first began using Drupal in 2005 with the launch of BlufftonToday.com, a blog-centric community website coupled with a free daily newspaper. In 2006 it adopted Drupal for both news and blogs at SavannahNow.com, the website of the Savannah Morning News. Both newspapers won Digital Edge awards for innovation in user participation.

Since then, the digital media arm of Morris Communications, Morris DigitalWorks, has developed a robust digital newspaper platform built on Drupal 6, to eventually power all 13 of its daily newspapers. Morris also uses Drupal for its radio stations and Skirt.com, a national specialty site for women.

Reader Participation

Morris has made a commitment to make their online platform a dynamic arena for reader participation and contributions. Readers are encouraged to comment on stories and blogs, and, on some papers, are encouraged to create their own blogs on the site. Journalists are expected to post news online immediately and to interact with the public, and they need to be able to do it without learning HTML or tools such as FTP. These requirements made Drupal a natural choice.

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En Français

Do you love solving complex problems? Do you code in your sleep? Are you an African university student? Are you interested in internships at Google?

If so, Code Jam Africa is for you!

Code Jam Africa is a new coding competition for African computer science students. It's your chance to try your skills against fellow coders and algorithmic whizzes! Google engineers have been hard at work developing a set of brainteasers designed to challenge your CS know-how. Think you can beat them? You might win a Code Jam Africa t-shirt or special prize pack. Interested in Google internships? Register now and let us know! Outstanding performance in Code Jam Africa 2010 may be considered if you apply for an internship at our European Headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland.




Register now at: http://code.google.com/codejam/africa/

Important dates
Registration: Now - March 15th, 2010
Round 1: 12:00 UTC March 15th - 00:00 UTC March 16th, 2010
Round 2 (for Round 1 winners): 17:00 UTC March 22nd - TBD
If you want to spread the word at your local University, feel free to print and distribute this leaflet.

Need even more coding? Ready to take on the world? Stay tuned for Google's global Code Jam 2010 !

Posted by Caitlin Pantos, University Programs Team

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Vous adorez résoudre des problèmes complexes ? Vous écrivez du code en dormant ? Vous êtes étudiant dans une université africaine ? Vous êtes intéressé par un stage chez Google ?

Dans ce cas, Code Jam Africa est fait pour vous !

Code Jam Africa est un nouveau concours de programmation pour les étudiants africains en informatique . C’est l’occasion de vous mesurer à vos camarades et aux champions de l’algorithme ! Les ingénieurs de Google ont travaillé d’arrache-pied pour développer un ensemble de casse-tête conçus pour défier votre savoir-faire en codage. Vous pensez pouvoir les battre? Vous pouvez gagner un T-shirt Code Jam Africa ou un prix spécial. Vous êtes intéressé par un stage chez Google? Inscrivez-vous et laissez nous savoir!Show romanization Parmi les meilleurs, quelques-uns pourront bénéficier d’un stage au siège européen de Google à Zurich en Suisse !

Inscrivez-vous maintenant sur : http://code.google.com/codejam/africa/

Dates importantes

Inscriptions : du 22 février au 15 mars 2010

1ère série d’épreuves : du 15 mars 2010 à 12 :00 UTC au 16 mars 2010 à 00 :00 UTC

2e série d’épreuves (pour les gagnants de la 1ère série) : le 22 mars à 17:00 UTC - TBD

Si vous voulez faire passer le mot à votre université locale, n'hésitez pas à imprimer et distribuer ce dépliant

Vous voulez faire encore plus de code ? Prêt à affronter le monde ? Restez branché sur le Code Jam 2010 de Google !

Posté par Caitlin Pantos, University Programs Team

A powerful US lobby group is trying to have pro-open source countries listed as being "anti-capitalism"(author unknown)00490252475335708998

Drupal 7 is moving along nicely, and is becoming increasingly stable. We just released a second alpha release, fixing a number of critical bugs, following our initial alpha release in January. Alpha releases are to give Drupalistas something to download and test, so they can report and help fix bugs.

When will we switch to betas? We will switch to betas when the upgrade path from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 is working. Once we hit beta, we will become increasingly strict about accepting any more changes and we'll also commit to making HEAD to HEAD upgrades work.

Finally, we'll start rolling release candidates once the number of critical bugs is zero (or close to zero). To help us focus on critical bugs, we're working on adding a 'major' severity level to our ticketing system, making the options 'critical', 'major', 'normal' and 'minor'. 'Major' bugs would be really bad, but not necessarily block a release. For example, bugs that don't prevent Drupal from working, or that only affect a fraction of the Drupal population would be prioritized for fixing in follow-up releases. Critical bugs are those that badly break Drupal, or that are a major regression compared to Drupal 6.

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