Posted by LeVar Burton

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: Through his work with Reading Rainbow, LeVar Burton continues to inspire generations of students to love reading. Getting an early start on celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week, we asked LeVar about educators that inspired him. He shares some stories from his childhood in today’s guest post, and he’ll share more during his keynote, “The power of storytelling to inspire students,” during our Education on Air conference. Register today and tune in for LeVar’s talk on May 8th at 11:15am ET.

Teachers seem to run in my family. My elder sister, my son and two nieces are all educators, and my mother, Erma Gene Christian, was a high school English teacher before becoming my first teacher. I know firsthand how hard these unsung heroes work, and especially how important a teacher can be in a child’s life.

One of the most indelible memories from my childhood happened one day when I was learning to read. My favorite aunt Hope, my mother’s youngest sister, was visiting from Kansas City. We were sitting together in a chair in the living room and I was reading aloud while my mother listened from the kitchen where she was preparing a family meal. Things were going fine until I got stuck on a word. I stopped cold in the middle of a sentence. The word was one I thought I knew, but I didn’t yet have the inner confidence to know that I could read it. I will never forget the infinite patience that Aunt Hope displayed and the gentle nudges of support she gave me. “Go on,” she’d whisper, “You know this word. I know you can sound it out.”

I still remember the word —it was “pretty” — and when my aunt finally said the word to me it was a revelation. She gave me the confidence I needed to trust myself; to trust that I did know these words. I was a reader. This is what teachers do for their students every day.

It’s from my mother, Erma Gene, that I learned the allure of storytelling. Throughout my childhood, mom always had several books going simultaneously, switching from one to the other seamlessly, deriving pleasure from each turn of the page, no matter what the genre. I learned from my mom—and eventually from my own experiences reading, and from exposing children to the joy of books through Reading Rainbow—that storytelling is an elemental part of the human experience, regardless of whether the medium is a print book or a digital book. We know that kids are reading more than 200,000 books a week on the Reading Rainbow App. They are using their devices not just for games or movies, but to read.

Here's me with the first educator who inspired me, my mother.

Children are drawn to stories, and with good storytelling we can teach kids anything. I have seen the light go on in a child’s eyes when he or she falls in love with a story. I’ve seen that light get brighter when they realize that they can read the stories for themselves. This light is the beginning of a lifelong love of reading, and from there a lifelong love of learning. For me, literacy means freedom, and literacy begins with storytelling. You get a child’s attention when you give them a good story. If we fail to take advantage of this, we are letting the opportunity of a lifetime—of our lifetime and theirs—pass us by.

Hear more about the power of storytelling from LeVar Burton during his Education on Air keynote on May 8 at 11:15am ET or check out his Reading Rainbow website.

Posted by Drew Hintz, Security Engineer and Justin Kosslyn, Google Ideas

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog.)

Would you enter your email address and password on this page?

This looks like a fairly standard login page, but it’s not. It’s what we call a “phishing” page, a site run by people looking to receive and steal your password. If you type your password here, attackers could steal it and gain access to your Google Account—and you may not even know it. This is a common and dangerous trap: the most effective phishing attacks can succeed 45 percent of the time, nearly 2% of messages to Gmail are designed to trick people into giving up their passwords, and various services across the web send millions upon millions of phishing emails, every day.

To help keep your account safe, today we’re launching Password Alert, a free, open-source Chrome extension that protects your Google and Google Apps for Work Accounts. Once you’ve installed it, Password Alert will show you a warning if you type your Google password into a site that isn’t a Google sign-in page. This protects you from phishing attacks and also encourages you to use different passwords for different sites, a security best practice.

Here's how it works for consumer accounts. Once you’ve installed and initialized Password Alert, Chrome will remember a “scrambled” version of your Google Account password. It only remembers this information for security purposes and doesn’t share it with anyone. Next, if you type your password into a site that isn't a Google sign-in page, Password Alert will show you a notice like the one below. This alert will tell you that you’re at risk of being phished so you can update your password and protect yourself.

Password Alert is also available to Google for Work customers, including Google Apps and Drive for Work. Your administrator can install Password Alert for everyone in the domains they manage, and receive alerts when Password Alert detects a possible problem. This can help spot malicious attackers trying to break into employee accounts and also reduce password reuse. Administrators can find more information in the Help Center.

We work to protect users from phishing attacks in a variety of ways. We’re constantly improving our Safe Browsing technology, which protects more than 1 billion people on Chrome, Safari and Firefox from phishing and other dangerous sites via bright, red warnings. We also offer tools like 2-Step Verification and Security Key that people can use to protect their Google Accounts and stay safe online. And of course, you can also take a Security Checkup at any time to make sure the safety and security information associated with your account is current.

To get started with Password Alert, visit the Chrome Web Store or the FAQ.

Posted by Erzsi Sousa, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: We’re jumping into our Delorean to explore how some of our favorite historical figures might have worked with Google Apps. Today, on the anniversary of Isaac Newton’s knighthood, we imagine his research in a Google Apps universe.

In April 1705, Isaac Newton was knighted for his many accomplishments. Since we’re self-admitted history nerds (how better to appreciate the advancements we enjoy now?) we asked ourselves: what if the Isaac Newton of 1705 used today’s Google Apps?

Newton was one of history’s foremost masters of mathematical formulation. What if he had been able to archive and automate his complex formulas in Sheets? We imagine he might have used the product function, =PRODUCT(factor1, factor2), to test different values for his second law of motion: force equals mass times acceleration (f = ma) — showing how apples of different sizes fall with different rates of acceleration from a tree.

While writing his famous Principia, Newton might have solicited feedback from his colleagues, like mathematicians Isaac Barrow and John Collins, by creating a Google Group and inviting them to edit in Docs. Working in Docs would have been helpful for keeping track of his notes while developing calculus — it might even have helped to avoid a heated debate with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who claimed he discovered it first. There’s no dispute over who first documents an idea when there’s access to revision history.

Newton famously feared criticism and was no stranger to controversy, so we imagine he would have been a strong advocate of using technology to keep his research secure. Should he have any concerns about a collaborator secretly passing sensitive information to his rival, Robert Hooke, he could adjust the sharing settings. He could even restrict the ability to view, share, download or print his treatise on optics after he’d already shared it.

Newton communicated through writing by hand — it’s estimated that he left behind about 10 million words of notes, letters and manuscripts — but we think he might have used Hangouts for urgent conversations. If Newton needed to speak with his colleagues at the Royal Society about whether Leibniz was guilty of plagiarism, he’d meet with them face-to-face on a Hangout. Or, if his wig wasn’t looking particularly great that day, he could’ve started a group chat and shared pictures of his calculus notation as evidence (maybe even including a few emoji to lighten things up).

As a professor at the University of Cambridge, Newton lectured about optics and presented his research about the properties of light. He might have shared illustrations of prisms to explain rainbows and the color spectrum, uploading the images to a shared Drive folder rather than passing around delicate hand-drawn sketches. Using Drive’s Optical Character Recognition, he could turn his handwritten notes into searchable text. Old notes he wrote on refraction and diffraction would be easy to find and reference as he developed new theories on the nature of light. As one of the most important thinkers and scientists of all time, how valuable would it have been for him to so easily archive and pull up his every great thought and idea?

Sir Isaac Newton’s findings changed our understanding of the world around us and are still relevant to our lives 300 years later. But even more inspiring is the way his curiosity and intellectual daring influenced generations of thinkers to be relentless in pursuing new ideas — a principle (pun intended) that drives us here at Google.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Chrome for Work

Today at Chrome Live, we showed how Chrome continues to make the way we work faster, simpler and more secure, while businesses like Netflix, Pinterest and Chico’s shared how Chrome for Work is bringing innovation to their workplaces.

We also announced new Chrome products and features that make it simpler to bring Chrome to work, including:

• Chromebook integration with Box for more ways to bring your files to the cloud: Now, you can seamlessly access your Box documents from a Chromebook, just as you would access your local documents. This means that with your Chromebook, you’ll have access to even more applications, no matter where you are.

• Bringing face-to-face meetings to larger rooms: Last year, we launched Chromebox for meetings so you can have face-to-face conversations with colleagues in remote offices and still feel like you’re in the same room. Today, we announced a new version of Chromebox for meetings that powers meeting rooms fitting up to twenty people. The hardware in the bundle includes a Chromebox powered by Dell, Asus, and HP, a pan tilt zoom camera, and more; just bring your own display. From huddle rooms to large conference rooms, you can now affordably bring video meetings to more office spaces.

• Improvements to Chrome management for Chrome-dedicated devices: A few weeks ago, we announced over a dozen Chrome partners in the digital signage space. We’ve also improved ongoing reporting to monitor the health of your kiosks and signage at all times. You’ll get alerts from Chrome management if a screen goes down and can remotely reboot the device to get it back online without dispatching a technician. You can also get live updates about system usage and capture screen grabs to see exactly what viewers see.

• Bringing Chrome management pricing flexibility to more places: We’re adding pricing flexibility to Chromebook management at a subscription fee of $50/year and announcing availability in seven new countries: Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, India, UK and France.

If you weren’t able to attend the live session, you can still watch the event on demand. Feel free to share your thoughts, impressions and questions using #chromelive15 on social media.

Posted by Hugh Lynch, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

We built Classroom to help teachers spend less time on paperwork, and more time with their students. Since we launched, we’ve also heard from teachers and professors that they’d love to be able to use Classroom to collaborate with other educators.

Teach together: Whether it’s a substitute, a teacher’s aide or a department chair, almost every teacher and professor is supported by other educators. So starting today, you can have multiple teachers in a Classroom class. To try it out, just go to your class’s About page and click “Invite teacher.” Additional teachers can do almost everything the primary teacher can do: they can create assignments or announcements, view and grade student submissions, participate in the comments on the class “stream,” invite students and even get email notifications – everything except delete the class.

Dani Raskin, a special education teacher at Clarkstown High School South in New York, has been helping us test out this new feature. “It’s really important for me to be able to work closely with other teachers who also teach my students, but we don’t always have prep time together,” Dani said. “We are now able to split the workload: both of us can provide direct feedback via comments and grading. It really fosters an authentic sense of teamwork and collaboration."

Prep for your classes in advance: We know how much planning goes into every class you teach, and now we’re making it a little bit easier to do some of that planning in Classroom. You can save announcements and assignments as “drafts” and wait to send them to students until you’re ready. And similar to Gmail, any time you start creating a new announcement or assignment, it’ll be automatically saved as a draft. This works with multiple teachers as well, so all the teachers in a class can collaboratively prep assignments in advance, and even make changes to each other’s posts on the fly.

We’re also making some other updates you’ve told us will make Classroom easier to use:

• Autosaved grades: If you can’t get all of your assignments graded in one session, but still want to return them to students at the same time, grades will now be auto saved as you enter them. You can choose when to return them to students.
• Better notifications: Teachers and students will now receive email notifications when a private comment is left on an assignment. 

For schools here in North America and in Europe, we know you’re working hard as you round the corner into the end of the year. We are, too, and we’ll have more Classroom news for you before school’s out for summer.

Posted by Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security, Google for Work

It’s easier than ever to share ideas across the world. But as technology keeps advancing to connect us, so do the techniques of those with bad intentions. The number of records breached in 2014 was staggering; weak usernames and passwords remain the leading cause. The introduction of 2-Step Verification added a layer of security for your Google Account, but we knew more could be done.

That’s why Google, working with the FIDO Alliance standards organization, developed the Security Key — an actual physical key used to access your Google Account. It sends an encrypted signature rather than a code, and ensures that your login cannot be phished. And using this key saves you time — when you need to verify your Google Account on a Chrome browser, the key’s light will flash. Just tap it and the signature sends automatically. In fact, when we rolled the Security Key out to Googlers last year, they loved that it was so much faster than when they had to enter a code.


New Google Apps controls to manage Security Keys Businesses like Yelp and Woolworths started piloting the Security Key at work and have been looking for ways to scale adoption. Cameron Roberts, Google Apps SME at Woolworths Limited told us, “We have a large workforce and it’s imperative that all of our accounts are secure. The Security Keys are a great step forward, as they are very practical and more secure.” Ryan de Temple, IT Engineer for Security at Yelp said, “As we roll Security Keys out to our users, we realized the importance of a management toolset to audit and revoke keys, as well as reports on key enrollment activity.”

In the coming weeks, Google Drive for Work admins will be able to easily deploy, monitor and manage the Security Key at scale with new controls in the Admin console with no additional software to install. IT admins will see where and when employees last used their keys with usage tracking and reports. If Security Keys are lost, admins can easily revoke access to those keys and provide backup codes so employees can still sign-in and get work done

Admins can order Security Keys from online retailers or directly from a manufacturer. Multiple models are available and prices start at $6 per key. You can have a smaller model permanently in the USB slot, so it’s available at your fingertips or carry a larger removable model on your keychain or in your wallet. We hope you also take advantage of what the Security Key can do to help protect your organization. Learn more.

Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Product Manager, Chrome for Work

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: Chromeboxes help businesses and schools update employees and students with timely information and create a sense of community. To learn more about using Chromebox for digital signage and how it can help your business or school work smarter, join Chrome Live on April 22.

Schools and universities across the country use digital signage to share announcements, news and schedules. Chromeboxes give students waiting in dorm lobbies for friends or standing in the cafeteria line for lunch the opportunity to learn about campus events on the go. And digital signage apps for Chrome built by Rise Vision, one of our content partners, power many of these digital experiences that go beyond traditional campus fliers.

Here are three ways academic institutions are using Chromeboxes for digital signage to better engage and inform students:

Personalizing content at Siena College Siena College, a private liberal arts college in Loudonville, New York, prizes its close-knit community of 3,000 students. In this intimate class setting, individual departments manage their own content featured on Chromeboxes for display. IT and display managers don’t have to be involved in day-to-day content updates, and each department is nimble and flexible with their content. For example, the Student Senate features content from the athletics and academic departments on several of its screens and those departments directly update their content to ensure it’s relevant and timely.

Cutting IT costs and time at University of Toronto Mississauga The University of Toronto Mississauga uses its 25 digital signage displays to profile professors, highlight research projects and market events to their more than 12,600 undergraduate students. Their previous display technology required extensive IT time to configure and update. Since Chromeboxes automatically update with new features and security fixes, IT can spend time on other tasks. Chromeboxes have also freed up the University’s budget, since they’re much more affordable than their previous display equipment, which cost $1,300.

Reducing power use at Manor Independent School District The 20 digital signage displays in the Manor Independent School District notify the 8,000 K-12 students about announcements, lunchroom menus, upcoming events and recent posts from a live Twitter feed. Previously, the schools relied on netbooks to power their screens, which consumed a lot of power, were noisy and crashed often. Chromeboxes, which don’t have fans or spinning hard drives, were a natural fit as the district sought more eco-friendly display solutions.

As universities and school districts continue improving their digital display technology, they’re finding better ways to deliver informative and entertaining content to teachers and current and prospective students. Join Chrome Live to learn how to use Chromebox for digital signage at your school.

Posted by Zoe Tabary, Editor-Thought Leadership, Economist Intelligence Unit

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: During Education on Air, Google’s free online conference May 8-9, we'll be discussing how we can help prepare our students for their future. To investigate this issue in more depth, we commissioned The Economist Intelligence Unit to conduct global surveys of senior business executives, teachers, and students, ages 11-17 and 18-25. Editor Zoe Tabary will share the findings during the kickoff session for Education on Air, but here’s a preview.

As technology becomes more pervasive, traditional trades disappear and the world of work becomes more globalised, the skills considered to be valuable for the future are shifting.

Problem solving, team working, and communication (a trifecta commonly known as “21st century skills”) are the most-needed skills in the workplace, according to our recent surveys of business executives, students and teachers. Digital literacy and creativity— and the latter’s close relative, entrepreneurship—are expected to grow more important in the next three years.

Business survey: Which of the following would you say are the most critical skills for employees in your organisation to possess today? Select up to three.

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

Incorporating these skills in existing education systems, however, is far from straightforward. Teachers report that lack of time in a strictly regulated curriculum is the biggest barrier to teaching 21st century skills, while digital literacy is one of the areas where they would most like further training (31%).

Meanwhile, the young have become more comfortable learning on their own, especially on topics of interest: 62% of teachers report that students are becoming more independent and able to gather information themselves. As one expert interviewed for the report puts it, “young people have an innate affinity with technology, and it would be a shame not to utilise that effectively”.

Countries all over the world are devising new innovative approaches to teaching and learning based on these changing trends. For example Singapore’s ‘Teach less, learn more’ initiative aims to help schools and teachers to engage more effectively with students, so that they connect with what they are they are learning and how and why they are learning it.

To hear more about the full research findings, register for the free online conference.

Posted by Flora Wong, Head of Maps for Work Marketing APAC

For the last decade, we’ve been helping businesses make the most of maps with Google Maps APIs. Whether it’s helping Allstate give their customers location information so they can deliver better service, or DHL Same Day a view into where their couriers travel to ensure things arrive on time, we know that companies put their information onto a customized Google Map to see real business value.

To understand more about this value and how businesses are using maps, we commissioned some research into how businesses in the Asia Pacific region use Google Maps APIs. The new report “More Than Pins on a Map” has found that 94 percent of businesses that use Maps APIs have seen real business improvements, 50 percent boosted customer satisfaction and 40 percent improved productivity.

Key findings from the report include:

There’s new revenue to be found with Maps Almost a third of businesses said Google Maps had delivered over $100,000 of value since implementation. This includes a New Zealand airline that created a service to help customers with airport transfers. They pulled information from 20 different taxi services and used Google Maps APIs to provide customers fast facts about driving conditions and transportation options so they could plan their route more easily.

One map leads to another Companies typically introduce Google Maps with a specific purpose in mind — to show customers their store locations, or to track their assets — but they often find maps can be useful in other parts of their business. For example, a government department in Australia first turned to maps to visualize data points on a map but soon realised they could use Google Maps APIs to bring more data management in-house and cut out a third party. This means less coordination and allows them to push data live within one day rather than waiting a week.

Maps give customers power An online auto marketplace changed the way it runs its business after discovering Google Maps could help customers locate the best car deal in the shortest time. They created a trip planner tool that integrates with Google Maps and helps customers plan the most efficient route to cars at various dealerships.

Maps can save dollars and lives Whether an executive’s job is on the line or employees are literally saving lives, it’s critical for teams to work at top efficiency. A disaster management software provider uses Google Maps to investigate ambulance delays. Using real-time data, the company monitored delays longer than 20 minutes and the root-cause of the delay. They found that often these delays occurred because employees weren’t using Google Maps, which takes into account traffic conditions and typography to find the best route.

Maps help employees communicate Google Maps can help departments communicate with one another more clearly by putting technical information on a map. A telecommunications company in Australia once updated teams about network outages via lists. Out of context, these lists did not simply convey the extent of outages and led to confusion. Now outages are visualized on a Map, so the staff has access to real-time contextualized information that makes it much easier to assess the business impacts.

Whether you’re looking to introduce new revenue streams, improve your customers’ experience or boost productivity, putting your information on a map with Google Maps APIs can help. To find out more and learn how Google Maps APIs may be useful for your business download the new white paper.

Posted by Tia Lendo, Head of North America Education Marketing

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Last month we announced Education on Air — our free online conference taking place May 8-9, 2015 — and asked what you wanted to hear about. Today we released the schedule of sessions, based largely on what we heard from you. We’ll emphasize innovation — 44% of you voted for this — as well as how to empower students and use Google tools effectively. It was clear from our second poll that you also want practical examples, so our speakers will go beyond theory and share their specific advice for enacting change.

Here’s a look at what you can expect over the two-day conference:

Friday, May 8: Leading for the future

Tune in from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET to hear from educators, business and policy leaders, students and researchers, whose keynotes will challenge you to innovate and improve education. In our kickoff session, panelists will tackle the question “What are the skills of the future?” and will touch upon results from an Economist Intelligence Unit survey. You’ll also hear panels of different perspectives about some hot topics for educators, including how technology is transforming learning and how students are guiding their own learning.

In addition to these panels, our keynote speakers will share their personal passions for the future of education. You’ll hear from Actor, Education Advocate, and Host of Reading Rainbow LeVar Burton, Google Senior Vice President of People Operations Laszlo Bock, education leader and Order of Canada honoree Michael Fullan, and Sir Michael Barber, chief education advisor to Pearson and former Chief Adviser to the Secretary of State for Education during the first term of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Educators and school leaders like Ryan Bretag, education researcher and Chief Innovation Officer of Illinois’ District 225, and students like Brittany Wenger (2012 Google Science Fair winner) will also share their perspectives.

Saturday, May 9: Shaping the classroom today

Over 100 sessions will be led by educators from 12 countries and 29 U.S. states, all specifically designed to offer practical advice and examples. Whether you’re interested in the track for educators, administrators, IT or “anyone,” we invite you to join for the sessions that are most interesting to you.

Presenters will discuss tools and techniques that you can implement easily, affordably and immediately. Many sessions highlight how Google tools like Google Apps, Earth, Chromebooks and Android tablets can support learning and help educators save time. Others will relate to themes including collaboration and community, computer science and STEM, creation and creativity, digital citizenship, literacy and professional development.

Here’s a flavor of the range of sessions:

• Guy Shearer, Head of IT for the David Ross Education Trust in the UK will lead “Create impact by rolling out Chromebooks across a network of schools” at 8:30 a.m. ET
• Kim Meldrum, Pedagogical Consultant for the Lester B. Pearson School Board in Canada will lead a session on “Developing literacy with Google Apps” at 11:00 a.m. ET
• Sean Beavers, Digital Information Specialist at the West Morris Regional High School District will lead "Fostering student genius: empowering student leadership through technology" at 12:15 p.m. ET
• Tonia Dousay, Assistant Professor at the University of Wyoming will lead a session called “Bringing the maker movement to your classroom” at 12:30 p.m. ET
• James Sanders, Director of Innovation for the EdTechTeam will lead “How to survive a zombie apocalypse using Google Apps” at 3:00 p.m. ET

Visit the Education on Air site to see the full line-up of sessions and make sure to register; because even if you can’t join us live, if you register we’ll notify you when the recordings are available to view.

We hope to “see” you there!

Posted by Casey Le, Product Marketing Manager, Chrome for Work

Chrome was a big bet when it was introduced six years ago and has since grown to provide a simpler, speedier and safer web for more than 750 million users around the world. Today, Chrome is an integrated hardware and software solution for work that meets the challenges of and innovates upon traditional platforms.

Join us online April 22nd at 10:00am PDT at Chrome Live, our first-ever online event, to hear from Googlers, technical experts and our customers about how Chrome is meeting the needs of a more mobile, social and cloud-oriented workplace. At Chrome Live, you’ll:

• Have a front-row seat to two keynotes from:

• Amit Singh, President of Google for Work, who’ll share how Chrome for Work is part of the transformational agenda of many businesses today. He’ll also be announcing a number of new products coming to the Chrome for Work family.

• Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management for Chrome for Work, who’ll discuss how devices have revolutionized the way we work. He’ll also uncover a few pathways of our top-secret roadmap and may have a few surprises in store.

• Learn how the web, meeting technology and digital displays are being reimagined with Chrome for Work product managers Saswat Panigrahi and Vidya Nagarajan

• See live deployment and management demos by Chrome team experts

• Hear from IT leaders at Netflix, Pinterest and Chico’s about integrating devices with the cloud and enabling IT admins at top companies to streamline day-to-day operations

• Get a sneak peek at the team’s plans to continue innovating and addressing new needs in the market

To be a part of Chrome Live, all you need is a comfortable seat, an Internet connection and a computer, tablet or phone; pants are optional but recommended. You’ll be able to interact with Google experts and ask questions.

Register now to learn all this and more at the first Chrome Live event on Wednesday, April 22nd at 10:00am PDT. And even if you can’t attend on the scheduled dates, be sure to register to stay up to date on all things Chrome. Feel free to share your thoughts, impressions and questions using #chromelive15 on social media.

Posted by Marc Crandall, Head of Global Compliance, Google for Work

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is Marc Crandall, Head of Global Compliance at Google for Work. A lawyer and long time Googler, Marc focuses on regulatory matters involving privacy and security.

We regularly hear from our customers that assessing data protection compliance in various countries around the world can be challenging. Protecting the privacy and security of our customers’ information is a top priority, and we take compliance very seriously. That’s why we've been working hard to make things a bit easier for you.

We recently launched a new legal and compliance section of the Google Admin console where Google Apps administrators can find pointers to useful information, such as security and privacy certifications, third-party audits and data center and subprocessor information. This will be helpful to everyone, from those who manage their own domain to legal, security and privacy compliance specialists.

Another important resource for Google Apps for Work customers is our data processing amendment, which we’ve offered to customers since 2012. Customers that use our products for Work and for Education are often subject to data protection and compliance regulations. To help address this, in addition to our commercial agreements, we offer a data processing amendment that describes Google’s specific data protection commitments for your Google Apps information.

If you operate in a regulated industry, having Google’s data protection obligations in writing helps demonstrate to regulators that we take significant and concrete steps to protect your information. For customers subject to laws implementing the European Union’s Data Protection Directive, our data processing amendment also contractually binds us to remain enrolled in the U.S Department of Commerce Safe Harbor Program. And we indicate that Google Apps customers may opt-in to model contract clauses with Google.

While the data processing amendment does not affect the functionality of Google Apps, we believe customers with regulatory compliance considerations will find the amendment useful. You can access the data processing amendment from within the Admin console.

Millions of organizations use Google for Work today — they come from all sectors and more than half of our customers operate outside of the United States. You rely on Google to provide strong data protection capabilities, in compliance to your specific needs. With these tools in place, we hope to make it easier for you and third parties to verify that. For more information, visit our Google for Work and Google for Education trust site.

Posted by Deborah Hsieh, Product Manager, Google for Work

As an IT admin you want your organization to be free to focus on getting stuff done. But part of your role is also to make sure you stay on top of legal compliance. Today we’re making it a little bit easier to do both with two new Hangouts features.

Over the next few days, we’ll roll out an admin option that lets you manage Hangouts chat history in your organization, so that you can make certain that it’s either on or off. People in your organization can have the freedom to chat with whomever they want — whether that person is part of your organization or not — and you can be sure that new employee conversations stay personal and private, because they’ll disappear shortly after taking place.

We’re also adding Google Apps Vault support for Hangouts chat. With Vault support for chat, organizations of all sizes can quickly find and preserve chat messages. This is a great way to safeguard business-critical information for continuity, compliance and regulatory purposes.

Find out how to tailor Hangouts to best suit your organization's compliance needs.

Posted by Adam Ratana, Developer of Sun Surveyor

(Cross-posted on the Geo Developers Blog.)

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Adam Ratana, developer of Sun Surveyor. Read how Sun Surveyor is using Google Maps APIs to help photographers capture the perfect photo.

I’m a photography enthusiast, and I’m always looking for ways to improve my work. That’s what led me to develop Sun Surveyor, an iOS and Android app that uses Google Maps APIs to visualize the location of the sun and the moon anywhere in the world. The app makes it easy to figure out when the natural lighting will be just right — and get the ideal shot.

Sun Surveyor uses augmented reality to overlay the paths of the sun and moon on a camera’s view, so you can see where in the sky they’ll be at a specific time and place. Photographers can use it to plan their shots ahead of time, and businesses can use it to gauge things like how best to align solar panels to make the most efficient use of the angle of the sun.

The app uses multiple Google Maps APIs, including the Elevation API, the Time Zone API, the Google Maps SDK for iOS and the Google Maps Android API. The Android API, which includes Street View, was particularly helpful. It allowed me to overlay the path of the sun and moon on any Street View location anywhere in the world. For programming details, see this blog post.

The following screen captures give you a sense of how the app works. They show overlays on top of the iconic Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. The first shows the paths of the sun (yellow line) and moon (blue line) over an aerial view of Yosemite Valley. The green line shows the distance between the photographer and the object to be photographed — in this case, Half Dome.

This next screen capture shows how the app looks when in Street View mode. Again, the yellow line shows the sun’s path, and the blue line shows the moon’s path. The green line represents the horizon. You can see how the app lets you plan the right time to get a shot of the sun behind Half Dome: in this particular instance, 8:06 am.

Nearly 500,000 people around the world have downloaded the free version of Sun Surveyor, and many have paid for the full edition. They’re taking remarkable photos as a result, and what started as a hobby for me has turned into a business — thanks to Google Maps APIs.

Posted by Miles Ward, Global Head of Solutions, Google Cloud Platform

Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog.

As the most recent and deadly Ebola outbreak spread in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the global philanthropic community sought new and innovative ways to raise money for much needed awareness and relief. Band Aid 30 was imagined as a modern echo of the original Band Aid’s successful campaign to address hunger in Africa. A global team immediately set out to organize a live performance that would feature dozens of the world’s top music artists.

Sounds a bit ambitious, right? In this case, as with many ventures that make a true impact, the team behind the scenes was a lot smaller than you’d think. The number of developers responsible for deploying the website for this fast-paced, globally critical project: two. Mukesh Randev and Jonathan Horne, web developers from a cutting edge media agency in the UK called Adtrak, took the job on with great urgency. A couple of nice chaps in Nottingham, trying to change the world. Well, ok, mostly trying to keep the website online.

The project came together in just shy of 14 days, so things were a bit frenetic. The logos changed 17 times. Layout and top billing were in constant flux. The front page had UK and US donation links… or maybe just UK? Looming in the back of Jonathan’s mind was the fact that when this site goes live, and several dozen artists with an aggregate 100+ million twitter followers all invite the world to donate, the traffic would be coming fast and heavy.

They were using Google Cloud Platform, which was a bit new to them, and they were really eager to set up automatic scaling so that they’d be able to handle the load. They were also using Google DNS to direct traffic to a Google Compute Engine instance hosting Wordpress and using a local instance of MySQL as the database.

As I explained to Mukesh and Jonathan the standard best practices required to operate a dynamic website like this correctly (e.g., use a load balancer, use replica pools, use autoscaler, and move MySQL to CloudSQL with MemCacheD, and configure WordPress for performance), an idea struck:

Miles: “Hey, what dynamic stuff are you running through WordPress?”

Mukesh: “Well, really nothing. All payment processing is offloaded, comments are using disqus, but that’s really just for layout. And so the PR/media team can make updates on the day of the event.”

Because 100% of the site was static, rather than creating all of the above services, we simply copied the Band Aid 30 website to Google Cloud Storage. Cloud Storage is integrated into the Google front end, a powerful distributed edge routing and caching system that provides incredible performance for serving static content. Just imagine how much content is being served through this system for YouTube, Google Play, Picasa... it’s staggering!

Copying the site might sound complex, but let me assure you, it’s not. In fact, it’s exactly three short lines of code at your command line prompt:

//go get my website, make sure you go to an empty folder first
wget --convert-links -q --mirror -p --html-extension --base=./ -k -P ./ http://ipaddressforyourstagingserver

//put that website in the cloud
gsutil cp -R * gs://www.yourrockingwebsite.com

//let everyone read it
gsutil -m acl set -R -a public-read gs://www.yourrockingwebsite.com

That’s it! This solution had simplicity written all over it.

Simplicity also meant cost savings. The dynamic setup – which is obviously more functional – allows lots of simultaneous site editors, data-driven features and richer logging, but is also substantially more expensive to operate. We think all of that would’ve looked something like this, and cost in excess of $10,000 USD per month.

Now, compare that to what we actually built.

It only cost $9.17 (yes, you read that right) to run this production website on launch day, without a single performance hiccup or any risk of operational crisis. It just worked.

That’s a 99.92% discount from our original approach. Assuming all other costs of Band Aid 30 are zero (clearly they aren’t), this would represent a 40,621,592.14% ROI based on their smash success of raising over £2.5 million GBP. Not too shabby ;)

We’re really excited about the positive impact in Ebola victim’s lives that Band Aid 30 is making, the outstanding execution under pressure that Mukesh, Jonathan and the whole Adtrak team delivered (in less than 14 days) and our opportunity to help in this little way.

Posted by Greg Demichillie, Director of Product Management

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog.)

At Google Cloud Platform, we strive to deliver innovative cloud computing technology to developers at low costs with massive scale. Currently, our cloud offerings are powered by best-in-class data centers, virtualization software and container-based applications, but as we consider the future of cloud computing, we realize there’s a major opportunity ahead that would allow us to deliver an unprecedented improvement in the power, efficiency and reliability of our infrastructure. We can elevate cloud computing like never before.

We’re answering the question that’s been in front of us the whole time: why isn’t cloud computing built in actual clouds? Well, as of today, it is. We’re excited to announce Google Actual Cloud Platform: all of our incredible services and products running in actual clouds in the troposphere.

Starting on April 1, Google Actual Cloud Platform brings with it a number of exciting new features:

• New compute zone: We’ve added a new compute zone, troposphere-1a, to make it easier than ever to provide your app with non-earth-bound availability. Now, you no longer have to make a choice between high availability and high altitude.

• New machine types: Alongside our current machine types, we’ve added a new category of “physical” devices: actual-cloud machine types. Choose from cumulus-16gb, cirrus-32gb and stratocumuliform-64g (created specifically for data intensive workloads).

• Stormboost: Drawing on charges from electrical fields during thunderstorms, we’re able to supercharge read/write performance on all persistent disks and offer 50% higher IOPS.

• CloudDrops: A new, game-changing content distribution system. CloudDrops can provide blazingly fast content delivery to all of your users using—you guessed it—rain drops.

• Weather Dashboards in the Developer’s Console: With new weather-dependent performance features, you need a way to monitor the atmospheric conditions of your servers. Now, you can monitor humidity/request, watch your app’s altitude and see a 7-day forecast right next to the rest of your stats.

• Bare-metal container support: Applications deployed on Actual Cloud Platform can run in containers too. The lightweight shared kernel model of containers makes them ideal for non-terrestrial deployments.

From all of us on the Google Cloud Platform team, here’s to clear skies ahead.