Archive for December, 2009
 Windows: You can do a lot more with the free cross-platform utility Dropbox than sync files. In fact, with the free command line tool Akira, you can administer, and grab non-Dropbox files from, any computer linked to your Dropbox account.
Akira is a bit of a geek tool that requires two Windows computers—one running a server process (Latte) and another issuing commands through a command line client (Akira). That's not all that new, but the Akira tool sets up the connection through a single, stand-alone folder inside you Dropbox folder, and doesn't require installation. With Akira's text commands, you can do a lot of really neat stuff. You can list, navigate to, and grab files from anywhere on the remote computer, grab a screenshot of what's going on and save it in your Dropbox folder, and, perhaps most helpfully, start and kill remote processes and run applications, or even launch a web site in the default browser.
Akira’s Readme offers a number of ways to set up the Latte/Akira combo, with access to other people’s computers through Dropbox folder sharing, and jumping onto your remotely-controlled computer from anywhere with the previously mentioned app DropboxPortable.
I tested out the Akira/Latte remote control between Windows 7 systems linked to the same Dropbox account, and while there was a notable bit of lag—something to be expected when waiting for a file change to be noticed and synced—it worked as advertised. You'd likely want to set up Latte as an auto-starting, Administer-level process on a system you always keep on, and make sure you've got a really good password on that Dropbox account if you were interested in using this. As a convenient remote access trick for those not quite up on setting up a virtual private network with Hamachi or remote control with VNC, however, Akira might just be the ticket.
Akira is a free, no-install-needed application for Windows systems with a Dropbox account. Tell us how Akira could be useful for your own systems, and offer up usage advice, in the comments.
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Sipping warm cider, watching the snow fall, unwrapping gifts — these holiday traditions always seem to produce many of the year’s sweetest memories. Several years ago, we added another holiday tradition to our list — helping NORAD keep tabs on Santa every Christmas Eve.
NORAD’s Santa-tracking dates back to 1955, when a Sears and Roebuck magazine ad in Colorado Springs accidentally directed readers to call NORAD instead of the “Talk-to-Santa” hotline they were advertising. Embracing the holiday spirit, the folks at NORAD provided callers with Santa’s location according to their radar and have tracked his journey ever since. Many years later, in 2004, the same holiday spirit inspired us to use Google Earth — it was called “Keyhole Earth Viewer” back then — to display Santa’s voyage around the world on Christmas Eve. We hosted the entire tracker on a single machine and were excited to have an audience of 25,000 following St. Nick’s flight with us that night.
Our scrappy Santa tracker has come a long way since 2004. We added “Santa-cam” videos for select locations around the world, 3D SketchUp models of Santa’s sleigh and his North Pole home, the official feed of Santa’s location from NORAD headquarters and several other improvements. With more technical resources to support this richer experience, and the wonderful efforts of our Santa-tracking team, 2008 was the biggest year ever for NORAD Tracks Santa — more than eight million people tuned in to track Santa last Christmas Eve.
As soon as he returned to North Pole last year, Santa and his elves began planning for his 2009 flight — and we were no different. We thought hard about the different ways we could improve the Santa tracker and after a year of planning, we think this year’s will be the best one yet. As usual, we’ll display Santa’s location, according to NORAD, in Google Maps and Google Earth at www.noradsanta.org. But we’ve made a few improvements to make tracking Santa even easier. Namely, we’ll display Santa’s journey with the Google Earth plug-in, directly on the NORAD Tracks Santa site, instead of using the Google Earth client. As a result, you’ll be able to follow Santa in Google Earth’s immersive, 3D environment directly within your web browser. For more information about the plugin and why we chose to use this tool to track Santa, have a look at our post on the Google Geo Developers Blog.
We’re also excited about the many different ways you can keep track of Santa’s location this Christmas Eve. Like last year, Santa will be trackable by visiting m.noradsanta.org on a mobile device, or searching for “Santa” on Google Maps for Mobile, available for most mobile phones (read more on the Google Mobile Blog). Santa’s location will also be updated on Twitter with @noradsanta and you can keep up with news about Santa’s flight with our real-time search feature.
To track Santa, visit www.noradsanta.org starting at 2am ET on Christmas Eve. There, you’ll see a Google Map that will display Santa’s location over the course of the day. To visualize Santa in Google Earth, just click “Track Santa in Google Earth” and you’ll see St. Nick flying through Google Earth in your browser. If you don’t have the Earth plug-in, click here — it will be installed automatically when you download Google Earth 5.1.
We hope you enjoy tracking Santa with us this year. And on behalf of everyone at Google — happy holidays and have a happy new year!
Posted by Brian McClendon, VP Engineering and Bruno Bowden, Senior Software Engineer
Tags: google, google earth, twitter
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 Previously mentioned web service Backupify backs up all your online accounts (Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and a ton more) to the cloud, normally for a nominal fee—but until January 31, 2010, all Backupify accounts will be free with unlimited storage. After this period, the service will go back to a paid pricing structure. Anyone who signs up for an account during this free period, however, will remain free—and unlimited—forever. So if you've been considering the service (or feel the need to backup your Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Wordpress, or many other supported online accounts), now is the time to sign up. If you don't see your service listed, sign up anyway—they've announced that YouTube and Linkedin backups are coming soon, and they plan to continue to launch support for more services. It can't hurt—after all, it doesn't get much cheaper than free. [Backupify via ZDNet]
Tags: facebook, gmail, twitter
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 Previously mentioned web service Backupify backs up all your online accounts (Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and a ton more) to the cloud, normally for a nominal fee—but until January 31, 2009, all Backupify accounts will be free with unlimited storage. After this period, the service will go back to a paid pricing structure. Anyone who signs up for an account during this free period, however, will remain free—and unlimited—forever. So if you've been considering the service (or feel the need to backup your Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Wordpress, or many other supported online accounts), now is the time to sign up. If you don't see your service listed, sign up anyway—they've announced that YouTube and Linkedin backups are coming soon, and they plan to continue to launch support for more services. It can't hurt—after all, it doesn't get much cheaper than free. [Backupify via ZDNet]
Tags: facebook, gmail, twitter
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Google brought translation features to many of our products in 2009, including Google Docs and Gmail and we’re happy to add one more before the New Year. To make it easier for people around the globe to read the site you created with Google Sites, we’ve integrated with the Google Translate Element. Now, whenever someone visits a Google Site in another language, they will be given the option to translate the content into the language of their choice. All they have to do is click on the translate link at the bottom right-hand side of the page. Now, the content on your site can be translated into 51 languages, allowing you to reach a whole new audience. Check out this before and after for a Korean school’s website below (or try it out for yourself).
Before
After
We hope this feature helps expand your Google site’s reach to more people.
Posted by Michael Cheng, Software Engineer, Google Sites
Tags: gmail, google
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