Posted by George Strompolos, Google Video Team



A good viral video sets off a chain reaction that continues until nearly everyone has seen it, including your mom. The mad scientists known as EepyBird know a thing or two about chain reactions. They first rocketed into viral video fame by turning the explosive act of mixing Diet Coke and Mentos into an art form. Today they’re back with a chain reaction like none other: 500 liters of Diet Coke and 1500+ Mentos, all triggered by the pull of one string.



Don’t miss The Domino Effect — a Google Video exclusive. In addition to being very fun, it demonstrates another interesting application of our Sponsored Video program — this time with user-generated content. This helps producers like EepyBird earn revenue by pairing them up with our advertising partners.



We’re excited to help compensate these independent producers for their creativity, and we can’t wait to see who the next stars will be. If you have very compelling videos and are interested in this program, please get in touch.

Posted by Joe Kraus, JotSpot



OK, I can finally blurt it out: JotSpot is now part of Google, and I couldn’t be more excited.



Three years ago my friend Graham Spencer and I set out to start a new company. We’d both recently left Excite, which we co-founded, and we had spent a few years starting a nonprofit together. We brainstormed scores of ideas, debated late into the night and ultimately exchanged a mountain of email and documents. We realized we needed a tool to help us organize our thoughts or we’d quickly become overwhelmed. So Graham set up a wiki. I was hooked because it immediately changed the way we worked together. Everything was kept in one place, not locked in email threads or on different computers. We could both make changes to the same document, without having to know HTML (well, without me having to know HTML). After twenty minutes of using a wiki, I was convinced that they were like the Internet in 1993 — useful, but trapped in the land of the nerds (which both Graham and I proudly inhabit). So we set out to start JotSpot as a way to bring the power of wikis to a much broader audience.



As we built the business over the past three years Google consistently attracted our attention. We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online. Then when we had conversations with people at Google we found ourselves completing each other’s sentences. Joining Google allows us to plug into the resources that only a company of Google’s scale can offer, like a huge audience, access to world-class data centers and a team of incredibly smart people.



Our first order of business is to move JotSpot to Google’s software architecture. While we’re doing so, we’ve turned off new registrations. But if you’re interested, sign up for our waitlist and we’ll keep you posted.



Finally, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the support, feedback, grumbles and praises of our users and customers. Thank you. That’s the only way great products are built.

Posted by Salar Kamangar, VP Product Management



We’d like to welcome Joe, Graham, and the rest of the JotSpot team to Google. They’ve truly pioneered do-it-yourself application publishing, enabling anyone from individuals to small businesses and large enterprises to use wikis for online collaboration. Since we’re just getting started on a long and exciting road in online collaboration for both consumers and our enterprise customers, joining forces with the JotSpot team comes at a great time.



After all, information created by a single user becomes exponentially more valuable when it’s shared and combined with information from other people or places. We’ve been tackling this step by step for awhile now, including enabling people to move their calendars, photos and documents onto the web — unlocking them from one PC or one piece of paper to open up a wide range of possibilities for working, planning, socializing, organizing, and so on.



Please stay tuned, and we’ll tell you more as soon as we can.

Posted by Will Smit, Google Apps for Your Domain team



Somewhere in the neighborhood of three out of four people on Earth don’t speak English, so to better serve more Earthlings, we aim to make our products available and useful in lots of native languages other than English. Recently I’ve been working with translators and other linguistic experts to support 17 new languages in Google Apps for Your Domain.



This product is our way of letting entire organizations give their users powerful communication and collaboration tools: private-label versions of Gmail for custom domains, Google Calendar and Google Talk. The service is free, there’s no hardware or software required, and organizations can tailor the user interface with custom logos and colors. So now anyone with a domain can provide essential, customized apps to all of their users, without spending a cent. (Or as the case may be, without spending a rupee, a krone, a won, a Eurocent, a yen, a centavo or a kopek.)



Here’s the full list of languages Google Apps for Your Domain now supports:

French, Italian, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, British English, Polish, Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Korean and US English. (Your browser’s language preference determines which version of the site you’ll see.)

Posted by Cédric Beust, software engineer, Gmail for mobile devices team



The new Gmail for mobile client launching today began life as a challenge: What if we could develop a Gmail application for cell phones that was as powerful and as easy to use as the desktop version? What if it ran on hundreds of different mobile devices — and made it possible to compose, read, and respond to conversations with a bare minimum of clicking and scrolling? What if it enabled you to do things like search your inbox, view your attachments (including pictures and PDF files), and click to call your Gmail contacts? And what if the app were designed to make the whole experience as fast and as seamless as possible?



Team stalwarts Jimmy Shih, Joanne McKinley, Derek Phillips and others worked hard to answer these questions, and the result is Gmail for mobile devices. It’s a small download, but one that might make you look at email on your phone in a different way — maybe like Gmail did for email when that first appeared. Download it now and decide for yourself!

Posted by Gavin Chan, Google Checkout team



To celebrate the holidays, we’re offering merchants free transaction processing using Google Checkout through the end of 2006. Read more here.

Posted by Patrick Barry and Reza Behforooz, Software Engineers



You talkin’ to me? I sure hope so. At Google, we like it when people talk with each other. So we figured we should make life a little easier for our friends on orkut, where getting in touch and staying in touch is the name of the game. We noticed that a lot of orkut users have been using a separate instant messaging program to chat, which just seems like unnecessary work — clicking around, keeping separate buddy lists, etc. This is why we’ve built Google Talk into orkut, so you can see your friends’ availability and chat with them more easily. And, as a special Google Talk bonus, if you want to do more than text chat, you can make voice calls, leave voicemail, and transfer files.



Here’s what to look for. If your friends are online and using Google Talk, you’ll see a brightly-colored ball by their name. Green means they’re available; orange means they’re away from their computer; and red means they’re busy. But no matter which color, if you see that ball, it means you can chat with or call your friends in just a couple of clicks.



We’ve put some orkut features into Google Talk too. In addition to chatting, calling, and sending files to your Google Talk buddies, you can also scrap them, receive instant notice when others scrap you, and quickly jump to any of their orkut profiles.



It’s easy to enable these features — sign in to talkify your orkut account and we’ll get you going. Haven’t been invited to join orkut yet? No problem.

Posted by Alex Medina, Technical Account Manager



Ever get lost, or turned around? Found yourself in unfamiliar territory? Or worse, awakened with just one shoe on? Well, we have something for you. No, not a shoe — we mean GPS-Enabled Google Maps on the Helio Drift.



In a very short time, Google Maps for Mobile has taken a lead in mobile mapping and is available on more than 300 phone models. Now we’ve taken it to a new level: we’re partnering with Helio to bring you GPS integration with Google Maps.



It’s hard to enter a starting point if you don’t know where you’re starting from. We think that integrating GPS capabilities into Google Maps for Mobile will make our phones much smarter — and you’ve told us that too.



When you use Google Maps on the Helio Drift you always know where you are. Start Google Maps and a blue dot is placed on the map at your current location. You can even see yourself move on the map as you change location. Say goodbye to sore thumbs from having to constantly type in your location.



Of course, you still get all of the popular Google Maps functionality: real-time traffic, detailed directions, integrated search results, easily movable maps, and satellite imagery. So get yourself a Drift and just get lost! No matter where you end up, we’ll show you the quickest way out.

Posted by Vlad Adzic, Software Engineer



Google Personalized Search now includes Google Maps, which means you’ll no longer have to remember searches you do for addresses, businesses, or directions on Maps. Instead, you’ll be able to browse, search for, and bookmark them directly from your search history, just as you already can with your web, images, news, Froogle, and video history.



If you already have Personalized Search enabled, you can access your history through the “Search History” link in the upper right corner of Google Maps. Otherwise, you can sign up for Personalized Search, and make sure you’re signed in to your Google Account when searching.