This morning, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced the election of 66 new members, including our very own Amit Singhal, Google Fellow and lead on Google Search. Amit joins a list of nine of us Googlers who have previously been recognized by the NAE: Sergey Brin, Vint Cerf, Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Dick Sites, Ken Thompson and myself.

Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. The Academy recognized Amit for his contributions to information retrieval and search, where Amit has creatively applied and extended the science of information retrieval to new heights that were almost unthinkable when the field was founded. In so doing, he has had a tremendous and beneficial impact on the world with sustained excellence of Google’s search.

Amit was similarly recognized by the Association of Computing Machinery two months ago. I encourage you to read more about his important contributions in our blog post from December. Congratulations to Amit!

Posted by Alfred Spector, VP, Google Research

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week kicks off today, and you can be front row at the Lincoln Center. YouTube Live From the Runway, presented by Maybelline NY, is your ticket to the hottest shows including Diane Von Furstenberg, Michael Kors, and Vera Wang.

Fashionistas from around the world can watch around 30 of today’s hottest designers live streamed from NYC. You can also find fashion and beauty tutorials, behind-the-scenes action, interviews with designers, models, celebrities and more, all at www.youtube.com/liverunway.



Tune in today through February 16 for the live stream. You can also add your favorite shows to your calendar from the designer line-up schedule on the channel.

Jamie Reichstein, lifestyle program manager, recently watched “Sporty Look for Spring 2012: Trend Report.”

Today we’d like to welcome Chris Hardwick, actor, comedian, writer, and general nerd enthusiast, to the YouTube Blog to announce a truly “out of this world” event. Keep an eye out for Chris on The Nerdist Channel coming to a YouTube near you!

Humans of the ‘Tube! I am BEYOND pleased to blab about something which has been brewing and bubbling at Nerdist Industries for the past few months that is finally ready to spill over into the public consciousness. And now, a leading question! Are you going to San Diego Comic-Con this year? If so, how are you getting there? Plane? Bus? Rickshaw? Pack mule? Some type of matter disassembler/reassembler? Whatever your answer, I’m sure that “on foot” was not on the list….UNTIL NOW!!!

Nerdist Industries—in an exclusive partnership with Lucasfilm and Machinima—is proud to announce COURSE OF THE FORCE, a five-day Olympic-torch-style lightsaber relay run that begins at Santa Monica pier on Saturday, July 7th and ends in San Diego on Wednesday, July 11th (just in time for preview night of SDCC ’12)!

Yes! You heard right (with your eyes)! We are going to run down the California coast—lightsaber ahoist (not a real word)—and pass it off, one nerd at a time. Segments are purchasable in quarter-mile increments and ALL proceeds from your segment monies will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. See? It’s not just a vanity exercise! It actually benefits a wonderful charity.



Here’s some backstory you didn’t ask for! In 2012, I will be attending my 9th San Diego Comic-Con. While I always look forward to that extended weekend of Nerdvana, I sometimes feel a bit like the commercial shininess of it slightly eclipses its intended spirit. To me, going to Cons as a kid was all about having a safe haven—a place where like-minded folks could come together to celebrate nerdly passions and accept each other for the oddball (by the larger and more boring sector of society’s standards) stuff we were all into. Ultimately, it should be the most fun thing of the year. For poop sake, most of you save up your whole year of cash and vacation time to go to SDCC so why not run at it screaming?? This is a rare opportunity to dress like a Sith (or ANYTHING of your choosing, Star Wars-y or not) and run down the beach while power chanting with a glowing sword made of light in your hand. On ANY OTHER DAY that would easily get you arrested or at the very least, detained. Don’t feel like running but want to support someone who is? FINE! Join us for parties, live music and comedy each night along the way.

Space is limited to about 500 running slots so snatch yours POST HASTE at courseoftheforce.com. In addition to a place on the Course, you’ll also get a limited edition lightsaber of your very own and a swag bag that would make a scavenging Jawa jealous. Great swag, general public silliness and a celebration of Nerd pride...all for an amazing cause. Please join us in taking the Con out of the hall and stretching it to a full week of activities as we storm the yellow brick road (sand) to Oz (SDCC)!

If you are geographically challenged and can’t make it out to Southern California in July, the entire relay will be livestreamed at YouTube.com/nerdist, aka, The Nerdist Channel. WHAT IS THAT??? Excellent query, Person! The Nerdist Channel on YouTube is a partnership between Nerdist Industries, The Jim Henson Company, and Broadway Video. We officially launch April 1 and will be bringing you nerd-centric programming with such folks as me, Neil Patrick Harris, Rob Zombie, Awkward Family Videos, The Dudesons and The Kids in the Hall, just to name a few. Additionally, we’ll have programs that cover gaming, science, tech and cosplay. Shows with other people you may recognize as being relevant to your interests will be announced VERY soon so keep an eye glued to Nerdist.com for that business!

Also, if you’ve read this far, you are a nice person and I heartily thank you.

Guest YouTube blogger Chris Hardwick hosts The Nerdist Podcast, AMC’s Talking Dead, and recently watched “COURSE OF THE FORCE - An Epic Journey”. He also enjoys synth-driven rock music and Salt & Vinegar chips.

Bestselling Southern American author Anne Rice is coming to Google headquarters to discuss her latest book, The Wolf Gift, on Friday, February 24 at 10am PT. One of the most popular authors of contemporary fiction, Rice has bewitched readers with her vampire chronicles, tales of the Mayfair Witches and other metaphysical gothic fiction for more than thirty years. Submit your question online between now and Feb 23 at midnight PT, and it could be asked during the Interview with the Vampire—we mean, the interview with Anne Rice. To watch the live broadcast, tune in to the Authors@Google YouTube channel on February 24 at 10am PT. If you miss it, the recording will be posted in its entirety after the interview is over. For more information on Anne Rice and her new book, read the full post on the Google Books blog.

If it’s got wheels and a motor, it’s on YouTube. This week we’re going full throttle with two new original channels dedicated to the wide and wild world of motors — Motor Trend and Drive.

The Motor Trend YouTube Channel, created by Source Interlink Media, brings together eight shows from automotive brands you know and love. Like a never-ending auto expo (without the lines), expect to see original programming from the folks behind Motor Trend, Hot Rod, Motorcyclist, Lowrider, FourWheeler, Dirt Rider, Car Craft, Automobile, Import Tuner and more. From speed to style, the Motor Trend Channel will have something for every car lover, and they’ll be listening closely to your feedback to learn what you want to see more of.



If getting under the hood is only the beginning for you, check out the new Drive YouTube Channel, which celebrates the rich culture of cars. From the road to races to factories to studios, Drive will take you as far behind the scenes as as possible. Expect to see news, reviews and commentary from names like Chris Harris, Mike Spinelli, Leo Parente, Alex Roy and more.



With millions of you already coming to YouTube for all things auto, we hope you buckle up and enjoy these new channels!

Graham Bennett, original programming content partnerships, recently watched “Cavitation.”

If you’re planning a vacation, check out the new YouTube Vacationer Channel. Vacationer is a one-rest-stop destination for travel videos from folks like National Geographic, LonelyPlanet and the TravelChannel, and is presented by Alamo Rent-A-Car.



Whether you’re already planning spring break, getting ready for a road trip or hungry to experience new cuisines in exotic places, Vacationer can take you around the world and back. Not ready to leave the house? Vacationer also has travel eye-candy and on-the-road reporting, so you can broaden your horizons from the comfort of your home, couch or commute.

So pull over to the Vacationer Channel and start planning your next great adventure.

Alison Walker, lifestyle marketing program manager, recently watched “Hungry in San Francisco - Three Babes Bake Shop.”

In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We’re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you’ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.



Speed
With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast—Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.

Simplicity
Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you’re holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.


One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.

And as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options (tap menu icon, ‘Settings,’ and then ‘Privacy’).

Sign in
You can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:

• View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer (also signed into Chrome)—picking up exactly where you left off.
• Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, you'll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.
• Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you’re using.

Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We’re eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Chrome and Apps

(Cross-posted from the Chrome blog and on the Mobile blog)

Last week, we ran an experiment. We hosted a gathering, called “Solve for X,” for experienced entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists from around the world. The event focused on proposing and discussing technological solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems. Discussions began last week with this small event, and now we invite others to join the conversation on our website and our Google +page.

The Solve for X gathering, which we co-hosted with Eric Schmidt, is a place to celebrate a concept we champion internally and that we believe will inspire many others: technology moonshots. These are efforts that take on global-scale problems, define radical solutions to those problems, and involve some form of breakthrough technology that could actually make them happen. Moonshots live in the gray area between audacious projects and pure science fiction; they are 10x improvement, not 10%. That’s partly what makes them so exciting.



Moonshots can come from anywhere—people of all ages and places, companies, academia, inspired experts, enthusiastic newcomers, and often from accidental discoveries. Take this Solve for X talk by Adrien Treuille, a professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He proposes that going forward significant science and technological advances will come from individual contributors—independent of their official affiliations or training. It sounds implausible, but he makes the case by discussing EteRNA and Foldit, scientific discovery games where individual gamers are lapping the best computer programs in DNA folding and RNA nano-fabrication problems. Rob McGinnis, co-founder of Oasys, suggests in his Solve for X talk that fresh water could be produced everywhere in the world at less than one-tenth the energy input or cost to the environment of what’s possible today. It sounds too good to be true because the world needs fresh water so very desperately, yet Rob is exploring dramatic technological breakthroughs in desalination to make this moonshot into a possible reality.

You can watch these videos and others on our site now, and we will add more in the coming week. Just wait to hear Mary Lou Jepsen’s Solve for X talk on how it may literally be possible to take pictures of the mind’s eye! The potential impact of this technology on the way we communicate, preserve memories and understand ourselves is staggering. Or consider Daphne Preuss, a leading geneticist who moved from academia to pursue plant genetics in order to help make the planet healthier and find ways to feed more people. She doesn’t plan to take on her moonshot herself, but she has a strong vision for what it would take to get it done and why it’s so important.

Our gathering last week brought together a group that is already practiced at moonshot thinking to propose specific solutions. At least a few times a year, we hope that people will take a few hours or a day or two out of their busy schedules to dare to push the boundaries, and to consider moonshot approaches to some of the world’s many unresolved challenges. Solve for X isn’t about developing a new business line or building an investment portfolio. Rather, it aims to be a forum where technology-based moonshot thinking is practiced, celebrated and amplified. We invite you to come collaborate with us at www.wesolveforx.com.

Posted by Astro Teller & Megan Smith, co-hosts of Solve for X

The newest addition to the Google scholarships family is the Google Student Veterans of America (SVA) Scholarship. We’re partnering with the nonprofit Student Veterans of America (SVA) to support their mission of providing veterans with the resources, support and advocacy they need to succeed in higher education and throughout their careers. The Google SVA Scholarship is available to student veterans who are pursuing degrees in computer science and related fields in the U.S. for the 2012-2013 academic year. In addition to the financial award, recipients will be invited to attend the annual all-expenses-paid scholars’ retreat at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. in the summer of 2012.

We have a long history of helping university students pursue computer science education with scholarship and internship opportunities. Since our first scholarships were awarded in 2004, we’ve provided over $8.8 million dollars of financial support to 2,100 students from historically underrepresented groups worldwide. Our academic scholarship programs are just one part of our global effort to increase the diversity of the technology industry and invest in the next generation of computer scientists. This mission includes ensuring that student veterans in the U.S. have the support they need to pursue technology education and careers.

Google’s commitment to military veterans extends beyond our educational outreach efforts. The Google Veterans Network, one of our 18 employee groups dedicated to supporting diversity and inclusion at Google, fosters a community of support for our military veterans, reservists, guardsmen, family members and friends. In 2011, we introduced a customized job search engine called the Veterans Job Bank in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Members of our veterans’ community also partnered with the Google Creative Lab to launch Chrome for Wounded, Ill and Injured Warriors and to create Google for Veterans and Families, a new online resource that brings together our free products and platforms for service members and their families. As a Google engineer and a Marine veteran, I’m proud of our commitment to diversity and of our efforts to bring other veterans into the world of technology and computer science.

The deadline to apply for the Google SVA Scholarship is March 15, 2012.

For complete scholarship details, visit our scholarship programs page.

Posted by Dan Cross, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted from the Google Student blog)

One of the most rewarding projects I worked on in 2011 was the Next Creator program (comprised of YouTube NextUp, YouTube Next Chef, and YouTube Next Trainer). These programs worked to catapult 91 content creators’ careers across 15 different countries, by providing them with production and audience development training, new video equipment, promotion, and mentoring from DeStorm, FreddieW, Michelle Phan, Chow.com and Billy Blanks.

But what’s next for the Next Creator program? There are still millions of creators who could benefit from participating in the program, so we’re excited to continue to expand the program further. That’s where you come in — we'd like to hear which type of content we should launch for the next round. Maybe you're a budding beauty guru and want to see YouTube Next Beautician; or, perhaps you're a habitual big personality vlogger and have been waiting for YouTube Next Vlogger.

Whatever you want to see next, let us know by voting on some categories and by suggesting your own here. You may vote and submit as many as you’d like before February 19th. We'll then evaluate the top-voted suggestions and bring some of these to you this year!

2012 is going to be an incredibly exciting year for YouTube creators. Stay tuned for more initiatives that will empower you to take your YouTube career to the next level — coming very soon!

Bing Chen, global creator initiatives manager, recently watched Ryan The Truth Higa’s “Word of the Day - Swog."

Now that the final Super Bowl touchdown has been scored, the dip bowl wiped clean and the last of the chicken wings devoured, we’re taking a look at some game-day search trends to see what football fans were searching for this year.

As the Giants and Patriots battled it out on the field yesterday, U.S. viewers multi-tasked, watching the game on television and also going online more than ever before, turning to their smartphones and tablets to look up players, halftime show performers and their favorite Super Bowl commercials. In fact, around 41% of searches related to [Super Bowl ads] that were made during the game came from mobile devices, up from 25% for the same time the day prior.

Overall, the top trending searches on Google during the game were:

1. Madonna
2. Halftime show
3. Patriots
4. Tom Brady
5. Giants

This was the first year that the Super Bowl was live streamed, and there was a significant spike in searches related to Super Bowl live streaming on game day. Searches peaked at kickoff, and were made predominantly on desktop, followed by mobile phones and then tablets. Searches for the Spanish language version of the live stream made the list of top trending queries, and while it may have been after midnight on the other side of the Atlantic, we still saw searches for [Super Bowl 2012 übertragung] and [w9 streaming] in Germany and France, respectively.


The Giants claimed the game in a down-to-the-wire nail biter; however, the Patriots edged them out in searches. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady not only broke Joe Montana’s record for the most consecutive completions at a Super Bowl, he also scored the most searches out of all the players. Eli Manning, Victor Cruz, Aaron Hernandez and Danny Woodhead rounded out the top five players trending during the game.


The Material Girl Madonna took the honor of being the most-searched for term during the game, but other celebrities that caught viewers’ eyes included Super Bowl performers LMFAO, Kelly Clarkson and Nicki Minaj. Searches for Katherine McPhee’s soon-to-premiere NBC show [Smash] beat out searches for David Beckham’s H&M ad campaign.


Finally, no Super Bowl wrap-up would be complete without talking about the commercials. 2012 saw a pre-Super Bowl ad bonanza, with many of the top commercials either being teased or posted in full well in advance of the game. Super Bowl ads or ad teasers were watched more than 30 million times on YouTube before the big weekend this year (you can read more on the top rising Super Bowl searches on YouTube here).

Game day searches for [super bowl ads] were 122 times higher than the same time last week. The most popular commercials in terms of Google searches were ads from Acura, GoDaddy and M&M’s. Searches for The Avengers movie trailer were also trending, along with Chrysler’s spot featuring Clint Eastwood.

Now that you’ve seen them all, vote for your favorite commercial of the game on the YouTube Ad Blitz channel. The winning ads will be showcased on the YouTube homepage on February 18.

To download the full infographic above, visit Think Insights, our website for marketers. Our final Ad Blitz infographic (coming soon) will include new facts and stats about Super Bowl ads, and you can follow Think with Google on Google+ to be the first to know when it's released.

That’s it for the NFL 2012 season, but luckily, major league baseball is just around the corner...

Posted by Jeffrey Oldham, Software Engineer

Update 10:09am: Earlier, this post incorrectly stated that Patriots quarterback Tom Brady broke Joe Montana’s record for the most touchdown passes at a Super Bowl, instead of most consecutive completions. This post has been updated to correct the error.

For the third year, YouTube is teaming up with See3 Communications to present the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, a celebration of the best non-profit videos on the site. If you’re a nonprofit who made a video in 2011, you’re eligible and encouraged to submit.

It doesn’t matter if your organization is small and scrappy, large and global, or somewhere in between. We’ll award prizes like $3,500 grants, free admission to the Nonprofit Technology Conference, and a spotlight on the YouTube homepage to small, medium and large organizations, plus a special award for “Best Video Storytelling.”

Need more details? Watch this video:



The deadline to enter is February 29, 2012 and you must be a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program at the time of judging, to enter. Full rules are available here.

Get those cameras rolling and good luck!

Ramya Raghavan, YouTube Nonprofits, recently watched “300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds”.

To help you learn about the big stories of the week, we’re kicking off a new series from CitizenTube, a YouTube channel focusing on global news and politics.

Everyday on the CitizenTube channel (and @CitizenTube on Twitter), along with our curation partners @storyful, we look at how the top news stories are covered on YouTube. Each week, starting today, we'll post a weekly recap of the top news stories of the week, as seen through the lens of both citizen-reported footage and professional news coverage.

• We witnessed widespread protests in Cairo, Egypt after the tragic deaths of over 70 people at a soccer game in Port Said.
• We monitored reports of violence in Syria, where fighting intensified causing the Arab League to suspend its monitoring mission in the country.
• We observed parts of Queensland and New South Wales being declared natural disaster zones due to flooding after days of heavy rainfall.
• We watched Eastern and Southern Europe come to a standstill due to freezing temperatures and unprecedented levels of snowfall.
• We followed the GOP candidates do battle in Florida as tensions grew on the US campaign trail, with Mitt Romney emerging as the comprehensive victor in the Sunshine state.
• We watched social networking giant Facebook announce that it was going public, as it sought to raise $5bn in the largest IPO by a technology company.
• We viewed Occupy Oakland protesters burn the Star Spangled Banner after clashes with police.
• We saw Novak Djokovic defeat Rafael Nadal to claim the Australian Open final, in a match that will go down in history as one of the greatest of all time.
• And finally, we looked forward to Super Bowl XLVI, as some companies released advanced versions of their half-time commercials.

Olivia Ma, YouTube News & Politics Manager, recently watched “Inside Syria: Escalating violence pushes country toward full-blown war”.

Computers store every piece of text using a “character encoding,” which gives a number to each character. For example, the byte 61 stands for ‘a’ and 62 stands for ‘b’ in the ASCII encoding, which was launched in 1963. Before the web, computer systems were siloed, and there were hundreds of different encodings. Depending on the encoding, C1 could mean any of ¡, Ё, Ą, Ħ, ‘, ”, or parts of thousands of characters, from æ to 品. If you brought a file from one computer to another, it could come out as gobbledygook.

Unicode was invented to solve that problem: to encode all human languages, from Chinese (中文) to Russian (русский) to Arabic (العربية), and even emoji symbols like or
; it encodes nearly 75,000 Chinese ideographs alone. In the ASCII encoding, there wasn’t even enough room for all the English punctuation (like curly quotes), while Unicode has room for over a million characters. Unicode was first published in 1991, coincidentally the year the World Wide Web debuted—little did anyone realize at the time they would be so important for each other. Today, people can easily share documents on the web, no matter what their language.

Every January, we look at the percentage of the webpages in our index that are in different encodings. Here’s what our data looks like with the latest figures*:

*Your mileage may vary: these figures may vary somewhat from what other search engines find. The graph lumps together encodings by script. We detect the encoding for each webpage; the ASCII pages just contain ASCII characters, for example. Thanks again to Erik van der Poel for collecting the data.
As you can see, Unicode has experienced an 800 percent increase in “market share” since 2006. Note that we separate out ASCII (~16 percent) since it is a subset of most other encodings. When you include ASCII, nearly 80 percent of web documents are in Unicode (UTF-8). The more documents that are in Unicode, the less likely you will see mangled characters (what Japanese call mojibake) when you’re surfing the web.

We’ve long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text Google searches and process: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode. Version 6.1 just released with over 110,000 characters; soon we’ll be updating to that version and to Unicode’s locale data from CLDR 21 (both via ICU). The continued rise in use of Unicode makes it even easier to do the processing for the many languages that we cover. Without it, our unified index it would be nearly impossible—it’d be a bit like not being able to convert between the hundreds of currencies in the world; commerce would be, well, difficult. Thanks to Unicode, Google is able to help people find information in almost any language.

Posted by Mark Davis, International Software Architect

Game day can’t come soon enough? Get in the spirit today with the official premiere of Madonna’s “Give Me All Your Luvin” featuring Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. on YouTube. You can find the video on the Madonna YouTube Channel, along with teasers for her halftime show performance.



We’ll also have her video up on the YouTube Ad Blitz Channel pre-game on Sunday, where you’ll be able to view and vote for your favorite commercials.

Love the song and can’t wait for the album? You can pre-order it now, and stay tuned to her Google+ profile for her latest news and behind-the-scenes photos leading up to the big game.

Craig McFadden, YouTube Partner Development, recently watched “‘W.E.’ - Official Trailer.”

Women make up more than half the global population, but hold fewer than a third of the world’s engineering jobs. In the U.S., female students comprise fewer than 15 percent of all Advanced Placement computer science test takers. Even in high-tech Israel, few girls choose computer science. Not only is this a loss to companies like Google and everyone who benefits from a continually developing web; it's also a lost opportunity for girls.

Beginning in 2008, a group of female engineers at Google in Israel decided to tackle this problem. We established the “Mind the Gap!” program, aimed at encouraging girls to pursue math, science and technology education. In collaboration with the Israeli National Center for Computer Science Teachers, we began organizing monthly school visits for different groups of girls to the Google office and annual tech conferences at local universities and institutes. The girls learn about computer science and technology and get excited about its applications, as well as have a chance to talk with female engineers in an informal setting and see what the working environment is like for them.



Since we started this program over three years ago, we’ve hosted more than 1,100 teenage girls at our office, and an additional 1,400 girls at three annual conferences held in leading universities. These 2,500 students represent 100 schools from all sectors and from all over the country: Tel Aviv, Haifa, Tira, Beer-Sheva, Jerusalem, Nazareth and more; what they have in common is the potential to become great computer scientists.

The results are encouraging. For instance, some 40 percent of the girls who participated in last year’s conference later chose computer science as a high school major.

We encourage people in other countries, at other companies and in other scientific disciplines to see how they could replicate this program. You can read more at the project site. Currently, we are working with the Google in Education group to expand the program to more offices globally and get even more young women excited about computer science. The difference we can make is real: At one of our first visits three years ago, we met a 10th grade student named Keren who enjoyed math but had never considered computer science as a high school major. Last month, Keren informed us that the visit made such an impact on her, she decided to change her major to computer science. “Talking to women in the field helped me change my mind,” she said.

Posted by Michal Segalov, Software Engineer at Google’s R&D Center, Israel

As I wrote in the Huffington Post recently, we here at YouTube believe that great educators can come from all walks of life, and we want to see more teachers - in the broadest sense of the word - turn YouTube into their global classroom. The demand on YouTube for educational content - from math to science to history and beyond - continues to grow. We did some math of our own recently, and found that views of educational content DOUBLED in the last year. We also found that nearly 80% of the views for this content came from outside the U.S., suggesting that our vision for a global classroom might be becoming a reality.

So for all you knowledge-hungry people around the world, today we’re welcoming the first six new educational channels coming to YouTube as part of the new original content initiative we announced last year (more to come later this year). Without further ado, and In alphabetical order … (what else?) ….

Crash Course
A weekly dose of world history, from one half of the vlogbrothers, John Green. The first episode tackles the agricultural revolution, and over the year, the show will tackle the entire 15,000 years of human civilization. Insider tip: the show is written in conjunction with John’s high school history teacher!



Deep Sky Videos
Back in the 1700s, astronomer Charles Messier was hunting for comets … and kept getting frustrated by objects that were NOT comets … so he made a list of these non-comet objects, which went on to become one of the most famous lists of cosmic objects in science. This channel is a quest by Brady Haran to make videos about all 110 so-called Messier Objects … starting with M1 (side note: Brady’s collaborator on another YouTube channel called periodicvideos is Professor Martyn Poliakoff, who was today awarded the Ron Nyholm Award for his role in chemistry education - congratulations!)




Intelligent Channel
This new channel hosts luminaries from education, art, and culture as they discuss the most topical subjects of the day. The hosts of the shows are actor/comedian Richard Belzer (from Homicide and Law & Order, and Paul Holdengraber of ‘Live from the New York Public Library’ fame. “Richard Belzer’s Conversation” will feature interviews with actors, comedians, directors, musicians, and writers. “The Paul Holdengräber Show will engage award-winning writers and artists about their work and passions.

Numberphile
Numberphile is a channel for people who love numbers and want to find out the stories behind them, also from Brady Haran. Numberphile’s very first video appeared on an auspicious date (the last binary date of a generation) - 11.11.11 - and of course, the video was all about the number 11 - and barcodes. The channel has gone on to feature videos about 98, 15, 31 … teaching us about grafting numbers and hexadecimals and Mersenne Primes in the process.



SciShow
From the other vlogbrother, Hank, SciShow aims to teach scientific concepts in an easy-to-understand way, covering everything from particle physics to DNA. The first episode is about "non-newtonian fluids," and the second episode focuses on the Higgs Boson particle and includes interviews with the director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research.



The Spangler Effect
YouTube was only five months old when Steve Spangler first taught people how to turn a bottle of Diet Coke and a roll of Mentos into an exploding geyser. Science videos are among the most popular viral videos on YouTube, and this channel will set out to make science more approachable and a whole lot more fun.




We hope you enjoy these additions to our YouTube Education corpus, which today has 700+ partners and more than 500,000 videos. If you’re a teacher, check out youtube.com/teachers for a set of education resources that includes more than 300 playlists of videos that align with core education standards. And if you want to make YouTube more accessible in your school, check out YouTube for Schools.

Angela Lin, Head of YouTube Education, recently watched “The Agricultural Revolution: Crash Course World History #1”.

While thousands of lucky fans will brave the crowds at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Ind. to fill the coveted seats at this Sunday’s Super Bowl, many more in the U.S. will enjoy the game from home—in front of the TV, with mobile phones and tablets at the ready.

As the New York Giants and New England Patriots prepare for kickoff, here are several ways to make the most of the big game with Google—wherever you’re watching. You can explore the full list in our Game Day with Google playbook, a new page on Inside Search that we’ve filled with tips on how to use Google to enjoy the game.

Get the inside scoop
Visit the Giants and Patriots Google+ pages for behind-the-scenes coverage and details on a chance for you to join the Giants pre-game hangout on Thursday for a face-to-face chat with the players. Be sure to leave a comment on their post for a chance to participate.


On Monday, Feb 6 at noon ET, stop by the NBC Sports Google+ page for a Hangout On Air with CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell. He’ll chat about the previous day’s game and review the best commercials with fans that drop in. Leave a comment on this NBC Sports post to throw your name in the hat to be one of the lucky participants who will chat with Rovell On Air.


Plan your party
Super Bowl party rivalry is already in full swing with Indiana leading the pack in Google searches for [super bowl party], ahead of both New York and Massachusetts. Despite New York being the home state of the buffalo wing, searches for [chicken wings] are nearly 50 percent higher in Massachusetts.

If you’re looking for a dip recipes, [hummus] reigns supreme, followed by guacamole, queso and bean dip. Use Google Recipe search to find a recipe with the ingredients to make everyone happy. Or, swing by ChefHangout on Google+ to join a cooking class on favorite Super Bowl party foods.

Talking babies or barking dogs? You decide.
It wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without the commercials. We’ve already seen a flurry of pre-game teasers pop up on YouTube and Google+, but which commercial will reign supreme? Our fifth annual YouTube Ad Blitz in partnership with NBC Sports enables you to replay and vote on your favorite commercials online from a laptop, mobile phone or tablet. Tune in to the YouTube Ad Blitz channel or NBCSports.com to watch and rate the commercials.


Watch the Madonna premiere on YouTube
If the halftime show interests you more than counting yards gained and lost, get an early taste of the show with Madonna’s music video premiere for “Give Me All Your Luvin” featuring Nicki Minaj and M.I.A on her official youtube.com/Madonna channel this Friday and on the YouTube Ad Blitz channel pre-game on Sunday. You can pre-order her deluxe album right there in the video description. And make sure to tune in to Madonna’s Google+ profile all week long for her latest news.

May the best team win!

Posted by Sue McCauley, YouTube Ad Blitz program manager (and die-hard Giants fan)

Our business at Google is rooted in STEM and CS, so we’re passionate about supporting organizations that are expanding access to these fields, especially for students who might not have the opportunity otherwise. The annual Google Roots in Science and Engineering (RISE) program supports organizations running innovative STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and CS (computer science) enrichment programs for K-12 and university students around the world.


This year, the Google in Education group received a record number of inspiring applications for RISE. We expanded the awards to include Sub-Saharan Africa, and in total, we’re awarding more than $340,000 in funding to 13 U.S., eight European and five African organizations.

Our recipients are diverse, ranging from girls robotics teams building high-tech machinery in Nairobi to after-school programs that have students configuring cluster computers in Salt Lake City. Below are just a few of the outstanding organizations receiving RISE awards this year for their efforts in advancing CS and STEM education:

United States

• Santa Clara Valley Society of Women Engineers, San Jose, California. GetSET is a program created for underrepresented ethnic minority girls in the San Francisco Bay Area to expose them to engineering while building self confidence through leadership workshops, tours of technology companies and participation in team-building exercises.
• Saturday Academy, Portland, Oregon. Saturday Academy serves 2nd-12th grade students from Oregon and SW Washington with high quality and creative learning opportunities taught by STEM experts, including hands-on, real world activities that create meaningful connections between academic content and practical application.

Europe

• Frauennetzwerk Informatik at Universität Passau, Passau, Germany. University students from Passau act as ambassadors for computer science, engineering and math by reaching out to juniors and seniors at their former high schools and running workshops on topics like robotics and mobile app development. Ambassadors go on to serve as mentors to the students throughout their high school and college careers.
• The Centre for Academic Achievement, Dublin, Ireland. This center runs free after school educational classes in a university setting for bright primary school students from disadvantaged areas. Each term, students from 32 local primary schools have the opportunity to study science, math and engineering subjects and are encouraged to pursue college degrees in the future.

Sub Saharan Africa

• Savana Signatures, Tamale, Ghana. Savana Signatures educates youth and women, building their capacity to access information for the benefit of Ghana’s social and economic development.
• Fundi Bots, Kampala, Uganda. Fundi Bots is a technology outreach program for students in high school and university that uses robotics to introduce young children to the endless possibilities of technology in both their day-to-day lives and potential careers.

Organizations interested in applying for 2013 funding can sign up for more information here. We look forward to hearing about all the great work being done in CS and STEM education.

Posted by Roxana Shirkhoda, K-12 Education Outreach

The good ship Wilco sailed into YouTube Music this week, with the premiere of their new video “Dawned on Me”, which believe it or not, is the first hand-drawn Popeye cartoon in 30 years. We also featured a curation from Black Bananas, a video from Cymbals Eat Guitars, and more...

Busta Rhymes with YouTube and Google Music

Back in November, Busta Rhymes offered you all a chance to appear in the music video for "Why Stop Now," his latest single. Hundreds of you took up his challenge, downloaded the song, learned the verse, and filmed yourselves spitting it. Busta watched the entries, selected his favorites, and had director Hype Williams splice them into the final cut. We're happy to debut the results. Take a look, and see which fans did the verse nice enough to earn Busta's seal of approval.




Chemical Brothers

For the first time in 20 years, electronica pioneers the Chemical Brothers have captured their audio-visual live show on film. The movie, titled “Don’t Think”, is directed by Adam Smith, and will be hitting theater screens around the world later this year. To celebrate, Adam and the Chemical Brothers collected some of their favorite YouTube music videos in a playlist:

 

January Fresh Faces

Every month, we feature a handful of newly-signed music partners on YouTube’s homepage. Amongst January’s picks, Jitta55 shows us his "Drink Face," and Shonsta performs an intense guitar solo:

 

Tim Partridge, YouTube Music Manager, recently watched Busta Rhymes “Why Stop Now ft. Chris Brown”