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Olympic madness

Google has Olympic fever. In celebration of the Beijing Summer Games that start today, Google has created a special site specifically for Olympic news, updates and video. The site is available in 66 countries and 31 languages. Additionally, Google has special mobile portal to keep you up to date too. You can either search for Olympic terms like "swimming" or "gymnastics" and get instant results/information, or view all the data at http://www.google.com/m/summergames.

[via Official Google Blog]

Google Translate comes to the iPhone

The Google Translate team has optimized the Google Translate site and interface for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The interface uses AJAX so as soon as the Translate team updates the supported languages, they are automatically added to your phone. Additionally, the iPhone web app stores past translations so you ca always access them, which is great if you don't have access to a local network. If you are traveling to a foreign country, stocking up on some basic phrases in Google Translate before your trip (or while in an airport with good connectivity) might be really, really beneficial.

[via Official Google Mobile Blog]

New Google Earth API resources

The Google Earth API has added four new resources this week for anyone interested in working with or developing applications around Google Earth. The API reference is now more attractive and easier to navigate, sample code has been added for projects running on the Google Earth API, App Engine and GWT Earth, a page to track releases and changes and a FAQ have also been added.

[via Google Geo Developers Blog]

Directly link to Google Mapplets

The Google LatLong Blog has a great tip about how to directly link to Google Mapplets. This is a really nice tip, because it avoids forcing users to go straight to "My Maps" tab instead of the desired Google Mapplet. Simply construct a URL using the following syntax: http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?modeuleurl=[insert URL to Mapplet XML]

You can find your Mapplet's URL by clicking on the "View Source" link.

[via Google LatLong Blog]

Get your Picasa prints at Walgreens

Good news US Picasa lovers, Picasa Web Albums has added Walgreens as a print provider. What this means is that you can now opt to have your photos printed at any of the 6200+ Walgreens locations and have your photos in about an hour, with no shipping fees to worry about. This could be especially useful if sharing photos with relatives all over the country (make sure you enable "Allow visitors to order prints of my photos" in the settings), saving on postage and providing a hard-copy for the digital-averse (I'm talking to you Mom!).

[via Google Photos Blog]