Google Now Offers a Monthly Account Activity Report

Google just launched a new opt-in feature called Account Activity, which sends users a detailed monthly report full of analytics about their signed-in use of Google. The user receives a Web link to a password-protected report.

The report displays data like sign-in locations, browsers, platforms, changes to sign-in credentials, connected sites and apps. It also provides some personal analytics, on places one has been (for Google Latitude users), number of emails sent and received, and the volume of searches.
The Account Activity report can provide information as simple as, "I sent 5% more email this month than last month and received 8% more." But if you check in with Google Latitude, it can also provide instructive pie charts like "How you spent your time per week: 50% at home, 35% at work, 15% out."

Google's business is built on collecting data about its users, and most of its recent headlines about the practice have been unfavorable. This is the flip-side of that issue. By collecting data this way, Google can provide users with early signals about whether their account has been compromised. If someone has logged into your account from a place you've never been or on a device you've never used, it's time to change your password.
It can also help users in more holistic ways. Users spend so much time using Google services that it can tell how we're spending a good deal of our time. That information is obviously sensitive, so Google password-protects it. But knowing how much of one's life is spent emailing or working or searching for things is a reality check. We might not like some of the patterns we see in our personal analytics, and we might want to change our habits.

To turn on your Account Activity report, go to google.com/settings/activity.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's 126th birth anniversary: Google remembers with a doodle

Google's doodle today pays tribute to legendary German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on his 126th birth anniversary. The building in the doodle is the SR Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, regarded as one of masterpieces of Mies. The building comprised only glass and steel in its exteriors.

Regarded as one of the pioneers of modern architechture, Mies is said to have never taken any formal architectural training. He worked with several architects before he developed his own style. Like many of his post-World War I contemporaries, Mies wanted to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times. He strived towards an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of free-flowing open space, according to Wikipedia. He is known to call his buildings "skin and bones" architecture.

A few years after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and the government-financed school he was heading was closed down by Nazis, Mies emigrated to the United States. In the US, Mies became the head of department of architecture at the Armour Institute of Technology, Chicago, which later came to be known as the Illinois Institute of Technology.

In 1944, Mies became an American citizen, severing all his ties from his native Germany. Mies architecture, with its origins in the German Bauhaus and western European style, became the popular choice for several American buildings like cultural and educational institutions, public agencies and many large corporations.

Some of the prominent buildings designed by Mies include Farnsworth House (Illinois), 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments (Chicago), Seagram Building (New York City) and Museum of Fine Arts (Houston). Ludwig Mies died in 1969 in Chicago at the age of 83.

Google doodles are the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists. The first doodle was created by Larry Page and Sergy Brin in the year 1998 to mark the celebrations of the Burning Man Festival.