Friday, November 13, 2009

Googland

Googland

[G] 1080p HD Is Coming to YouTube

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 05:13 PM PST

YouTube Blog: 1080p HD Is Coming to YouTube

We're excited to say that support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution is on its way. Starting next week, YouTube's HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today.

As resolution of consumer cameras increases, we want to make sure YouTube is the best home on the web to showcase your content. For viewers with big monitors and a fast computer, try switching to 1080p to get the most out of the fullscreen experience.

Just how much larger is 1080p? Take a look at the following screenshots from this video:



Standard - 360p



HQ - 480p



HD - 720p



HD - 1080p

Have an HD camera? We would love to see your awesome 1080p videos! Be creative and choose subjects that really show off the beauty of your camera. We will run the best examples on our homepage in a future spotlight.

And those of you who have already uploaded in 1080p, don't worry. We're in the process of re-encoding your videos so we can show them the way you intended.

Billy Biggs, Software Engineer, recently watched "Toy Story 3 - Official Teaser Trailer [HD]."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/TA-r5rD3whA/1080p-hd-comes-to-youtube.html

[G] Google welcomes Gizmo5

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 04:23 PM PST

Google Voice Blog: Google welcomes Gizmo5

Today we're pleased to announce we've acquired Gizmo5, a company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers. While we don't have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5's engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience. Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service, though we will be suspending new signups for the time being, and existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number.

We've acquired a number of small companies over the past five years, and the people and technology that have come to Google from other places have contributed in many ways, large and small, to all kinds of Google products. Since the GrandCentral team joined Google in 2007, they've done incredible things with Google's technology and resources to launch and improve Google Voice.

We welcome the Gizmo5 team to Google and look forward to working together to bringing more useful features to Google Voice.

Posted by Wesley Chan and Craig Walker, Group Product Managers
URL: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/google-welcomes-gizmo5.html

[G] Google Sidewiki: The first 50 days of valuable entries and new API features

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 04:23 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Google Sidewiki: The first 50 days of valuable entries and new API features

It's been just under 2 months since we launched Google Sidewiki and we've already seen a great number of valuable entries that have been written worldwide.

From product tips to online petitions and from expert health advice to programming help, Sidewiki users are finding many useful and creative ways to help others. We've been really excited by these uses of Sidewiki and wanted to share 10 of these great entries with you:

If you haven't used Sidewiki yet, you can download it at google.com/sidewiki as part of the Google Toolbar for Firefox and Internet Explorer. If you're using Google Chrome, Safari or other browsers without the Google Toolbar, simply install the Sidewiki bookmarklet.

We're also releasing a top-requested feature for our API today that makes it easy to retrieve all Sidewiki entries for an entire domain. With this addition, you can look for new entries created on any page of a website and also subscribe to them via RSS (such as this RSS feed for all Sidewiki entries on the Google Blog). See our Sidewiki API documentation for all of its details.

We look forward to seeing many more great entries and keeping you posted with new features — follow us on Twitter for the latest news and highlights. Try using Sidewiki right now to add your feedback to this blog post and read what others are saying!

Posted by Ario Jafarzadeh, Sidewiki User Experience Designer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/google-sidewiki-first-50-days-of.html

[G] Locking SafeSearch

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 04:23 PM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Locking SafeSearch

Posted by Pete Lidwell, Product Manager and Aaron Arcos, Engineer

(Cross-posted from Official Google Blog)

When you're searching on Google, we think you should have the choice to keep adult content out of your search results. That's why we developed SafeSearch, a feature that lets you filter sexually explicit web sites and images from your search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, SafeSearch helps you avoid content you may prefer not to see or would rather your children did not stumble across. We think it works pretty well, but we're always looking for ways to improve the feature.

Today we're launching a feature that lets you lock your SafeSearch setting to the Strict level
of filtering. When you lock SafeSearch, two things will change. First, you'll need to enter your password to change the setting. Second, the Google search results page will be visibly different to indicate that SafeSearch is locked:



Even from across the room, the colored balls give parents and teachers a clear visual cue that SafeSearch is still locked. And if you don't see them, it's quick and easy to verify and re-lock SafeSearch.

To use SafeSearch lock, go to the "Search Settings" page on Google. For detailed instructions, check out this video.



We hope you and your family find exactly what you're looking for in Google search results — and nothing more.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/11/locking-safesearch.html

[G] Making health-related ads more useful

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 04:23 PM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Making health-related ads more useful

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Managing Policy Counsel

This afternoon we're taking part in the Food and Drug Administration's public hearing to discuss the online advertising of regulated medical products on the Internet. The two day hearing - being live cast and Tweeted - is intended to help guide the FDA's policy decisions, especially in the areas of social media tools and search.

We think it's an important conversation and we share their goal of better understanding how to promote medical products online in a non-misleading and balanced manner. That's why at today's FDA hearing, we proposed a new Google ad design for FDA-related approved products that highlights an extra line of text clearly stating important risks, with a link to even more information for consumers. We think this new format will help set a clear standard for advertisers and give users important information.


The Internet, and how people use it, has changed a lot since the FDA last examined access to online health information in 1996. On Google alone, we've seen health condition searches increase several times over. What this tells us is that people find health related searches - and the ads they return - useful. We think this new ad proposal for FDA-approved products will make those searches even more helpful.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/11/making-health-related-ads-more-useful.html

[G] Saving the world, one line of code at a time

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 03:34 PM PST

Google LatLong: Saving the world, one line of code at a time


The whole thing started last spring at the first-ever Crisis Camp in Washington DC where we heard about the challenges that NGOs, governments, and first responders face during disaster response.

We discussed these challenges with colleagues from Microsoft, and Yahoo. We all agreed that we could provide technological development. But, even for large companies, resources are finite. So, the question became, "How do we make this happen quickly?"

We decided to reach out to our active development communities. Out of this effort, Random Hacks of Kindness, a hackathon for humanity, was born. Random Hacks of Kindness, jointly sponsored by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA, and the World Bank, aims to build an active developer community around disaster response and humanitarian relief.

This weekend, benevolently-inclined hackers will listen to a keynote from FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. Then they'll churn out some of the most important open source code on the planet—code that saves lives and mitigates human suffering. They'll address problems like, how do we crowdsource information from local citizens to aid first resonders? How do we quickly collect and publish fresh aerial imagery of an affected area? How do we create a comprehensive missing persons finder after a disaster?

Their work will have a positive, lasting impact on the state of the human experience, not just here in the U.S, but all around the globe.

While it's no exaggeration to call these coders modern-day superheroes, they'll be going home with just a T-shirt for their efforts. It's a nice T-shirt, but perhaps masks and capes would have been more appropriate.

For more information, visit http://www.randomhacksofkindness.org

Posted by Jeff Martin, Google Crisis Response Team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/11/saving-world-one-line-of-code-at-time.html

[G] Site maintenance on Saturday, November 14

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 02:39 PM PST

Inside AdSense: Site maintenance on Saturday, November 14

This Saturday, our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You'll be unable to log in to your AdSense and Ad Manager accounts during this time, but we'll continue serving ads to your pages and tracking your clicks, impressions, and earnings as usual. In addition, your ad targeting won't be affected.

We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world:

Toronto - 1pm Saturday
Buenos Aires - 3pm Saturday
Cape Town - 8pm Saturday
Moscow - 9pm Saturday
New Delhi -11:30pm Saturday
Melbourne - 5am Sunday

If you'd like to learn more about what goes on during these maintenance periods, check out this Inside AdSense post.

Posted by Dia Muthana - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/11/site-maintenance-on-saturday-november.html

[G] Gone Google at EDUCAUSE 2009

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 12:47 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Gone Google at EDUCAUSE 2009

According to the newly-released 2009 Campus Computing survey statistics, 44% of colleges and universities have converted to a hosted student email solution, while another 37% are currently evaluating the move. Of those that have migrated, over half — 56% precisely — are going Google.

Since this time last year we have seen lots of exciting growth for Google Apps Education Edition. We've rolled out more than 100 new features, launched free Google Message Security for K-12 schools, integrated with other learning services such as Blackboard and Moodle, and have reached well over six million students and faculty – a 400% increase since this time last year.

The Google Apps for Education team celebrated these big changes with Apps customers – including students – and conference attendees last week at EDUCAUSE, an important annual gathering for higher ed IT. Here are a few photos:



Read more about EDUCAUSE and our exciting year of change, and be sure to visit www.google.com/appsatschool to learn more about how your school can go Google.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Edition team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/11/gone-google-at-educause-2009.html

[G] A 2x Faster Web

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 11:31 AM PST

Official Google Research Blog: A 2x Faster Web

Posted by Mike Belshe, Software Engineer and Roberto Peon, Software Engineer

Cross-posted with the Chromium Blog.

Today we'd like to share with the web community information about SPDY, pronounced "SPeeDY", an early-stage research project that is part of our effort to make the web faster. SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression.

We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP. HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web's tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support.

So far we have only tested SPDY in lab conditions. The initial results are very encouraging: when we download the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, we see a significant improvement in performance - pages loaded up to 55% faster. There is still a lot of work we need to do to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions. However, we believe that we have reached the stage where our small team could benefit from the active participation, feedback and assistance of the web community.

For those of you who would like to learn more and hopefully contribute to our experiment, we invite you to review our early stage documentation, look at our current code and provide feedback through the Chromium Google Group.
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/11/2x-faster-web.html

[G] Gone Google at EDUCAUSE 2009

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 11:31 AM PST

Official Google Blog: Gone Google at EDUCAUSE 2009

Last week the Google Apps for Education team headed to Denver for EDUCAUSE 2009 where the higher education community meets annually. It was at this conference three years ago that we first unveiled Google Apps for Education. Since then, we've witnessed staggering growth in the world of cloud computing in education. Lots has happened over the past year especially: more than 100 new features have rolled out in Google Apps, we've engaged well over six million students and faculty (a 400% increase since this time last year), launched free Google Message Security for K-12 schools and have integrated with other learning services such as Blackboard and Moodle.

These developments are just the beginning. According to the newly-released 2009 Campus Computing survey statistics, 44% of colleges and universities have converted to a hosted student email solution, while another 37% are currently evaluating the move. Of those that have migrated, over half — 56% precisely — are going Google.

To toast the students and faculty that are shaping this movement, we hosted our customers and EDUCAUSE conference attendees at the Denver Public Library. Check out the photos to see what these schools have to say:



We also did something different this year and invited some student ambassadors from schools using Google Apps to come to Denver and share how using Apps on campus helps make their lives easier. Daniel Miller who works at University of Washington's Ethnic Cultural Center uses Calendar to let students on campus know about his organization's events. Sociology major Robin Brown uses forms in Docs to collect data for her class surveys at Notre Dame. Taylor Bell at Boise State relies on Gmail's filters and gadgets to seamlessly access to his Calendar, Docs, Tasks and Chat. After losing his journal, Vaughn Parker at Temple University created a Calendar to keep track of his assignments and share them with his classmates and professors. (There are many more of these student stories, too).

Every year, more schools move to Google Apps so they can spend their time focusing on students, not servers; on higher learning, not higher costs. If you're a school, you can go Google, too. Check out www.google.com/appsatschool to learn more.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/gone-google-at-educause-2009.html

[G] Google Ad Planner: Now even easier to find the right audience for your campaigns

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 11:31 AM PST

Inside AdWords: Google Ad Planner: Now even easier to find the right audience for your campaigns

In our ongoing effort to give you in-depth data for your media plan, we've released a number of Google Ad Planner enhancements that provide a more granular view of where your audience can be found.

Subdomain data
We've added subdomain data to Google Ad Planner to give you a more detailed view of sites. This information can help you refine your media plan by providing more information about specific pages.

With subdomain data, you can search for subdomains; view the top subdomains based on total domain traffic for a site; view traffic, demographics and other data for the subdomain itself; and add subdomains to your media plan. Learn how to search for subdomains.

Ad placements
Ad placements are specific sections on a website where advertising can be purchased, such as the middle right section of a page.

Google Ad Planner now offers ad placement data so that you can make better informed decisions about where to target your ads. You can review placement data for sites in the Google Content Network, and beta test publishers using Google Ad Manager. Additional placement data is coming soon. Learn how to search for ad placements in Google Ad Planner.

Reach and relevance at a glance
With our new interactive graph, you can easily see which sites in your plan provide the best reach and relevance. In its default setting, the graph will compare sites in your search results by audience reach and composition index. Sites with the most reach will appear in the top-left quadrant. Sites with the most relevance will appear in the bottom-right quadrant. Sites near the top-right quadrant will have the best combination of both reach and relevance. You can customize the graph to visualize and compare sites in a variety of ways.


In the example above, a graph of sites reaching seniors age 65 or older shows that newsmax.com has the best relevance, facebook.com has the best reach, and nytimes.com has a mix of both.

More detailed publisher data
Publishers and site owners can now use Google Ad Planner to share additional Google Analytics data points such as page views, unique visitors, total visits, average visits per visitor, and average time on site. As a result, you can feel even more confident in the accuracy of Ad Planner data, and make better informed decisions about the sites you include in your media plan.

We hope you will try out these new features, and please send us your feedback so we can continue to improve Google Ad Planner.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/11/google-ad-planner-now-even-easier-to.html
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