Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Out with the old, in with the new!

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 04:37 PM PST

Google Open Source Blog: Out with the old, in with the new!

Apache members, committers and contributors descend on the Google headquarters in Mountain View, enjoying a rare chance to get together face-to-face, and getting some really great work done!

January 25th and 26th saw the oldest project at the Apache Software Foundation join forces with one of the newer Incubator podlings for a fantastic hackathon. More than twenty developers from the two projects met at Google for two days of hacking, learning, collaboration, and fun!

Members of the Apache HTTP Server team worked side-by-side with committers to the Traffic Server podling, on everything from documentation formats to getting code to build on new platforms!

The HTTP Server team finalized and released Apache HTTP Server 2.3.5-alpha, the newest version of the ever-popular web server. We also worked on tidying up our download page, and wrote up the CHANGES file and announcement texts for the release of 1.3.42. This is the final release of Apache HTTP Server version 1.3, which has now reached end of life.

Some of the issues and action items that needed to be addressed before Traffic Server can do its first release at the Apache Software Foundation

The Traffic Server podling team was even busier! The following are just some of the things they managed to do over the two days:
  • Finalized the issues that need to be addressed for the first Traffic Server release at Apache (v2.0).
  • Worked on migrating the last remnants of Yahoo! specific code into the Apache repository.
  • Patched the existing code to build on OS X.
  • Gave several interesting presentations, including a discussion of a number of changes in the pipeline for v2.2, the current "dev" branch.
  • Cross-signed developers' GPG keys with several ASF members, to broaden the web-of-trust for code-signing of Traffic Server releases.
On behalf of the Apache Software Foundation, the Apache HTTP Server Project, and the Traffic Server Podling, it's my pleasure to offer Google a huge vote of thanks for their support!

By Noirin Shirley, Vice President, Apache Software Foundation; Technical Writer, Google
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/02/out-with-old-in-with-new.html

[G] 2010 Super Bowl: Some search touchdowns

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 03:08 PM PST

Official Google Blog: 2010 Super Bowl: Some search touchdowns

While 106 American football players sought yardage in the 2010 Super Bowl, millions of people sought information related to the big game from Google search. We looked at some game-day search trends and data* to see what football fans were searching for this year.

Most searched-for team
To the victor of this year's big game went the search spoils: The New Orleans Saints captured both the NFL championship and the lion's share of Super Bowl team searches in 2010.

Most searched-for player
For leading the New Orleans Saints to their 31–17 win over the Indianapolis Colts — with 288 yards, two touchdowns and 32 of 39 passes completed — quarterback Drew Brees won the Most Valuable Player award. But Peyton Manning earned the status of the Super Bowl's most searched-for player, beating out some tough competition and followed by Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, Hank Baskett and Scott Fujita.

Many fans of Reggie Bush also expressed interest in his girlfriend Kim Kardashian; searches for her name, both on its own and linked with Reggie Bush's, spiked significantly during the game. Additionally, search volume for football great Walter Payton — after whom the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award was named — was as high as that for some of the game's top five most searched-for players.

Most searched-for coach
Behind every team is a great coach, and behind every coach is an engaged online community. This year, Sean Payton, who has coached the New Orleans Saints since 2006, was the most searched-for team leader.

Most searched-for party planning terms
Die-hard football fans and casual shindig hosts alike look forward to game day for its party planning possibilities. This year, people went online to find all the information they needed to watch the game and to make sure they were well-fed during the same. Some top rising recipe searches on game day included buffalo chicken dip, guacamole, 7-layer dip and pigs in a blanket.

People were also looking for information on how and when to watch the game; searches related to the start time of the game and watch Super Bowl 2010 online were both notably high.

Most searched-for advertisers
In addition to spotlighting some of the finest football teams in the U.S., the Super Bowl is a showcase for some of the funniest, coolest and most interesting creative advertisements each year. This year, the prospect of "free" dominated the searched-for ads. The offer of free pants from Dockers garnered a spike of queries which continued throughout the game. Twice, Denny's advertised free grand slam breakfasts, leading to two bumps in searches for Denny's free breakfast, Denny's locations and Denny's.

Searchers also enjoyed ads featuring celebrities — including Betty White, who played football and ate Snickers bars, and Megan Fox, who used a Motorola smartphone.

We told the story of an American who finds love in Paris — using search queries. Google Super Bowl commercial led searchers to the love story of a man who dutifully searched for information on how to impress a French girl, long distance relationship advice and how to assemble a crib. (Full disclosure: We work for this advertiser.)

Stay tuned
Which advertiser won the position of Favorite 2010 Super Bowl Ad, according to fans? Check out YouTube's Ad Blitz results on February 17 to see which Super Bowl ad received the greatest number of positive votes from the YouTube community. Until then, you can use Google Trends to see more Super Bowl-related queries.

*We used internal tools to quickly gather this data. All of the search queries we looked at were anonymous — no personal information was used.

Posted by Jeffrey Oldham, Software Engineer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/2010-super-bowl-some-search-touchdowns.html

[G] More webinars coming your way

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 12:44 PM PST

Inside AdSense: More webinars coming your way

We've just published a new webinar schedule for the next month. In our live webinars, we'll highlight changes you can make to your ad implementation in order to maximize your AdSense revenue. We're also trying something new with our upcoming webinars: we've set up open Google Moderator discussions, where you can raise questions related to the specific webinar topic or vote on questions from other participants. We'll then answer your questions live in the webinar.

To sign up for our webinars, please visit our Help Center. Even if you're not able to attend the live sessions, we'll make sure to upload each webinar recording within 24 hours of the event.

Posted by Siobhán McCormack - AdSense Optimisation Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/02/more-webinars-coming-your-way.html

[G] Upcoming Google Analytics Workshop

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:20 AM PST

Google Analytics Blog: Upcoming Google Analytics Workshop

Feras Alhlou, president and principal consultant of E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, will be conducting a Google Analytics workshop at SMX West on March 5, called "Using Google Analytics to Improve Your Online Marketing & Business." Register here and get 10% off with this discount code: GA@SMX

Many organizations, large and small, struggle to go beyond basic web metrics of visitor counts and pageview volumes. In this workshop, senior consultant Feras Alhlou will walk you through what you need in order to drive your online marketing strategy ahead of your competition. I've had the pleasure of sitting in on Feras' workshops in the past, and it was the one of the main reasons we were so proud when E-Nor in the Bay Area joined our Google Analytics Authorized Consultant network. His clear, engaging and energetic teaching style will make the day fly by as you learn. It's time well spent.

Workshop Agenda

Morning Session – Marketer/Business Focus – Strategy & Planning
  • Web Analytics Strategy – approach, opportunities and limitations
  • How It Works – overview, accuracy and privacy implications, integrating with other data
  • Practical – understanding the user interface
  • Advanced Features Overview – clever stuff you can do with Google Analytics
Afternoon Session – Webmaster/Technical Focus – Implementation
  • Accounts & Profiles, Filters & Goals – structure your data properly
  • External Campaign Tracking – measure performance of search, email, banner campaigns
  • Reporting – dashboards & insights
  • Advanced Segmentation & Custom Reports – powerful ways to find insights
The Google Analytics team will also be at SMX West, and we'll blog about that in the near future. Hope to see you there.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/02/upcoming-google-analytics-workshop.html

[G] Enhanced security for Google Maps API Premier

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:20 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Enhanced security for Google Maps API Premier

The Google Maps API Premier team looks to customer input as we build tools that enrich websites, applications, and devices with location information. Customers frequently tell us that the higher than standard limits on web services such as geocoding and static maps are among the most valuable aspects of Maps API Premier.

However, any web service can be vulnerable to anonymous automated access. To further protect our Premier customers from unauthorized use of their client IDs, we're adding an additional layer of security to Google Maps API Premier.

Starting today, we will be issuing a private cryptographic key, unique to each account, to all Maps API Premier customers. From now on, requests made to certain web services from Maps API Premier accounts will need to be "signed" with this key. This security enhancement will ensure that requests are authorized by the owner of the Maps API Premier client ID specified in the request.

Existing Maps API Premier customers should expect to receive an email from Google within the next 10 days containing their private cryptographic key. For documentation explaining how to use this cryptographic key to sign requests, please refer to the Maps API Premier Developer Guide. The Static Maps V2 API is the first API to support URL signing.

As of March 2, 2010, requests made to the Static Maps V2 API will need to be signed to be accepted. However, for added security, we encourage you to begin signing requests you make to this service now.

By enhancing the security of our services we better protect the interests of our customers and of our data content partners. I'm excited to continue to develop the secure infrastructure that support ongoing innovation from Google – and for our customers.

Posted by Daniel Chu, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Maps & Earth team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/02/enhanced-security-for-google-maps-api.html

[G] Watch free online courses in the AdWords Online Classroom

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 11:20 AM PST

Inside AdWords: Watch free online courses in the AdWords Online Classroom

We're excited to announce our latest and most interactive online training for advertisers: the AdWords Online Classroom.

You can get free, hands-on online training on key AdWords topics, delivered by our own AdWords & Industry specialists.

We're offering a great selection of live and recorded courses, including:

* Improving your AdWords performance with key tips
* Reaching more potential customers
* Getting the most from your website with Website Optimizer
* Using Google Analytics reports to improve your AdWords return-on-investment

To view all upcoming live and recorded courses for North America, please visit our North America Online Classroom site.
To view upcoming live and recorded courses for the UK and Ireland, please visit our UK & Ireland Online Classroom site.

We look forward to seeing you in class!


Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/02/watch-free-online-courses-in-adwords.html

[G] Postponed: Today's D.C. Talk on Democracy Online

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 08:16 AM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Postponed: Today's D.C. Talk on Democracy Online

Posted by Mistique Cano, Manager, Public Policy Communications

Given that most of us of are still digging out from this weekend's record snowfall, we're postponing today's D.C. Talk, Democracy Online: Can the Internet Bring Change? We hope to reschedule soon. In the meantime, keep warm!
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/02/postponed-todays-dc-talk-on-democracy.html

[G] Lincoln Property Company finds a new home with Google Apps

Posted: 08 Feb 2010 08:16 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Lincoln Property Company finds a new home with Google Apps

Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Jay Kenney, CIO of Lincoln Property Company, a residential property management and development company. Prior to joining Lincoln Property, Jay was a Managing Director at BearingPoint for eight years and spent 19 years at SBC (now AT&T).

Last year Jay inherited a Novell Groupwise system powering email for 950 of his firm's approximately 3,500 employees. After careful consideration, Lincoln Property migrated from Groupwise to Google Apps, saving the company $200K – and enabling Jay to provide all 3,500 employees with company email.

Jay will be available on a live webcast this Thursday at 11:00 a.m. PST, 2:00 p.m. EST, 7:00 p.m. GMT to share his experience and answer questions about Lincoln Property Company's experience in switching to Google Apps. Michael Cohn from Cloud Sherpas, a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, will also be on hand to answer questions about the migration process.

Lincoln Property is the fifth largest property manager in the United States. When I joined the company, 950 of our 3,500 employees were using Novell Groupwise for email. We were maintaining an expensive infrastructure including servers, a SAN and data center space. It was difficult to maintain our email archive. It was also tough to find IT staff skilled in Groupwise. At the same time, we were looking to outsource as many of our mission-critical applications as possible.

Evaluating our options, we first considered remaining with Groupwise or switching to Microsoft Exchange. At the prodding of one of our tech-savvy partners, we tried out Google Apps and liked what we found. We did a comprehensive TCO analysis that included licensing and maintenance, data center costs, spam protection, server, SAN, migration costs, you name it.

The business case was clear. At approximately $200K per year cheaper than the existing system and infrastructure, Google Apps would provide email, instant messaging, great mobile options, and AV/AS protection for just $50/user/year. And, we would be able to equip all 3,500 employees with company email instead of just the 950 who were on the legacy on premise system.

After trialing Gmail, Google Calendar, and Gmail's integrated chat, we made the move to Google Apps. Cloud Sherpas was instrumental in helping us extract email and contacts data out of GroupWise and migrate it into Google Apps for 950 users in a phased migration. They also provided webinar and video training to ease our users through the transition.

Now we are on track to migrate our remaining 2,500 users in 2010. The results so far have been stellar. I'd be happy to share the lessons we've learned – what we did that I'm glad we did!

Please join me for this live webinar.

Lincoln Property Company finds a new home with Google Apps
Thursday, February 11, 2009
11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST / 7:00 p.m. GMT


Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/02/lincoln-property-company-finds-new-home.html
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