Googland

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• [G] Shopping smarter with Google Shopper
• [G] Control your Buzz settings in Google Dashboard
• [G] What are you doing tomorrow at 8am PT/11am ET?
• [G] May we recommend...
• [G] Auto Pagination on Blogger
• [G] Site maintenance on Saturday, February 20
• [G] Google Docs: the tool for the 21st century classroom
• [G] Google Voice, explained
• [G] Google Voice, Explained
• [G] AdWords system maintenance on January 20th
• [G] 5 Buzz tips

[G] Shopping smarter with Google Shopper Posted: 18 Feb 2010 10:17 PM PST Official Google Mobile Blog: Shopping smarter with Google Shopper We're happy to announce a new Android application called Google Shopper. Shopper lets you find product information quickly by using your phone's camera. It can recognize cover art of books, CDs, DVDs, and video games, along with most barcodes. You can also speak the name of the product you're looking for. Use Shopper to make smart decisions about what to buy, what price to pay, and where to buy it. You can star items for later and share them with friends. Shopper also saves your history so you'll always have product and price information at your fingertips, even when you don't have a signal. Here's an example search based on the Effective Java: Programming Language Guide. To see Google Shopper in action, watch this video: To download Google Shopper to your Android-powered phone, scan the QR Code below, or search for "Shopper" on Android Market. You'll see a green icon for Shopper by Google. Click install and happy shopping! For more information about Google Shopper, take a look at our Google Labs page. We hope you send us your feedback. Posted by Daniel Switkin and Farhan Shamsi, software engineers URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/02/shopping-smarter-with-google-shopper.html

[G] Control your Buzz settings in Google Dashboard Posted: 18 Feb 2010 08:10 PM PST Google Public Policy Blog: Control your Buzz settings in Google Dashboard Posted by Pablo Chavez, Managing Policy Counsel Earlier this week, I noted some of the improvements we've made to Buzz based on some really helpful user feedback. We've made a few other efforts to make Buzz settings easier to manage, including adding Buzz to the Google Dashboard. The Google Dashboard is a tool that summarizes data for each Google product you use and provides direct links to your personal settings. For Buzz, the Dashboard is another place to see how many people you're following, how many people are following you, and information about your recent posts as well as links to change your Buzz settings. The Dashboard is just another way for users to find out more about products like Buzz -- and how to exercise choice and control over their information and their use of our products. Check it out and let us know what you think. URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/02/control-your-buzz-settings-in-google.html

[G] What are you doing tomorrow at 8am PT/11am ET? Posted: 18 Feb 2010 08:10 PM PST YouTube Blog: What are you doing tomorrow at 8am PT/11am ET? Tune in tomorrow to youtube.com/citizentube where we'll be live streaming the Tiger Woods' press conference to the world at 8:00am PT / 11:00am ET. You'll also be able to access the press conference from a spotlight on the YouTube Homepage. The YouTube Team URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/RObzvqZhuoE/what-are-you-doing-tomorrow-at-8am.html

[G] May we recommend... Posted: 18 Feb 2010 06:57 PM PST Official Google Reader Blog: May we recommend... ​ Long time readers of our blog will note that we occasionally throw in links to crazy, interesting, and fun items in our posts. You may be wondering, "How can I find such interesting content to share?" Today we're launching two new features that are designed to help you do just that: Recommended items get personal - When we launched Popular items many of you wanted to see even more personalized recommendations. With the latest round of improvements, we've started inserting items selected just for you inside the Recommended items section. This is great if you've got interests that are less mainstream. If you love Lego robots, for example, then you should start to notice more of them in your Recommended items. Even more related feeds - If you've ever discovered a cool blog on, say, underwater basket-weaving and wanted to find more on the same topic, we've added a few easy ways to find related feeds. Hover over any of your subscriptions, click the menu and check out "More like this..." to see related feeds. We'll also show you related feeds when looking at the preview of any feed. We hope these new features will help you find more content that interests you, whether that's LOLcats or cooking. As always, feel free to come visit our help forums or Twitter to leave us some feedback. URL: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/02/may-we-recommend.html

[G] Auto Pagination on Blogger Posted: 18 Feb 2010 05:03 PM PST Blogger Buzz: Auto Pagination on Blogger by Vardhman Jain, Software Engineer, Mountain View Latency is a word you hear a lot at Google. We are always looking for ways to make our products faster, because we have consistently found that faster page loads mean more satisfied users. This post is the first of an occasional series that will discuss ways in which we're working to make blogs load faster for all users. A few months ago, we took a look at ways to improve the performance of Blogger blogs, and noticed that many pages — particularly search results pages, label pages and archive pages — were taking longer to load than they should. This has lots of implications. Users suffer — pages take longer to load, and for anyone around the world who pays for their bandwidth, they can incur unneccessary charges as their browser downloads more content than needed. You suffer, because as latency increases, pageviews go down. (See here for a study Google did last year for this phenomenon at google.com.) Starting today, we're rolling out a change that affects how we paginate webpages on Blogger. We will dynamically adjust how much content to send to the browser depending on (a) the amount of HTML on the page being requested (in kilobytes) and (b) the number of images on the page. Users can continue to use "older posts" and "newer posts" navigation elements to see additional posts. For major changes like this, we do incremental roll-outs so we can monitor performance as they progress. We expect the change to be fully deployed over the next week, and once fully deployed, we expect to see several results: pages will load faster pageviews, if impacted at all, may increase We will keep an eye on things, and if we see anything unexpected, we will update this post. Otherwise, keep blogging - and we'll keep working to make your blog faster for you and your readers! URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/02/auto-pagination-on-blogger.html

[G] Site maintenance on Saturday, February 20 Posted: 18 Feb 2010 05:03 PM PST Inside AdSense: Site maintenance on Saturday, February 20 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: London - 6pm Saturday Johannesburg - 8pm Saturday Hyderabad - 11:30pm Saturday Ho Chi Minh City - 1am Sunday Brisbane - 4am 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/2010/02/site-maintenance-on-saturday-february.html

[G] Google Docs: the tool for the 21st century classroom Posted: 18 Feb 2010 04:24 PM PST Official Google Docs Blog: Google Docs: the tool for the 21st century classroom Guest post: Tara Seale teaches 9th grade English in the Bryant Public School District and recently attended the Google Teacher Academy. English teachers polled in the last decade of the last century about the one tool that they could not live without in their classrooms would probably select the overhead projector. In the first decade of the 21st Century, English teachers would probably choose a document camera, but in future decades, the tool will be web-based. I already teach in a web-based environment, and Google Docs is the web-based tool that has become the organizational center of my classroom. I share assignments with my students as a view only file. Students make a copy of the file so they can annotate the directions. This is a weblink of an assignment: Expository Essay defining the word perseverance. This is an annotated copy of the assignment: Google Doc Annotated Copy of Expository Essay Assignment. No longer do I hear, "Mrs. Seale, can I have another copy of that assignment? I lost mine." Docs also teaches organizational skills. Students create folders to keep up with assignments. The most important folder is the folder students share with the teacher. All graded writing goes into this folder, and it serves as a writing portfolio for the semester. I do not have to hunt student work; it is organized in a student folder. At the end of the day, I leave with just a laptop, no papers to lug around. Each student folder is in a group class folder. The class folder contains each student's writing for the semester: Each student's online writing portfolio folder is also shared with his or her parents. Parents can even comment on student work and participate in the revision and editing process. For students, Google Docs is an invaluable tool in the writing process. Students do not need a flash drive to carry drafts to and from home. Also, students can share writing with peer editors. After peer editing, students move their final draft into their English 9 folder. As the final editor, I leave comments to assist the student in revising his or her final draft. It is satisfying to browse through the revision history and see that a student is considering each comment as they revise: Yea! They are really reading what I wrote! Usually, students do not read teacher comments that are hand written on paper, but it seems to work in Google Docs. Recently, a student working at home asked if I could read her paper before she submitted it later that week. I left comments and asked questions on the Google doc as the student wrote and revised, and it turned into a successful tutoring session. Thanks Google Docs! Posted by: Tara Seale, English Teacher and Instructional Technology Specialist Editor's note: Google recommends you use Google Docs within the Google Apps Education Edition suite with your students. URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-docs-tool-for-21st-century.html

[G] Google Voice, explained Posted: 18 Feb 2010 01:25 PM PST Official Google Blog: Google Voice, explained (Cross-posted from the Google Voice Blog) Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications, through dozens of features — ranging from call screening to voicemail transcription to the ability to send and receive SMS by email. While we've heard from users that they love our growing list of features, we're conscious of the fact that Google Voice can seem overwhelming to people trying it for the first time. So we've created a short video that gives an overview of what Google Voice can do. In addition, we've created a set of short videos that dive into more detail about ten features of Google Voice: Voicemail transcription One number Personalized greetings International calling SMS to email Share voicemails Block callers Screen callers Mobile app Conference calls The videos show why you might want to use each feature and basic instructions for getting started. And each video focuses on just one topic so you can learn about the features that matter to you. FFinally, we just launched our own YouTube channel at youtube.com/googlevoice. You can view all of the videos mentioned above in a custom video gadget we built for this channel, which will help you keep track of which videos you've already watched. We hope these videos help you get the most out of Google Voice. Posted by Jason Toff, Associate Product Marketing Manager URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-voice-explained.html

[G] Google Voice, Explained Posted: 18 Feb 2010 12:06 PM PST Google Voice Blog: Google Voice, Explained Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications, through dozens of features — ranging from call screening to voicemail transcription to the ability to send and receive SMS by email. While we've heard from users that they love our growing list of features, we're conscious of the fact that Google Voice can seem overwhelming to people trying it for the first time. So we've created a short video that gives an overview of what Google Voice can do: In addition, we've created a set of short videos that dive into more detail about ten features of Google Voice: Voicemail transcription One number Personalized greetings International calling SMS to email Share voicemails Block callers Screen callers Mobile app Conference calls The videos show why you might want to use each feature and basic instructions for getting started. And each video focuses on just one topic so you can learn about the features that matter to you. Finally, we just launched our own YouTube channel at youtube.com/googlevoice. You can view all of the videos mentioned above in a custom video gadget we built for this channel, which will help you keep track of which videos you've already watched. We hope these videos help you get the most out of Google Voice. Posted by Jason Toff, Associate Product Marketing Manager URL: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-voice-explained.html

[G] AdWords system maintenance on January 20th Posted: 18 Feb 2010 12:06 PM PST Inside AdWords: AdWords system maintenance on January 20th On Saturday, January 20th, 2010 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10AM to 2PM PST, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10AM to 2PM. We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the January 20th date and of our scheduled maintenance further down the road. Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/02/adwords-system-maintenance-on-january.html

[G] 5 Buzz tips Posted: 18 Feb 2010 09:27 AM PST Official Gmail Blog: 5 Buzz tips Posted by John Costigan, Software Engineer Now that people have been playing with Google Buzz in Gmail for a week and we've rolled out the improvements we announced here over the weekend, we wanted to let you know about some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Buzz. Here are five tips to get you started: 1. Format your posts. When posting in Buzz, you can format text just as you can in Gmail chat: *bold*, _italics_, or -strikethrough- all work. 2. View a summary of your own Buzz activity at www.google.com/dashboard. The Google Dashboard provides a private, consolidated summary of the data associated with your Google account, as well as direct links to control your personal settings. As of today, Buzz has its own section on the Dashboard, so you can see how many people you're following, how many people are following you, and information about your recent posts, comments, and likes. You can also access your Buzz settings right there on the page. 3. Use an @reply to send a post directly to someone's inbox. If you want to make sure one of your friends sees a certain Buzz post, you can direct it to their inbox with an @reply. Type the "@" symbol followed by the first few letters of their name, and select their email address from the list. Only you'll see their Gmail address — other people will just see their name. 4. Try keyboard shortcuts to fly through buzz. Turn on keyboard shortcuts from Settings, and use "j" or "n" to scroll down the buzz tab, "k" or "p" to go back up, "r" to comment (same shortcut as reply in Gmail), and "shift + l" to like. 5. Mute posts so they don't get sent to your inbox. Comments on your posts and comments after your comments send buzz directly to your inbox. If you don't want a lively conversation to keep appearing in your inbox as people reply to it, you can mute it. Click the arrow in the corner of a buzz post and select "Mute this post." If you have keyboard shortcuts turned on, you can also mute buzz that appears in your inbox by hitting the "m" key while you're reading it. Check out our Help Center for more tips and answers to your common questions, and stay tuned for more here as well. URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/5-buzz-tips.html

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