Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Serious threat to the web in Italy

Posted: 24 Feb 2010 03:17 AM PST

Official Google Blog: Serious threat to the web in Italy

In late 2006, students at a school in Turin, Italy filmed and then uploaded a video to Google Video that showed them bullying an autistic schoolmate. The video was totally reprehensible and we took it down within hours of being notified by the Italian police. We also worked with the local police to help identify the person responsible for uploading it and she was subsequently sentenced to 10 months community service by a court in Turin, as were several other classmates who were also involved. In these rare but unpleasant cases, that's where our involvement would normally end.

But in this instance, a public prosecutor in Milan decided to indict four Google employees —David Drummond, Arvind Desikan, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes (who left the company in 2008). The charges brought against them were criminal defamation and a failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed.

Nevertheless, a judge in Milan today convicted 3 of the 4 defendants — David Drummond, Peter Fleischer and George Reyes — for failure to comply with the Italian privacy code. All 4 were found not guilty of criminal defamation. In essence this ruling means that employees of hosting platforms like Google Video are criminally responsible for content that users upload. We will appeal this astonishing decision because the Google employees on trial had nothing to do with the video in question. Throughout this long process, they have displayed admirable grace and fortitude. It is outrageous that they have been subjected to a trial at all.

But we are deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason. It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming. European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. The belief, rightly in our opinion, was that a notice and take down regime of this kind would help creativity flourish and support free speech while protecting personal privacy. If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them — every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video — then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.

These are important points of principle, which is why we and our employees will vigorously appeal this decision.

Posted by Matt Sucherman, VP and Deputy General Counsel - Europe, Middle East and Africa
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/serious-threat-to-web-in-italy.html

[G] Now Implementing Updated U.S. and Canada Pharmacy Policy

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 07:44 PM PST

Inside AdWords: Now Implementing Updated U.S. and Canada Pharmacy Policy

We want to let you know that the changes to our pharmacy policy in the U.S. and Canada will start to go into effect today.

As we explained a couple weeks ago, this update means that Google AdWords will only accept advertisements from VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies, and that these pharmacies can only target ads within the countries where they are accredited.

To ensure that users see the most relevant and useful ads possible, pharmaceutical manufacturers and VIPPS and CIPA certified pharmacies will be allowed to run on prescription drug and pharmaceutical-related keywords.

For more information about this updated policy, please see this link: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=7463

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/02/now-implementing-updated-us-and-canada.html

[G] Committed to competing fairly

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 06:26 PM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Committed to competing fairly

Posted by Julia Holtz, Senior Competition Counsel

(Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog)

As Google has grown, we've not surprisingly faced more questions about our role in the advertising ecosystem and our overall approach to competition. This kind of scrutiny goes with the territory when you are a large company. However, we've always worked hard to ensure that our success is earned the right way -- through technological innovation and great products, rather than by locking in our users or advertisers, or creating artificial barriers to entry.

The European Commission has notified us that it has received complaints from three companies: a UK price comparison site, Foundem, a French legal search engine called ejustice.fr, and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing. While we will be providing feedback and additional information on these complaints, we are confident that our business operates in the interests of users and partners, as well as in line with European competition law.

Given that these complaints will generate interest in the media, we wanted to provide some background to them. First, search. Foundem - a member of an organisation called ICOMP which is funded partly by Microsoft - argues that our algorithms demote their site in our results because they are a vertical search engine and so a direct competitor to Google. ejustice.fr's complaint seems to echo these concerns.

We understand how important rankings can be to websites, especially commercial ones, because a higher ranking typically drives higher volumes of traffic. We are also the first to admit that our search is not perfect, but it's a very hard computer science problem to crack. Imagine having to rank the 272 million possible results for a popular query like the iPod on a 14 by 12 screen computer screen in just a few milliseconds. It's a challenge we face millions of times each day.

Our algorithms aim to rank first what people are most likely to find useful and we have nothing against vertical search sites -- indeed many vertical search engines like Moneysupermarket.com, Opodo and Expedia typically rank high in Google's results. For more information on this issue check out our guidelines for webmasters and advertisers, and for an independent analysis of Foundem's ranking issues please read this report by Econsultancy.

Regarding Ciao!, they were a long-time AdSense partner of Google's, with whom we always had a good relationship. However, after Microsoft acquired Ciao! in 2008 (renaming it Ciao! from Bing) we started receiving complaints about our standard terms and conditions. They initially took their case to the German competition authority, but it now has been transferred to Brussels.

Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners. This is not the case. We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users' interests first and to compete fair and square in the market. We believe our business practices reflect those commitments.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/02/committed-to-competing-fairly.html

[G] 25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 04:44 PM PST

Official Google Website Optimizer Blog: ​25 Google Website Optimizer Tips for Better Product Pages

​Late last year, a fantastic post went around the Internet with 55 Google Website Optimzer Tips and Tricks. Today, we have a sequel for you. This is a guest post from Khalid Saleh, who is the president and cofounder of Invesp, an ecommerce conversion rate optimization company.
​
Increasing e-commerce conversion rates is challenging. With thousands of possible pages, where should you start optimizing? Even if you can answer that question by picking a small set of pages to start with, what changes should you make?

The following tips will be focused on product page testing, but we will first set the stage with few setup items:
​
1. Segmenting your visitors. Nothing is more powerful than segmenting your visitors and examining the different trends these visitors follow on your site. At a minimum, you should segment visitors by source of traffic, keyword, type of visit (new vs. returning) and country.

2. Segmentation with Google Website Optimizer = Testing on Steroids! Not all customers are created equal, nor should you deal with all customers equally. Testing different versions of your page or funnel is powerful. Testing different versions based on the type of visitors is even more powerful. There are different ways of doing this, but we recommend starting with BTBuckets or with these instructions.

3. Setup your funnels. Funnels tell you what pages are causing visitors to exit the site. At a minimum, we recommend you setup the following funnels:
  • Home page to cart page funnel
  • General checkout process funnel including the cart page
  • General checkout process funnel excluding the cart page
  • Checkout process funnel for different payment types including the cart page
  • Checkout process funnel for different payment types excluding the cart page
4. Funnels & visitors. Beyond setting up funnels is segmenting your traffic and examining how it moves in funnels. But how do you do that in Google Analytics? We will let you in on a small secret:
  • Setup the different funnels in Google Analytics
  • Setup different profiles to represent the different segments
  • Now, you can examine each of the funnels for the different profiles
5. Returning visitors vs. new visitors. Comparing different segments of visitors can be confusing. You should expect visitors from organic search to interact differently with your site compared to visitors from paid search. We find that segmenting new visitors versus returning visitors can reveal major design problems in the site. Generally returning visitors will take longer on a site, view more pages, and have lower exit and bounce rates. If that is not the case, then you might have major design issues to deal with.

6. Product pages: A micro conversion. We like to run the product pages tests twice with different conversion goals:
  • Micro conversion goal: When a visitor adds an item to the cart, we count that as a micro conversion.
  • Macro conversion: When the visitor completes an order, we count a macro conversion.
7. Product pages: the image. Yes, you heard it before. An image is worth a thousand words. However, product images do require an investment, so test the correct solution for your website. Each of the options below will require considerable time, software, and resource commitment. So, test with 5 to 10 products before choosing the right solution for your website.

8. Product pages: Image of product in use. Test with showing the product in use vs. images with solid backgrounds. While in many cases showing the product in use helps the visitors see themselves use the particular product, this is not the case for all products. Apparel websites seem to benefit from this feature. Electronics or book websites, not so much!

9. Product pages: Location of the image. Where should you place the product image? Common wisdom is to place product images on right side of product pages. But common wisdom fails to predict how visitors will act on your website. So test placing the image on left versus the right and see which converts better.

10. Product pages: Product zooming. If you have the software installed on your website, then allowing visitors to zoom in and examine the product closely is an excellent feature to add.

11. Product pages: Multiple product images. Finally, consider having multiple images of the product. We usually recommend having 3-4 images per product to start with. But a word of caution here: hire a professional photographer for these images. Having several low quality images versus a single high quality image is something worth thinking about.

12. Product pages: your product descriptions. Most e-commerce stores take the product description from the manufacturer and place it on the site. So, you will find the same description on competing e-commerce stores. Pick your top 10 best selling products and:
  • Test the impact of having the standard manufacturer's description versus custom copy your team creates. What impact does this have on the micro conversion (visitors adding items to their cart)?
  • Test different versions of the custom copy you create: Not all copy created equal. You might want to test technical copy versus non-technical. Consider the different market segments and what words will have the most impact on them.
13. Product pages: Reviews. Reviews are great for increasing conversions. There are many studies that show product reviews are responsible for up to 30% uplift in conversions. However, if you are just starting out, allow customers to add reviews but do not display them right away. Wait for a product to collect enough reviews before sharing them with your visitors. Consider using services such ProductWiki to add images on your site.

14. Product pages: add to cart buttons. Yes, they do impact conversion. And there are many things you can test with these:
  • Test the location of the add to cart button
  • Test different designs of the add to cart button
  • Test the wording on the add to cart buttons
15. Product pages: don't overdo it! What do you think of this?

Too many CTAs (call to actions) can stop a visitor in their tracks.

16. Product pages: cross-sells and upsells. We know that you want to sell more of your products. Cross-sells and upsells can help you do that, but they also can distract the visitors. So, test the placement of cross-sells and upsells on your product pages. Should they go in the left navigation or somewhere in the middle section of the product pages?

17. Product pages: pricing. Most of your visitors will do some sort of comparison shopping. So, test different prices and see what impact that will have on your conversion rates. We had a client who reported a 135% increase in conversion rate by lowering product prices by 10%. We do not like to focus on pricing as a mechanism to increase conversion rates but sometimes it works really well.

18. Poor man testing: pricing & Google Website Optimizer. It is usually difficult to switch back and forth between different pricing for items, but here is a general framework to help you:
  • Most ecommerce packages provide a way to maintain a single price for a product. Plan on a strategy for testing multiple prices:
    • Price A is the original price
    • Price B is the original price x 1.10 (10% increase)
    • Price C is the original price x 0.90 (10% decrease)
  • Price A (original is already saved in your database). You can either maintain Price B, C in the database or have application logic to switch between the different prices for a single item.
  • One option to implement this is to have all prices available on the page and use GWO to display one price and hide the other two prices. Another option will be to use GWO to pass a variable value to be used in a formula to change the price.
  • Implementing this should take less than a day and will provide a mechanism to test prices in Google Website Optimizer.
19. Product pages: stock availability. This is a no brainer. No customer likes to add an item to their cart only to discover later that the item is out of stock. So, tie your front end e-commerce store to your inventory system. If that is too much, then consider a daily update.
  • Bad: No product availability on your site
  • Good: Always display product availability
  • Excellent: Display messages to encourage customers to buy a product if you have limited stock available (Only 5 left in stock -- order soon.)

20. When can I have it? Tell visitors when the product will be in their hands. Do not tell visitors the items will arrive 3 to 10 days. That will simply kill your conversion and if it does not, it will irritate visitors.

21. Product pages: Feature list.
The first level of attracting customers is features. Features are the facts about a given product. Features of an outdoor grill might include:
  • Electric
  • Grease tray
  • Non-stick cooking surface
  • Temperature control
  • 300 square inches of cooking space
  • Attached working surface
22. Product pages: The benefit list. Benefits start you on the road to closing a sale. The benefits of the above outdoor grill include:
  • Convenience
    • Electric
    • Non-stick cooking surface
    • Attached working surface
  • Easy to Use:
    • Electric
    • Non-stick cooking surface
    • Temperature control
    • Attached working surface
  • Saves Money
    • Electric
    • Temperature control
23. Product pages - People buy benefits, they do not buy features. What results do your customers want from your barbeque? They want a grill that offers:
  • Tasty, Healthy Food Every time
    • Temperature control
    • Grease tray
  • Perfect for Easy Entertaining
    • 300 square inches of cooking space
    • Attached working area
    • Easy to clean
  • A Double Bonus: Environmentally Friendly While Saving You Money!
    • Electric versus charcoal emissions
    • Do not have to buy charcoal for the life of the grill
24. Bundled pricing. Consider bundling shipping costs with product items so visitors will not have to worry about paying for shipping costs. If the shipping costs are too complicated to understand or might be on the high side, we recommend testing bundling them with the product price.

25. Free shipping is a great way to increase sales. We have many clients who offer free shipping on orders above a certain size and usually see a nice uplift in both conversions and average order value by doing so.

26. Bonus tips: If you are about to start conversion rate optimization, then these resources are a must:

Conversion rate 101: a series of articles on conversion rate optimization.
Personas 101: a complete guide to creating personas for your website
30+ principles to a better landing page design: a must read for anyone interested in landing page design.
Landing page templates: we optimized these templates using GWO to increase their conversion rates to the double digits. They are a good starting point.

Thanks to Khalid for putting together this great list. Share your own favorite GWO tips in the comments.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team
URL: http://websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com/2010/02/25-google-website-optimizer-tips-for.html

[G] Picasa 3.6 now in 38 languages

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 04:13 PM PST

Google Photos Blog: Picasa 3.6 now in 38 languages

Posted by Tara Morrison, Software Test Engineer

We're happy to announce that Picasa 3.6 for Windows is now available in 38 languages, so people around the world can add name tags to their photos, create collaborative albums, and geotag their photos using Google Maps. For an in-depth overview of all the new features available in these international editions, check out our launch blog posts for Picasa 3.5 and 3.6 or the Picasa Help Center.

To upgrade to Picasa 3.6 in your language, download it from picasa.google.com or from your local Picasa site. When you load Picasa for the first time, it displays in the same language as your operating system, and you can always easily change your language settings under Options.
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2010/02/picasa-36-now-in-38-languages.html

[G] Five Days Left to Submit in Round 1 of Project: Report

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 04:13 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Five Days Left to Submit in Round 1 of Project: Report

The deadline is quickly approaching in the first round of Project: Report 2010, a journalism contest done in partnership with the Pulitzer Center for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories in their community that might not otherwise be be told.

The assignment for Round 1 is to document a single day in the life of a compelling person the world should meet and showcase how that person is making a positive impact in his or her community. All videos must be three minutes or less, and the deadline for submissions is this Sunday, February 28, 2010.

Ten finalists will be chosen from the pool of Round 1 submissions by a panel of judges at the Pulitzer Center. Each finalist for Project: Report -- which is made possible by Sony and Intel -- will receive a Sony VAIO notebook with the new 2010 Intel Core i7 processor and a Sony HD video camera and proceed to the second and final round, where they will compete for five $10,000 travel fellowships to work with the Pulitzer Center on an international reporting project.

All five winners will also receive invitations to Washington, D.C., for a public screening of their work and the chance to participate in a special workshop with Pulitzer Center journalists.

You still have time to put together your Day in the Life piece if you get going today -- so find that person, tell their story, and submit your video on youtube.com/projectreport by Sunday.

We look forward to seeing your entries.

Olivia Ma, News & Politics Manager, recently watched "Arturo's Jerusalem Vlog: Episode One."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/rdAAQjHO9PI/five-days-left-to-submit-in-round-1-of.html

[G] Tip: Recovering closed tabs

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 04:13 PM PST

Google Chrome Blog: Tip: Recovering closed tabs

If you've ever accidentally closed a tab with something important in it, or shut down the browser only to realize you needed one more bit of information about the webpage you were reading, despair not. Google Chrome remembers the last ten tabs or windows you've closed, and lets you restore them. You can get at these in several ways:

  • On the bottom of New Tab page, the most recent few are listed in the "Recently closed" section. You can even use this after restarting the browser, in case you accidentally quit with something important open.


  • If you right-click in the tabstrip, you'll see an option to "Reopen closed tab" or "Reopen closed window", depending on what you last closed. Using this repeatedly goes back through the remembered tabs and windows, from most to least recent.


  • If keyboard shortcuts suit you more than context menus, just use ctrl-shift-T to reopen a close tab or window.



Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/02/tip-recovering-closed-tabs.html

[G] Troubleshooting tips part IIb: Ad relevance and targeting continued

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 04:13 PM PST

Inside AdSense: Troubleshooting tips part IIb: Ad relevance and targeting continued

To follow up on our previous post about ad relevance and targeting, let's look at some other reasons why you may experience ad targeting issues on your site.
  • Have you blocked the AdSense crawler's access to your pages? The AdSense crawler is an automated program that scans your web pages and tracks content for indexing. Sometimes we don't crawl pages because the AdSense crawler doesn't have access to your pages, in which case we're unable to determine their content and show relevant ads. Here are a few specific instances when our crawler can't access a site:

    • If you use a robots.txt file which regulates the crawler access to your page. In this case, you can grant the AdSense crawler access by adding these lines to the top of your robots.txt file:

      User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
      Disallow:

    • If the sites you place the ad code on are behind a login, our crawler won´t be able to access your site. To grant access to such pages, please follow these instructions. Also, be sure to regularly check your site diagnostics tool to be aware of any blocked pages.

  • Is your site language supported by AdSense? Check to make sure that your site has a substantial amount of text-based content in one of the languages supported by AdSense. When there's enough content, our technology detects the primary language of each of your pages and delivers relevant ads in the appropriate language, even if your site contains multiple supported languages.

    • The crawlers used by Google AdSense index content by unique URL. As a result, if the URL is the same regardless which language the user chooses to view the pages in, our system will only have the language version it received when indexing this URL. This means that we'll show ads according to the page our system has in its cache, which might not match the language the user is viewing the page in. In order to resolve this, we suggest either of the following:
      • Create separate directories for each language, such as http://www.site.com/en/index.html
      • Send GET variables (encoded user information appended to the end of the URL after the ? character) in the URL to determine which language should be shown such as for example http://www.site.com/index.php?lang=en

  • Do you see public service announcements (PSAs) on a site which previously showed paid ads before? If your AdSense account requires PIN or phone verification, you'll see a prompt in your account when you sign in. If you fail to verify your PIN or phone number (requirements vary depending on your location), then you may see PSAs on your site. If this is not your case, please visit our Help Center for further information.
If you continue to have ad targeting issues or are unable to see your ads we recommend visiting the ad troubleshooter in our Help Center.

Posted by Ulrike Jung - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/02/troubleshooting-tips-part-iib-ad.html

[G] Web Analytics TV Episode #6 with Avinash and Nick

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 04:13 PM PST

Google Analytics Blog: Web Analytics TV Episode #6 with Avinash and Nick

This is the sixth edition of Web Analytics TV with with a dash of Nick and Nash! In this series you share your most burning questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them! And, here is the list of last weeks questions.

We love hearing from you and thank all the folks who rated last weeks comments.

In this episode we discuss:
  • What you can do if you get spammed pageviews in your Analytics Account.
  • How to collect ecommerce tracking variables on 3rd party shopping carts.
  • Issues with maintaining campaign information with 3rd party shopping carts.
  • How do links from competitors show up in your referring sources site?
  • How to find Singapore in the Google Analytics map overlay.
  • How to see referring URLs in the campaign report.
  • How Google Analytics treats conversions from multiple sources in the same visit.
  • Why certain referrals like search can have a number of pageviews but 0 visits.
  • Computing page influence to conversion and the Google Analytics $Index metric.
  • How events effect and sometimes lower the bounce rate.




Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:If you found this helpful, we'd love to hear your comments.

If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer them in a couple of weeks with yet another Nick and Nash video.

Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/02/web-analytics-tv-episode-6-with-avinash.html

[G] YouTube on Fox News - Power Player of the Week

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 01:32 PM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: YouTube on Fox News - Power Player of the Week

Posted by Steve Grove, YouTube News and Politics

(cross-posted from the CitizenTube blog)

Chris Wallace at Fox News Sunday came to our DC office last week to do a piece for his Sunday show. Every week, FNS does a feature called "Power Player of the Week" - this week, Chris chose YouTube. We had a great conversation with him about politics on the site and how our interview with President Obama came together earlier this month.

Wallace himself is no stranger to YouTube. Before the interview, we chatted about Chris' first big YouTube moment - which was his interview with President Clinton in which Clinton became irked when Wallace pressed him on what more he could have done to go after Osama Bin Laden.

Fox now has a YouTube channel at youtube.com/foxnews.

URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/02/youtube-on-fox-news-power-player-of.html

[G] AdWords Comparison Ads - Credit Card Test in the UK

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 11:25 AM PST

Inside AdWords: AdWords Comparison Ads - Credit Card Test in the UK

You may recall that towards the end of 2009, we began testing a new feature called AdWords Comparison Ads. This feature lets users compare multiple relevant offers with ease, and it provides advertisers with a new sophisticated and flexible cost per lead format. Speed is of the essence for many users, so we've made sure that Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second.

The initial test covered mortgage-related queries in the US. Today, we're delighted to announce that the test is being extended to cover credit card-related queries in the UK that and some major issuers have signed up to be part of the initial run.
Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google by letting users specify exactly what they're looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side. There are no long forms for users to fill in, and Comparison Ads will not send advertisers any personally identifiable user information (in fact, we don't send any user information at all unless the user explicitly applies for an advertiser's offer).

It's part of our continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to our users and to help you, our advertisers, reach the people who are most interested in your products and services.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/02/adwords-comparison-ads-credit-card-test.html

[G] Uploading your Picasa Web Albums pictures into Panoramio

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 11:25 AM PST

Google LatLong: Uploading your Picasa Web Albums pictures into Panoramio

Starting today, we are happy to announce that you can upload your pictures right from Picasa Web Albums into Panoramio. By uploading your best photos of places into Panoramio you can share them with the Panoramio community and the world through Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Search, and more.

Panoramio is a community for hosting relevant photos about places, so every photo uploaded into Panoramio will be reviewed to ensure it meets the criteria to be included in Google Earth. We recommend you to check the Photo acceptance policy for Google Earth and Google Maps.

To upload photos from Picasa Web Albums, your photos need to be geo-tagged and in a public album. Eligible photos in Picasa Web Albums will display the "Upload to Panoramio" option below the Location map.


You'll need to log-in or create a Panoramio account to upload photos.

After uploading a photo to Panoramio, it will remain public as it was before in Picasa Web Albums. The process will create a second copy, so be aware that if you want to delete this photo in the future you will need to delete it from both Picasa Web albums and Panoramio.

We are looking forward to seeing your great pictures!


Posted by Roger Trias i Sanz, Panoramio Software Engineer
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/02/uploading-your-picasa-web-albums.html

[G] Memeo Connect for Google Docs

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 10:43 AM PST

Official Google Mac Blog: Memeo Connect for Google Docs

By Greg Robbins, Software Engineer

Software publisher Memeo recently released Memeo Connect™, an application that provides tight integration between documents on Google Apps and the Mac and Windows desktops. Over on the Google Apps Developer Blog, Memeo's Mac developer Matthew Tonkin describes some of their experiences of using the Google Data API client libraries. Please take a look.
URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2010/02/memeo-connect-for-google-docs.html

[G] Uploading to Panoramio from Picasa Web Albums

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 09:09 AM PST

Google Photos Blog: Uploading to Panoramio from Picasa Web Albums

Posted by Gerard Sanz, Panoramio Software Engineer

Since we know the Picasa community takes great photos of beautiful places, we're happy to announce that you can now easily upload your photos to Panoramio, a Google-powered site for exploring places through photos. Photos you upload will be shared with the Panoramio community and with the world on Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Search, and more.


To upload a photo to Panoramio, click the "Upload to Panoramio" link below the location map next to a photo in Picasa Web Albums. You'll need to sign in or create a Panoramio account to upload. Photos must be shared publicly in Picasa Web Albums and have a location set to be eligible for upload to Panoramio.


Note that Panoramio creates a duplicate copy of all uploaded photos, so if you choose to delete a photo in the future you'll need to delete it from both places.

Thanks for sharing your favorite place photos with Panoramio!
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2010/02/uploading-to-panoramio-from-picasa-web.html

[G] Best Practices of a Google Apps Deployment

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 04:35 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Best Practices of a Google Apps Deployment

Are you considering Google Apps for your organization? Would you want to hear about the strategies other organizations have used in deploying Google Apps? Do you want to learn field-tested best practices to accelerate deployment and maximize employee satisfaction?

Then please join us this Thursday, February 25, for a live webcast with Jim Copeland, Dan Kennedy and Marcello Pedersen, Google Apps deployment specialists. Get your questions answered on which best practices will help you succeed.

Join us for this live event:

Geek Out on the Best Practices of a Google Apps Deployment
Thursday, February 25, 2010
11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST / 7:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/02/best-practices-of-google-apps.html

[G] Google Earth now available for Android

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 01:55 PM PST

Google LatLong: Google Earth now available for Android


As we hinted at last month, we knew Nexus One was going to be a great platform to showcase the rich (and technically demanding!) features of Google Earth. With a 1GHz processor, advanced 3D graphics, and Android 2.1, Nexus One packs a lot of performance in a thin package. Ever since we got our hands on one, we have been putting it through its paces, drawing complex scenes of 3D imagery, terrain, roads, and other layers, and Nexus One never misses a beat. Now that we have put the final touches on the app, we are happy to announce that the latest member of our family is ready for the world -- Google Earth for Android. This is our fastest mobile version of Google Earth yet, with a smooth framerate and a beautiful 800 x 480 screen.

With the release of Google Earth for Android, we are also introducing the Roads layer, a very popular feature of the desktop version of Google Earth. Now you can get a better sense of where you are with road labels drawn on top of the satellite imagery.


In addition, we have taken advantage of the integrated voice recognition capabilities of the Android platform to provide the best Google Earth experience yet -- a pocket globe that responds to your every command. Try speaking "Eiffel tower" or "best burrito Mission district of San Francisco." Maybe you're trying to find some nice lodging for an upcoming getaway to Lake Tahoe. Just say "romantic getaway Lake Tahoe." With Google Earth for Android, we have brought together the convenience of Google Search by voice with the power of Google Local Search to make it easier than ever to navigate the globe and find whatever you are looking for.



As with other versions of Google Earth, you can also browse photos, places, and local businesses, whether it is in your local community or on the far side of the globe. Click on an icon to see photos, videos, and read about prominent places in the world. You can easily customize your version of Google Earth to display the layers that most interest you.

In addition to Nexus One, Google Earth will be available in Android Market on most devices that have Android 2.1 or later versions. So as devices such as Droid get updated to Android 2.1, others will also be able to fly to the far reaches of the globe with a swipe of their finger.

Download Google Earth for Nexus One today by searching for Google Earth in the Android Market.

Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-earth-now-available-for-android.html

[G] 5 more Buzz tips: post by email, follow the Buzz team, and more

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 12:05 PM PST

Official Gmail Blog: 5 more Buzz tips: post by email, follow the Buzz team, and more

Posted by Brian Stoler, Tech Lead, Google Buzz

1. Post by email. You can post buzz by emailing buzz@gmail.com — super handy for posting photos you take on your phone. Photos that you attach to your email will appear along with the subject line of your message. You can choose who can see posts you email into Buzz from the connected sites menu (click "Buzz," then "Connected Sites").



2. Prevent your boring chat status messages from being posted to Buzz. By default, your chat status messages are posted to Buzz and shared with your chat contacts. Don't want a boring message like "be right back" to turn into a Buzz post? Just put parentheses around it. If you don't want any of your chat status messages to get posted, you can always disconnect chat from the connected sites menu.



3. Look for the yellow line to see what's new. Can't figure out what's new on the Buzz tab? Posts and comments new since your last visit have a light yellow line along the left hand edge (if you're using a different theme the color may vary).



4. Link to a post. Each Buzz post has a permalink, so you can link to it. Click the down-arrow in the upper right-hand corner of a post, and select "Link to this post." Of course, you'lll only be able to see the posts you have access to.



5. Follow the Buzz team in Google Buzz. Visit buzz.google.com/googlebuzz and click "Follow Google Buzz" to get updates about what we're working on and send us your feedback.

URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/5-more-buzz-tips-post-by-email-follow.html

[G] Google Earth now available for Android

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 12:05 PM PST

Official Google Mobile Blog: Google Earth now available for Android

(Cross-posted from Google LatLong)
As we hinted at last month, we knew Nexus One was going to be a great platform to showcase the rich (and technically demanding!) features of Google Earth. With a 1GHz processor, advanced 3D graphics, and Android 2.1, Nexus One packs a lot of performance in a thin package. Ever since we got our hands on one, we have been putting it through its paces, drawing complex scenes of 3D imagery, terrain, roads, and other layers, and Nexus One never misses a beat. Now that we have put the final touches on the app, we are happy to announce that the latest member of our family is ready for the world -- Google Earth for Android. This is our fastest mobile version of Google Earth yet, with a smooth framerate and a beautiful 800 x 480 screen.

With the release of Google Earth for Android, we are also introducing the Roads layer, a very popular feature of the desktop version of Google Earth. Now you can get a better sense of where you are with road labels drawn on top of the satellite imagery.


In addition, we have taken advantage of the integrated voice recognition capabilities of the Android platform to provide the best Google Earth experience yet -- a pocket globe that responds to your every command. Try speaking "Eiffel tower" or "best burrito Mission district of San Francisco." Maybe you're trying to find some nice lodging for an upcoming getaway to Lake Tahoe. Just say "romantic getaway Lake Tahoe." With Google Earth for Android, we have brought together the convenience of Google Search by voice with the power of Google Local Search to make it easier than ever to navigate the globe and find whatever you are looking for.



As with other versions of Google Earth, you can also browse photos, places, and local businesses, whether it is in your local community or on the far side of the globe. Click on an icon to see photos, videos, and read about prominent places in the world. You can easily customize your version of Google Earth to display the layers that most interest you.

In addition to Nexus One, Google Earth will be available in Android Market on most devices that have Android 2.1 or later versions. So as devices such as Droid get updated to Android 2.1, others will also be able to fly to the far reaches of the globe with a swipe of their finger.

Download Google Earth for Nexus One today by searching for Google Earth in the Android Market.


Posted by Peter Birch, Product Manager
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-earth-now-available-for-android.html

[G] Saluting the Best Nonprofit Videos of the Year

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 10:55 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Saluting the Best Nonprofit Videos of the Year

Over the past year, we've been surprised, entertained and inspired by the videos that nonprofit organizations have uploaded to YouTube; content featuring everything from unemployed porcupines to hospital workers shimmying in pink gloves. Some videos have urged the community to donate through call-to-action overlays (we've seen some nonprofits generate tens of thousands of dollars in a day), while others have "scared" citizens into doing good.



Today, we're teaming up with See3 Communications to present the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards and recognize those organizations that have used video to the greatest effect to create lasting social change in the past year:




One winner will be selected in each of the following categories: Best Small Organization Video, Best Medium Organization Video, Best Large Organization Video and Best Innovation in Video. A judging panel comprised of social media and nonprofit experts will narrow down the finalists, and public voting will determine the ultimate victors.


These winners will be recognized at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Atlanta and on YouTube. In addition, each winning organization will receive a $2,500 grant from the Case Foundation and a custom Flip camera.


To enter, organizations must be a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program, a program that offers free benefits to nonprofits in the United States, the United Kingdom, and, as of today, in Canada and Australia. To apply to the YouTube Nonprofit Program, please click here.


Nonprofits, you have until March 12 to enter. Visit the Nonprofit Video Awards channel now to get started!



Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, recently watched "Australia Non-profit Program"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/EYgiqyqpNSs/saluting-best-nonprofit-videos-of-year.html

[G] Celebrating Google Apps Resellers – a year of customer success

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 10:08 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Celebrating Google Apps Resellers – a year of customer success

When we launched the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program a year ago, a number of partners around the world were already actively helping customers of all sizes reduce IT costs and complexity while giving users the productivity tools they wanted – Gmail, Google Calendar, and more. Since then, millions of businesses have gone Google – and our resellers, too, have gained momentum. With nearly 1,000 Google Apps Authorized Resellers from more than 50 countries now building successful Google Apps practices, we celebrate our partners' progress over the last year and look forward to them continuing to drive customer success with Google Apps in the years to come.

In a recent mark of this progress, the MSPmentor 100 Report for 2010, which ranks top managed service providers worldwide, reports that already 22% of these top MSPs are now promoting Google Apps to their clients.

Our resellers represent a wide range of firms who assist businesses in adopting, leveraging, and extending Google Apps – from global systems integrators to smaller, specialized IT service providers. Acting as trusted advisors, these solution providers work to serve their clients' unique business needs and to improve user productivity via Google Apps at lower costs and with greater reliability.

In our first year, we launched some important tools to help our partners better serve customers, including our online Reseller Console for automated ordering, provisioning, and management of their Google Apps clients. Our Solution Providers resource site provides a full range of marketing, sales, and product information, while we also instituted a series of online webinars and live training sessions in Google offices around the world.

Conversations with channel firms at events hosted by Everything Channel, CompTIA, ConnectWise, and SMB Nation reinforced our belief that customer needs are well served when resellers act as the primary contact for provisioning, deployment, billing, and ongoing consulting and support.

We're especially excited about the relationships we've built with our partners over this first year. Some highlights include (in alphabetical order):

• Appirio and Genentech (large enterprise): Appirio, a cloud solution provider, migrated 15,000 Genentech users from a variety of legacy systems such as Apple Mail, Exchange 2003, Sendmail MStore, and Thunderbird. Appirio also provided a range of value-added services including integration with new systems such as Magic Meeting Marker, end user training, and on-site support.

• Cloudreach and Small World Financial Services: Cloudreach, a UK-based reseller, successfully migrated Small World Financial Services, a family of retail financial services businesses that operates worldwide, from their legacy Microsoft Exchange and Kerio environment to Google Apps. In total, 500 users across 9 countries were migrated resulting in cost savings in excess of 75% annually against their legacy software license. Here's more:



• Cloud Sherpas and Lincoln Property (mid-market): Cloud Sherpas, cloud computing systems integrator and application developer, assisted Lincoln Property with the configuration, implementation, change management and deployment support around their move to Google Apps. In addition to successfully migrating GroupWise mail and contacts data for 950 users, they implemented SherpaTools, a free app from Cloud Sherpas that provides additional IT management functions for admins and new features for employees.

• Sheepdog and Evisu (small business): Sheepdog successfully migrated Evisu off of Microsoft Exchange 2003 in less than two weeks, allowing the company to avoid its renewal deadline. They also provided comprehensive Gmail and Calendar training for all users and continue to offer support as Evisu adds new users to Google Apps.

• Spread and Renner Stores: Renner, the second largest clothing retailers in Brazil with more than 120 stores, wanted to transform the delivery of product information to store clerks. Spread, one of our leading Brazilian resellers, implemented Google Apps for 3,500 users, provided training, and delivered integration services among Google Sites, Google App Engine, and a number of premises-based legacy systems, thereby reducing the time to market for building new Renner sites by a factor of 10.

We recently kicked off our second year by hosting our first Google Apps Partner Advisory Board here at Google in Mountain View. Our partners provided valuable input on the best ways to continue to enrich our program. In 2010, we look forward to strengthening our reseller relationships and finding new ways to help our partners build sustainable, profitable cloud computing businesses.

If your firm is interested in Google Apps reselling and services, we invite you to learn more about the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program and join this growing movement.


Posted by Stephen Cho, Director, Google Apps Channels
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/02/celebrating-google-apps-resellers-year.html

[G] The next generation of ad serving for online publishers

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 10:08 AM PST

Official Google Blog: The next generation of ad serving for online publishers

Today, we're announcing the next generation of ad serving technology for online publishers — DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP).

For the past few years, we've been investing in a suite of solutions — AdSense, ad-serving technology and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange — to help online publishers make the most money possible from their content, whether they sell advertising directly through their own sales force, through an ad network such as AdSense, or a combination of both.

For major online publishers — including social networks and online communities, entertainment sites, e-commerce sites and news sites — managing, delivering and measuring the performance of ads on their websites can be a hugely complicated process. A publisher's ability to manage this process can have a significant impact on how much money they make from their online content.

Imagine you're a major online publisher with a popular global surfing website and an ad sales team. Every second of every day, you have difficult decisions about what ads to show and how to measure their relative performance. For example:
  • In the same ad space, a surfboard wax advertiser may want to run a static image ad for your Australian readers, while an airline offering flights to Hawaii may want to run an expandable interactive ad for your American readers.
  • A fast-food restaurant wants to run their burger ads before noon and their pizza ads in the afternoon.
  • You've sold 10 different surfboard makers a million ad slots at slightly different prices; now you have to allocate them across your various webpages to fulfill all these orders over the next two weeks.
  • One of your surfing tournament reviews is linked to by a popular news site and you have a surge in traffic. Your sales team couldn't predict this, so you're potentially left without any ads for thousands of readers. You want to fill this ad space by selling it via an ad network which has ads available.
This is really just scratching the surface. Managing ad space can involve faxes, emailed orders, the manual scheduling of different ad campaigns across multiple sites and difficult decisions about how to allocate ad space most effectively.

Major online publishers use ad serving technology to manage the complex process of how and when the ads they have sold appear on their websites. In recent years, we've invested significantly in our ad serving products — DoubleClick's DART for Publishers for large publishers and Google Ad Manager for growing publishers. Thousands of major online publishers use these products to serve billions of ad impressions every day.

But we see an opportunity to improve ad serving even further by combining Google's technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick's display advertising and ad serving experience. Since we acquired DoubleClick in March 2008, our engineering and product teams have been working with online publishers to tackle the obstacles that prevent them from maximizing revenues from their websites.

The upgraded DFP includes a wide variety of features that will help publishers to get the most value out of their online content:
  • A new interface that has been completely redesigned to save time and reduce errors.
  • Far more detailed reporting and forecasting data to help publishers understand where their revenue is coming from and what ads are most valuable.
  • Sophisticated algorithms that automatically improve ad performance and delivery.
  • A new, open, public API which enables publishers to build and integrate their own apps with DFP, or integrate apps created for DFP by a growing third-party developer community (apps under development today include sales, order management and workflow tools).
  • Integration with the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange's "dynamic allocation" feature, which maximizes revenue by enabling publishers to open up their ad space to bids from multiple ad networks. Dynamic allocation is described in this document [PDF].
DFP comes in two flavors, tailored for different publishers' needs: DoubleClick for Publishers, for the largest online publishers, and DFP Small Business, a simple, free version designed for growing online publishers. We'll be upgrading current DART for Publishers publishers to DoubleClick for Publishers over the next year as we continue to add features and modules, and we'll be moving Google Ad Manager customers to DFP Small Business in the coming weeks.

To reflect our continued investment in DoubleClick's products, as well as the central role of DoubleClick's technology products within Google's display advertising business, we're also today unveiling some changes to the DoubleClick logos — including typeset changes, incorporating a new "by Google" theme and retiring the "DART" brand.



The upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers is a perfect example of our continuing innovation in this area, and we believe that it will add significant value to online publishers' content. You can read more about the features of the upgraded DFP on the DoubleClick blog and on the DFP website.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/next-generation-of-ad-serving-for.html

[G] Introducing the new DoubleClick for Publishers

Posted: 22 Feb 2010 10:08 AM PST

Inside AdSense: Introducing the new DoubleClick for Publishers

You may have read previous posts on this blog about Google's ad serving platforms for publishers, such as Google Ad Manager. Publisher ad serving helps website owners better manage and deliver ad campaigns that they've sold directly to advertisers. Ad serving platforms are also used to better manage how unsold ads are allocated to third parties, such as the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, AdSense and other ad networks. If you do a lot of direct media sales and ad network management today, you may already be using an ad server or have investigated using one. Google offers two ad serving products for publishers - Google Ad Manager, for growing publishers, and DoubleClick's DART for Publishers (DFP), for large media companies with complex needs.

Since Google's acquisition of DoubleClick in March of 2008, we've been working to leverage the combined knowledge of our companies and the combined strengths of our product suite to develop an even more effective solution for ad serving and management. Today we announced the new DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) from Google, our next generation ad serving platform as well as DFP Small Business, a streamlined version of our new platform designed to meet the needs of growing publishers. The new DFP offers an even more intuitive workflow to help publishers of all sizes manage campaigns quickly and easily, while providing access to sophisticated feature set including advanced reporting, forecasting, and optimization capabilities.

Google Ad Manager publishers will automatically be upgraded to DFP Small Business in the coming weeks and we will be working closely with DoubleClick customers to upgrade them to our premium platform on a schedule that makes sense for their business. New publishers signing up for Google Ad Manager today will be automatically upgraded to DFP Small Business on the same schedule as current GAM publishers. To learn more about both versions of our upgraded ad serving platform you can visit this link.

Posted by Alexander Vogenthaler - Product Manager
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/02/introducing-new-doubleclick-for.html
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)