Thursday, March 4, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Curator of the Month: TechCrunch

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 11:25 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Curator of the Month: TechCrunch

Our curator of the month is TechCrunch, a blog dedicated to "obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies...as well as companies making an impact on the new Web space." They polled their whole crew to come up with a list of favorite videos focusing largely on tech, innovation, start-ups, Silicon Valley and, of course, a few unconventional subjects, like a pogo-ing CEO.



Here, Jason Kincaid explains the thinking behind their selection, which is featured on our homepage today:













You can find the full playlist here.



Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently watched "Life in Quarantine - Fully Sick Rapper."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/erZIdJMXA8c/curator-of-month-techcrunch.html

[G] Search your Android phone with written gestures

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 06:21 PM PST

Official Google Mobile Blog: Search your Android phone with written gestures

As mobile phones become increasingly powerful and can store more data, we've introduced new methods of search to get you to your content faster, such as search suggestions or search by voice. But sometimes, typing to get to the right search suggestion takes too long, and you may be in a quiet environment where speaking a query is inappropriate. Today we're pleased to announce Gesture Search, a new Google Labs application for Android-powered devices running Android 2.0 or above in the US. Gesture Search lets you quickly find a contact, an installed application, a bookmark or a music track from hundreds or thousands of items, by simply drawing alphabet gestures on the touch screen.

Say you want to call your friend Anne. Just open Gesture Search and draw letter "A", and Gesture Search returns a list of items that have words starting with "A". If your handwriting isn't all that neat, that's okay. If the "A" you draw looks a bit like an "H", as seen in the bottom left corner of the screenshot, "H" results will be brought up as well. If needed, you can also erase a query by crossing it horizontally: left to right erases the entire query, and right to left removes the last letter or space in the query. Now you can either scroll down the list to find Anne or write more letters to refine the search.



Additionally, Gesture Search improves search quality by learning from your search history, so Anne's contact info will jump to the top of the list the next time you write "A".

To download Gesture Search, search for it in Android Market. You can get more information on our Google Labs page. And as this is a Labs launch, we are particularly eager to get your thoughts and feedback in the comments below!

Posted by Yang Li, Research Scientist
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/03/search-your-android-phone-with-written.html

[G] Hopping on a Face Manifold via People Hopper

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:38 PM PST

Official Google Research Blog: Hopping on a Face Manifold via People Hopper

Posted by Sanjiv Kumar and Henry Rowley, Google Research

A few weeks ago we announced the launch of a new orkut application in Google Labs called People Hopper that lets you take your profile image and "morph" it into a friend's photo, using publicly available images from other orkut users along the way. No computer graphics tricks are used; every image along the transition comes from real orkut users.



The application hops across millions of public user images in orkut so that one image is smoothly transformed into another. First, faces are automatically detected in public profile images and normalized in contrast and size. Then, for each image, we find other public profile images that are similar to it. Finally, when you pick two faces, we just hop between similar public images, step-by-step, until the connection is made.

People Hopper was outcome of the following research question: Is it possible to learn a low-dimensional space (i.e. a manifold) in which all the human face images live? It is well-known in the machine learning community that to recover the true underlying manifold one needs a large number of samples from it. In 2008, we published a paper at CVPR in which we learned a face manifold using tens of millions of images, which is still the largest scale manifold learning study to date.

To be able to do manifold learning at such a large scale, we had to address two key issues: First, how to do nearest neighbor search in very large databases? We used spill-trees to speed up the search to construct the neighborhood graph. Second, how to do spectral decomposition of matrices which are hundreds of terabytes in size? We investigated sampling-based matrix decomposition methods to handle such matrices.

One way to visualize the quality of the manifold is to find shortest paths between pairs of faces in the manifold, and observe the smoothness of the transitions between them. This is exactly what People Hopper does. Curious? Try People Hopper on orkut now!

The quality of the face manifold depends on three main factors: the number of faces in the manifold, the appearances of those faces, and the similarity measure used for image matching. Since we cannot control the number or appearance of the faces in orkut profiles, it may happen that for a particular image there exists no visually similar image in the database. We plan to update our graph over public profile images frequently, so the quality of paths will change as users join orkut or update their profile images. Finding better contrast normalization and similarity measures is a topic of continuing research. Currently we don't use any face-specific features during this process, just simple image distances.

We are eager to hear your feedback on how we can make this application more fun and useful. Also, if for any reason you would prefer your profile image not to appear in any People Hopper path, you can choose to opt out by visiting our People Hopper homepage.
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/03/hopping-on-face-manifold-via-people.html

[G] 5 tips for using Google Buzz on your phone

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 03:21 PM PST

Official Google Mobile Blog: 5 tips for using Google Buzz on your phone

A few weeks ago we released Google Buzz for mobile. There are many ways to access Google Buzz from your phone, but the web app (buzz.google.com) provides the most complete viewing and posting experience on an iPhone or Android 2.0+ device (more platforms are coming soon). Today, we'd like to share some tips on how to get the most out of the Google Buzz web app on your phone.

1. Search for a place to post from
Tagging a post with your location is easy and fun. You can just tap the location box in the posting screen to add a place name or an address. Or, you can search for a place. Click ">" in the location box and scroll down a bit to find the search box. This will allow you to search for places nearby and tag your post with that location.

2. Learn more about a tagged place
When you see a location tag and the little red pin attached to someone's post, you might want to learn more about that place. Click 'Show map' to see the address of that place and a small map, which you can tap to see a bigger, fully functional map. You can also click the place link to view business details, reviews, photos, and more.

3. Choose to share privately or publicly
The Google Buzz web app provides options to share your post publicly on the web or privately with the groups you select. To create a new group to share privately, you'll need to visit Buzz in Gmail or google.com/contacts from your computer. Your location is attached to your post by default, either as an address or a place. If you don't want it attached, you can simply tap the 'Remove location' link. Next time you post, we will remember your choices for the sharing option (public or private) and for the location tagging option (whether or not to include location).

4. View mobile profiles and follow new people
You'll often find interesting public posts or comments made by people you're not following yet. If you'd like to start following them, simply tap on their name to visit their mobile profile page, click the 'Buzz' tab, and tap 'Follow'. The 'Contact Info' tab includes info pulled from their public Google profile that they've chosen to share and any additional info you may have about them in your contacts, making it easy for you to contact them with one click.

5. Auto-finish @reply
When you want to include someone in a post or comment, you can use the @reply feature. On mobile devices, simply type "@user", which will be automatically expanded to "@user@gmail.com" for you. This will save you time typing on the phone.

Stay tuned for more tips, and visit our Help Center to learn more. We also love to hear your feedback in our forum and your suggestions on the Mobile Product Ideas page!


Posted by Alex Kennberg, Software Engineer, Google Mobile
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/03/5-tips-for-using-google-buzz-on-your.html

[G] Stars make search more personal

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 02:10 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Stars make search more personal

We've long believed that personalization makes search more relevant and fun. For nearly five years, we've been tailoring results with personalized search. Today we're announcing a new feature in search that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite web content — stars.

With stars, you can simply click the star marker on any search result or map and the next time you perform a search, that item will appear in a special list right at the top of your results when relevant. That means if you star the official websites for your favorite football teams, you might see those results right at the top of your next search for [nfl]. Here's what the new "Starred results" feature looks like:


The great thing about stars is that you don't have to keep track of them. You don't even have to remember whether or not you starred something. Simply perform a search and you'll rediscover your starred items right when you need them. Stars sync with your Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar, so you can always see your list of starred items in one place and easily organize them. Even beyond the results page, while browsing the web you can quickly click the star icon in Toolbar to create a bookmark, and those pages will start showing up in the new stars feature.

Stars in search replace SearchWiki. In our testing, we learned that people really liked the idea of marking a website for future reference, but they didn't like changing the order of Google's organic search results. With stars, we've created a lightweight and flexible way for people to mark and rediscover web content. For people who like annotations, we have Sidewiki, a more powerful way for people to contribute and discover helpful information next to pages across the Internet. All your existing SearchWiki edits will be preserved with your Google Account. You can learn more on our help center.

Stars in search are rolling out in the next couple days and will be available globally for all signed-in users.

Posted by Cedric Dupont, Product Manager and Matthew Watson, Software Engineer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/stars-make-search-more-personal.html

[G] Dive into Google Earth with marine scientists

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 12:21 PM PST

Google LatLong: Dive into Google Earth with marine scientists


Have you ever dreamed of being a marine scientist? With today's release of a Google Earth tour by the Pew Environment Group to introduce the 2010 Pew Fellows in Marine Conservation, you can put on your virtual scuba gear and join them in the underwater ecosystems, coral reefs, and shores around the world.

Narrated by actress and philanthropist Isabella Rossellini, the Google Earth tour introduces you to the work of the new Pew Marine Fellows: Daniel J. Conley, Omar Defeo, Beth Fulton, Peter Mumby, and Ben Sullivan.

The prestigious fellowship is awarded each year to five outstanding global leaders or teams for working tirelessly to preserve and protect the world's oceans and marine species. For the next three years, these marine scientists will work on their original, research-based marine conservation project.

Each Pew Marine Fellow will communicate his or her results widely, so check back for more information about the program and the fellows at www.pewmarinefellows.org, or you can learn more about the fellows now by viewing the Google Earth tour on the 2010 Pew Marine Fellows website today!

Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/dive-into-google-earth-with-marine.html

[G] Troubleshooting tips part III: Performance reports & earnings

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 12:21 PM PST

Inside AdSense: Troubleshooting tips part III: Performance reports & earnings

Once ads are displaying fine on your pages, your next concern may be your earnings. To make sure all your impressions and clicks are recorded correctly, check out the following notes and tips.

First, be aware that your AdSense reports are updated every 15 to 30 minutes, but can sometimes take up to 24 hours to update. So at times, if you don't see the numbers you expect in your reports, be sure to check again later once your reports have been updated.
  • Do you use the Allowed Sites feature? Allowed sites are websites or URLs on which AdSense publishers allow or wish to have their Google ads displayed. If you use the allowed sites feature in your AdSense account, be sure to add all the websites you're displaying ads on, to the list of allowed sites. If you forget to add a sites where you're displaying ads, then impressions and clicks on the sites will be shown in your reports, but advertisers won't be charged and the clicks won't earn any revenue.


  • Do you have channels set up to track your clicks and impressions?
    • If your channel reports show more data than your aggregate reports, it might be the case that your domains or ad units are being tracked simultaneously on multiple URL or custom channels. If that's the case, then to see your complete, accurate statistics, visit your Advanced Reports page. When you select the Aggregate Data radio button and click Display Report, you'll see all clicks, page impressions, and earnings from your account with no duplication of data.

    • Alternatively, you may see that your aggregate reports show more data than your channel reports, even if all your pages are tracked with channels. This can occur sometimes when your page is displayed within a frame; in this case data won't appear in your channel reports but will display in your aggregate reports.


Channel data can be a bit tricky, so make sure to pick distinctive names to differentiate between URL and custom channels -- that way, you'll know exactly what data you're viewing. We also recommend checking out our optimization tips for channels to help you determine which ad units and placements are performing well, and how you can use this information to earn more revenue.
  • If you have ad placements, have you named them accurately? Once you create channels for your ad units or domains, you can turn your custom channels into ad placements that advertisers can specifically target their ads to, using placement targeting. When entering a description for your channels to appear as ad placements, be sure to enter something informative and accurate to represent your site well.
Also, we advise you to be careful when renaming the ad placement as you will lose existing advertiser bids.

Next week, we'll look at publisher controls and how to filter certain ads from appearing on your site.

Posted by Ulrike Jung - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/03/troubleshooting-tips-part-iii.html

[G] Federal Support for Federated Login

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 06:21 AM PST

Google Online Security Blog: Federal Support for Federated Login

Posted by Eric Sachs, Senior Product Manager, Google Security

Last November, we discussed the progress that account login systems operating via standards-based identity technologies like OpenID have achieved across the web. As more websites seek to interact with one another to provide a richer experience for users, we're seeing even more interest in finding a secure way to enable that kind of information sharing while avoiding the hassle for users of creating new accounts and passwords.

Excitement for technology like OpenID is not limited the private sector. President Obama's open government memorandum last year spurred the creation of a pilot initiative in September to enable U.S. citizens to more easily sign in to government-run websites. Google joined a number of other companies to explore ways to answer that call.

Now, several months later, some interesting things are taking shape. The Open Identity Exchange (OIX), a new organization and certification body focused on online identity management, today named Google among the first identity providers to be approved by the U.S. Government as meeting federal standards for identity assurance. This means that Google's identity, security, and privacy specifications have been certified so that a user can register and log in at U.S. government websites using their Google account login credentials. The National Institute of Health (NIH) is the first government website ready to accept such credentials, and we look forward to seeing other websites open up to certified identity providers so that users will have an easier and more secure time interacting with these resources.

Our hope is that the work of the OIX and other groups will continue to grow and help facilitate more open government participation, as well as improve security on the Internet by reducing password use across websites.
URL: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/03/federal-support-for-federated-login.html
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