Friday, March 19, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Rescheduling meetings made easy

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 04:37 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Rescheduling meetings made easy

Outside of our Gmail inboxes, we, like many businesses, spend quite a bit of time in meetings – and scheduling and rescheduling meetings. And we know that trying to get a group of people with busy schedules into the same empty conference room at the same time can be quite a challenge.

As a result, our Calendar team began noodling on how to help solve group scheduling difficulties. The result is a new experimental feature called Smart Rescheduler, available in Google Calendar Labs. Smart Rescheduler automatically generates a list of good meeting times that would work for invitees when someone has a conflict. Through the power of search and cloud computing, employees can now focus even more time on the real business at hand.



As a Labs feature, Smart Rescheduler may not work exactly as you'd expect each time, but we wanted to share this feature with customers while it's still in the testing phase to hear how it's working in the real world. If you have ideas or suggestions, we welcome your feedback.

Businesses, schools and organizations can start using Calendar Labs once their Google Apps administrator selects 'Turn on new features' in the Google Apps control panel. Once new features are enabled there, users can enable Labs in Google Calendar's settings page.

Happy Scheduling!

Posted by Ken Norton, Google Calendar Product Manager
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/rescheduling-meetings-made-easy.html

[G] Find out “Why Cloud-Based Security and Archiving Make Sense"

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 03:36 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Find out "Why Cloud-Based Security and Archiving Make Sense"

Join the Google Postini team on March 23, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. PDT for a live webinar addressing "Why Cloud-Based Security and Archiving Make Sense." This interactive session will explore the growing requirements for email security and email archiving and the benefits and cost savings available when companies bring these services to the cloud. Learn about:

  • best-in-class practices, including results from recent research, presented by Michael Osterman, President of Osterman Research
  • Google's cloud-based enterprise IT solutions, presented by Adam Swidler, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Google

The discussion will include a live Q&A session open for audience participation.


Reserve your place at this event.


Why Cloud-Based Security and Archiving Make Sense

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT / GMT -07:00


For more information on Google Postini Services, please visit www.google.com/postini


Posted by Adam Swidler, Google Postini team

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/find-out-why-cloud-based-security-and_18.html

[G] Meet Your Mentors: Announcing Accepted Project for Our Sixth Google Summer of Code

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 03:27 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Meet Your Mentors: Announcing Accepted Project for Our Sixth Google Summer of Code

We've just announced the list of accepted mentoring organizations for Google Summer of Code™ 2010. Congratulations to all of our future mentors!

After reviewing just over 365 applications, we finally narrowed our selection to 150 Free and Open Source projects. The accepted projects are now busy adding details about their participation in Google Summer of Code to the program website, but you can already take a look at the list of accepted projects and their Ideas Lists.

As with every year, we had to make some very tough decisions in 2010. We simply weren't able to accept every great project that applies. Once again, we are also bidding fond farewell to some past participants in favor of bringing new projects into the program. We greatly appreciate everything they have contributed to the program in past years and hope they will remain actively involved in our community. We want to thank everyone for their applications and would encourage those who were not accepted to apply for future instances of the program.

What Happens Now?

No doubt many would-be Google Summer of Code students are wondering what their next steps should be. You'll have about 1.5 weeks to learn about each participating organization before student applications open on March 29, 2010. Use this time to meet your potential mentors and to discuss how you'd like to contribute to their organization, especially your ideas for improving their code base. Keep on eye on the program mailing lists, as we'll post notes about additional resources for learning about our mentoring organizations there.

Most organizations have provided individual points of contact for each project suggestion, and you can always propose ideas and look for guidance on project mailing lists or forums, as well as on IRC. You can also look for your potential mentors in the program IRC channel, #gsoc on Freenode.

Remember, some of our most successful proposals come from ideas suggested by the students themselves, so take advantage of this time to explore what areas of development most excite you. You can then find people to help you brainstorm about your initial thoughts and further refine them. Don't be nervous about how your ideas will be received; take some time to think through what you'd like to accomplish, propose a plan of action, then work with your potential mentors to iterate, iterate, iterate.

Congratulations to all of our future mentors! We look forward to working with all of you this year, and to working with many of you once again.

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/meet-your-mentors-announcing-accepted.html

[G] Introducing Google Buzz widget for Android

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 02:13 PM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Introducing Google Buzz widget for Android

Since we launched Google Buzz for mobile, we've been working on ways to make it quicker and easier to share your thoughts and experiences while you're out and about.

Today, we're excited to release a Google Buzz widget for Android phones that lets you post text and photos with a single tap. Like other mobile access points for Google Buzz, the widget lets you choose to tag your post with the location or place from which it was posted. You can post buzz about a great meal you had and share photos of the new restaurant. To save time, your posts will upload in the background, letting you get back to your scrumptious dessert without a wait.

The widget is initially available in English for Android phones running v1.6 and later. Search for 'Google Buzz' in the Android Market to download it now. Once installed, you can add it to your home screen: tap "Menu" while on the home screen and select "Add > Widgets > Google Buzz".

We plan to add support for other languages soon. Visit our Help Center to learn more, ask questions in our Help Forum, or give us suggestions and vote on other people's on the Mobile Product Ideas page.



Posted by Zak Cohen, Software Engineer, Google Mobile
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/03/introducing-google-buzz-widget-for.html

[G] Looking for a good time? New scheduling tool in Calendar

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 02:13 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Looking for a good time? New scheduling tool in Calendar

Scheduling meetings is tough, but rescheduling is even harder. We all know how frustrating it can be to try to find just the right time that accommodates everyone's availability and preferred working hours. Throw in different time zones and conference rooms and it goes from painful to excruciating. We'd rather schedule dental appointments.

On the Google Calendar team, we've noticed that when people talk about scheduling they say things like "I'm trying to find a time" or "let's search for a new date." We wondered what would happen if we treated calendaring more like a search problem. Just as Google search applies ranking algorithms to return the most relevant results from the web, we hoped we could rank meeting times based on criteria important to the person scheduling the meeting.


Today we're launching the result of that experiment, a gadget called Smart Rescheduler, in Google Calendar Labs. Once you enable the Lab, you can find a new time for an event simply by clicking on a link. Our schedule search algorithm will return a ranked set of the best candidate dates and times based on the calendars others have shared with you. You can read more about it on the Gmail Blog.

So next time your boss says "We need to reschedule," just smile and say "I'm feeling lucky."

Posted by Ken Norton, Product Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/looking-for-good-time-new-scheduling.html

[G] More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 02:13 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

Posted by Amy Chang, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-choice-for-users-browser-based-opt.html

[G] Smart Rescheduler in Google Calendar Labs

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 01:03 PM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: Smart Rescheduler in Google Calendar Labs

Posted by David Marmaros, Software Engineer

As you can imagine, those of us on the Google Calendar team spend a lot of time thinking about scheduling. We regularly talk to people who schedule and reschedule a lot of meetings: administrative assistants. Talking to them, we understand just how much time they spend looking at schedules, investigating other people's calendars, finding replacement conference rooms and rescheduling conflicts. And then some manager's travel plans change and everything starts over again.

If you're searching for something on the web, you don't just start randomly visiting pages looking for relevant content, you use a search engine. So we decided to apply some of Google's search experience to the problem of scheduling. We experimented with using ranking algorithms to return the most relevant meeting times based on specified criteria like attendees, schedule complexity, conference rooms, and time zones. Just like Google search ranks the web, our scheduling search algorithm returns a ranked set of the best candidate dates and times.

Today we're launching the result of that experiment, a gadget called Smart Rescheduler, in Google Calendar Labs. Once you turn it on, just select an event you'd like to reschedule, then click "Find a new time...":

You'll see ranked list of possible times for your meeting. By investigating the calendars others have shared with you, Google Calendar can make some educated guesses about how easy it might be to reschedule a conflicting meeting and even find you a replacement conference room nearby. This process is 100% automated — no Google employees are doing any work behind the scenes. You can refine the results by marking people as optional, changing the meeting duration, ignoring certain conflicts, or specifying the earliest and latest times you'll accept. The results will immediately update to reflect your new requirements.


This feature is still experimental, so we'd love your ideas and feedback. Of course, we can't make meetings more interesting, but we can try to save you frustration leading up to them.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/smart-rescheduler-in-google-calendar.html

[G] Go Mobile! Series: Reach local customers

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 01:03 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Go Mobile! Series: Reach local customers

About one in three mobile search queries are made by people who are looking for something in their local area. This means that local businesses have the opportunity to reach mobile users when they're nearby and looking to take immediate action. Here are a few tips to help you reach these potential customers.

1) Control how your business appears in organic search results
Since more people search for businesses online than anywhere else, it's important to make sure your business listing can be easily found on Google.com and Google Maps. Creating a business listing in the Local Business Center helps ensure potential customers find you, and allows you to maintain full control over how your listing appears.


If your business already appears as a search result, you can use the Local Business Center to claim your listing and enter additional information like photos, hours of operation, website, and more.

2) Reach more potential customers near you
Whenever you create a campaign in your Google AdWords account, you can use location targeting to show your ads only to people close to your business. You can target potential customers within a given city, region or metro area. You can also define a radius around a certain point or set your own borders for more precise reach. Location targeting can help you improve the ROI on your ad campaigns by focusing on people who are nearby and therefore more likely to take action.



3) Drive local action with location extensions
A location extension is an optional additional line of ad text that shows your nearest business address to potential customers based on their location or search terms. People can click on the address to see a map of the area around your location. When the ad appears on mobile devices with full internet browsers, potential customers can also see a click-to-call phone number to connect directly with that business location by phone.


You can easily set up location extensions with the business information in your Local Business Center account or by manually entering the information in your AdWords account. While your ad will appear to users in any geographic location you chose to target, only people whose location signals indicate that they're close to one of your businesses will see your location extension.

4) Put it all together
How do geo-targeting and location extensions come together when ads appear on mobile devices? Let's say you own a flower shop with several locations in the area. John is a potential customer who wants to pick up flowers on his way to a housewarming party. John can use his mobile phone to search for 'flower shop.' Since he's close to one of your stores, your ad appears with a location extension showing the closest business address and phone number. John clicks on the business address to see a map and get driving directions. He then clicks on your phone number to call and make sure that you're open for business and have ready-made bouquets in stock. Thanks to you, geo-targeting, and location extensions, John can quickly pick up a beautiful bouquet of lilies and make a great impression at the party!

Mobile users are often looking to take action immediately, whether it's driving to a store or calling ahead to make sure that store has what they're looking for. Try out these features to enable your customers to easily engage with your business.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/03/go-mobile-series-reach-local-customers.html

[G] Site maintenance on Saturday, March 20

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 01:03 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Site maintenance on Saturday, March 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 - 5pm Saturday
Dar es Salaam - 8pm Saturday
Chennai - 10:30pm Saturday
Singapore - 1am Sunday
Sydney - 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/2010/03/site-maintenance-on-saturday-march-20.html

[G] Broadcast Yourself

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 11:50 AM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Broadcast Yourself

Posted by Zahavah Levine, YouTube Chief Counsel

(cross-posted from the Official YouTube Blog)

Around the globe, YouTube has become a metaphor for the democratizing power of the Internet and information. YouTube gives unknown performers, filmmakers, and artists new ways to promote their work to a global audience and rise to worldwide fame; makes it possible for political candidates and elected officials to interact with the public in new ways; enables first-hand reporting from war zones and from inside repressive regimes; and lets students of all ages and backgrounds audit classes at leading universities.

Yet YouTube and sites like it will cease to exist in their current form if Viacom and others have their way in their lawsuits against YouTube.

In their opening briefs in the Viacom vs. YouTube lawsuit (which have been made public today), Viacom and plaintiffs claim that YouTube doesn't do enough to keep their copyrighted material off the site. We ask the judge to rule that the safe harbors in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA") protect YouTube from the plaintiffs' claims. Congress enacted the DMCA to benefit the public by permitting open platforms like YouTube to flourish on the Web. It gives online services protection from copyright liability if they remove unauthorized content once they're on notice of its existence on the site.

With some minor exceptions, all videos are automatically copyrighted from the moment they are created, regardless of who creates them. This means all videos on YouTube are copyrighted -- from Charlie Bit My Finger, to the video of your cat playing the piano and the video you took at your cousin's wedding. The issue in this lawsuit is not whether a video is copyrighted, but whether it's authorized to be on the site. The DMCA (and common sense) recognizes that content owners, not service providers like YouTube, are in the best position to know whether a specific video is authorized to be on an Internet hosting service.

Because content owners large and small use YouTube in so many different ways, determining a particular copyright holder's preference or a particular uploader's authority over a given video on YouTube is difficult at best. And in this case, it was made even harder by Viacom's own practices.

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Given Viacom's own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.

Viacom's brief misconstrues isolated lines from a handful of emails produced in this case to try to show that YouTube was founded with bad intentions, and asks the judge to believe that, even though Viacom tried repeatedly to buy YouTube, YouTube is like Napster or Grokster.

Nothing could be further from the truth. YouTube has long been a leader in providing media companies with 21st century tools to control, distribute, and make money from their content online. Working in cooperation with rights holders, our Content ID system scans over 100 years worth of video every day and lets rights holders choose whether to block, leave up, or monetize those videos. Over 1,000 media companies are now using Content ID -- including every major U.S. network broadcaster, movie studio, and record label -- and the majority of those companies choose to make money from user uploaded clips rather than block them. This is a true win-win that reflects our long-standing commitment to working with rights holders to give them the choices they want, while advancing YouTube as a platform for creativity.

We look forward to defending YouTube, and upholding the balance that Congress struck in the DMCA to protect the rights of copyright holders, the progress of technological innovation, and the public interest in free expression.

URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html

[G] Template highlight: 2010 College Basketball Tournament Bracket

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 11:13 AM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Template highlight: 2010 College Basketball Tournament Bracket

The first round of the 2010 NCAA Division I men's college basketball tournament is starting and in celebration, the Google Docs team has brought back the College Basketball Tournament bracket template for 2010. This template is powered by the GoogleTournament function which John Danaher created last year in his 20% time.

Since you can add collaborators to your spreadsheet, it's easy to engage in some friendly rivalry right within the spreadsheet. Like last year, the template includes 10 blank brackets that each of your friends can fill out. No need to print out and fill-in blank paper brackets. There's one sheet that shows whose picks are the best. You can even customize the point values for each game if you want using points sheet.

Other Google teams are getting into the basketball spirit. From an iGoogle gadget, to live scores, to a Google Earth plugin, there is something for every basketball fan at google.com/collegebasketball2010.

Posted by: Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/03/template-highlight-2010-college.html

[G] Broadcast Yourself

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 11:13 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Broadcast Yourself

Around the globe, YouTube has become a metaphor for the democratizing power of the Internet and information. YouTube gives unknown performers, filmmakers, and artists new ways to promote their work to a global audience and rise to worldwide fame; makes it possible for political candidates and elected officials to interact with the public in new ways; enables first-hand reporting from war zones and from inside repressive regimes; and lets students of all ages and backgrounds audit classes at leading universities.

Yet YouTube and sites like it will cease to exist in their current form if Viacom and others have their way in their lawsuits against YouTube.

In their opening briefs in the Viacom vs. YouTube lawsuit (which have been made public today), Viacom and plaintiffs claim that YouTube doesn't do enough to keep their copyrighted material off the site. We ask the judge to rule that the safe harbors in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA") protect YouTube from the plaintiffs' claims. Congress enacted the DMCA to benefit the public by permitting open platforms like YouTube to flourish on the Web. It gives online services protection from copyright liability if they remove unauthorized content once they're on notice of its existence on the site.

With some minor exceptions, all videos are automatically copyrighted from the moment they are created, regardless of who creates them. This means all videos on YouTube are copyrighted -- from Charlie Bit My Finger, to the video of your cat playing the piano and the video you took at your cousin's wedding. The issue in this lawsuit is not whether a video is copyrighted, but whether it's authorized to be on the site. The DMCA (and common sense) recognizes that content owners, not service providers like YouTube, are in the best position to know whether a specific video is authorized to be on an Internet hosting service.

Because content owners large and small use YouTube in so many different ways, determining a particular copyright holder's preference or a particular uploader's authority over a given video on YouTube is difficult at best. And in this case, it was made even harder by Viacom's own practices.

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Given Viacom's own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.

Viacom's brief misconstrues isolated lines from a handful of emails produced in this case to try to show that YouTube was founded with bad intentions, and asks the judge to believe that, even though Viacom tried repeatedly to buy YouTube, YouTube is like Napster or Grokster.

Nothing could be further from the truth. YouTube has long been a leader in providing media companies with 21st century tools to control, distribute, and make money from their content online. Working in cooperation with rights holders, our Content ID system scans over 100 years worth of video every day and lets rights holders choose whether to block, leave up, or monetize those videos. Over 1,000 media companies are now using Content ID -- including every major U.S. network broadcaster, movie studio, and record label -- and the majority of those companies choose to make money from user uploaded clips rather than block them. This is a true win-win that reflects our long-standing commitment to working with rights holders to give them the choices they want, while advancing YouTube as a platform for creativity.

We look forward to defending YouTube, and upholding the balance that Congress struck in the DMCA to protect the rights of copyright holders, the progress of technological innovation, and the public interest in free expression.

Posted by Zahavah Levine, YouTube Chief Counsel



URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/lFvHvYA0gUY/broadcast-yourself.html

[G] Orkut for Android — live folders, photo upload and more!

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 10:37 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Orkut for Android — live folders, photo upload and more!

(Cross-posted on the orkut Blog)

Orkut is now ready to roll on mobile phones with Android. Now you can stay connected to your orkut friends wherever you go -- via scrap notifications, direct photo uploads to your orkut albums, and a phonebook synced to your orkut friends' phone numbers and status messages. Orkut for Android lets you stay in touch with pals through...

Orkut friends live folders
Simply add the list of your orkut friends as a live folder on your home screen, and you'll be able to browse through your friends list even when not under data network coverage. The live folder also lets you communicate (via call, scrap or SMS) with your friends in a single click. To install a live folder, click "Menu > Add > Folders > Orkut" on your Android device's homescreen after installing the orkut for Android application.

Photo uploads to your orkut albums
Gone are the days when you needed to download photos from your Android phone to your computer and then upload them to your orkut albums. Now you can simply upload photos from your Android Photo Gallery. Just click "Menu > Share > Orkut" while browsing your photos in the Android Photo Gallery to get started.

Scrap notification
You will get notifications on your Android device when you have new scraps on orkut. The notifications will appear on your Android device notification bar; clicking on notifications will take you to your scrapbook page.

To install the orkut for Android application visit Android Market from your Android device and search for "orkut" under the social applications category. You can also directly scan the QR code below to install it. Note that the application is available only for Android devices running version 1.6 or higher.
Hope to see you on orkut for Android soon!

Posted by Deepak Sethi and Alok Goel, software engineer and product manager
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/03/orkut-for-android-live-folders-photo.html

[G] Shooting for three: Keeping up with the Madness

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 10:37 AM PDT

Google LatLong: Shooting for three: Keeping up with the Madness


Do you feel it, sports fans? Has the anticipation fully gripped your college basketball soul? It's definitely got my attention. Therefore I've embarked on my third consecutive journey into mapping the NCAA College Basketball tournament. This may have caused a bit of personal March madness - a lot of long nights and triple-checking each arena placemark - but I hope you'll enjoy the result. I've made a Google Earth KMZ file that includes the home arenas of the field of 65, and the 14 tournament venues. Each entry in the field of 65 is color coded by region and the game sites have a special basketball icon this year.

You may wonder why I've kept this up for three years. Well, aside from the fundamental fact that I'm a college hoops nut, I just so happen to also love seeing the geo-spatial distribution of the teams. The research and compliation of the information led me to several interesting facts you can see for yourself in the layer and then use to wow your friends, such as:
  • There are two first-round matchups that pit two teams which have the same mascots
  • Bears, Eagles, Gophers, Grizzlies, and Lions have a common trait: they are all 'Golden'
  • This year's tournament is quite colorful: Blue Devils, Mean Green, Orangemen, Big Red, and Yellow Jackets
This My Map also shows you all the key locations for the Madness, color-coded for your viewing pleasure. The East division is indicated by a blue pin; South with green; Midwest with red; and West with cyan. The pins with a dot in the center tell you who the #1 seeds are:

Travel to the tournament without leaving home! All 14 arenas are in the "3D Buildings" layer in Google Earth, ready for you to explore. Take a tour of these 3D models by watching the video below or download this kml tour and open it in Google Earth 5. Be sure to check out the Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City -- even the court is modeled.


Also, teaming up with a few other March Madness enthusiasts, we've created a page, google.com/collegebasketball2010, where all of you basketball fans can find additional Google tools to help you track the tournament. Keep up with your favorite teams and get up-to-date information on scores, schedules, and brackets with our iGoogle gadget. By doing a quick search for your favorite team, you can see live scores. If you haven't already made a bracket, check out our Google docs tournament bracket template to help you create and manage your pool in an online spreadsheet. You can also see real time search results so you never miss any March Madness news or chatter!

For all the times when I can't be planted in front of my television watching the action (or during those pesky commercial breaks), these tools will keep my head in the game!

Posted by Adam Hughes, Google Apps Senior Strategist and College Hoops Fan
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/shooting-for-three-keeping-up-with.html

[G] Zero-result queries: finding them, fixing them

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 10:37 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Zero-result queries: finding them, fixing them

From building and improving search on Google.com, my fellow engineers and I have learned a lot about how people search and why factors such as stemming, spelling, and synonyms are so important, even in the context of our business tools.

One of our first and most important observations was that returning zero results for a search query is one of the fastest ways to frustrate visitors – and lose potential customers. Shoppers who have made it to your site and searched for a product or category have expressed clear interest in buying from you, and returning no results is akin to accidentally forgetting to turn around the "Closed" sign on your storefront door in the morning!

Fortunately, retailers do have tools available to avoid this pitfall: automatic stemming, spell-checker, and synonym dictionaries can help ensure that customers find related or similar products on your site, even if they don't type in the exact product name or description text.

Like Google.com, Google Commerce Search has always arrived "out of the box" with the best automatic stemming, spelling, and synonym technology available. Starting today, it's become even easier for retailers with unusual or distinct product catalogs to upload and manage custom synonym dictionaries.

Now retailers who choose to enable advanced synonym options can simply add sets of synonyms specific to their product lines and can also trigger search expansion, so that the query as typed automatically triggers results for synonymous products.



Google already has a large body of synonym data for general search terms, and since Google Commerce Search lets you harness many of the search features of Google.com, you shouldn't bother replicating the work. Instead, focus on adding synonyms for queries specific to your product line or online store.

It's easy for search engine administrators to add synonyms to their accounts. Simply log into the control panel and add or delete search terms you want to trigger the synonym expansion. Or, if you have a large number of terms to add, you can create an XML file and quickly upload that to your account.

We hope you'll join us on our quest to end unnecessary zero result queries!

Posted by Tianyu Wen, Software Engineer

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/zero-result-queries-finding-them-fixing.html
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