Thursday, March 25, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] GNOME Usability Hackfest

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 05:53 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: GNOME Usability Hackfest









Google recently sponsored the GNOME Usability Hackfest, which took place in London. With over 30 GNOME design and usability experts attending on some days, it was an unusually large, exciting and dynamic event. As GNOME 3.0 is just around the corner, people took advantage of the opportunity to build bridges within the GNOME usability community, and re-think the desktop paradigm.

Highlights for me included:

In the last few days at the event, I spent a fair amount of time cleaning up the GNOME Usability Project Wiki so it is more clear and straightforward. I also did a lot of coordination with the Dev8D conference organizers to arrange for GNOME speakers at their event, and made arrangements for Antonio Roberts from the Dev8D community to attend the GNOME Usability Hackfest and participate on Thursday the 25th.

The GNOME Usability team has posted a great deal of blog posts, articles, and photos highlights about the work done at this hackfest and as more attendees post their notes, they will be updated onto the GNOME Planet blog aggregator. You can see my blog for more photos and a full report on the event. Many thanks to Google for sponsoring this event.

By Brian Cameron, GNOME Foundation Board Secretary
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/gnome-usability-hackfest.html

[G] Find the places you care about in Google Earth

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 03:31 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Find the places you care about in Google Earth


On March 19, we announced some changes to the Google Earth layers panel intended to make browsing easier (with more descriptive icons, including more than 40 different icons to indicate place types). We also made some changes to the way layers are organized, with the goal of making it easier to find and control our top three layers:

We made the recent changes as part of our continual attempt to streamline and simplify the browsing experience, particularly for casual (or brand new!) Google Earth users. But we know we also have a very loyal community of users who weren't happy with the changes. One of the most common complaints was that we removed the ability to individually select certain layers (such as "Parks" or "Transportation"), which now appear in our default-on "Places of Interest" layer.

We've been listening, and today we released some changes to make these separate layers available again in Google Earth. You can now once again expand the "Labels" folder:
You can also find "Parks and Recreation Areas" under "More," as well as specific place categories like schools or coffee shops in our new "Place Categories" folder:

Finally, we're working to restore our separate "Transportation" layers in the near future, and appreciate your patience while we make the required changes.

We'd like to make some further changes in the future to streamline the Ocean, Gallery, and Global Awareness content in our Layers panel, but we realize that many of you have very specific interests and want to easily find the information you care most about. In the interest of making these changes as painless as possible, we invite you to make suggestions about how best to organize the Layers panel in Google Earth.

Posted by Matt Holden, Product Manager, Google Earth Team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/find-places-you-care-about-in-google.html

[G] Testifying before the Congressional - Executive Commission on China

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 02:20 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Testifying before the Congressional - Executive Commission on China

Posted by Alan Davidson, Director of Public Policy

This afternoon I'm testifying before the Congressional - Executive Commission on China on our new approach in China and what led to it.

As we've said, figuring out how to make good on Google's promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including our users in China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe our new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced.

I look forward to discussing this, as well as the impact censorship has on Internet users around the world, with members of the committee. You can read my written testimony here.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/testifying-before-congressional.html

[G] Spring Into Green

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 02:20 PM PDT

Official Google CPG Blog: Spring Into Green

Posted by Elizabeth Mills, CPG Account Manager

Green, eco-friendly, organic, natural, sustainable – no matter the term, more and more of today's consumers make simple, informed decisions about the products they bring into their homes. Forty-nine percent of consumers report searching for environmentally friendly products at least some of the time when making an online purchase [i], and 34 percent of Americans use internet searches to research and to determine whether the brands they're buying are socially responsible [ii].

What aspects of "Green" do consumers really care about? Do consumers value products that are animal friendly (not tested on animals)? Environmentally friendly? How would consumers prioritize various green attributes of their CPG products? According the trends Mintel Global New Products Database, it looks like packaging has increased significantly in importance from 2007 to 2009. Not being tested on animals, is still the most important.

New Product Introductions Making Selected Ethical Claim, US (2004-2009)

Source: Mintel GNPD

Investing in and promoting awareness of social responsibility is paying off in the CPG world. Fifty-seven percent of adult internet users in the United States report being willing to spend more on environmentally friendly products [iii]. Companies are capitalizing on this burgeoning market with new products and positioning strategies: As other beauty categories saw sales declines in 2008 and 2009, natural and organic personal care sales increased seven percent; across strong-performing household categories, significant increases came from positioning new or existing products as sustainable [iv].

As a CPG marketer, ask yourself:
  • How is my company or my brand making strides toward being more environmentally-friendly or socially responsible? How am I communicating this to my consumers? Do users searching for eco-friendly product lines see ads for my product?
  • Do consumers associate my brand with social responsibility? Am I adequately supporting my offline investments by promoting awareness and engaging consumers online?
  • Am I conveying how using my brand means taking a simple step toward a greener lifestyle? Am I positioning my product line as an alternative using paid search and the Google Content Network?

Whether you've been marketing green products for years or you've launched your first eco-friendly line, make sure you're leveraging online as an ecosystem for informing and empowering consumers to go green with your brand.

---------------------
Sources:
[i] DoubleClick Performics Green Marketing Research survey 06/2008
[ii] eMarketer, "How Green Marketers Can Lure Consumers" 5/13/2009
[iii] eMarketer, *The Center for Media Research April, 2009
[iv] Mintel GNPD, 2009
URL: http://google-cpg.blogspot.com/2010/03/spring-into-green.html

[G] Display advertising: towards creativity without limits

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 12:33 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Display advertising: towards creativity without limits

This is the second post in our series on the future of display advertising. Today, Neal Mohan looks at how new technology can power creativity in the years ahead - Ed.

Imagine you own a popular coffee chain in Denver that you want to promote. On Monday afternoon, it's warm and 80 degrees in the city. You run a display ad campaign online that offers Denverites a discount coupon for an iced cold latte, with a searchable map embedded in the ad to show local branches, and a real-time feed from people who have tweeted publicly about your newest flavor. That evening, a cold front rolls over the Rockies. Your ad automatically and dynamically adjusts to present a photo of a hot, steaming cup of hot chocolate in front of a warm fireplace, together with a home delivery number and an offer of free marshmallows.

Creative? Absolutely. Impossible? Hardly. You can do this today using technology from Teracent that we're working to roll out for our clients who advertise on the Google Content Network or who use DoubleClick Rich Media.

There's no doubt that advertisers today are increasingly seeking to run campaigns that are highly measurable and relevant to users. That's one of the benefits of advertising on the Internet. But great ad campaigns are about more than clicks or numbers. The best campaigns are so memorable and effective because they make an emotional bond with us. The very best can engage us, move us and make us feel a connection with the brand that's being promoted. That's the real creative genius of advertising.

We traditionally think of TV as the most creative advertising media. But display advertising has the promise of a couple of things that even TV doesn't have — the ability to dynamically customize ads in infinite ways and the opportunity to enable a true two-way interaction and dialogue with users.

Here are some examples of how creative ads have been used to drive engagement and deliver great results:
  • An award-winning rich media ad that was created by Euro RSCG for the new Volvo XC60. In addition to an interactive game, photos and gallery, it incorporated a Twitter feed from the New York Auto show. In just three days, the campaign garnered 170 million impressions, 50,000 clicks and 17,000 hours of brand engagement. No other type of advertising format could have come close in driving this type of conversation with a brand's potential customers.
  • A great campaign for Harley Davidson, created by the agency Overdrive. This ad functions almost like a website — with interactive video, Twitter and Facebook Share functionality, as it invites people to send a "Tribute to the Troops" for Veteran's Day. Over 280,000 people clicked to watch the video embedded in the ads and more than 18,000 Tributes were sent to troops from this campaign.

Some in our industry have asked why we aren't seeing more creative display ad campaigns like these. In our view, it's definitely not because of a lack of creativity or an unwillingness to experiment. The problem to date has been the lack of tools and technologies necessary to do this at scale across the Internet.

It takes hard work to create, serve and measure the impact of these ads. Under the hood, there's a lot of technology that needs to come together for them to work seamlessly. Take the Harley Davidson ad: It contains dozens of complex creative elements, integrations with various technologies like Flash, numerous APIs, Twitter and Facebook, and multiple parties involved in its creation and delivery — from the creative agency, to teams at Google, through to the ad operations teams at the publisher. You could spend hundreds or thousands of hours building out creative concepts and ads like this, but ultimately only run them on a few sites because the customization takes so much time to implement across the web.

We believe that technology, by streamlining and eliminating some of the hard work involved, and by offering new creative possibilities, can be a great enabler of more creative ads.

What if it were seamless to serve and run highly creative ad units — not just on one site, but on thousands of sites, and also in videos and on mobile phones? What if it were simpler to incorporate social features in the ad creative itself — such as letting people endorse and spread particular ads or campaigns to their friends? What if you could serve video ads that included simple tools in the ad creative itself that allowed users to easily make their own mashups of your ad, and post and share them with friends?

And what if you could make a few different creative elements for an ad, and then have them dynamically chosen, depending on factors like where the ad's shown, product availability, time of day and any other variable you choose — just like the coffee ad I mentioned at the start? That way, agencies and advertisers would be able to spend their time building out their creative concepts and ads, and technology can multiply the impact by running it on thousands of sites with millions of variations for every website and user.

Technology is evolving rapidly and will help facilitate all of this in the months and years ahead. What about imagining what might be possible on your phone in a few years? Let's say you're walking down the street, using an augmented reality app on your mobile phone to see what's interesting around you. In your viewfinder, you see a billboard for a great product — basketball shoes. Using image recognition, the app could recognize that it's a billboard for a particular shoe brand, show an expandable ad for that brand, let you choose to watch a video of one of their shoes in action, display all the nearest stores on an accompanying map, and include a way for you to order a shoe and pick it up on your way home from work.

That's just one example of what one day will be possible in the world of display advertising. It's the goal of our display advertising efforts to produce the tools and technologies to allow for this type of unbridled creativity at a grand scale.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/display-advertising-towards-creativity.html

[G] Security alerts for Gmail

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 12:33 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Security alerts for Gmail

Posted by Harry Wingo, Policy Counsel

We're always developing new ways to make your online experience more secure. For example, earlier this year we worked through several technical obstacles to become the only major webmail provider to offer session-wide SSL encryption by default.

Even with the protection that SSL provides, users may become exposed to phishing and malware attacks elsewhere on the web that attempt to steal and misuse their personal information. To help address this problem, we're rolling out a notification system for suspicious account activity associated with your Gmail account — notifications that will provide you with greater control by helping to identify potential security issues.

You can learn more about how this alert works and how you can better manage the activity on your account on the Official Gmail Blog.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/security-alerts-for-gmail.html

[G] Creating data visualization dashboards with Google Maps API Premier

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 12:33 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Creating data visualization dashboards with Google Maps API Premier

Editor's note: Ryan Goodman is the founder of Centigon Solutions, Inc. and is an expert in business intelligence dashboards with BusinessObjects Xcelsius. Using Google Maps API Premier, Centigon has created a dashboard application to help users better visualize complex data from SAP BusinessObjects. With hundreds of succesful dashboard projects under his belt, he continues to innovate in applying geographic analysis for performance management dashboards using Google Maps Premier.

As co-author of "Crystal Reports 2008 the Official Guide," and a frequent contributor to trade publications, Ryan continues to push the envelope for what's possible with dashboards and Xcelsius on his personal blog: www.ryangoodman.net/blog.

Enterprise organizations that utilize Business Intelligence dashboard technologies require flexible mapping solutions to meet a range of geo-analysis requirements for performance management dashboards. With numerous potential use cases for bringing maps into dashboards, customers have long struggled between static graphics or traditional GIS solutions.

While static images don't provide enough flexibility to address all business needs, feature-rich GIS solutions are sometimes more than most business users need. To facilitate flexibility and ease-of-use for dashboard end users, Centigon Solutions has helped Google Maps become a rich enterprise visualization tool with GMaps Plugin for Xcelsius 2008. GMaps Plugin empowers developers to deploy Google Maps API Premier enabled dashboards to drive geographic visualization of performance management metrics without without writing a single line of code.

Centigon Solutions has bridged the gap between SAP BusinessObjects' on-premise dashboard technology and Google Maps API Premier service, making geo-analysis accessible at any level of an organization, and in any industry. Using a simple property sheet, dashboard developers can align geographic dimensions with performance measures and then deploy a fluent Google Maps experience to business users. From global financial metrics to city-level risk analytics, both technical and non-technical users can leverage GMaps Plugin's seamless integration with Google Maps API Premier to create compelling analysis – in minutes.

Organizations that rely on on-premise, on-demand solutions require easy methods for analyzing and communicating information queried from these systems. In the dashboard shown below, an analyst required a mashup of Salesforce.com campaign/lead data and enterprise financial data to measure campaign effectiveness. GMaps Plugin provided the location intelligence required to quickly digest a large volume of information.



The example shows how multiple marketing campaigns across the United States were created and tracked through Salesforce.com. Powered by GMaps Plugin, Google Maps API Premier, and Force.com Integration (hosted on Google App Engine), this dashboard empowers marketing professionals to view and drill into each campaign and visually digest campaign results. The resulting analysis provided a visual proximity of attendees and their response rate.

From this information, the user can make informed decisions to what regions should receive priority for future campaigns. This new visibility into lead data provides a new perspective for a marketing analysts to make more informed decisions through guided analysis.

While traditional reporting solutions can present drillable tabular data, the graphical and spatial analysis gained with a Google Maps API Premier enabled dashboard increases the speed, depth, and efficiency of data analysis. By mobilizing Google Maps API Premier for enterprise performance management reporting and dashboards, Centigon Solutions improves the way business decision makers can interpret key information. Visit our website to learn more about GMaps Plugin and the Google Maps API Premier case study page for more success stories.


About Centigon Solutions: Centigon Solutions Inc. couples business insight with technical expertise to deliver quality business intelligence dashboard solutions. Centigon Solutions Inc. is strategically focused on creating interactive visualization technology for developers and business users. As thought leaders in dashboard and Web 2.0 technologies for the enterprise, Centigon Solutions is also recognized as the premier developer of Xcelsius® add-on solutions, including GMaps Plugin.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise team


URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/creating-data-visualization-dashboards.html

[G] Creating data visualization dashboards with Google Maps API Premier

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 11:48 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Creating data visualization dashboards with Google Maps API Premier

Editor's note: Ryan Goodman is the founder of Centigon Solutions, Inc. and is an expert in business intelligence dashboards with BusinessObjects Xcelsius. Using Google Maps API Premier, Centigon has created a dashboard application to help users better visualize complex data from SAP BusinessObjects. With hundreds of succesful dashboard projects under his belt, he continues to innovate in applying geographic analysis for performance management dashboards using Google Maps Premier.

As co-author of "Crystal Reports 2008 the Official Guide," and a frequent contributor to trade publications, Ryan continues to push the envelope for what's possible with dashboards and Xcelsius on his personal blog: www.ryangoodman.net/blog.

Enterprise organizations that utilize Business Intelligence dashboard technologies require flexible mapping solutions to meet a range of geo-analysis requirements for performance management dashboards. With numerous potential use cases for bringing maps into dashboards, customers have long struggled between static graphics or traditional GIS solutions.

While static images don't provide enough flexibility to address all business needs, feature-rich GIS solutions are sometimes more than most business users need. To facilitate flexibility and ease-of-use for dashboard end users, Centigon Solutions has helped Google Maps become a rich enterprise visualization tool with GMaps Plugin for Xcelsius 2008. GMaps Plugin empowers developers to deploy Google Maps API Premier enabled dashboards to drive geographic visualization of performance management metrics without without writing a single line of code.

Centigon Solutions has bridged the gap between SAP BusinessObjects' on-premise dashboard technology and Google Maps API Premier service, making geo-analysis accessible at any level of an organization, and in any industry. Using a simple property sheet, dashboard developers can align geographic dimensions with performance measures and then deploy a fluent Google Maps experience to business users. From global financial metrics to city-level risk analytics, both technical and non-technical users can leverage GMaps Plugin's seamless integration with Google Maps API Premier to create compelling analysis – in minutes.

Organizations that rely on on-premise, on-demand solutions require easy methods for analyzing and communicating information queried from these systems. In the dashboard shown below, an analyst required a mashup of Salesforce.com campaign/lead data and enterprise financial data to measure campaign effectiveness. GMaps Plugin provided the location intelligence required to quickly digest a large volume of information.



The example shows how multiple marketing campaigns across the United States were created and tracked through Salesforce.com. Powered by GMaps Plugin, Google Maps API Premier, and Force.com Integration (hosted on Google App Engine), this dashboard empowers marketing professionals to view and drill into each campaign and visually digest campaign results. The resulting analysis provided a visual proximity of attendees and their response rate.

From this information, the user can make informed decisions to what regions should receive priority for future campaigns. This new visibility into lead data provides a new perspective for a marketing analysts to make more informed decisions through guided analysis.

While traditional reporting solutions can present drillable tabular data, the graphical and spatial analysis gained with a Google Maps API Premier enabled dashboard increases the speed, depth, and efficiency of data analysis. By mobilizing Google Maps API Premier for enterprise performance management reporting and dashboards, Centigon Solutions improves the way business decision makers can interpret key information. Visit our website to learn more about GMaps Plugin and the Google Maps API Premier case study page for more success stories.


About Centigon Solutions: Centigon Solutions Inc. couples business insight with technical expertise to deliver quality business intelligence dashboard solutions. Centigon Solutions Inc. is strategically focused on creating interactive visualization technology for developers and business users. As thought leaders in dashboard and Web 2.0 technologies for the enterprise, Centigon Solutions is also recognized as the premier developer of Xcelsius® add-on solutions, including GMaps Plugin.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise team


URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/03/creating-data-visualization-dashboards.html

[G] New In AdWords: Search Funnels

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 10:01 AM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: New In AdWords: Search Funnels

Yesterday, AdWords announced the launch of Search Funnels, a new set of reports available only in AdWords that describe the Google search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion. They are rolling out over the next few weeks and work if you are using AdWords Conversion Tracking or importing your Google Analytics goals into AdWords.

What are Search Funnels?
Currently, conversions in AdWords are attributed to the last ad clicked before the conversion happened. However, it's likely that customers perform multiple searches prior to finally converting.

These reports provide data on how "upper-funnel" keywords behave on the conversion path prior to the last ad click. These funnels are not to be confused with funnels in Google Analytics, which are on-site funnels. These are the paths users take when seeing and clicking on your ads after doing a search on google.com, on the way to converting. They look back 30 days prior to the conversion.

In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consists of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last ClickAnalysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. Take a look at this video giving an overview of the new reports, and at the AdWords blog post to learn more.




How is this useful?
Search Funnels data gives you more data to help you gauge the true value of your keyword and ads in AdWords. By showing whether an ad was shown prior to a conversion and whether it was clicked or not, they help you analyze assist relationships. For instance, find out whether generic keywords actually contributed to conversions occurring from a branded keyword search, and vice versa. You're no longer limited to a last-click perspective in AdWords.

Take a look at the AdWords help center for a complete description of the new reports and metrics. These reports are currently in beta, and again, they'll be available in your AdWords account over the next few weeks. Bravo AdWords!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-in-adwords-search-funnels.html

[G] Collaborative bookmarking with lists

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 10:01 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Collaborative bookmarking with lists

Earlier this month we added stars in search so that you can easily mark and rediscover your favorite websites. Today we're debuting lists in Google Bookmarks, an experimental new feature that helps you easily share those sites with friends.

Bookmarks are a great way to keep track of your favorite content across the web and we want to help you share them with your friends. To use lists, visit Google Bookmarks at google.com/bookmarks or by clicking "Manage all" in your Google Toolbar. From there, select the links you want to share and click "Copy to list." Lists are private by default, but once you've created one you can share it with specific friends or even publish it to the web. For example, if a friend of yours is visiting Seattle for the first time and you have some local attractions bookmarked, you might want to create a new list for "Seattle attractions" and share it with your friend.


Sharing lists can help you collaborate with your friends on common interests or activities. Let's say you're planning a group trip to Paris. With a list, everyone can contribute useful links and resources, such as packing lists, hotel links, flight information and attractions. You could also create lists for your favorite hobbies, and then share them with friends who share your interests. Lists dynamically generate previews for many pages so you can get a sense of the site before clicking.

Lists also help you discover new web content. For example, once you've created your list of favorite Seattle attractions, Google will algorithmically analyze your list to identify other potentially relevant links, such as the Seattle Aquarium. Similarly, when we detect that a list is relevant to a specific region, we provide a map of those places and relevant info for each place, such as addresses, hours and reviews.


We're launching lists as an experimental feature so that we can quickly test it out and get feedback. Visit Google Bookmarks on google.com in English to try it out and let us know what you think. You can also learn more about lists in our Help Center.

Posted by Christina Chen, Product Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/collaborative-bookmarking-with-lists.html

[G] Visualizing Census form return rates

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 10:01 AM PDT

Google LatLong: Visualizing Census form return rates


The US Constitution's Article I, Section 2 requires a national census every ten years - and the time has come again in 2010. Accordingly, this month the US Census Bureau mailed 120 million forms to households nationwide, and completed forms have begun streaming back. Because this count determines the distribution of more than $400 billion in annual spending and representation in the House of Representatives, local and state governments and media watch mail participation rates very closely (as do many data geeks like myself).

To keep up with all this interest, the Census Bureau is providing daily updates on the participation rate by state, county, and census tract — well over 100,000 distinct geographical entities throughout the 50 states and Puerto Rico. To make this huge amount of data easy to browse, for the first time the Census is plotting it with Google Maps. Check out the Take 10 Map for yourself. What you'll see is a basic accounting of the percentage of forms that have been received back. None of the results of the survey are shown — that data is not revealed at the household level, and aggregate data won't be made available for several months.

Additionally, this same data from the Census Bureau is available as a layer for use in Google Earth. You can download the layer for use in your desktop client. You can even embed the layer within your website or share with a friend, just like below. Simply click the "Get Link or Embed" link, tweak the settings to your preferences, and you'll get the code to send a link or embed in your site -- no permission needed.



In the same spirit as the Take 10 Map and Google Earth layer, we're also working with the Census Bureau to make their volumes of data more accessible through technologies like Public Data Explorer and the experimental Fusion Tables. If you're a developer who plots data on maps, we also whipped up some pretty useful border simplifications and regionations for this layer that we plan to make freely available in the near future. And if you're just interested in looking at pretty maps made with Census data, you'll definitely want to take a look at some really old ones.

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/03/visualizing-census-form-return-rates.html

[G] Detecting suspicious account activity

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 10:01 AM PDT

Google Online Security Blog: Detecting suspicious account activity

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

Posted by Pavni Diwanji, Engineering Director

A few weeks ago, I got an email presumably from a friend stuck in London asking for some money to help him out. It turned out that the email was sent by a scammer who had hijacked my friend's account. By reading his email, the scammer had figured out my friend's whereabouts and was emailing all of his contacts. Here at Google, we work hard to protect Gmail accounts against this kind of abuse. Today we're introducing a new feature to notify you when we detect suspicious login activity on your account.

You may remember that a while back we launched remote sign out and information about recent account activity to help you understand and manage your account usage. This information is still at the bottom of your inbox. Now, if it looks like something unusual is going on with your account, we'll also alert you by posting a warning message saying, "Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from…" along with the geographic region that we can best associate with the access.


To determine when to display this message, our automated system matches the relevant IP address, logged per the Gmail privacy policy, to a broad geographical location. While we don't have the capability to determine the specific location from which an account is accessed, a login appearing to come from one country and occurring a few hours after a login from another country may trigger an alert.

By clicking on the "Details" link next to the message, you'll see the last account activity window that you're used to, along with the most recent access points.


If you think your account has been compromised, you can change your password from the same window. Or, if you know it was legitimate access (e.g. you were traveling, your husband/wife who accesses the account was also traveling, etc.), you can click "Dismiss" to remove the message.

Keep in mind that these notifications are meant to alert you of suspicious activity but are not a replacement for account security best practices. If you'd like more information on account security, read these tips on keeping your information secure or visit the Google Online Security Blog.

Finally, we know that security is also a top priority for businesses and schools, and we look forward to offering this feature to Google Apps customers once we have gathered and incorporated their feedback.
URL: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/03/detecting-suspicious-account-activity.html

[G] Detecting suspicious account activity

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 10:01 AM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: Detecting suspicious account activity

Posted by Pavni Diwanji, Engineering Director

A few weeks ago, I got an email presumably from a friend stuck in London asking for some money to help him out. It turned out that the email was sent by a scammer who had hijacked my friend's account. By reading his email, the scammer had figured out my friend's whereabouts and was emailing all of his contacts. Here at Google, we work hard to protect Gmail accounts against this kind of abuse. Today we're introducing a new feature to notify you when we detect suspicious login activity on your account.

You may remember that a while back we launched remote sign out and information about recent account activity to help you understand and manage your account usage. This information is still at the bottom of your inbox. Now, if it looks like something unusual is going on with your account, we'll also alert you by posting a warning message saying, "Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from…" along with the geographic region that we can best associate with the access.


To determine when to display this message, our automated system matches the relevant IP address, logged per the Gmail privacy policy, to a broad geographical location. While we don't have the capability to determine the specific location from which an account is accessed, a login appearing to come from one country and occurring a few hours after a login from another country may trigger an alert.

By clicking on the "Details" link next to the message, you'll see the last account activity window that you're used to, along with the most recent access points.


If you think your account has been compromised, you can change your password from the same window. Or, if you know it was legitimate access (e.g. you were traveling, your husband/wife who accesses the account was also traveling, etc.), you can click "Dismiss" to remove the message.

Keep in mind that these notifications are meant to alert you of suspicious activity but are not a replacement for account security best practices. If you'd like more information on account security, read these tips on keeping your information secure or visit the Google Online Security Blog.

Finally, we know that security is also a top priority for businesses and schools, and we look forward to offering this feature to Google Apps customers once we have gathered and incorporated their feedback.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/detecting-suspicious-account-activity.html

[G] D.C. Talk tomorrow: Democracy Online. Can the Internet Bring Change?

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 07:37 AM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: D.C. Talk tomorrow: Democracy Online. Can the Internet Bring Change?

Posted by Mistique Cano, Public Policy Communications Manager

With spring in the air, it's hard to imagine that just a few weeks ago the city was blanketed in an obscene amount of snow. It caused road closures, power outages and one very unfortunate rescheduling of a hotly anticipated D.C. Talk on Internet freedom.

The moment we've all been waiting for has come: join us tomorrow, Thursday March 25th, as we bring together experts, advocates and bloggers for a thoughtful - and timely - discussion of democracy online. The panel will answer questions, submitted to Moderator, like these:
"In a practical sense, how effective do you believe that online action can be transformed into offline impact? Is there a risk of people feeling that they've done enough once they have spread a message online?" - Will
"Internet's empowering in terms of connectivity, information, etc. How does it pose danger on freedom/safety of citizens since what they write, send, receive could be more easily tracked? Could this outweigh the benefits? How to mitigate the risks?" - Sarhang
Please join us for what will be a thoughtful exchange.

Google D.C. Talks Presents:
Democracy Online: Can the Internet Bring Change?
Thursday, March 25th
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Google D.C. Office
1101 New York Avenue, NW, 2nd Floor
Washington, DC

RSVP here

Have a question for our panel? Visit www.googledctalks.com to submit it through Google Moderator.

URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/dc-talk-tomorrow-democracy-online-can.html
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