Googland

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• [G] A new look for Google Transit maps
• [G] Introducing the eBay Social Shopping Gadget (Alpha)
• [G] Go Mobile! Series: Your ads on the iPad
• [G] OGRE’s Latest Release Features Google Summer of Code Projects
• [G] Google services on the iPad and tablet computers
• [G] Mapping new drinking water sources in Haiti
• [G] Improved comment collapsing for Google Buzz posts
• [G] Al Gore + You(?) = Earth Day's 40th Celebration

[G] A new look for Google Transit maps Posted: 02 Apr 2010 07:41 PM PDT Google LatLong: A new look for Google Transit maps At the beginning of last year, the Google Maps team launched the Transit Layer, showing the layout of public transportation networks on top of the map in over 50 cities worldwide. Since then, we have grown our coverage to nearly 450 cities and added more information to both the base maps and the transit layer. We've now released a significant redesign of our transit maps that better highlights the information transit riders are most interested in seeing. Before, the transit map was placed on top of the base road map, obscuring some important information in the base map and competing visually with the complexity of the road network. With this redesign, we're changing the entire base map to put more focus on the transit lines, and lower the prominence of roads. We hope you'll agree that the result is a cleaner, less cluttered map that will make it easier for transit riders to get around. Looking at the London Underground shows the immediate benefits of removing the clutter of the A-road badges, and the simplified map style which lets the transit lines and roads coexist more elegantly: In the old transit map of New York, streets such as 8th and 7th Avenue are completely obscured. The new rendering is a cleaner, lighter, and more readable experience: San Francisco is a great example of the benefits of being able to see important underlying map data in addition to the transit lines. Now the city name, major landmarks and important roads are visible again: To try this out for yourself, select "Transit" from the "More" drop-down on Google Maps in any city where transit is supported, or simply click on a transit station on the map itself. We hope that you have as much fun using our new transit maps as we did making them! Posted by Jonah Jones, User Experience Designer, Google Maps URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-look-for-google-transit-maps.html

[G] Introducing the eBay Social Shopping Gadget (Alpha) Posted: 02 Apr 2010 04:43 PM PDT Social Web Blog: Introducing the eBay Social Shopping Gadget (Alpha) Hi, my name is Jay Patel and I'm a software engineer at eBay. I'm excited to introduce the Google Friend Connect community to the new eBay Social Shopping Gadget (Alpha). Add "Social Shopping" functionality to your Web site We built the new eBay Social Shopping gadget with site owners in mind, so you can easily add "social shopping" functionality to your website. The eSS gadget lets users browse on eBay in almost the same way they could if they were on eBay.com, and also allows them to share their shopping experiences with friends. For instance, users of your site can recommend eBay items to friends and browse their friends' recommendations — all in one place. In addition to searching the entire eBay site, your users can also view item details at a glance and watch items within auctions or buy-it-now listings. If your users already use eBay, then they can easily link their eBay account to their Google Friend Connect (GFC) account, which will let them monitor their eBay watch list from eSS, receive personalized recommendations and bid and buy directly using eSS. For publishers and web site owners As with all Friend Connect gadgets, the eSS gadget enhances your site's appeal by adding social features, allowing you to customize eBay recommendations and listings to suit your site content. For example, if you own a blog about "twin parenthood," visitors to your site would probably see items such as twin strollers or baby monitors. No spam, no football memorabilia. For more eBay Social Shopping gadget details, visit the "Help" section at http://ess.ebay.com. To install the gadget, visit the Google Friend Connect Gadget Gallery by logging into Google Friend Connect and clicking on the "Social Gadgets" link on the left-hand side. Then click on the "All gadgets" tab to locate the eBay Social Shopping Gadget. We hope you'll take advantage of the eSS gadget to add a "social shopping" dimension to your website. Please contact us at ess@ebay.com with any feedback or questions. By Jay Patel, Software Engineer, eBay URL: http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2010/03/introducing-ebay-social-shopping-gadget.html

[G] Go Mobile! Series: Your ads on the iPad Posted: 02 Apr 2010 02:50 PM PDT Inside AdWords: Go Mobile! Series: Your ads on the iPad Like many of you, we're excited about the upcoming release of Apple's iPad and the promise of tablet computers. Innovative products like the iPad are on the cutting edge of a whole new class of devices that promise to make accessing information and content easier and more fun. Over the past year, we've been working to make sure that our advertising products work well on a different class of exciting new devices - mobile phones with full Internet browsers like the iPhone and those running Android. These mobile devices have exploded in popularity, and have allowed advertisers to achieve incremental reach and great results. With these high-end phones making up 50% of mobile search queries, it's highly valuable for advertisers to connect with these users. In many ways, an iPad is more similar to these mobile devices than to desktop and laptop computers. It runs on a mobile operating system, has a touchscreen, runs mobile apps, and is highly portable, suited for on-the-go browsing. For this reason we've decided for now to include the iPad as a mobile device in AdWords, which means that as AdWords advertisers, you can easily extend the reach of your current ad campaigns to these new types of devices. To ensure that your ads appear on new mobile devices like the iPad, simply make sure that you have "all mobile devices" selected in your campaign settings under the "Networks and devices" section. You can also use the default setting, "All available devices." (Click to view full size image) If you want to target the iPad specifically, our engineers are busy at work doing the final testing on an option to enable you to do just that. It will appear in the coming days when you choose to "target only selected mobile devices". And don't worry - if you've already changed your AdWords settings to not appear on these mobile devices, your ads won't appear on the iPad. Of course, the world of devices like the iPad is in its infancy, and these devices may evolve in ways that we haven't anticipated yet. So we'll continue to watch the space and ensure that no matter which direction the devices go in next, we make sure give advertisers the reach, control and features they'll need to get great results from their ad campaigns. Posted by Paul Feng, Group Product Manager for Google Mobile Ads URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/04/go-mobile-series-your-ads-on-ipad.html

[G] OGRE’s Latest Release Features Google Summer of Code Projects Posted: 02 Apr 2010 02:50 PM PDT Google Open Source Blog: OGRE's Latest Release Features Google Summer of Code Projects OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine written in C++ designed to make it easier and more intuitive for developers to produce applications utilising hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. OGRE has taken part in Google Summer of Code™ since 2006, and every year it's been a valuable learning process for our mentors and organisers as well as the students themselves. 2009 was our most high-profile year by far, despite the fact that we intentionally took on fewer students, because those we did accept this year were of truly amazing quality. Assaf Raman mentored Noam Gat (aka 'Noman' in our community), who also participated in Google Summer of Code in 2008 and has been an active member of our community for a while now. He did some stellar work on improving the convenience of using various deferred shading approaches in OGRE, and as a result was approached by GameDev.net, a leading online community for game developers, after the summer to write an article on it; his article has been featured on the front page for a few days now. We're all very proud of what Noam's achieved both over the summer and outside it, and he's now officially joined the core team. Brian Johnstone, a former Google Summer of Code student who went on to become a mentor (he was a student in 2007), guided Zi Ye (aka 'omniter') in 2009, and his work has also been hugely successful; his project was a unified samples framework to replace our ageing collection of demos, and he vastly exceeded even our high expectations. Not only did he produce a fantastic new framework and browser for all our samples, he created a new GUI system from scratch designed specifically to make samples easier to write, created new, more attractive versions of most of the demos, and even created some 3d models as a bonus (outside of the program). He also came up with the idea of making a weekly narrated video of his progress to share with the community which was hugely popular. Google Summer of Code continues to help drive OGRE forward, and in particular has been a valuable source of new developer talent, while also giving students an interesting and hopefully educational way to spend their summer. Everybody wins! The OGRE Team would like to offer our thanks to Google for running this truly remarkable programme. By Steve 'sinbad' Streeting, OGRE team lead, and Assaf Raman, OGRE core team member URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/ogres-latest-release-features-google.html

[G] Google services on the iPad and tablet computers Posted: 02 Apr 2010 12:37 PM PDT Official Google Mobile Blog: Google services on the iPad and tablet computers Here at Google we're really excited about the promise of tablet computers, which will be great for browsing the web and using apps. We've been working hard to optimize our services for the new format - larger touchscreens, increased portability, rich sensors - and we'd like to share some information about our progress so far. While surfing the web on your iPad, we expect many of you will want to check your Gmail. If you go to gmail.com in your browser, you'll see something different than what you're used to on the desktop. We're releasing an experimental user interface for the iPad built on the Gmail for mobile HTML5 web app that we launched last year for the iPhone and Android devices. Those devices have large screens compared to other phones, and tablets like the iPad give us even more room to innovate. To take advantage of the iPad's large display, we've created a two-pane view with your list of conversations on the left and messages to the right. To try this new interface, go to gmail.com in your browser. We recommend adding a homescreen link for easy access. As this interface is experimental, expect changes as we continue to develop and optimize. Also, please let us know any ideas or feedback that you have. You can also access Gmail on the iPad through the native Mail app using the IMAP protocol. Additionally, the iPad ships with a number of Google services pre-installed. As with Mac computers and the iPhone, you'll find Google Search in the top right corner of Safari. The YouTube app for iPad is built-in, so you can watch HD videos and read and write comments. The new Maps app on iPad takes advantage of high-resolution satellite and Street View imagery, includes a new terrain view, and lets you search for local businesses and get directions. Just like on the iPhone, you can also go to the App Store to download Google Mobile App with search by voice. Of course, Google Mobile App was originally designed for the iPhone's screen dimensions, but we've adapted it to work on the iPad and we're looking into new ideas to make the app even better. As you use Google's web-based applications on iPad, you'll notice that you sometimes see the desktop user interface and other times you see the mobile interface. We've evaluated the behavior of each Google web app using the iPad Simulator, and we are serving the interface we feel works best. If you'd like any help using our products on iPad, please click the 'Help' link within the product. We're particularly excited by how tablet computers create the opportunity for new kinds of user interaction. Here on the mobile team, we often talk about how mobile devices are sensor-rich: they can sense touch through their screens, see with a camera, hear through a microphone, and they know where they are with GPS. The same holds true for tablet computers, and we're just starting to work through how our products can become even better on devices like the iPad. Posted by Punit Soni, Product Manager, Google Mobile URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-services-on-ipad-and-tablet.html

[G] Mapping new drinking water sources in Haiti Posted: 02 Apr 2010 10:43 AM PDT Google LatLong: Mapping new drinking water sources in Haiti We have all heard how the earthquakes in Haiti have uprooted millions of people, with many of them displaced from their homes in Port-au-Prince to the rural areas. charity:water is a non-profit organization working tirelessly to bring clean and safe drinking water to millions of people in developing nations. People to donate money towards a well or other water project, and charity:water tracks all water projects on their Google Maps-powered Projects page. After a water project is installed, local field partners report back to charity:water with photos and GPS coordinates. charity:water then adds this project to their online map, so that donors can track the water projects to which they contributed, and the whole world can track all the water projects. In the past few months, they have turned their attention to Haiti, and in honor of the recent World Water Day, they launched Unshaken, a new campaign to get support for new water projects in Haiti. So follow their map this year to see the support coming in for the Haiti rebuilding efforts! Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/04/mapping-new-drinking-water-sources-in.html

[G] Improved comment collapsing for Google Buzz posts Posted: 02 Apr 2010 10:43 AM PDT Official Gmail Blog: Improved comment collapsing for Google Buzz posts Posted by Sean McBride, User Experience Designer Any Google Buzz post can turn into a lively discussion. Sometimes these conversations can gather lots of new comments very quickly, turning them into "skyscraper" posts that can dominate your entire screen, especially if you don't check Buzz for a few days. We've heard from many of you that these big posts can be a lot to skim over. Today, we're making some changes to how comments get collapsed in Google Buzz. In the past, old comments were sometimes collapsed, but new comments (posted since your last visit to the Buzz tab) were always expanded. Now, if there are enough of them, new comments may be collapsed as well. Here's the nitty gritty on how it'll work by the end of the day once we finish rolling out these changes: If there are 3 or more previous or new comments, we collapse them into a group. We leave the latest previous comment (from before your last visit) expanded to give you context. We leave the last two new comments (since your last visit) expanded so you can get a taste of the ongoing conversation and decide if you're interested. If there are enough previous and new comments, we collapse them together into a single line to save space. You'll see the names of some of the people whose comments are collapsed, which can help you decide if you might be interested in diving into the conversation. These changes will limit how much space any one post can take up in the Buzz tab and prevent the popular posts you're not interested in from dominating the stream. We hope this helps make Google Buzz a little less noisy so you can focus on conversations you care about. URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/improved-comment-collapsing-for-google.html

[G] Al Gore + You(?) = Earth Day's 40th Celebration Posted: 02 Apr 2010 07:43 AM PDT YouTube Blog: Al Gore + You(?) = Earth Day's 40th Celebration The success of the film An Inconvenient Truth had several outcomes: it moved the issue of climate change into the spotlight and forced average citizens to think about their consumption; it catapulted former U.S. Vice President Al Gore into the role of global climate champion; and it demonstrated that film has the power to promote social change. In anticipation of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, we're building upon these results by partnering with Vice President Al Gore and his organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, on our next round of Video Volunteers. This month, as Video Volunteers curator, Gore is asking you to use film to do good by creating a short, inspiring video for your favorite climate change organization. The top three videos will appear on the YouTube homepage alongside a video from Gore himself as part of a very special Earth Day spotlight. Here he is with more details about the program and why it's imperative that you take action: Earth Day is on April 22, so we're working with an abridged Video Volunteers timeline this month. All entries must be submitted by April 19 to be considered, so get your camera out today. And if you're a nonprofit organization working on issues related to climate change, this could be your chance to make a big impact on the YouTube homepage. You can post an opportunity for a Video Volunteer here. Visit www.youtube.com/videovolunteers now to get started! Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, recently watched "Polio is Back in Guinea." URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/k_Ap5xkaa98/al-gore-you-earth-days-40th-celebration.html

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