Googland |
- [G] New Place Pages for mobile
- [G] Bridging the gap: Branding campaigns
- [G] Discovering pages “similar to” ones that you like
- [G] Manufacturing in the Cloud with Google Apps and Smartsheet
- [G] Re-size your images in the new document editor
- [G] 4.7 trillion reasons for well-designed copyright
| [G] New Place Pages for mobile Posted: 27 Apr 2010 06:45 PM PDT Official Google Mobile Blog: New Place Pages for mobileLast fall, we launched Place Pages which organize relevant and useful information about places on Google Maps. Since then we've been developing a version, available now, which gives you access to the same useful information optimized for your mobile phone. For example, in the video below, the Place Page for Mama's restaurant in San Francisco shows location information, customer ratings, opening hours and what people are saying about the restaurant in summary format.To get more details on opening hours or on customer specific comments related to the food, service or ambiance, simply click on those respective sections to show more information instantly. The Place Page also provides links to useful websites where the user can read full reviews about the place. Lastly, if address and cross street information is not enough, click on the map button and you will be taken to a full screen dynamic map which is pannable and zoomable. In this way you can quickly see the restaurant's location in the context of the entire neighborhood. To try this yourself, go to google.com on your phone's browser and search for "mama's sf". On the search results page, click on the listing for Mama's restaurant to go to the Place Page. This mobile optimized Place Page is currently supported on Android-powered devices and iPhones/iPod touches in the US. Posted by Dan Zivkovic, Software Engineer, and Karen Groenink, User Experience Designer, Mobile Search  URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-place-pages-for-mobile.html      |
| [G] Bridging the gap: Branding campaigns Posted: 27 Apr 2010 06:44 PM PDT Inside AdSense: Bridging the gap: Branding campaigns In the last post in our "Bridging the Gap" series, lets explore how advertisers build tailored campaigns to promote their businesses. My team and I work mostly with medium-sized businesses that try to be as efficient as possible with their online ad spend. In the past, we found that direct response campaigns (which ask users to make a purchase or sign up for a newsletter) were more common than pure branding campaigns. However, I've seen firsthand that advertisers are slowly but surely beginning to understand the value of online advertising as an extremely cost-efficient, effective and measurable branding mechanism. As publishers, this means that you'll have more opportunities to capitalize on the increased ad competition that brand campaigns bring. Below I'll explain what types of brand campaigns we see, how advertisers select publishers to include in brand media plans, and how you can ensure that your sites make it in. Types of Branding Campaigns The most important difference between direct response and brand campaigns is that brand campaigns aren't focused on driving direct conversions. The goals of online "pure brand" campaigns are very similar to offline ads: reach a specific audience with a sticky message that builds recognition, favor, and/or credibility of the brand. Another type of brand campaign called "brand response" aims to reach a targeted audience and elicit some form of action. Common types of brand response goals include increased searches on brand terms, unique visitors to the advertiser's site, and user interaction on site. To achieve these goals, most brand campaigns have the following characteristics:
Building a Media Plan When advertisers choose sites to include in the media plan for a brand campaign, they consider much more than 'will it convert?' The top things on their minds as they choose sites to target are:
As mentioned, brand campaigns are great for publishers because advertisers are willing to pay a premium for sites they want to show on. This means more revenue for you. One of the best ways to maximize the chances of being included in a media plan is to update your site information in the Ad Planner Publisher Center. Google Ad Planner is the media planning tool advertisers use to select inventory on the content network. Ad Planner allows advertisers to filter sites by audience composition, accepted ad formats and sizes, reach, unique visitors and daily pageviews. Other important steps you can take:
 URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/04/bridging-gap-branding-campaigns.html   |
| [G] Discovering pages “similar to” ones that you like Posted: 27 Apr 2010 06:44 PM PDT Official Google Blog: Discovering pages "similar to" ones that you likeOne of the great things about the web is choice. There's a website out there for nearly everything, and sometimes there are many sites all dedicated to a single topic. But how can you find all the sites that are related to the subject that interests you? This week, we launched a search feature that helps you easily find new websites that are similar to the ones with which you're already familiar.For example, with the recent earthquakes around the world, many of us have been looking for international relief organizations. We knew that Direct Relief International has been actively involved in Haiti, so we started off by searching for [direct relief international]. The first result on the page linked us to the Direct Relief website, where we found many ways to help in Haiti. But what if one wants to support several organizations? If you click the "Similar" link that's on the same line as the "www.directrelief.org/" URL, you'll find other nonprofits that are also involved in relief efforts. We've offered a "Similar" feature on results for a while now as a way to discover new, useful sites, but it hasn't been too visible. Since we've been continuously improving this feature and we think it's really useful, we're now going to start showing these alternative sites more prominently. Starting this week, for queries where similar sites are likely to be helpful, we'll display a list of "Pages similar" at the bottom of the results page. For example, this is the list of sites similar to Direct Relief International:  These sites might provide alternative ways to contribute to Haiti or Chile, like AmeriCares and Operation USA. Or they could provide a different perspective or approach, like giving more broadly through a blood donation at the Red Cross. We hope this feature helps you discover many useful websites that you didn't know about before and get a better understanding of all the choices the web has to offer. Posted by Doantam Phan, Software Engineer  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/discovering-pages-similar-to-ones-that.html   |
| [G] Manufacturing in the Cloud with Google Apps and Smartsheet Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:16 PM PDT Official Google Enterprise Blog: Manufacturing in the Cloud with Google Apps and SmartsheetEditor's Note: Tom Hippensteel is the Vice President for LiquidConcrete, a medium-sized Seattle-based manufacturer of high-performance concrete coatings and flooring systems for industrial and transportation markets. LiquidConcrete relies on Google Apps for email, calendar, and document collaboration, and on Smartsheet, an integrated app from the Google Apps Marketplace, for online project management, general work management, and team collaboration. Smartsheet's integration with Google Apps enables businesses to transform the work they routinely track in spreadsheets into a complete solution for managing business operations. Smartsheet currently offers three versions in the Google Apps Marketplace: online project management, sales pipeline management, and crowdsourcing. Below, Tom explains a bit about LiquidConcrete and the steps they took to get the entire business – from the front office to the warehouse – to operate in the cloud. To learn more about LiquidConcrete's success with Google Apps and Smartsheet, please join us for a webinar on Tuesday, May 11 at 11:00 a.m. PDT. We win business because we have great products, and because we run a lean operation that differentiates on quick turnaround of custom jobs with high levels of customer service. Everything about our operation is focused on efficiency, so we're always looking for software solutions that fit that model. We've had successes and setbacks in getting our operations into the cloud in a way that works for all of our employees. We needed tools that "just work the way that we work." We use Quickbooks for accounting and have had great success with Google Apps for email and calendar, but had trouble finding a tool that combined the ease of use, power and flexibility we needed to manage the rest of our operations. We tried various CRM, ERP and manufacturing solutions but they made us work in a certain way and were difficult to use – people just went back to how they were doing it before. Then we found Smartsheet, a cloud-based project management tool. It was already integrated with Google Apps, and as we began deploying it more broadly, made Google Docs much more useful. Smartsheet and Google Apps are the only tools that have been readily adopted across our whole company, all the way out to the guys on the warehouse floor. Here's how we use them: Project & task management We started tracking various projects and shared task lists in Smartsheet. User adoption was not a problem and the ability to launch Smartsheet from Gmail (the first app we open every morning) might sound simple, but it was a big win. Most of us check into Smartsheet dozens of times per day and we all have it added to the first screen on our iPhones. Order-to-ship process We then realized that Smartsheet and Gmail could help with our order entry and shipping process. It was easy to set up and quickly adopted by reps on the phones with customers as well as people in the factory and at the warehouse. Here's our new streamlined process: 1. New orders are entered in a Smartsheet with the packing slip attached to the order and special instructions added as discussion notes  2. The people at the warehouse are automatically notified by Smartsheet (via Gmail on their iPhone) that a new order needs to be shipped  3. They access Smartsheet from their email, download the packing slip and prep the order 4. Once the order is shipped, they fill out the "tracking number" field for that order in Smartsheet and change the dropdown status from "waiting" to "shipped" 5. The right people receive a Smartsheet notification that a new order has been shipped with the tracking number available  Inventory tracking We also track raw and finished goods inventory in Smartsheet, giving salespeople instant access to the latest information online or via their iPhone. Sales pipeline We have recently started using Smartsheet to manage the sales pipeline. It's been great to have all of our client projects and potential leads tracked in one place with their relevant documents attached to their record. We have instant status updates, forecast amounts and recent call notes at our fingertips and use reminders to make sure follow up happens. Specification document management Since we are able to easily attach Google Docs to our Smartsheets, we decided to go forward with converting hundreds of specification documents into Google Docs. Google Docs gives us collaborative writing and review to get the specifications right, and Smartsheet organizes them conveniently right inside the project workflow. Accessing files directly from our sales, inventory and order processing sheets has been a big productivity win.  Smartsheet and Google Apps are changing the way our company communicates. Our CEO loves it because he gets an update on order status or a key customer in real time. Our reps love it because they can quickly pull up an order while on the phone with a customer and give an instant answer without waiting for someone at the warehouse to call them back. This saves us a tremendous amount of time. The two keys for us are ease of use and the flexibility, and we've yet to come across a type of work that can't be managed in Smartsheet and Google Apps. We also love that it's a fraction of the cost of Salesforce and many of the other solutions we've looked at and we don't have to hire expensive consultants to customize it. Bottom line is that we serve our customers better than bigger competitors because we're nimble and agile, and we feel the same way about Smartsheet and Google Apps. Tom Hippensteel, VP, LiquidConcrete Join Tom and the Smartsheet team for a webinar to learn more about this customer success story. This online discussion will include a question and answer session. Tuesday, May 11, 2010 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT You can watch it at work here: To learn more about Smartsheet's experience selling their app in the Google Apps Marketplace, please read their post on the Google Apps Developer Blog. Posted by Chris Kelly, Google Apps Marketplace team  URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/04/manufacturing-in-cloud-with-google-apps.html   |
| [G] Re-size your images in the new document editor Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:16 PM PDT Official Google Docs Blog: Re-size your images in the new document editorA few weeks ago we introduced a new version of the document editor in Google Docs. While the new editor is in preview, we will continue adding features you miss like drawings, the web clipboard, and table of contents.Today we're adding the ability to re-size images right inside the document. After you insert an image into a document, click on the image to bring up controls that let you scale the image's size in any direction.   Once you're happy with the size, you can click the Fixed option to place the image at a fixed place, relative to your paragraph. When an image is fixed, any text you enter will flow around it. As mentioned previously, if you want to try out the new editor, visit the Editing tab in the Google Docs settings. Check the box next to "New version of Google documents," and all new and uploaded documents will be created in the new editor. For now, old documents will remain in the old editor. Let us know what you think in the forums. Posted by: Michael Thomas, Software Engineer  URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/04/re-size-your-images-in-new-document.html   |
| [G] 4.7 trillion reasons for well-designed copyright Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:16 PM PDT Google Public Policy Blog: 4.7 trillion reasons for well-designed copyrightPosted by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst$4.7 trillion. According to a new study by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, that's the amount of revenue generated in the U.S. by the "fair use economy" -- industries that rely on fair use and other limitations on copyright. They account for 1/6th of U.S. GDP, one out of eight jobs, and $281 billion in exports. The Internet and information technologies are key drivers of the economy, but few realize that copyright law's delicate balance is essential to this growth. Copyright law not only provides artists with certain protections, but also includes important limitations that promote innovation and legitimate re-use of information. For example, without limits on copyright, search engines would not exist. Indexing the Web would be illegal, because that requires creating a copy of websites first. The importance of well-designed copyright goes much further, though. iPods, Tivos, and any other digital media device that is capable of making copies depends on balanced copyright. The Internet's very function is to make and disseminate copies of information -- it couldn't exist without limitations in copyright. Congress laid the foundations for the Web in 1998, when it enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and created a set of "safe harbors" that protected online service providers who respond properly to copyright holders' notifications of alleged infringement. Virtually all Web platforms -- from the smallest website hosting platforms and community bulletin boards to YouTube, Facebook, eBay, Craigslist, and everything in between -- depend on this legal framework. CCIA's study attempts to quantify the economic impact of these and other industries by using a methodology put out by the World Intellectual Property Organization. This methodology has also been used in several studies that analyze the economic contributions of content creators. As more people and more devices access the Internet at even faster speeds, one can expect the "fair use economy" to be increasingly important. In fact, the "fair use economy" has been growing at a faster pace than the overall economy: from 2002 to 2007, it accounted for 23 percent of U.S. real economic growth. Maintaining balance in copyright law will be crucial to this continuing innovation and growth.  URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/04/47-trillion-reasons-for-well-designed.html   |
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