Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Mapping the Gulf oil spill in Google Earth

Posted: 04 May 2010 10:59 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Mapping the Gulf oil spill in Google Earth

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Two weeks ago, there was a fatal explosion on the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig sank shortly afterwards, and since then the well has been leaking crude oil into the Gulf, spreading an oil slick towards the U.S. Gulf Coast. This spill is pouring as many as 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of oil a day into the Gulf and poses a serious threat to coastal industries, sensitive habitats and wildlife, including numerous species along the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Many government agencies and other organizations have made data publicly available, which we've compiled on our crisis response site dedicated to the spill.

Last week we made imagery from NASA's MODIS available as an overlay for Google Earth, which currently shows the extent of the oil spill through April 29, and we'll continue to add more imagery as it becomes available. We've also made radar images from ESA's ENVISATavailable through this KML file. Below, you can see the progression of the spill over time.


To view this imagery and other datasets in Google Earth, turn on the "Places of Interest" layer in the Layers panel on the left-hand side of Google Earth, then navigate to the Gulf of Mexico and click on the red icon.


In addition to this imagery, our site contains maps of the locations of the oil, fishing closures and affected areas, the ability to upload videos directly to YouTube, and a link to a site where people in the area can contribute their observations. We hope these resources are useful to those affected by the spill, those responding to it and those learning about its devastating effects on the people and environment of the Gulf Coast.

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Google Crisis Response team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/05/mapping-gulf-oil-spill-in-google-earth.html

[G] Mapping the Gulf oil spill in Google Earth

Posted: 04 May 2010 09:13 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Mapping the Gulf oil spill in Google Earth

Two weeks ago, there was a fatal explosion on the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig sank shortly afterwards, and since then the well has been leaking crude oil into the Gulf, spreading an oil slick towards the U.S. Gulf Coast. This spill is pouring as many as 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of oil a day into the Gulf and poses a serious threat to coastal industries, sensitive habitats and wildlife, including numerous species along the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Many government agencies and other organizations have made data publicly available, which we've compiled on our crisis response site dedicated to the spill.

Last week we made imagery from NASA's MODIS available as an overlay for Google Earth, which currently shows the extent of the oil spill through April 29, and we'll continue to add more imagery as it becomes available. We've also made radar images from ESA's ENVISAT available through this KML file. Below, you can see the progression of the spill over time.


To view this imagery and other datasets in Google Earth, turn on the "Places of Interest" layer in the Layers panel on the left-hand side of Google Earth, then navigate to the Gulf of Mexico and click on the red icon.


In addition to this imagery, our site contains maps of the locations of the oil, fishing closures and affected areas, the ability to upload videos directly to YouTube, and a link to a site where people in the area can contribute their observations. We hope these resources are useful to those affected by the spill, those responding to it and those learning about its devastating effects on the people and environment of the Gulf Coast.

Posted by Christiaan Adams, Google Crisis Response team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/mapping-gulf-oil-spill-in-google-earth.html

[G] New AdWords reports in Google Analytics

Posted: 04 May 2010 06:14 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: New AdWords reports in Google Analytics

AdWords provides several ways for you to track the performance of your ads– most of which focus on clicks. Sometimes, however, understanding what happens after people click on your ads is just as important for measuring your AdWords performance. Today at the eMetrics conference in San Jose, we announced a new set of AdWords reports in Google Analytics to help you do exactly that.

The new AdWords reports in Google Analytics give you more insight into what happens after the click. For example, suppose you wanted to see if potential customers searching for your exact matched keywords were more engaged with your site's content than those who were searching on broader terms. Using the new reports, you can view all the visits from clicks on exact matched ads for any keyword, ad group, or campaign in your account. You can also see how many pages that group visited and the average time spent on site. If you use the funnel reports in Google Analytics, you can even see the specific step where visitors tend to drop off when trying to make a purchase.

Want to see other ways you can use the new reports? Check out this short video:


If you're ready to use the new reports, you just need to have a linked Google Analytics account with destination URL auto-tagging turned on. This is easy to set up; you can start by clicking on the Reporting tab, and then selecting Google Analytics in your AdWords account.

We're rolling these new AdWords reports out gradually over the next several weeks, so you may not see them right away. You'll know when the new reports have been added to your account when you see the AdWords section in your Traffic Sources reports in Google Analytics.



We hope these reports make it easier for you to measure the success of your AdWords campaigns!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-adwords-reports-in-google-analytics.html

[G] What people are telling the FTC about Google-AdMob

Posted: 04 May 2010 03:14 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: What people are telling the FTC about Google-AdMob

Posted by Paul Feng, Group Product Manager

We've been talking with the Federal Trade Commission for the past six months about our planned acquisition of mobile advertising start-up AdMob, which we believe will bring new innovation and competition to mobile advertising. We've told the FTC about how new and highly competitive the mobile advertising space is, and the FTC has been talking to others in the industry about their views as well.

Some of those folks are sharing what they told the FTC. The developers of a mobile app called Wertago said they told the FTC that:
The internet and mobile technology sectors right now are perhaps the most (or among the most) competitive and fast-moving industries EVER TO EXIST. The web and mobile spaces have remarkably low barriers to entry. [...] And we think Google's AdMob acquisition will have little if any effect on the competitiveness of the mobile advertising market space.
Wertago also talked about both the low entry barriers and non-existing switching costs in mobile advertising:
The crucial point here is 1) the marginal advertiser and the marginal developer, not the average or typical advertiser and developer, are who drive the competition, and there will always be a fight for them, especially because of the "long-tail" where lots of niche opportunities exist, and 2) the cost of switching ad networks in a mobile app is close to zero, and the cost of developing an ad network is not terribly high and easily bankrolled.
Industry analyst Greg Sterling also met with the FTC, and said that he told them:
I didn't believe competition would be affected adversely and that advertising prices were not likely to go up. Indeed, mobile CPM prices have been falling in mobile. In short I said, yes Google becomes more powerful and effective but the deal doesn't stifle competition. The market is dynamic and highly competitive, I told the FTC.
And:
I'm no laissez-faire capitalist but I think the mobile ad market is both very young and highly dynamic. It's evolving quickly and definitely very competitive. If the objective of anti-trust law is to protect competition in the market then it is simply unnecessary for the FTC to intervene at this stage by blocking the AdMob deal.
Other analysts and observers have been weighing in too:
With Google and AdMob facing strong competition every day from businesses like Apple, JumpTap, Millennial Media, Microsoft, inMobi, Greystripe, Mobclix and many more, we agree that there's vibrant competition in this space.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-people-are-telling-ftc-about.html

[G] The Growing Google Analytics Ecosystem

Posted: 04 May 2010 03:14 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: The Growing Google Analytics Ecosystem

Google Analytics is not simply a product but also a growing ecosystem of developers, tools, users, and partners. Today at the eMetrics Summit in San Jose, Brett Crosby made several announcements that highlight this ecosystem.

All Google Analytics customers have access to a worldwide network of Google Certified Partners (formerly known as Google Analytics Authorized Consultants). And now the ecosystem is growing further with developers who are creating a variety of applications on the Google Analytics platform. Today, we're announcing the Google Analytics App Gallery. Among the current list of 32 apps, you'll find tools like Excellent Analytics, which lets you work with your Analytics data in an Excel spreadsheet, and the Analyticator for Wordpress, which automatically implements Google Analytics across your entire WordPress site. There are many more applications in the gallery, so go take a look. And if you're a developer, you can learn how to publish apps in the App Gallery here.

Google AdWords is another important part of the ecosystem. Website owners drive traffic using AdWords, and use Google Analytics to understand the performance of that traffic. Over the coming weeks, we'll be making a new set of AdWords reports available in Google Analytics. These reports expand significantly on the AdWords reports you currently see in your account. For example, you can break out your AdWords traffic by actual search query, match type, distribution network, and many other AdWords attributes. We've added reports for day parting, placements, and destination URLs. For a 3-minute overview of what you can accomplish with the new reports, check out this video.




Also, developers can now access AdWords information via the Google Analytics APIs. This makes it much easier to combine your AdWords and Google Analytics data for both analysis and automation. We're very excited to see third party applications that use this capability to offer new functionality to advertisers. For details, check out this article, which includes a code sample and more, on Google Code.

Also part of the AdWords/Analytics ecosystem, AdWords Search Funnels was announced one month ago, and today is available in all AdWords accounts. We're also making two short tips videos available (tip 1 and tip 2) that illustrate just a couple of the ways you can use Search Funnels.

Finally, supporting the ecosystem of all websites using Google Analytics, the new faster page tag comes out of beta. The asynchronous tracking snippet will soon be the default snippet when you set up a new profile. This new page tag will speed up your site and every site that uses Google Analytics across the web. If you want to upgrade from your existing tag (which we highly recommend), you can learn how to do that here.

We'll follow up with deep dive posts on each of these topics next week. Thanks for being part of the ecosystem.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/05/growing-google-analytics-ecosystem.html

[G] Additional publisher resources: Using Webmaster Tools

Posted: 04 May 2010 03:14 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Additional publisher resources: Using Webmaster Tools

In the second part of our 'Additional Publisher Resources' video series, Deborah Chang will explain how website owners can use Google's Webmaster Tools to ensure that their site is properly indexed in Google's search engine. Webmaster Tools is a powerful tool where publishers can gather information on what sites on the web link to them, under what keywords they're site is likely to be found, and how they can improve their sites' load times.



Posted by Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo - Inside AdSense team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/additional-publisher-resources-using.html

[G] “Springing” into a new shopping season with Google

Posted: 04 May 2010 12:07 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: "Springing" into a new shopping season with Google

It's that time of year again. Brick-and-mortar stores are clearing out the sweaters and snow-mobiles and revamping window displays with sandals and scuba gear. We know that online retailers are painstakingly updating their virtual window space as well and (perhaps even more importantly) are thinking hard about how new technologies can bring a fresh edge to their website – and the bottom line.

To kick off the season, Google hosted "search summits" for more than 200 retailers in our London and New York offices last month. These summits allowed retailers to share their top priorities and concerns from a technology and business standpoint, and provided an opportunity for Google Product Managers, Engineers, Partner Managers, and customers to trade best practices in the industry.

We want to share the learnings with people who weren't able to attend, so we're extending an invitation to a live webcast on Friday, May 14 presented by Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager for Google Commerce Search. We'll cover all the basics of what makes good search on e-commerce sites, how improving search speed and usability can help improve customer satisfaction and increase sales, and how top online retailers have made the switch.

Join us to learn more – and bring your questions!

Friday, May 14, 2010
10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT / GMT 06:00

Posted by Anna Bishop, Enterprise Search Marketing team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/05/springing-into-new-shopping-season-with.html

[G] Pedal to the Chrome metal: Our fastest beta to date for Windows, Mac and Linux

Posted: 04 May 2010 12:07 PM PDT

Google Chrome Blog: Pedal to the Chrome metal: Our fastest beta to date for Windows, Mac and Linux

Here in Aarhus, Denmark -- home of the V8 project, Chrome's JavaScript engine -- we've been tuning, testing, and polishing the V8 engine to give Chrome a hefty boost in speed.

Today's new beta release incorporates one of Chrome's most significant speed and performance increases to date, with 30% and 35% improvement on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over the previous beta channel release. In fact, looking back in time, Chrome's performance has improved by as much as 213% and 305% on these two benchmarks since our very first beta.





Today's beta release also includes a handful of new features. Not too long ago, we introduced bookmark sync into the browser, which allows you to keep your bookmarks synchronized on multiple computers using your Google Account. Beta users can now synchronize not only bookmarks, but also browser preferences including themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, and language. By popular demand especially from avid Chrome extensions users, you can now install and use Chrome extensions while in incognito mode.

Under the hood, today's release contains the goodness of some new HTML5 features, namely Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop capabilities. Additionally, this is the first Chrome beta that features initial integration of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in with Chrome, so that you can browse a rich, dynamic web with added security and stability -- you'll automatically receive security and feature updates for Flash Player with Chrome's auto-update mechanism.

To try out all these new features, download Chrome on the Windows beta channel, or download the Mac or Linux betas.

Lastly, with this beta's crazy speed improvements, we designed a series of equally unconventional speed tests for the browser. While the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks have their strengths, we felt that more could be done to measure speed on the browser. Here's an early preview of how we designed, built, and implemented these speed tests. Stay tuned for the full results; we'll post them here tomorrow.



Watching web pages load at 2700 frames per second reveals unexpected artifacts. If you're interested in the technical details, read on in the video's description drop-down in YouTube.


Posted by Mads Ager, Software Engineer
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/pedal-to-chrome-metal-our-fastest-beta.html

[G] Don't Copy This Code

Posted: 04 May 2010 12:07 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Don't Copy This Code

Normally, when we release source code we're hoping that other people will build on it and improve it. Today's release of Jarlsberg, a small yet full-featured microblogging application, is a code release of a different sort entirely.

Jarlsberg has one feature that most applications usually do their best to avoid: lots of security bugs.

In fact, Jarlsberg was written specifically to teach about security. More specifically, it is a tool to show how to exploit web applications and, in turn, protect against those exploits when developing software. Jarlsberg is the software component of the "Web Application Exploits and Defenses" codelab being released today on Google Labs in cooperation with Google Code University. The codelab walks participants through a number of common web application vulnerability types and demonstrates how an attacker could exploit such vulnerabilities.

So while we don't want you to copy the code in Jarlsberg, we do hope you'll check it out and learn from it.

By Bruce Leban, Software Engineering Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/dont-copy-this-code.html

[G] Do Know Evil: web application vulnerabilities

Posted: 04 May 2010 12:07 PM PDT

Google Online Security Blog: Do Know Evil: web application vulnerabilities

Posted by Bruce Leban, Software Engineer

We want Google employees to have a firm understanding of the threats our services face, as well as how to help protect against those threats. We work toward these goals in a variety of ways, including security training for new engineers, technical presentations about security, and other types of documentation. We also use codelabs — interactive programming tutorials that walk participants through specific programming tasks.

One codelab in particular teaches developers about common types of web application vulnerabilities. In the spirit of the thinking that "it takes a hacker to catch a hacker," the codelab also demonstrates how an attacker could exploit such vulnerabilities.

We're releasing this codelab, entitled "Web Application Exploits and Defenses," today in coordination with Google Code University and Google Labs to help software developers better recognize, fix, and avoid similar flaws in their own applications. The codelab is built around Jarlsberg, a small yet full-featured microblogging application designed to contain lots of security bugs. The vulnerabilities covered by the lab include cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (XSRF) and cross-site script inclusion (XSSI), as well as client-state manipulation, path traversal and AJAX and configuration vulnerabilities. It also shows how simple bugs can lead to information disclosure, denial-of-service and remote code execution.

The maxim, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" is only true if the eyeballs know what to look for. To that end, the security bugs in Jarlsberg are real bugs — just like those in many other applications. The Jarlsberg source code is published under a Creative Commons license and is available for use in whitebox hacking exercises or in computer science classes covering security, software engineering or general software development.

To get started, visit http://jarlsberg.appspot.com. An instructor's guide for using the codelab is now available on Google Code University.
URL: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/05/do-know-evil-web-application.html

[G] Diane von Furstenberg’s Favorite Trend for May: Helping Women Thrive

Posted: 04 May 2010 08:32 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Diane von Furstenberg's Favorite Trend for May: Helping Women Thrive

Diane von Furstenberg is a legendary fashion designer, and she's also a big believer in celebrating women. That's why, with Mother's Day around the corner, we're thrilled that she's serving as the Video Volunteers guest curator for this month and asking you to create videos for organizations that support women.



Every day on YouTube, we see women standing up for what they believe in and challenging inequality, from this Saudi Arabian woman driving a car as an act of protest to Queen Rania of Jordan combating stereotypes of the Middle East. Now we want you to make your voice heard. Create a video about your favorite organization that supports women -- whether it promotes equal pay for equal work, helps women run for elected office, or is trying to outlaw female genital mutilation -- and upload it to the Video Volunteers channel.



The top three videos will appear on the YouTube homepage at the end of the month, next to Diane von Furstenberg's video for Vital Voices. Hear more from her about how you can get involved:







The deadline to submit your video is May 26 so check out www.youtube.com/videovolunteers to find an inspirational organization you can help. After all, service never goes out of style.



Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, recently watched "The Girl Effect."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/lOjU2piMeek/diane-von-furstenbergs-favorite-trend.html
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