Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] YouTube launches in South Africa

Posted: 17 May 2010 06:45 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: YouTube launches in South Africa

Today a new territory is added to the list of YouTube locations: South Africa. Excitingly, this is the first domain launch on the African continent. For a closer look, head to the bottom of the page, click on the 'Location' tab, and select South Africa from the menu:










In practice, this means that South Africa-based channels like Freshlyground and Khayav should enjoy more profile locally, and at the same time should also find it easier to identify other local users. From now on when users in South Africa visit the localized site they will see, for example, the Most Popular and Most Viewed videos in South Africa along with local content that closely matches their interests.

In conjunction with launching our South African domain, we are teaming up with local broadcasters to ensure that YouTube users, wherever they may be, have access to some of the best locally produced content from leading local broadcasters. These include the South African Broadcasting Corporation and e.tv, who have uploaded news content including content about all the soccer fever building up in the country!

In addition, South African journalism schools, such as Rhodes Journalism School and Wits Journalism School, are also using YouTube to showcase aspiring journalists' talent and highlight news items that are frequently under-reported:









All in all, we are pleased to be officially putting down roots in South Africa and look forward to working with South African users, partners and advertisers to make the YouTube community even bigger, even more diverse and even brighter than it is today.

Divon Lan, Product Manager, Africa, recently watched "YouTube Turns Five!" 


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/yq35JtGeU1Y/youtube-launches-in-south-africa.html

[G] Five more languages on translate.google.com

Posted: 17 May 2010 05:27 PM PDT

Official Google Research Blog: Five more languages on translate.google.com

[Cross-posted with the Google Translate Blog and the Official Google Blog]

Posted by Ashish Venugopal, Research Scientist

At Google, we are always trying to make information more accessible, whether by adding auto-captioning on YouTube and virtual keyboards to search or by providing free translation of text, websites and documents with Google Translate. In 2009, we announced the addition of our first "alpha" language, Persian, on Google Translate. Today, we are excited to add five more alpha languages: Azerbaijani, Armenian, Basque, Urdu and Georgian — bringing the total number of languages on Google Translate to 57.

These languages are available while still in alpha status. You can expect translations to be less fluent than for our other languages, but they should still help you understand the multilingual web. We are working hard to "graduate" these new language out of alpha status, just as we did some time ago with Persian. You can help us improve translation quality as well. If you notice an incorrect translation, we invite you click "Contribute a better translation". If you are a translator, then you can contribute translation memories with the Translator Toolkit. This helps us build better machine translation systems especially for languages that are not well represented on the web.

Collectively, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Georgian and Urdu have roughly 100 million speakers. We hope that these speakers can now more easily access the entire multilingual web in their own language. Try translating these and other languages at translate.google.com. Here are some phrases from the new alpha languages to get you started:

Baietz lehenengoan
میں خوش قسمت محسوس کر رہا ہوں
բախտաւոր եմ զգում
Mən şanslıyam
იღბალს მივენდობი
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/05/five-more-languages-on.html

[G] Reminder: Upcoming webinar on display advertising opportunities

Posted: 17 May 2010 03:45 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Reminder: Upcoming webinar on display advertising opportunities

We wanted to remind you that this week we're holding a webinar about our recent innovations in display advertising and how marketers are incorporating it into their strategies.

Join us on May 20, 2010 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST.

Specifically, we'll discuss:
  • Google's vision and recent innovations in display advertising
  • How to best take advantage of our offerings, from planning to improving your campaigns
  • How advertisers are incorporating the Google Content Network into their marketing strategy
Hope to see you there!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/05/reminder-upcoming-webinar-on-display.html

[G] Updates To Our Homepage

Posted: 17 May 2010 03:45 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: Updates To Our Homepage

Take a look at the Google Analytics homepage and you'll notice some small design and content changes that will improve your experience. Besides some under the hood improvements such as HTML5 and CSS2 validation, here are a few of the changes:
  • Added dropdowns to the top navigation across the whole site so users can find their way to the content they want better. Try hovering over Product to see a dropdown.
  • Updated the features scroller in the middle of the page with a more intuitive UI and cleaner look.
  • Updated the News & Hightlights section, which now includes a link to a recent Forrester Research article, "Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics".
  • Added a new box to the bottom right that allows the user to flip through our Strategic Solutions, including the recently announced Application Gallery.
Thanks to our fearless webmaster Mike Rigoli for spearheading these. Let us know what you think in comments below, but only if you love it. Joke :-) Enjoy.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/05/updates-to-our-homepage.html

[G] Google drawings enhancements

Posted: 17 May 2010 01:51 PM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Google drawings enhancements

Since we launched the new drawings editor, we've received lots of helpful feedback from you. Based on your comments, we've made some usability improvements to Google Docs drawings over the last week.
  • Selecting shapes
    • Press Alt (Option on Mac) and drag your mouse to select only those objects completely within the selection region (this is useful for selecting objects in a busy part of the diagram)

    • Holding Shift while you drag now adds shapes to your current selection instead of creating a new selection


  • Polyline improvements
    • When you finish drawing a polyline by clicking on the end of the last segment, you remain in polyline mode so you can immediately draw another one. Hit Escape to return to selection mode.
    • While drawing a polyline, press escape on your keyboard to cancel the last segment and return to selection mode
    • Draw very small segments in a polyline more easily
  • Word art
    • Add word art directly from the insert menu

Let us know if you have more feedback and ideas for improvements.

Posted by: Chris Nokleberg, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-drawings-enhancements.html

[G] The 2010 class of Google Policy Fellows

Posted: 17 May 2010 01:51 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: The 2010 class of Google Policy Fellows

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director of Public Policy

We began the Google Policy Fellowship 3 years ago to match students with advocacy organizations working on policy issues fundamental to the future of the Internet and its users. We've been impressed by incredible pool of talent the program has attracted. More than 500 students applied for this summer's 17 available slots. The 2010 class of Google Policy Fellows come from 14 schools in 4 countries and are studying everything from law to library science to mathematics and biology.

For 10 weeks this summer, the Fellows will join organizations in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Toronto, and Ottawa to analyze policy and technology, meet with lawmakers, and build coalitions from partners and grassroots supporters on topics including national security, free expression, privacy, and much more.

Here's a complete list of the 2010 Google Policy Fellows and where they'll be this summer:
We've seen great work from the past Fellows in 2008 and 2009, and expect even more this year as the the 2010 class of Fellows sets out to contribute important technology policy issues of our time.

A big congratulations to this year's fellows and a sincere thank you to everyone who applied. Stay tuned for updates on the 2010 Fellows, and check back here or at google.com/policyfellowship for more information on future programs.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/05/2010-class-of-google-policy-fellows.html

[G] Join us for an AdSense for search webinar this week

Posted: 17 May 2010 01:51 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Join us for an AdSense for search webinar this week

We're hosting a live webinar to share our tops tips on optimizing AdSense for search on Wednesday 19th May at 5pm GMT.

You can register for this webinar through our Help Center.

In this webinar we'll cover:
  • Implementing and customizing AdSense for search
  • Optimizing your search results using AdSense for search performance
  • Improving your search results using keywords
  • Custom Search Engine advanced features
You can already start asking questions related to this topic on our Google Moderator page and we'll do our best to address them during the webinar.

Posted by Posted by Caroline Halpin - AdSense Optimization team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/join-us-for-adsense-for-search-webinar.html

[G] The Ashpocalypse

Posted: 17 May 2010 11:40 AM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: The Ashpocalypse

Melange is the open source web app that runs Google Summer of Code™ each year. It is being developed and maintained by a volunteer team of student developers in several different countries. I try to meet with the Melange developers about every quarter in person to get hands-on time with the tool, suggest improvements, and give them time to code together and work out problems in person. It is usually relatively simple to bring us all together for a productive week, and get everyone home again. But then, usually we don't have an erupting volcano to schedule around.

My trip to the Netherlands started out simply enough: I flew to Amsterdam, and took a train to Delft. On Sunday evening, I met up with the Melange developers for dinner. We started work bright and early on Monday morning, and spent the next few days working on Google Summer of Code and the Melange tool.

Unfortunately, while we were at TU Delft on Thursday, reports of airport closures started to reach us. By Friday morning, we were assured by the respective airlines that none of our developers would be flying out of Amsterdam that evening.

We took the train back to Amsterdam and spent the night in a hotel. On Saturday morning we had breakfast and went over to Amsterdam Centraal in the hopes of getting train tickets back to our international destinations. We got there around 11am to find that the wait was already three hours long and the line snaked out the door and through the station:



We waited. And waited. And waited.



The moment our number was called, we all ran over to the counter. Mario took a picture. That's our number at the top (C037):



Sverre and Lennard, based in the Netherlands, were both lucky and able to travel back home by local train and bike. But eventually Mario, Madhusudan, and Daniel got their respective train tickets home as well.

After all the developers were safely en route, I started my own trip. I ended up opting for a ferry ride from mainland Europe to England, in the hopes of getting a flight home from there. My wait in Calais was just as bad as the wait in Amsterdam Centraal. Another 3-hour line, in Calais:



By the time I got to London, most airports had reopened. My flight home was uneventful. I promptly slept for 12 hours once happily ensconced in my own bed.

By Carol Smith, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/05/ashpocalypse.html

[G] Understanding Chargebacks: A New Google E-Commerce YouTube Channel Video

Posted: 17 May 2010 11:40 AM PDT

Official Google Checkout Blog: Understanding Chargebacks: A New Google E-Commerce YouTube Channel Video

Ever wonder what a chargeback is? Or how you can contest a chargeback received on a Google Checkout order? You can learn more about chargebacks in the newest Google E-Commerce YouTube Channel video.

Take a moment to watch the video, learn more about the chargeback resolution process, and leave your feedback. For even more detailed information on chargebacks, please visit the Chargeback and dispute resolution section of the Merchant Help Center.

And don't forget to subscribe to the Google E-Commerce YouTube Channel to get all the latest updates.

Thanks for watching!

Posted by Chad Liffmann, Google Checkout Operations
URL: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2010/05/understanding-chargebacks-new-google-e.html

[G] Google Mobile now on Twitter and Facebook

Posted: 17 May 2010 08:56 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Google Mobile now on Twitter and Facebook

Want to know what's on our minds or what we're up to more regularly? In addition to our blog and our YouTube channel, Google Mobile is now on Twitter and Facebook.

On Twitter, @GoogleMobile will share announcements, cool uses and product tips for Google products on mobile platforms, behind-the-scenes musings from Googlers and general goings-on in the mobile world. Simply go to twitter.com/googlemobile, sign in (or sign up), and choose "follow". You can also see our most recent Tweets on the right hand side of the Google Mobile Blog and follow us from there.


Google Mobile also now has a Fan Page on Facebook. On this page, you have the freedom to contribute just about anything you want - submit photos and videos, post suggestions and comments on our wall, and strike up discussions with other fans of Google Mobile.


To become a fan, just go to www.facebook.com/GoogleMobile and click "Like".

We look forward to hearing from you.

Posted by Julie Zhou, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-mobile-now-on-twitter-and.html
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