Friday, May 21, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Customizing Maps API Premier – your way

Posted: 20 May 2010 06:04 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Customizing Maps API Premier – your way

Customers often tell us how much their users love Google Maps. They love the friendly blue of the oceans, the easy-to-read labels of cities, and the solid yellow of the roads. But maybe you're a rebel – someone who wants the roads to look YOUR way. Or perhaps your corporate branding clashes with the standard version of cities and streets. You'd love to change the colors on the map, or adjust the details your customers see.

If that's you, we have good news. With today's launch of Maps API Premier Styled Maps, you'll be able to do all of that and more. An easy-to-customize hierarchical structure lets you easily turn on and off the transit stations, change the colors of the maps to match your corporate identity, work with details, and more. Enjoy!

Click here to learn more about using Maps API Premier.

Daniel Chu, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Maps/Earth
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/05/customizing-maps-api-premier-your-way.html

[G] Updates from Geo at I/O

Posted: 20 May 2010 12:16 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Updates from Geo at I/O

Greetings from Google I/O! The Google Geo API team and 16 of our partners are here to enjoy two fantastic days of sessions, demos and good geo fun! We've come a long way since our first Geo Developer Day in 2006 and continue to see a large portion of attendees interested in the Geo track here at I/O. With the first day under our belts, here are the highlights that cover notable launches, announcements and the other sights from the conference.

Google Maps API v3 Graduation - We're excited to announce that v3 of our Google Maps API has graduated from Google Code Labs! What this means for developers is that v3 is the new default API which we will continue to enhance and add features to. We're also making v3 the default for enterprise geo developers. V3 was built from the ground up with performance and mobile mapping implementations in mind so we're really excited to be moving forward with this new version.

Directions Web Service - We've listened to our users and addressed the number one most requested feature from our Maps API Issue Tracker. The Directions web service joins the existing Geocoding and Elevation web services and allows Google Maps applications to obtain Driving, Bicycling, and Walking directions through an XML/JSON REST interface.

Places Web Service, Nearby Places Widget preview - We previewed our latest addition to the Maps API web services family. The Places web service will allow a developer to offer search for nearby places in a native mobile application through an XML/JSON REST interface. During the session today we were joined on stage by Booyah who are using this new web service within their MyTown mobile gaming app.

As I mentioned we have 16 partners participating in what we're calling the "Developer Sandbox". The sandbox is the chance for attendees to talk 1:1 with developers that have used Google's Geo APIs to create awesome implementations. This year we have the Maps, Maps Data, Earth, and SketchUp APIs represented, in addition to 3 Google Earth Enterprise deployments.

Here is a sample of what we saw yesterday...



Stay tuned for more updates throughout the rest of the week and in the meantime be sure to follow @GoogleMapsAPI on Twitter and our Geo Developers Blog for updates as they happen!

Posted by Mike Pegg, Product Marketing Manager, Geo Developer team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/05/updates-from-geo-at-io.html

[G] Category filtering available in 13 languages

Posted: 20 May 2010 10:35 AM PDT

Inside AdSense: Category filtering available in 13 languages

If you're an international publisher who's been waiting for category filtering, we're happy to let you know that we're continuing to expand the feature's availability worldwide. It's currently available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Arabic. In addition, we're beginning to roll this out in beta for Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian -- although we're not able to add additional publishers to the limited beta at this time, we're working to make category filtering more widely available in these languages soon.

With category filtering, you can prevent ads from up to 11 specific categories from appearing on your pages. Ads in these categories will be filtered if they're in any of the supported languages, regardless of how they've been targeted to your pages. To start using category filtering, sign in to your AdSense account and visit your Ad Review Center, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab. Once you click 'change', you'll be able to view the full list of categories you can filter. In addition, you can see the percentage of revenue and ad impressions you've been receiving from each category in the last 30 days; this information can help you understand the impact that applying filters might have.

To learn more about category filtering, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/category-filtering-available-in-13.html

[G] Announcing Google TV: TV meets web. Web meets TV.

Posted: 20 May 2010 10:35 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Announcing Google TV: TV meets web. Web meets TV.

If there's one entertainment device that people know and love, it's the television. In fact, 4 billion people across the world watch TV and the average American spends five hours per day in front of one*. Recently, however, an increasing amount of our entertainment experience is coming from our phones and computers. One reason is that these devices have something that the TV lacks: the web. With the web, finding and accessing interesting content is fast and often as easy as a search. But the web still lacks many of the great features and the high-quality viewing experience that the TV offers.

So that got us thinking...what if we helped people experience the best of TV and the best of the web in one seamless experience? Imagine turning on the TV and getting all the channels and shows you normally watch and all of the websites you browse all day — including your favorite video, music and photo sites. We're excited to announce that we've done just that.

Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more.

Google TV uses search to give you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. For example, already know the channel or program you want to watch? Just type in the name and you're there. Want to check out that funny YouTube video on your 48" flat screen? It's just a quick search away. If you know what you want to watch, but you're not sure where to find it, just type in what you're looking for and Google TV will help you find it on the web or on one of your many TV channels. If you'd rather browse than search, you can use your standard program guide, your DVR or the Google TV home screen, which provides quick access to all of your favorite entertainment so you're always within reach of the content you love most.

Because Google TV is built on open platforms like Android and Google Chrome, these features are just a fraction of what Google TV can do. In our announcement today at Google I/O, we challenged web developers to start coming up with the next great web and Android apps designed specifically for the TV experience. Developers can start optimizing their websites for Google TV today. Soon after launch, we'll release the Google TV SDK and web APIs for TV so that developers can build even richer applications and distribute them through Android Market. We're looking forward to seeing all of the ways developers will use this new platform.

We're working together with Sony and Logitech to put Google TV inside of televisions, Blu-ray players and companion boxes. These devices will go on sale this fall, and will be available at Best Buy stores nationwide. You can sign up here to get updates on Google TV availability.

This is an incredibly exciting time — for TV watchers, for developers and for the entire TV ecosystem. By giving people the power to experience what they love on TV and on the web on a single screen, Google TV turns the living room into a new platform for innovation. We're excited about what's coming. We hope you are too.



*Nielsen, Three Screen Report, Fourth Quarter 2009

Posted by Salahuddin Choudhary, Google TV Product Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-google-tv-tv-meets-web-web.html

[G] Android Froyo, with some sprinkles

Posted: 20 May 2010 10:35 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Android Froyo, with some sprinkles

Since launching the first Android-powered phone with T-Mobile in October 2008, we have worked with operators, handset manufacturers and developers to make Android one of the most useful, innovative mobile platforms available.

We've been thrilled by the adoption of the platform over the past year and a half. Every day, our partners sell more than 100,000 new Android-based handsets, and there are now more than 180,000 active Android developers who have contributed more than 50,000 apps now available in Android Market—up 12,000 since last month alone!

Today at I/O, our annual developer conference, we announced Android 2.2. Codenamed Froyo (for frozen yogurt), this seventh update to the Android platform brings some great new functionality to users (things like making your handset a portable hotspot and support for Adobe Flash within the browser), along with new tools for developers. Read more about the specifics of Froyo on our Android Developer Blog.

Posted by Andy Rubin, VP, Engineering
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/android-froyo-with-some-sprinkles.html

[G] Go Mobile! Series: Introducing click-to-call ads for mobile content and apps

Posted: 20 May 2010 10:35 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Go Mobile! Series: Introducing click-to-call ads for mobile content and apps

Today at Google I/O, we announced that we'll begin extending click-to-call advertising to mobile content and apps on the Google Content Network in the coming weeks. Click-to-call ads for mobile content and apps work with phone extensions and appear as animated  banner text ads with a call button on mobile devices with full Internet browsers. Now, whether your potential customers are reading the latest news, checking sports scores, or playing a downloaded game on their phones, you can reach them with relevant ads that let them easily click, call and connect with your business.










 Benefits:

As those of you who already use click-to-call search ads may know, providing a calling option can help you drive more qualified leads and conversions as callers are often more ready to make a purchase. Adding a phone number to your ads can also give your business more credibility, resulting in higher click-through rates and increases in both calls and visits to your website. What's more, enabling click-to-call ads for mobile content and apps is easy, even if you're new to mobile, click-to-call advertising, or the Google Content Network.

Getting started:

To get started with click-to-call for mobile apps and content, just follow these three quick steps:

1. Ensure that your campaigns are opted in to serve on the Content Network, either by selecting 'All available sites' or specifically checking 'Content Network' within your Campaign Settings.






 2. Set up phone extensions and add your business phone number.






At this time, click-to-call ads for mobile content and apps only support phone extensions and not location extensions.

3. Ensure that you've chosen to show your ads on mobile devices with full Internet browsers.





Improving your performance:

Once you're all set up, we encourage you to track your results and experiment. Our robust reporting lets you see the number of calls you receive by campaign, ad group and keyword so that you can easily monitor and improve your campaigns. Keep in mind that you pay the same price for a call as for a click, so it's a good idea to try creating new mobile campaigns for content to figure out what works best.

More innovative mobile ad formats on the way:
At Google I/O today, we also shared a preview of our new expandable ad units that display videos or images on content and apps on mobile devices with full Internet browsers. These new ad units offer you more real estate and let potential customers interact with the ad without being redirected from the content or app they were viewing. When people click to play a video, our ad unit plays on their device's native video player or YouTube app. Once they close the video, they're returned to exactly where they left off on their mobile site or app.  You may begin to see these new formats running on our network as part of our beta for US-based advertisers, and we're excited to make them more widely available soon.

We recognize that you have many options when planning your mobile advertising strategies and we're excited to be a part of this rapidly evolving and competitive mobile ads ecosystem. We'll continue to innovate with new mobile ad formats that we hope will help you better reach your audience in more relevant and engaging ways, driving the mobile ads space forward for everyone.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/05/go-mobile-series-introducing-click-to.html

[G] Google FeedFetcher subscriber counts erratic

Posted: 20 May 2010 06:24 AM PDT

The FeedBurner Status Blog: Google FeedFetcher subscriber counts erratic

Issue: Subscriber counts may appear lower than normal in publisher reports because of missing Google FeedFetcher reports.  All subscribers are still receiving the feed, this only effects the reporting number in the publisher dashboard and the awareness API.  There are no issues with feed delivery for text feeds or podcasts.

Status: Currently, we rely on the Google FeedFetcher user-agent to report to us the number of subscribers for a feed.  This number is calculated from a mix of Google properties including Google Reader and iGoogle.  We will be changing our method of calculating subscribers to use internal Google APIs between FeedBurner and the processes that run Google FeedFetcher so this number is more accurate in the future.  This post will be updated when that is running in production.
URL: http://feedburnerstatus.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-feedfetcher-subscriber-counts.html
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