Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Street View brings a taste of South Africa to football fans everywhere

Posted: 08 Jun 2010 03:36 AM PDT

Google LatLong: Street View brings a taste of South Africa to football fans everywhere


It's not every day that you find an elephant in Street View, or for that matter get to visit most of the South African football (or you may know it better as soccer) stadiums in one day. But from today you can do both with our bumper set of brand new Street View images and 3D models of host nation South Africa.

With just days to go before the tournament kicks off, football fans can start soaking up the atmosphere in seven of South Africa's soccer stadiums, including Soccer City in Johannesburg, Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane and Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. Thanks to some serious pedal-power by our trike riders in South Africa we've made available these pitch-level pictures from inside and outside of these stadiums. And we've created complete 3D models of all 10 stadiums, as well as many host cities which can be viewed in Google Earth -- check them out on the SketchUp Blog.

To make it easier for people to find all these great places South African Tourism have provided information on the most important sights. Visit maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica to start virtually exploring South Africa. Here are some amazing shots from on the field to get you excited:

Moses Mabdhiba Stadium:

View Larger Map

Soccer City Stadium:

View Larger Map

You can view more photos from inside the stadiums in our Street View gallery. But for those who can't tell their keeper from their striker we've got something altogether different. There's dramatic coastal scenery in the Cape; the urban buzz of Soweto, home to Nelson Mandela; or the world renowned Kruger National Park to explore at your leisure.

In fact, you'll be greeted by a special host when you start exploring the imagery of Kruger:

View Larger Map

And this coastal view lets you see the sea, as well as Table Mountain in the distance:

View Larger Map

Whatever colours you'll be wearing when the whistle blows and whichever side you'll be cheering for in the dreaded penalty shoot out, you can now get a sense for how it might feel for the players to step out onto the turf to take part in the most famous football/soccer tournament in the world!

Posted by Julie Taylor, Google South Africa
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/06/street-view-brings-taste-of-south.html

[G] Follow your football team in South Africa, wherever you are

Posted: 08 Jun 2010 03:35 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Follow your football team in South Africa, wherever you are

Whether you'll be in South Africa in person this month, or simply cheering your team on from back home, our new tools for football fans can help you soak up the atmosphere and follow your team wherever you are in the world.

You can check out the brand new Street View imagery for South Africa which includes amazing pictures from seven of South Africa's new football stadiums, including Soccer City in Johannesburg, Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane and Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. Each one can be explored from pitch-level in 360 degrees, both inside and out—see a preview on the Lat Long blog. These detailed images were collected over the last few months, using the Street View Trike and some serious pedal power!



You can also zoom around the host cities and stadiums in 3D. Simply turn on the 3D buildings layer in Google Earth or switch to Earth View in Google Maps, and zoom in to the chosen destination. All 10 of the football stadiums have been modelled in amazing 3D detail, as well as the South African cities of Rustenburg, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

To make it easier for people to find all these great places, South African Tourism have provided information on the most important sights. Visit maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica to start virtually exploring South Africa.

If you're staying back home but want to find a great place to watch the match with your friends, take a look on Google Maps and look for the special football icon—that tells you that the location is one of tens of thousands of businesses who have added themselves to Google Places as a football viewing location.

Our first global Doodle 4 Google competition is well underway, with tens of thousands of children in 17 countries around the world sending us their amazing designs for a doodle around the theme of "I Love Football." The winning doodle will be displayed internationally on the Google homepage for a day on July 11, 2010.

To make it easy for you to customize your photos to show the world which team you're cheering for, we've launched a set of football-themed photo effects in Picnik. With just a few clicks, you can add digital face paint, soccer-themed stickers and team flag overlays, customized for each of the 32 qualifying teams.

Finally, it's not just the professional players who've been put through their paces ahead of kick-off. In the run-up to the games, fans from around the the world have joined the legendary Dutch midfielder Edgar Davids on his Street Soccer Tour for Charity from Amsterdam, London and Paris and to eight cities in Senegal, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Edgar and his team of Street Soccer Legends have been competing against local players as they make their journey to South Africa and you can watch them on YouTube.

May the best team win!

Posted by Yonca Brunini, Marketing Director, Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (SEEMEA)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/follow-your-football-team-in-south.html

[G] Searching for Descartes, solving a centuries-old international mystery

Posted: 08 Jun 2010 01:14 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Searching for Descartes, solving a centuries-old international mystery

When I was a history major at Haverford College, I spent countless hours with old documents at Magill Library. It was one of the best parts of the Haverford experience—studying and researching with a great collection of musty works. Little did I or any other student know at the time that as we worked, we sat a few feet away from an international mystery involving none other than René Descartes.

It reads like a historical thriller. In 1641 the French philosopher penned a letter about one of his forthcoming works, a correspondence that found a home in the collections of the Institut de France. Nearly two centuries later, the Italian mathematician Count Guglielmo Libri thieved thousands of letters and documents from the Institut before fleeing to England, where he sold his stolen goods to collectors and booksellers—at least one of which found its way into the hands of Charles Roberts, a document collector and Haverford alum (Class of 1864).

More than 100 years ago, Roberts's widow bequeathed her late husband's collection to his alma mater, and these works have been the basis for ongoing scholarship ever since. For years, few people knew of the existence—or origins—of the Descartes letter held in Haverford's archives until a few months ago when a Google search led a Dutch scholar to uncover this missing treasure.

After Haverford's president Steve Emerson learned of the "long-lost and extremely valuable" document's discovery, he contacted his counterpart at the Institut de France, and today, after nearly 170 years, this mystery reaches its conclusion. Haverford has returned the missing letter to its original home, and a representative from Google France will be joining the formal repatriation ceremony at the Institut in Paris.

Excerpt of the letter written by Rene Descartes in 1641.
SOURCE: Haverford College

Search isn't a solved problem, but it certainly helps solve problems—whether you're looking for something as simple as the library hours of a small liberal arts school outside Philadelphia or trying to uncover a long-lost letter in the archives. Makes me wonder what mystery might be uncovered next.

Posted by John Saroff, Strategic Partnership Development Manager, Google TV Ads
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/searching-for-descartes-solving.html

[G] WWDC 2010 Journal, Day 0

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 09:29 PM PDT

Official Google Mac Blog: WWDC 2010 Journal, Day 0

By Mike Morton, Google Mac Team

As regular readers know, every year, Google engineer Mike Morton becomes intrepid reporter Mike Morton as he ventures to Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Except for the contents of Steve Jobs's keynote address, Apple doesn't allow attendees to disclose the technical bits of the conference, so he writes about other important observations and details, such as flights, food, lines, and plans (successful and otherwise). Here's the first part of Mike's 2010 journal.

Summer is here, and that means ice cream, hay fever, swimming in the pond, and — for people who develop Apple software — the annual gathering of the faithful called the Worldwide Developer Conference, known as WWDC to everyone.

I planned a short hop from my New Hampshire home down to Boston's Logan airport, then to San Francisco just in time to get a few hours of sleep and head to the conference on Monday. Developers want to be in line early for the Steve Jobs keynote, because… well, actually, I don't know why. We just always do. Some want to sit up front, but good camerawork and big screens throughout the room mean you can see from anywhere.

To my amazement, one die-hard Apple developer emailed me today that he plans to skip the keynote, and instead go eat pancakes and watch the live-blogging. (I won't name him, because I worry he'll lose friends over this.) He's just tired of waiting in long lines. Personally, I enjoy the line. It's a chance to catch up with people, to see and be seen.

As I write this from my transcontinental flight, it's about 11 PM Pacific Time, and we're going to land around 1:15 AM. I think that's 4:15 AM on my biological clock, which is the time I normally wake up. We'll see how much sleep I get when I check in to the hotel.

One big discussion point this year: some Mac engineers have grumbled that Apple's schedule of sessions seems tilted toward iPhone and iPad — and away from Mac OS X. Me, I see at least two sessions I want to attend in nearly every time slot, so I'm happy, no matter what the overall emphasis.

Time to see if I can catch some sleep before we land.
URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2010/06/wwdc-2010-journal-day-0.html

[G] The New AdWords Reports in Google Analytics

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 04:17 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: The New AdWords Reports in Google Analytics

Last month, we made a number of announcements around the Google Analytics ecosystem. Along with launching the Google Analytics Application Gallery and making the new, faster page tag the default, we released a major update of the AdWords reports in Google Analytics. As of today, all Analytics users now have access to the new AdWords reports. With this update, you have access to three new reports, 10 new dimensions, and more AdWords metrics.

Three Brand New Reports
Three new reports give you the ability to dig into all aspects of your AdWords campaign performance.

Day Parts Report
Curious to know the best day of the week for your ads or the best hours of the day for your campaigns? See your ad performance broken down by day of the week and by hour of the day using the Day Parts report. The Day Parts report can help you find the most profitable times of day for your ads. Then pair it with the Ad Scheduling feature in AdWords to automatically adjust your bid to capture the right traffic at the right time.

Destination URLs Report
What are your best landing pages? The Destination URLs report lets you dive into the performance of each of your Destination URLs. You can break out performance at the Campaign, Ad Group, or Keyword level. Apply a secondary dimension like Keywords and see your top Destination URL/Keyword pairs.

Placements Report
The Placement Performance Report in AdWords shows you the performance of your ads on the Google Content Network. With the Placements Report in Google Analytics, you can get rich post-click performance data about your campaigns and find the best sites to target your ads. Or, either exclude the sites that don't send you engaged traffic or identify the top performers to create a targeted display campaign.

10 New AdWords Dimensions
Dive deep into your AdWords performance using 10 new AdWords dimensions. For example, try Match Type to see performance between Broad, Phrase, and Exact Match. Love the search query report in AdWords? Segment by Matched Search Query to see exact user queries that triggered your ads and post-click performance.

Clicks Tab in Campaigns and Keywords reports
The Clicks tab brings your AdWords performance metrics into Google Analytics. From the Clicks tab you can get an overview of AdWords performance at the Campaign, Ad Group, or Keyword level. Combined with Goals or eCommerce tracking you can see a complete picture of your AdWords performance.

How to Get Started with the New AdWords Reports
To start using the new AdWords reports in Google Analytics you need a linked AdWords account. You also need to make sure that Destination URL auto-tagging is turned on. Start from your AdWords account, select the Reporting tab, then Google Analytics. To access the reports from Google Analytics, select Traffic Sources, then AdWords.

You can see the new reports in action in this video:



Hope you enjoy the new reports! Let us know what you think in the comments.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-adwords-reports-in-google-analytics.html

[G] Google Maps previews in Gmail and Google Buzz

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 04:13 PM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: Google Maps previews in Gmail and Google Buzz

Posted by Mark Knichel, Software Engineer

I often receive emails containing addresses in them &mdash where to meet for dinner, the location of my friend's new apartment, etc. To find out where these places actually are, I have to copy the address, open up Google Maps, and paste it in. Today, we're making it easier to see maps of all the addresses you receive in Gmail and Google Buzz.

Enable "Google Maps previews in mail" from the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, and any time you receive an address or a Google Maps link in an email, a preview will appear containing an interactive Google Map of that location. Any Google Maps URL will work, but we currently only extract US addresses (we're working on making addresses around the world work).


Additionally, when you paste a Google Maps link into the post box in Google Buzz, it'll automatically fetch an image preview of that location that you can associate with your post.


Please let us know if you have any feedback.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-maps-previews-in-gmail-and.html

[G] YouTube answers your questions about partnerships (and next topic announced)

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 04:06 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: YouTube answers your questions about partnerships (and next topic announced)

YouTube is a big place, but we're trying to make it feel a little bit smaller. That's why in April, we announced a new initiative in which you submit questions on a broad topic and then several employees who work in that area answer the most popular questions on video. It's an opportunity to ask us anything you like relating to the subject at hand and to get to know many of the faces working at YouTube.


Our first topic was partnerships, and there were 2,017 votes on 96 questions from 223 people. After reviewing your questions, rehearsing, applying a little more makeup than usual, and rehearsing some more (because we're not naturals at this like you are!), two members of our partnerships team -- Shenaz Zack, Product Manager, and Camille Hearst, Product Marketing Manager -- made this video response:



















We hope the video helps to demystify any burning questions you may have had about being a YouTube partner.



Next up, head over to our YouTube channel where we're using the nifty new Moderator tool to collect questions on the next topic: "YouTube Worldwide." This is a good opportunity to ask about what goes into localizing the site, how to find cool content in your language, translation features, and lots more. We'll be taking questions until Sunday, June 13, and then we'll be back as soon as possible afterward with two new staffers in the hot seat.


Mia Quagliarello, Product Marketing Manager, Community, recently watched "Mike Tyson's Tea Time."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/IoFp_ShDv3U/youtube-answers-your-questions-about.html

[G] Search engines make the best picture frames

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 11:18 AM PDT

Google Photos Blog: Search engines make the best picture frames

Posted by Jon Emerson, Software Engineer

Photos can be displayed in all sorts of places; on a wall, on your desk or in a Picasa Web Album. We recently announced yet another place — the Google homepage, where you can use your favorite photos or images as a background. If you store your photos in Picasa Web Albums, you can choose a photo right from your existing albums. There is also the option to upload a photo from your computer or choose one from a public gallery of featured photos hosted by Picasa.


When you visit google.com, you'll see a link in the lower left-hand corner inviting you to "Change background image." For those of you outside of the U.S. we will begin rolling this out to you within the next few days. If you don't see the link yet, please check back soon.

Once you've customized your homepage with a fun personal photo we'd love to see what it looks like. Tweet a picture of your page with the hashtag #myGooglepage to share it with us.

Have fun customizing your new photo frame!
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2010/06/search-engines-make-best-picture-frames.html

[G] Tips & Tricks: Embedding Google Docs in Google Sites

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 10:21 AM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Tips & Tricks: Embedding Google Docs in Google Sites

Embedding a Google document, spreadsheet, presentation, or form in a Google site can help you easily publish and share information in one central location. Embedding is different from simply copying and pasting information into a site because if you make a change to any of your embedded documents while using Google Docs, the changes will be reflected on your site.

Embedding a form
Let's say I'm planning a wedding and I'd like to create a Google site as a centralized place for my guests to RSVP and gather all of the information they need. First, I need to create my site. I visit sites.google.com and click Create site.


After choosing one of the many wedding site templates, I'm ready to begin personalizing it. I'd like to include the RSVP form on my wedding site because even though I sent paper invitations, embedding a form in my site makes collecting RSVPs easier and more streamlined. When guests visit the site to RSVP, they can also find out more about the bride and groom, the registry, and event details, among other things.

To collect RSVPs, I'll want to create a form in Google Docs. Once I do this, I go back to my site and create a new page on my wedding site where I want to embed the RSVP form.

I can add a title or any additional text to the page I've just created. Next, I go to the Insert menu and select Spreadsheet form. I'd like to select the RSVP form I've just created to embed on this page of my site.

My guests can now visit my site to RSVP to the wedding and simultaneously get all of the information they need about the ceremony and reception.

Embedding other types of Google Docs
You can embed any Google document, spreadsheet or presentation in a Google site using the Insert menu. On my wedding site, for example, I can embed a Google document outlining travel and accommodation for wedding guests or a fun slide presentation about how the bride and groom met. Embedding Google Docs in a Google site helps you easily deliver information to your friends, family, colleagues or students in a centralized and organized way.

Posted by: Julia Harter, Consumer Operations Associate
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/06/tips-tricks-embedding-google-docs-in.html

[G] Brady Corp. Goes Google—the best-in-class in the cloud

Posted: 07 Jun 2010 07:43 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Brady Corp. Goes Google—the best-in-class in the cloud

Editor's note: We're excited to announce that Brady Corporation, a $1.2 billion international manufacturer and marketer of complete solutions that identify and protect premises, products, and people, has gone Google with 7,800 employees across 90-plus locations.

Today we welcome a trio of guest bloggers from Brady's IT team – Steve Hasbrook, Luke Leonhard, and Matt Vandenbush – to share some of their experiences from managing Brady's "Big Bang" migration to Google Apps. All three are cloud veterans with years of experience in supporting users in the manufacturing industry, and they'll be discussing Brady's deployment in more detail and answering your questions on a live webcast later this week.

Brady Corporation's IT team will speak at a live webcast on Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. EDT, 11:00 a.m. PDT, or 6:00 p.m. GMT. Register today.

We went live on Google Apps a few months ago, and since then, we've seen a series of new features in Google Apps. That kind of innovation would have taken years on our previous platform. Google Apps is nimble and agile, and it fits with our need to support a dispersed, global manufacturing operation.

When we told our power users we were going to Google Apps, the reaction from most of them was "That's great!" The majority are using web-based applications at home already – and they expect the same in the office environment. The transition to cloud-based applications is a bit tougher for people weaned on client software, but people who've grown up in the web era expect the latest, greatest, most agile tools.

Think about it: nobody calls Amazon if the home page changes. Shopping carts are different from site to site, but people intuitively know how to use them. It's the whole trend of consumer technologies influencing corporate technologies, and for Brady Corp., it's a great thing for many reasons:
  • Cloud computing makes it easy to support 90+ locations through a central IT organization
  • We can integrate acquisitions with ease, including a recent one with 2,500 user accounts
  • We get collaboration functions like chat and document sharing
  • Our costs are lower, yet we have more advanced tools
We went with a "Big Bang" rollout for our 6,000+ users, and it's been a great success. We chose Google Apps for cost savings over other solutions, but more importantly because we believe it's the strongest platform to take advantage of future advancements on the Internet.

We would be happy to tell you why we chose Google Apps over other cloud solutions, and why the cloud makes so much sense for a local IT staff supporting regional operations. We also can share tips for a successful Big Bang rollout. Please join us for our upcoming webinar:

Choosing Google Apps as the Best-in-Class Cloud Solution
Thursday, June 10, 2010
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft® Exchange and Lotus Notes®/Domino.


URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/06/brady-corp-goes-googlethe-best-in-class.html
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