Friday, June 18, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Imagery Update - Week of June 14th

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 11:51 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Imagery Update - Week of June 14th

The Google Earth and Maps team has just finished pushing out yet another imagery update. Though we didn't blog about it at the time, many of our sharp-eyed fans also noticed that we updated a number of cities back on May 26th. There's plenty to see in these last two updates, from hunting for UFOs in Roswell to soaking up the blues while sauntering down Beale Street in Memphis.

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Nashville, Memphis, Charlotte, Puget Sound Area, Los Angeles, Ft Myers, Roswell NM, Winona MN
The Netherlands: Hoorn, Wijdemermen, Leidschendam, Wassenaar, Olst, Overbetuwe, Sint Hubert, The Hague, Lopik, Houten, Hilversum, Purmerend, Elburg, Enkhizen, Assen, Groningen
South Africa: Soccer City in Johannesburg
New Zealand: Kapiti Coast

Countries receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iceland, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, The Philippines, Russia, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, Tanzania, Uganda, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam

For a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

In addition to those updates, we've also added imagery of the flooding that occurred in Nashville to Google Earth's Historical Imagery database. You can access the new Nashville flood imagery by simply opening Google Earth and clicking on the clock icon in the top toolbar.



The historical imagery time slider will appear just beneath the toolbar. The tick marks on the slider represent images in our database that are available for your current view.


Drag the slider with your mouse to flip between images from different dates. In the examples below, you can see before/after images of the flooding in Nashville.


Posted by Matt Manolides, Senior GIS Strategist
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/06/imagery-update-week-of-june-14th.html

[G] Easier sharing in Google Docs

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 08:39 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Easier sharing in Google Docs

Posted by Vikki Chou, Software Engineer
(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Today, I rarely work on documents in isolation. I share docs with teammates for feedback, help them with their design docs and presentations and regularly make my files available to all of Google.

When using applications to collaborate with others, it's important to have control over your data and how it's shared. With Google Docs, you've always been able to share documents with individuals and groups. Today, we're making it even easier with a new simplified interface that make it even easier to share and see who has access to your files. For an overview of what's new, take a look at this video:



Documents, spreadsheets and presentations can now be identified as "Private," "Anyone with a link" or "Public on the web." As before, all docs start out as private by default.


These new visibility options appear as a link next to the title of every doc. Clicking this link or the "Share" button takes you straight to the new interface where you can see who has access, manage sharing access and invite others to share the doc.

These improvements have started to roll out and should be available to everyone in the next week. If you're interested in learning more about these changes and other new sharing features, check out our post on the Google Docs blog. If you're using Google Apps for your school or business, our post on the Enterprise Blog covers how you can share docs more easily within your organization.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/06/easier-sharing-in-google-docs.html

[G] Birds of a Feather at Open Source Bridge

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 04:21 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Birds of a Feather at Open Source Bridge

The second annual Open Source Bridge, held in Portland, Oregon, was a blast. I presented a talk on Foundations, Non-Profits, and Open Source and I participated in some great sessions as well on topics ranging from How to Give a Great Tech Talk (including the 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Speakers) and a geek choir.

The best part of the conference in my opinion, though, was the Google Summer of Code™ Birds of a Feather ("BoF") session that we held on Thursday night. I and my fellow Googlers, Ellen Ko and Cat Allman, met some past and present students and mentors and also talked with some enthusiastic students who may be applying next year. There was, of course, the traditional post-BoF gathering at Old Town Pizza, as well. We all had some great conversations, made some new friends and are looking forward to the Google Summer of Code BoF at OSCON on Wednesday July 21st.

Hope to see you there!

By Carol Smith, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/06/birds-of-feather-at-open-source-bridge.html

[G] The Future of the VP8 Bitstream

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 01:50 PM PDT

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: The Future of the VP8 Bitstream

Recently we've seen software products such as VLC, ffmpeg, Logitech Vid, Flumotion and Tixeo adopting and using WebM and VP8 (the video codec in WebM) in exciting new ways.

In addition to software developers, many hardware vendors have committed to shipping VP8-accelerated products based on our current bitstream in 2011 . Devices that use hardware acceleration for video are a very small percentage of overall web traffic today, but they are a rapidly growing segment of the market and our project must be mindful of these vendor's needs. Given the longer lead times for changes in chipsets, hardware companies implementing the codec today need to be confident that it will be stable and supported as VP8 content proliferates.

Like every codec, WebM is not immune to change; the difference in our project is that the improvements are publicly visible, and compatibility and implementation issues can be worked through in an open forum.

So, to maintain codec stability while also allowing for quality and performance improvements in VP8, we have added an experimental branch to the VP8 source tree. The WebM community can use this unstable branch to propose changes to VP8 that will produce the best video codec possible, but without the constraints of a frozen bitstream. At some point in the future, when the experimental branch proves significantly better than the stable branch, we will create a new version of the codec.

Teams dedicated to improving WebM are actively investigating and evaluating new techniques, and are committed to do so for the long term. We encourage the WebM community to keep contributing as well. To learn more about the experimental branch and get involved, see our repository layout page.

Jim Bankoski is Codec Engineering Manager at Google.
URL: http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/06/future-of-vp8-bitstream.html

[G] The FCC’s third way approach

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 01:20 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: The FCC's third way approach

Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel

This morning the FCC asked for public comment on its proposed "third way," a light-touch approach that would restore legal clarity after the recent Comcast decision. As we have said before, broadband infrastructure is too important to be left outside of any oversight. Google, along with a dozen other tech companies, have written in support of Chairman Genachowski's proposed "third way" as a straightforward way to protect consumers and the open Internet.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/06/fccs-third-way-approach.html

[G] The Magic of a Game 7

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 01:13 PM PDT

Google News Blog: The Magic of a Game 7

Posted by David Smydra, Google News Online Team

Growing up a diehard Pistons fan in Detroit, Michigan, I was taught two things about the sport of basketball. First, always cheer against the Boston Celtics. Second, always cheer against the Los Angeles Lakers. Fortunately, this was an easy thing for me to do: the Pistons beat both teams en route to its first NBA championship in 1989.

Tonight, however, the Lakers and Celtics complete their twelfth championship match-up in Game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals. This will be just the fifth time that a Lakers-Celtics Finals has reached seven games. And of course I know this by browsing through Google News Archive Search.

I can read about how Celtics coach Red Auerbach was "feeling a bit cocky" in the 1962 NBA Finals. Or about how the Celtics became the first major professional sports team to win eight consecutive championships by dispatching the Lakers in 1966. Or how Wilt Chamberlain wanted to beat Bill Russell's Celtics "in the worst way" in 1969. (He didn't; the Celtics won again.) Or about how Lakers coach Pat Riley wanted to make history in the 1984 NBA Finals by beating the Celtics in Game 7, on the road, in the old Boston Garden. (Yet again, the Lakers lost.)

While the Celtics have history on their side, this year's Lakers can boast a better overall record and are the defending champions, having won the 2009 Finals. Then again, they lost in the 2008 NBA Finals to...the Boston Celtics.

So it should be a great game, and well worth following. For that, be sure to check Google News.

As for my prediction, what can I say? I'm still recovering from the fact that the Pistons had their worst record in sixteen years and didn't even make the playoffs. I guess it's impossible for both teams to lose, huh?
URL: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/magic-of-game-7.html

[G] Sharing in Google Docs just got easier

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 11:28 AM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Sharing in Google Docs just got easier

The ability to share my Google Docs is crucial to my productivity. My teammates and I often add comments to docs, collaboratively organize our feature-planning spreadsheet, and send links of interesting company presentations to each other. Like anyone, I want to make sure that I can share these materials with my colleagues easily and efficiently. This is why I'm happy to announce some improvements that make sharing your Docs easier while giving you even more control:

  • Improved visibility options indicating how private or shareable a doc is: Google docs can now be identified as: private; anyone with a link; or public on the web.

    • Private: Docs start out as private. When you first create a doc, you are the only person with access to it. From there, you can give access to other people.
    • Anyone with the link: If you set your doc to "Anyone with the link," it's like an unlisted phone number. In the same way that anyone who knows an unlisted phone number can call it, anyone who knows the web address or URL of that doc can view it.
    • Public on the web allows anyone the ability to find and access that particular doc on the web. For example, you could create a flyer for a concert, save it as a public doc, post a link to it on your blog. Public docs are automatically indexed by search engines like Google, so they may appear in search results as well.

  • Access viewable at a glance: Visibility options for your docs now appear next to every doc title and in the docs list. You can easily see the full list of editors and viewers by clicking on the visibility option next to the doc's title or on the Share button

  • A cleaner, simpler interface: We've removed the three tab interface and replaced it with one dialog that lets you see who has access, manage access and invite others.

  • Resettable doc URL: For a doc set to anyone with a link, you can reset the doc's URL at anytime, which helps you better control who has access to your doc.

  • Bulk changes in the docs list: You can now modify the sharing settings of multiple docs at a time by selecting multiple docs and selecting Share > Sharing settings.
To learn more about how these new visibility options work and for an overview of sharing in Google Docs, check out the videos below:





These changes are rolling out now and should be available to everyone in the next week. These improvements have really made a difference in my Google Docs experience. I can share much more quickly and always tell at a glance who has access to my docs. I hope you find them helpful too. Let us know what you think in the forums.

Posted by: Vikki Chou, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/06/sharing-in-google-docs-just-got-easier.html

[G] Easier sharing in Google Docs

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 11:21 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Easier sharing in Google Docs

Today, I rarely work on documents in isolation. I share docs with teammates for feedback, help them with their design docs and presentations and regularly make my files available to all of Google.

When using applications to collaborate with others, it's important to have control over your data and how it's shared. With Google Docs, you've always been able to share documents with individuals and groups. Today, we're making it even easier with a new simplified interface that make it even easier to share and see who has access to your files. For an overview of what's new, take a look at this video:



Documents, spreadsheets and presentations can now be identified as "Private," "Anyone with a link" or "Public on the web." As before, all docs start out as private by default.


These new visibility options appear as a link next to the title of every doc. Clicking this link or the "Share" button takes you straight to the new interface where you can see who has access, manage sharing access and invite others to share the doc.

These improvements have started to roll out and should be available to everyone in the next week. If you're interested in learning more about these changes and other new sharing features, check out our post on the Google Docs blog. If you're using Google Apps for your school or business, our post on the Enterprise Blog covers how you can share docs more easily within your organization.

Posted by Vikki Chou, Software Engineer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/easier-sharing-in-google-docs.html

[G] New sharing settings in Google Docs

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 11:17 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: New sharing settings in Google Docs

Google Docs is designed for collaboration from the ground up. You've always been able to share documents with individuals and groups, and today we're making it even easier to share and control access to your files across your organization.




The new features include the ability to:

  • Easily apply sharing settings to a doc – Google Docs can now be identified as:

    • Private: Private docs are accessible only to people or groups you've explicitly invited to the file. Anyone trying to access the file will have to sign in to verify that they have access to the file.

    • People at your organization with the link: Docs set to this option are accessible to anyone inside the domain who knows the URL of the file. If you also select the 'Allow anyone to edit' option, anyone with the URL will be able to view and edit your file. This option allows you to easily copy and paste the file's link into chat, email and calendar invites.

    • People at your organization can find and access: Docs set to this option will be indexed by Google Docs search and may be opened by anyone in your organization.

    • If your Google Apps administrator allows sharing outside of your organization, you will also be able to make a file Public on the web or available to Anyone with the link (no sign in required). Administrators can also control the default visibility setting from the control panel.

  • Quickly see who has access to your docs – The visibility options for your docs now appear next to every file in your Google Docs list and next to the title within any doc. You can see the full list of editors and viewers by clicking on the visibility information next to the doc title or on the 'Share' button.

  • Reset a file's URL with one click – For files that can be accessed by anyone with the link, you can reset the file's URL at anytime, which helps you better control who has access to your files.
Gavin Haslam, IT manager at Rentokil Initial, says, "The new sharing settings make it easier to share information across our organization, and will save us huge amounts of time when rolled out across our 35,000 users on Google Apps."

We hope you enjoy these new features, which are rolling out over the coming week. Stay tuned for more updates soon! To learn more about the new Docs sharing settings and many more recent launches on Google Apps, please join us for a live webinar on Tuesday, June 22nd at 9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT.

Posted by Shimrit Ben-Yair, Product Manager
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-sharing-settings-in-google-docs.html

[G] Click-to-call for mobile content and apps now fully launched

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 10:30 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Click-to-call for mobile content and apps now fully launched

Last month at Google I/O, we previewed a new mobile advertising format, click-to-call for apps and mobile website content. We wanted to follow-up and let you know that this feature is now fully live and available to everyone who advertises with AdWords.  Expanding our popular click-to-call functionality on mobile search ads to now include mobile content and apps helps increase the reach of your ads across the mobile web and provides mobile publishers and app developers with even more ways to make money and grow their businesses. 


With click-to-call, potential customers can connect with your business via a phone call when they use their favorite mobile apps or when they browse the web from their mobile devices.  Ads will appear as animated banner or text ads with a call button on mobile devices with full Internet browsers.  To use this new format, you need to enable phone extensions and run your ads on both the Google Content Network and mobile devices with full Internet browsers.







Click-to-call for mobile content and apps is one of many ad formats that you can use to help achieve your mobile marketing goals. It's a great option for you and also helps drive great results for mobile publishers and app developers.


Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Senior Product Manager, Google Mobile Ads
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/06/click-to-call-for-mobile-content-and.html

[G] Tips & Tricks: Table of Contents in Google documents

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 08:45 AM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Tips & Tricks: Table of Contents in Google documents

Like in a book, the table of contents in a document is an important element that keeps readers and authors organized. It allows you to create a list of links at the beginning of your document that point to different sections of that document. This can be useful for drafting term papers, design documents or restaurant menus. Once you've created your table of contents, you can easily update its links as you edit each section of your document.

To make a table of contents, you need to mark each section of your document with a heading. To do this, highlight the appropriate text, and then select a heading size from the style menu in the toolbar.


To revert a heading to normal text, simply select the Normal option from the same drop down menu; doing so will also remove that link in the table of contents after you update the table of contents.

After you've marked each section with a heading, your document could look like this:


You can then add a table of contents from the Insert menu.


After you've added a table of contents, it will automatically create a link to each heading in your document.


As you update your document, you can easily update the table of contents by clicking the Update now button in the top right of the table of contents.

Posted by: John Day Richter, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/06/tips-tricks-table-of-contents-in-google.html

[G] Not yet a year old, Google Commerce Search turns “2.0”

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 08:37 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Not yet a year old, Google Commerce Search turns "2.0"

As we just announced on the Official Google Blog, today we're launching Google Commerce Search 2.0 for online retailers in the United States and United Kingdom. With the new release, we're offering both greater control and customization for retailers and a better experience for online shoppers.

The e-commerce industry is changing rapidly, and we're responding quickly to meet retailer's changing needs. Just seven months after our initial launch we're adding a host of features to help retailers provide the best possible shopping experience on their sites.


  • Enhanced merchant customization: With the full merchandising dashboard, Google Commerce Search 2.0 gives e-merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering customization—and no custom coding means that marketers and merchandisers can do all of this themselves.
  • Simple promotion set-up and management: New intuitive retailer controls like time-based promotions, custom filtering of results, and simple ranking rules mean retailers can "set it and forget it" using the new ranking wizards.
  • Better browsing and navigation: No matter how advanced the search function, some shoppers will always visit your site looking to browse and discover new products. People can now shop by browsing your site as well as searching directly for products.
  • Evolved shopper experience: One of the most popular features on Google.com but rarely found on retail websites, "as-you-type suggestions" help sites become more user-friendly and fast. Now, with query autocompletion retailers can offer common queries to shoppers in real time, as they type, without any custom coding.
  • Search quality improvements: Google Commerce Search continues to build on the speed and end-user innovation featured in the first release. Because it's hosted in the Google cloud, search results are returned to shoppers in less than a second. Spelling and stemming dictionaries and new custom synonyms mean that shopping on a retail site can be as easy and accurate as searching on Google.com.

Each of these improvements can make an impact on the usability and success of your online store, but collectively they have real ROI potential. Because more and more consumers are turning to the web to both research and complete purchases, eliminating frustration and improving site usability can lead to major advances in both online and offline channels.

For example, Google Commerce Search customer Discount Office Items is seeing immediate ROI. "When we saw how fast we could recoup our spending and start making more money due to better, faster search, the decision to implement Google Commerce Search was clear. Since deployment, visitor volumes and revenue have jumped 6.4%. Search is now one of the strongest elements of our site – all with less load on our servers and less time spent on maintenance for the IT staff," says Tim Horton, Co-Founder and CEO.

Finally, we're also making the benefits of Google Commerce Search 2.0 available to a wider range of retailers by introducing a pricing model that starts at $25k/year. For details on how Google Commerce Search can help your business, contact us.

To learn more, sign up for our upcoming webinar hosted by Chain Store Age (details below). You'll hear from Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager, in conversation with Google Commerce Search customers about how these new features can help bring your e-commerce site to the next level.

Google Commerce Search: Delivering Search Innovations to Retailers and Shoppers
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
1:00 p.m. EDT / 10:00 a.m. PDT / 5:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Carl Evankovich, Software Engineer
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/06/not-yet-year-old-google-commerce-search.html

[G] Summer is here, and so is Google Commerce Search 2.0

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 08:07 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Summer is here, and so is Google Commerce Search 2.0

School is out for the summer, and that means it's time for some swimsuit shopping, travel purchases and—before we know it—buying back-to-school supplies.

To help retail sites get ready for the summer shopping season, today we're launching Google Commerce Search 2.0 for retailers in the United States and United Kingdom. The new version of Google Commerce Search provides a better experience online for shoppers and greater control—with immediate ROI—for retailers.



Google Commerce Search, first launched a little over six months ago, is an enterprise-grade website search solution hosted in Google's cloud and designed specifically for online retailers. This second release includes a number of improvements:
  • More merchant customization: Today we're introducing a full merchandising dashboard, which gives merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering. Marketers and product merchandisers can now do all of this themselves—no custom code necessary. New intuitive retailer controls like time-based promotions, navigation bar with filters, and simple product ranking rules mean seasonal optimizations can be done on the fly.
  • Better shopper experience: With query autocompletion, retailers can offer common queries to shoppers in real time, as they type, without any custom coding. GCS is also faster and more relevant than before thanks to search quality improvements. Because it's hosted in the Google cloud, search results are returned to shoppers in less than a second. We've also added spelling and stemming dictionaries and new custom synonym options to make shopping on a retail site as easy and accurate as searching on Google.com.
  • Improved browsing and navigation: Many shoppers depend on the search bar on retail sites when they're looking to make a purchase, but some people will always prefer to navigate through different categories and discover new products. Now, Google Commerce Search allows visitors to shop by browsing around your site as well as searching directly for products.
Finally, we're making the benefits of Google Commerce Search 2.0 available to a wider range of retailers by introducing a pricing model that starts at $25,000/year. Get in touch with us to learn more.

As more consumers turn to online channels to purchase and research products, it's important for your site to keep up with them using the best technology out there. So with summer just around the corner, make sure your sunscreen's on, your beach blanket is ready and your e-commerce site is optimized with Google Commerce Search.

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/summer-is-here-and-so-is-google.html
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