Saturday, June 19, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Google Apps highlights – 6/18/2010

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 09:49 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Google Apps highlights – 6/18/2010

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last couple of weeks we introduced several new features to Google Docs, and made updates to Gmail, Buzz and Blogger. The Google Apps Marketplace expanded, and we brought many new businesses and schools onboard. Here's the scoop:

New Google Docs editors rolling out to everyone
Just a couple months ago we started previewing Google Docs' new editors for documents and spreadsheets, and on Monday we began turning on these faster, more feature-rich editors for everyone. In new documents, you'll see character-by-character real-time collaboration, a ruler for custom margins and tab stops, and the files you import from your computer will be much higher quality. The new version of spreadsheets is faster, and includes a formula editing bar, cell auto-complete and much more. If your university, employer or organization provides you with a Google Docs account, you'll start seeing the new editors by default in the coming weeks, too.



New sharing settings in Google Docs
Just yesterday we launched a streamlined way to share your files more easily in Google Docs. You can set a document, spreadsheet, presentation or drawing to be "Private," available to "Anyone with the link," or "Public on the web," and then customize who has access by inviting specific collaborators. If you're using Google Docs at work or at school, you'll also see options that make it easy to share your files just with other people within your organization. Learn more about the new sharing options on the Google Docs blog.



New features for drawings in Google Docs
We introduced several new features for the drawings editor in Google Docs, too. Now you can center objects on the page, resize your entire canvas, view thumbnails of your drawings in your doc list, search across your drawings by text contained within and quickly view a list of handy editing keyboard shortcuts. We also added the ability for you to share drawings in the Google Docs template gallery, so other people around the world can use your creations.


Blogger Template Designer available to all
Back in March we introduced Blogger Template Designer in Blogger in Draft, and last week we made it available to everyone. You can choose from more than 19 stock templates and further customize your design with hundreds of free, professional background images, custom color schemes and pixel-perfect layout manipulation. Customizing your blog and making it "your own" is now much easier.



Google Maps previews in Gmail and Buzz
Last week, we added a new Labs feature in Gmail that automatically displays a Google Map below messages that contain street addresses—saving you the trouble of copying and pasting of addresses from Gmail to Google Maps. You can enable this feature and many others from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings. Google Buzz also integrates Google Maps now too; when your buzz includes a Google Maps link, you'll automatically see an image of the map that you can choose to include in your post.


Apps Marketplace
For the businesses, schools and organizations using Google Apps, cloud-based functionality continues to expand through the Google Apps Marketplace. There, developers around the world can offer business- and process-enhancing apps that seamlessly integrate with Google Apps. The Marketplace has everything from accounting applications and CRM solutions to marketing automation and project workflow tools. Last week we added five new applications, and this Tuesday we tacked on over a dozen more.

Who's gone Google?
We're thrilled to welcome Brady Corporation, a globally distributed safety and security products company with more than 7,000 employees and 90 globally distributed business locations, to Google Apps. Cost savings were a factor in the decision, but Brady's IT team chose Google Apps to simplify their worldwide IT operations, to streamline the integration of future acquisitions and to offer employees advanced sharing features like real-time collaboration.

In addition to the big guys, tens of thousands more small and medium size businesses have also gone Google since our last update, including Hiatus Spa + Retreat, Goble & Associates and Método DeRose Matosinhos. Welcome!

And school's out for summer, but many colleges and universities are using the quiet months to reinvigorate their student technology. Sonoma State University, Meharry Medical College, Tokyo Keizai University (translated), Santa Fe Community College, Great Basin College and Colby College are all going Google.

Whether your company or school has already gone Google or if you're just starting to contemplate the move, tune into our live webcast next Tuesday, June 22 at 9:00 am PDT to hear more about the improvements and new features we've added to Google Apps during the first half of 2010.

For more details and updates from the Apps team, head on over to the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-apps-highlights-6182010.html

[G] A Father’s Day dedication

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 09:49 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: A Father's Day dedication

This is part of our summer series of new Search Stories. Look for the label Search Stories and subscribe to the series. -Ed.

Our latest Search Story, Father and Daughter, is a tribute to all the wonderful relationships dads have with their daughters.

While working on the story we came across a comment posted to Paul Simon's Father and Daughter video on YouTube. Maybe it's because I'm a father of two little girls, but this almost made me cry. One day, I hope that my daughters will feel compelled to write something like this.

To Cullenlvr961: we don't know if you'll read this or see the video, but we just wanted to put it out there and let you know you really touched us and we're dedicating this Search Story to you and your dad. We'll be proud if our video evokes even a small piece of the emotion your note did.



Posted by Robert Wong, Google Creative Lab
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/fathers-day-dedication.html

[G] Introducing the Google Command Line Tool

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 09:28 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Introducing the Google Command Line Tool


Ever wanted to upload a folder full of photos to Picasa from a command prompt? We did, a lot, last summer. It made us want to say:

$ google picasa create --title "My album" ~/Photos/vacation/*.jpg

So we wrote a program to do that, and a whole lot more.

GoogleCL is a command-line utility that provides access to various Google services. It streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog, adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs.

For example:

$ google blogger post --blog "My blog" --tags "python, googlecl, development" my_post.html
$ google calendar add "Lunch with Jason tomorrow at noon"
$ google docs edit --title "Shopping list" --editor vim

GoogleCL is a pure Python application that uses the Python gdata libraries to make Google Data API calls from the command line.

Read more at the GoogleCL project page, or jump right to the examples. Along with a standard tarball, we have a .deb package ready for download, and hope to have it included in Debian and Ubuntu repositories in time for their next releases. We're adding features all the time, so check in frequently. Or better yet, contribute.

GoogleCL brings cloud computing to your fingertips, literally!

By Jason Holt, Street View Team and Tom Miller, former Street View Intern
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/06/introducing-google-command-line-tool.html

[G] Introducing the Google Display Network

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 12:16 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Introducing the Google Display Network

We're always focused on improving AdSense by bringing more advertisers to your sites, giving you more control over the ads that appear on your sites, and giving you more transparency into how much revenue you're earning. Over the past year, much of our focus has been on attracting more display advertisers and display advertising spend to your sites. We've added new advertisers and introduced options that help these advertisers reach your sites. At the same time, advertisers have continued to run ads on YouTube and our own properties. To make our display media offerings clearer to advertisers and agencies so that we can continue to bring more display spend to your sites, we're creating a new umbrella name for all these properties, the Google Display Network.

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites where advertisers can buy ads through Google, including the over one million AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partners as well as YouTube and Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, and Blogger. As an AdSense publisher you're already part of the Google Display Network. We're not making any changes to how AdSense works, so no action is required on your part. If you use AdSense for search, your AdSense for search ad space won't be part of the Google Display Network. Advertisers will continue to be able to purchase ads on your search results pages in the same way they always have.

While this new name reflects our significant investment to bring more display advertising to your sites, we want to make sure you know that we are still committed to delivering relevant text ads. If you receive text ads on your sites today, rest assured that you will continue to do so. The Google Display Network offers all ad formats - text, image, rich media, and video ads - enabling advertisers to unleash their creativity and engage visitors on your websites in various ways. If you haven't opted into receiving image ads, we encourage you to do so in order to benefit from the investments we've made.

We're working hard to offer the best display advertising solutions, and we look forward to continuing to introduce new features on the Google Display Network that help advertisers reach their goals and that help our AdSense publishers earn more revenue.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/06/introducing-google-display-network.html

[G] Introducing the Google Display Network

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 10:43 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Introducing the Google Display Network

Over the past year, we've been focused on investing in display advertising, and we've seen great momentum from the increasing number of you running display campaigns with Google. We've rolled out new features and targeting options and more precise measurement tools. To provide more places for you to run display ads, we've added more publisher sites (through Google AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange) to our ad network of over one million sites. Meanwhile, many of you have continued to run ads on YouTube and our own properties. In an effort to make our display media offerings clearer to advertisers like you and agencies, we're creating a new umbrella name for all these properties, the Google Display Network. 

The Google Display Network will comprise all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google, including YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners (our display partners include all of our AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange partner sites that allow text and/or display ads). The Google Display Network offers all ad formats -  text, image, rich media, and video ads - enabling you to unleash your creativity and engage potential customers across the Web. 

You can run ads on the Google Display Network the same way you always have. Either place bids through AdWords or make reservations on YouTube and Google Finance with the help of a Google account team.

In the upcoming weeks, you'll see a change in the AdWords interface reflecting this new term, and you'll see Google Display Network where you might have seen Google Content Network mentioned. We've also launched a new website showcasing the sites and benefits available to you on the Google Display Network. 

We're working hard to offer the best display advertising solutions and we look forward to introducing new features on the Google Display Network that help you reach your advertising goals. 

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/06/introducing-google-display-network.html

[G] Searching for football connections

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 09:28 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Searching for football connections

In a previous post, we talked about popular World Cup search queries. It turns out that people who search for one player frequently follow that immediately with a query for another player. In this post, we explore these timely connections between queries. Below, a thick line connects Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi because a lot of people followed a search for one of them with a search for the other. A thin line connects Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona because fewer people searched for them together.

(Image by Amit Patel)

Why are some players connected while others aren't? Here are some of our discoveries:

The world's most popular players are well-connected. The highest paid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) is tightly connected to other popular players including Lionel Messi (Argentina), Fernando Torres (Spain), Wayne Rooney (England) and Didier Drogba (Côte d'Ivoire). These players form a nucleus connecting all the other players.

A country's players are usually connected—but not always. For example, Arjen Robben connects all the Netherlands players. In contrast, Ronaldo connects Brazilian player Kaká to his teammates Robinho, Nilmar and Grafite. France's players Thierry Henry and Yoann Gourcuff are likewise connected through Ronaldo.

Players in the same football club are connected. Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard play together on Chelsea but represent Côte d'Ivoire and England in the World Cup. Similarly, Steven Gerrard (England) and Fernando Torres (Spain) both play for Liverpool.

If you're interested in exploring how players connect to each other, try searching for a player's name using Google Insights for Search and look at the "Top searches" in the bottom left to see if other footballers are listed. For example, Clint Dempsey, the U.S. player who made the match-tying goal against England last Saturday, is connected to Landon Donovan.

Posted by Jeffrey D. Oldham, software engineer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/searching-for-football-connections.html

[G] Show Off Your Dance Moves

Posted: 18 Jun 2010 09:12 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Show Off Your Dance Moves

OK, YouTube. We know you love to dance. You've been shaking your stuff in front of the camera in your bedrooms, bathrooms and on the streets for years now. And all that practice is about to pay off: we're joining forces with Jon M. Chu (and Dr Pepper Cherry) for the first-ever "YouTube Dance Contest: Dance Studio."




If you love dance, you know who Jon Chu is. From the Miley and Mandy ACDC Dance Battle to the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, to directing Step-Up 2 and the upcoming Step-Up 3D, Chu is at the nexus of some of the most energetic, funky dancers you've ever seen. Now he wants to find the next generation of extraordinary talents on YouTube.

Here's the deal: pick the style of dance that suits you -- hip-hop, jazz-funk or b-boys & b-girls. Prove you know how to dance by replicating the choreography in the video; then show off your personality in the freestyle section. If your talent and style stand above the rest, you could win a trip for two to Los Angeles, where you'll spend a day with Jon M. Chu at a jam session with some of the best hip-hop dancers around. You'll also have the opportunity to dance in an Ultra Records music video.

So bring it! Download the selected tracks, learn the moves, take out your camera, and show off your style. We know you have a passion for dance, and we want the world to see it, too.

Sadia Harper, HowTo & Style Manager, recently watched "Dance Studio Choreography: Jazz-Funk."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/8ZN4HUzjYvU/show-off-your-dance-moves.html
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