Friday, July 2, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Join an AdWords focus group in Mountain View, California

Posted: 02 Jul 2010 12:52 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Join an AdWords focus group in Mountain View, California

"Focus on the user and all else will follow." That's always been Google's philosophy. It's also why we'd like to talk to you about how we can best serve you as an advertiser.

On Wednesday, July 14th, 2010, we'll be hosting advertisers at our headquarters in Mountain View, CA to hear about your experiences with AdWords support– including email, chat, and phone.

If you'll be in the San Francisco Bay Area on July 14th and have thoughts on how we can improve our support services, we'd love to have you join one of our focus groups. No visit to Google could be complete without lunch and a tour, so we'll make sure you get both when you come visit.

If you're interested and available, please fill out the form here

Even if you can't make it to Mountain View on July 14th, we'd still like to hear your feedback. If you provide us with your contact details we may reach out to get your feedback by phone or email.

Hope to see you in Mountain View soon!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/07/join-adwords-focus-group-in-mountain.html

[G] Get Related Content for Your Blog with the Zemanta Gadget

Posted: 02 Jul 2010 12:27 AM PDT

Blogger Buzz: Get Related Content for Your Blog with the Zemanta Gadget

Guest post by Boštjan 'Bos' Špetič, Zemanta CEO

About a year ago this blog featured Zemanta, a tool that helps you get more out of blogging. Previously, Blogger users could install a Zemanta browser plugin to recommend content while you blog, enabling you to:
  • Read news to learn more about the topic
  • Link articles to improve the value of your post
  • Use pictures to make your post richer
Today we are pleased to announce that we've teamed up with Blogger to make it easier to use Zemanta on Blogger. To use Zemanta, just follow these three easy steps:

1. Click this link: Add Zemanta gadget. It will take you to a page to add the Zemanta gadget to your blog:



2. Select one of your blogs in the drop-down box, and click Add Zemanta. This will add the gadget to the post editor for your selected blog, and take you to a new post page.

3. You will see Zemanta is already turned on, waiting for you to start using it.




That's it! You are now all set up to boost your blogging. Simply write a couple of sentences and the recommendations will show up automatically. You can preview them and then simply click on an item to add it to the post.

To learn more about how best to use Zemanta, check out this video, browse through our tutorials, read about our selection as one of ReadWriteWeb's "Top 10 Semantic Web products" last year, or just get started and play around with it. We would love to hear your feedback or suggestions.

Happy blogging!
URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/07/get-related-content-for-your-blog-with.html

[G] Grandmother's guide to video chat

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 09:23 PM PDT

Google Talkabout: Grandmother's guide to video chat

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

Often when I tell people that I work on Google video chat, I hear stories about how they've used it to give a video tour of a new home to friends, introduce a baby to relatives, keep in touch with traveling loved ones... the list goes on. This got me thinking about how convenient— and sometimes even magical — the experience of video chatting is.

So when I saw that my grandma, who loves keeping in touch with family more than anyone, wasn't set up to use video chat, I decided to help her get started. While doing so, it occurred to me how many people there must be out there in similar situations. If only there were a simple way that any grandmother could use to get started on her own...

Introducing the Grandmother's Guide to Video Chat:



This video, along with a printable guide, can be accessed at google.com/chat/grandma. Feel free to share this link with your grandma—or grandpa—or, well, anyone who wants to video chat to help get them up and running.

And after your grandma is all set up, take a screenshot of you video chatting with her and email it to grammy324@gmail.com to share it with us. The first 100 people to do so will get a t-shirt, printable guide and VHS of the video (because if your grandma's like mine, she's still a cassette kind of girl).


In a few weeks, we'll feature the best photos submitted on the Gmail blog.

Posted by Jason Toff, Grandson of Evelyn & Ida
URL: http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2010/07/grandmothers-guide-to-video-chat.html

[G] As the world turns to FIFA, FIFA.com turns to Google

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 05:29 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: As the world turns to FIFA, FIFA.com turns to Google

We're right in the middle of football fever worldwide and as the number of competing teams dwindles, the interest is only growing. Of course, many of these eyeballs around the world are turning to FIFA.com to get the latest scores, updates, and analysis.

Given the traffic flowing through FIFA.com, FIFA understands the importance of search on their website. Indeed, according to a recent independent Forrester Research, Inc. report, a 2008 survey found that "70 percent of online users stated that "ease of search" is the most important factor influencing how they select news resources". 1 For this reason, FIFA has chosen the Google Search Appliance to power search on their website.

With the Google Search Appliance, FIFA.com is able to provide a user-centric, universal search experience across all types of content—news, statistics, images and videos. For instance, when you type in "Messi," you first see a box at the top showing "player statistics," followed by FIFA news results in order of relevance, then images and videos specifically pertaining to Messi.



Additionally, features like "Did you mean" direct people to the right results. For instance, if you type in "mesi," FIFA.com will ask you if you meant "Messi." Or if you type in a country name, say "Argentina," the top result will be a link to a country-specific page.

By focusing on the user, FIFA.com offers their fans a compelling experience, with search as a core element. And we're happy to play a small role in helping millions of fans around the world keep up to date on their favorite sport.

1 Site Search Best Practices: Methods for Creating a Positive Search Experience, Forrester Research, Inc., March 5 2010.

Posted by Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager, Enterprise Search
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/07/as-world-turns-to-fifa-fifacom-turns-to.html

[G] Rapid innovation powered by the cloud – another reason to Go Google

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 05:29 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Rapid innovation powered by the cloud – another reason to Go Google

The web is the epicenter of innovation, and Google's multi-tenant infrastructure lets us push improvements to our customers seamlessly, enabling businesses that have Gone Google to move beyond the slow, multi-year innovation cycles typical of legacy technologies.

Users automatically get new features just by refreshing their browsers, and improvements roll out to organizations without patches or hardware upgrades to manage. Rapid innovation powered by the cloud also has another advantage over traditional technology cycles: users adapt to a continuous stream of manageable improvements better than they tolerate large, disruptive changes in the tools they use every day.

Last week I hosted a webinar to spotlight some of the more than 50 improvements and new features we've brought to Google Apps just in the last 6 months. You can watch the replay below or watch it on YouTube:



We're excited about what's in store for Google Apps. We're always making our products better based on feedback from millions of users, and to keep up with the latest features, you can subscribe to the Google Apps Updates RSS feed, or sign up for email alerts.

Posted by Hicham Alaoui, Google Apps Marketing Manager
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/07/rapid-innovation-powered-by-cloud.html

[G] Bringing federal IT into the cloud

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 04:20 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Bringing federal IT into the cloud

Posted by Harry Wingo, Policy Counsel

The cloud improves security. The cloud saves taxpayer dollars. The cloud makes government more efficient.

That's the message Mike Bradshaw, Director of Google Federal, will take to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during today's hearing on federal IT and cloud computing.

Mike's testimony will highlight three main points:
  • First, cloud computing can provide improved security. Under legacy computing models, data is stored on local computers – this is the equivalent of keeping cash under your mattress. Storing data securely in the cloud is like keeping cash in a bank. (To learn more, check out our Google Apps security whitepaper.)
  • Second, the cloud can save taxpayer dollars. The Brookings Institution found that government agencies that switched to some form of cloud computing saw up to 50 percent savings. To put that in context, the federal government is currently spending $76 billion per year on IT, with $20 billion of that devoted to hardware, software and file servers.
  • Third, in addition to securing data and lowering costs, cloud computing can improve efficiency and collaboration in ways that are simply not possible under the legacy IT model. Millions of individuals, businesses, and governments are already enjoying these benefits. We're beginning to see federal cloud initiatives and more robust pilot programs, and we support efforts like FedRAMP to accelerate the process.

You can read Mike's full written testimony here, and we'll be posting video of the hearing here soon.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/07/bringing-federal-it-into-cloud.html

[G] Finding soccer stats with the Google Search Appliance

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 04:14 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Finding soccer stats with the Google Search Appliance

For the past few weeks, many football fans have been living and breathing just one thing: the World Cup. When they're not watching on the matches, many people have flocked to FIFA.com, the source for the latest info on players, standings and scores.

With all these people looking for the latest and greatest on their favorite sport, we're pleased that FIFA has chosen the Google Search Appliance to power search on their website. With the GSA, FIFA.com can provide universal search across all types of content. Try searching for "Messi" from FIFA.com's search box, and you'll see all kinds of data: statistics, news results, images and videos—all pertaining to Messi.

For more on the Google Search Appliance and how FIFA is putting it to work, check out our post on the Enterprise blog.

Posted by Vijay Koduri, Product Marketing Manager, Enterprise Search
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/finding-soccer-stats-with-google-search.html

[G] Taking off with ITA

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 04:14 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Taking off with ITA

Today, almost half of all airline tickets are sold online. But for many people, finding the right flight at the best price is a frustrating experience; pricing and availability change constantly, and even a simple two city itinerary involves literally thousands of different options. We'd like to make that search much easier, which is why I'm pleased to announce that today we have signed an agreement to acquire ITA, a Boston-based software company specializing in organizing airline data, including flight times, availability and prices.

While online flight search is rapidly evolving, we think there is room for more competition and greater innovation. Google has already come up with new ways to organize hard-to-find information like images, newspaper archives, scholarly papers, books and geographic data. Once we've completed our acquisition of ITA, we'll work on creating new flight search tools that will make it easier for you to search for flights, compare flight options and prices and get you quickly to a site where you can buy your ticket.

We're confident that by combining ITA's expertise as the leading developer of flight information software with Google's technology we'll be able to create great user innovations in flight search. ITA has built a very successful QPX business, and we're looking forward to working with their current and future customers. Google will honor all existing agreements, and we're also enthusiastic about adding new partners. You can read more about this deal here, and we'll keep everybody up to date as we work to close this exciting acquisition.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/taking-off-with-ita.html

[G] Grandmother’s guide to video chat

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 04:14 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Grandmother's guide to video chat

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

Often when I tell people that I work on Google video chat, I hear stories about how they've used it to give a video tour of a new home to friends, introduce a baby to relatives, keep in touch with traveling loved ones... the list goes on. This got me thinking about how convenient—and sometimes even magical—the experience of video chatting is.

So when I saw that my grandma—who loves keeping in touch with family more than anyone—wasn't set up to use video chat, I decided to help her get started. While doing so, it occurred to me how many people there must be out there in similar situations. If only there were a simple way that any grandmother could use to get started on her own...

Introducing the Grandmother's Guide to Video Chat:



This video, along with a printable guide, can be accessed at google.com/chat/grandma. Feel free to share this link with your grandma—or grandpa—or, well, anyone who wants to video chat to help get them up and running.

And after your grandma is all set up, take a screenshot of you video chatting with her and email it to grammy324@gmail.com to share it with us. The first 100 people to do so will get a t-shirt, printable guide and VHS of the video (because if your grandma's like mine, she's still a cassette kind of girl).


In a few weeks, we'll feature the best photos submitted on the Gmail blog.

Posted by Jason Toff, Grandson of Evelyn & Ida
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/grandmothers-guide-to-video-chat.html

[G] Tips & Tricks: Using Images in Google documents

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 01:02 PM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Tips & Tricks: Using Images in Google documents

As anyone working on a term paper, project plan, or party invitation will tell you, there's a lot of truth in the old saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words." With the new Google Documents editor, you can easily find and insert the perfect image into a document and it will behave exactly as you'd like it.

To get started, select Image from the Insert menu. In Google documents, you can import images from your computer or from a URL. But sometimes you don't have the image you want to use on hand. Whether it's a map of the Roman Empire or a photo of a golden retriever, you can now insert an image directly from Google Image Search.


You can add any .gif, .jpg, .png, .bmp image file, up to 2 MB in size.

Wrapping it up
It can be important for images in your document to interact in certain ways with your text. Maybe you want your term paper's sentences to wrap around a country's flag? Or perhaps you want images to embellish the lines of your restaurant's menu?

In the new version of documents, we've added a new setting for images -- Inline or Fixed. An Inline image will behave like text -- as you add or subtract words and lines, the image will move around the page, just as words within a certain paragraph do.


Meanwhile, a Fixed image will stay anchored to a specific paragraph, and your words will wrap around it.


You can drag and drop the image around your document if the Fixed position is selected. Or, for an Inline image, you can copy and paste it as you would move around the text within your document.

Resizing images
To resize an image within your document, you can click on it, and a resize box will appear. You can maintain the aspect ratio of the image by dragging from the corner of the rectangular resize window. If maintaining that ratio isn't important, you can click one of the boxes on any side of the image and drag until you've resized the image to your liking.


These advanced image options are available only for documents created in the new version of Google Documents. Let us know what you think in our help forum.

Posted by: Michael Thomas, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/07/tips-tricks-using-images-in-google.html

[G] Grandmother's guide to video chat

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 11:16 AM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: Grandmother's guide to video chat

Posted by Jason Toff, Grandson of Evelyn & Ida

Often when I tell people that I work on Google video chat, I hear stories about how they've used it to give a video tour of a new home to friends, introduce a baby to relatives, keep in touch with traveling loved ones... the list goes on. This got me thinking about how convenient— and sometimes even magical — the experience of video chatting is.

So when I saw that my grandma, who loves keeping in touch with family more than anyone, wasn't set up to use video chat, I decided to help her get started. While doing so, it occurred to me how many people there must be out there in similar situations. If only there were a simple way that any grandmother could use to get started on her own...

Introducing the Grandmother's Guide to Video Chat:



This video, along with a printable guide, can be accessed at google.com/chat/grandma. Feel free to share this link with your grandma—or grandpa—or, well, anyone who wants to video chat to help get them up and running.

And after your grandma is all set up, take a screenshot of you video chatting with her and email it to grammy324@gmail.com to share it with us. The first 100 people to do so will get a t-shirt, printable guide and VHS of the video (because if your grandma's like mine, she's still a cassette kind of girl).


In a few weeks, we'll feature the best photos submitted on this blog.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/grandmothers-guide-to-video-chat.html

[G] Celebrating Pride 2010

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 08:59 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Celebrating Pride 2010

Googlers came out en masse this year to celebrate Pride around the world, in cities ranging from Dublin to Pittsburgh. Pride celebrations are a time for family, friends and members of the LGBT* community to reiterate their commitment to equality and honor the trailblazers whose efforts made it possible for us to stand out and proud today.

Nearly 300 Googlers marched with colorful balloons down Market Street for San Francisco's 40th annual Pride parade. We braved the rain in Boston, enjoyed the sun in New York, rode a trolley in Chicago and marched with the Israel Gay Youth Organization in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Googlers will be participating in EuroPride, held in Poland this year, as well as many other parades, including Tokyo for the first time. And we'll be celebrating Pride season in Singapore too.

This year, we have another reason to celebrate. Google will be grossing-up imputed taxes on health insurance benefits for all same-sex domestic partners in the United States, retroactive to January 1, 2010. Starting July 1, we'll also be providing the equivalent of the Family and Medical Leave Act for all same-sex domestic partners. And we've worked with our carriers to update their definition of infertility—it's now defined as the inability to conceive a child with no stipulations on trying for one year.

Google supports its LGBT employees in many ways: raising its voice in matters of policy, taking a moment to remember the plight of transgender people around the world and going the extra mile to ensure that its employees are treated fairly.

There's a lot be proud of this year but we know the best is yet to come. We look forward to many more years of Pride celebrations. Take a glimpse at the global festivities below.



*LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered but, without letting the acronym get too unwieldy, is also intended to include people who identify as queer, asexual or intersexed, amongst others.

Posted by Cynthia Yeung, Strategic Partner Development Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/celebrating-pride-2010.html

[G] Standing up for the First Amendment with 1 for All

Posted: 01 Jul 2010 08:59 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Standing up for the First Amendment with 1 for All

In the United States, our lives would be unrecognizable without the First Amendment. Every time you search, tweet, blog, pray (or not), gripe about your government, gather with your friends online or off, upload a video, read a newspaper or send an email to your member of Congress, you're enjoying the rights it guarantees:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We're celebrating the First Amendment on the 1st of July by joining news organizations, artists, librarians, lawyers, educators and many others in supporting 1 for All, a national campaign to teach Americans about the source of these fundamental freedoms. From now through July 25, you can show your support for the First Amendment by submitting a 30-second video that demonstrates your freedom to speak, rock or assemble. The best videos will be featured on YouTube, on TV and at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

At a time when restrictions on speech are increasing around the globe, we think it's essential to remind ourselves that we can't take freedom of expression for granted. Get informed, get involved and stand up with us for the First on the 1st.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/standing-up-for-first-amendment-with-1.html
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