Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Update to Canadian, UK and Ireland ad text trademark policy

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 03:23 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Update to Canadian, UK and Ireland ad text trademark policy

Last year, in an effort to provide better ads and a higher quality experience for our users, we adjusted our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some advertisers to use third party trademarks in their ad text even if they don't own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it.

These advertisers include resellers, sellers of component, replacement or compatible parts corresponding to the trademark and informational sites.

We believe that this change has helped both our users and advertisers by improving the usefulness of text ads on Google.com and across partner sites in the U.S. For example, resellers of jeans have been able to highlight the actual brands they sell in their ad text making their ads even more specific and relevant for users.

Today, we're announcing that starting September 14 we'll be extending this policy to Canada, the UK and Ireland.

Separately, today we've also announced an update to our policy to enable advertisers across Europe to select trademarks as keywords. This update will also occur on September 14 and brings Europe in line with the trademark policy that already exists in the U.S. and most of the world today.

Our aim is to provide as much useful information to users as possible so that they can make better informed decisions. We believe that these changes to the ad text policy in Canada, UK and Ireland and our keyword policy change across Europe fits perfectly with this aim.

For more detail on our updated trademark policy in Canada, the UK and Ireland, please visit the FAQ in our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Stokeley, Product Manager
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-to-canadian-uk-and-ireland-ad.html

[G] Introducing the new Search History link on Google

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 08:03 PM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Introducing the new Search History link on Google

Have you ever tried to remember how to get back to a website that you found from a recent search? Today in the US, we're launching a new search history feature which helps you quickly get back to sites you've been to and see items you have starred from your Android, iPhone, or desktop searches. Just sign in and then tap the history link at the bottom of the Google homepage.
If you've enabled search history in your account (tap "Settings" and select "Save Searches" under "Search History", then tap "Save"), the history that you see is a combination of all your searches done while you are signed-in, whether you are searching from a laptop at home, your desktop computer at work, or your phone while on-the-go. Your mobile searches are marked with a little phone icon so you can tell them apart. For websites you've visited while searching on a desktop or laptop, you'll see screenshot thumbnails that can help you recognize and return to the right sites quickly.
If you want to remove any history items, you can tap the "Edit" button at the top of the page and delete individual search queries. If you prefer to stop recording search history all together, choose the "Do not save searches" option under "Settings" on the home screen and tap "Save."

At the top of the History page, you can also select your "Starred items," which shows a list of search results you've starred on your computer or phone. Let's say after researching places to snorkel in Hawaii, you found a website full of photos about Kealakekua Bay that you want to return to later. To star the Kealakekua Bay website, simply click on the star next to the Kealakekua Bay website on Google search results. Thereafter, whenever you want to return to the site, simply click on the "Starred items" option in history. This way, while you're out with friends, you can easily get back to the website and show pictures of this magical cove right from your phone.
We hope you find the new History link useful!

Posted by Ran Liu, Software Engineer and Nick Fey, User Experience Designer, Google Mobile Team
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/08/introducing-new-search-history-link-on.html

[G] Google North American Faculty Summit - cloud computing

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 07:25 PM PDT

Official Google Research Blog: Google North American Faculty Summit - cloud computing

Posted by Brian Bershad, Director of Engineering, Site Director, Google Seattle

Of the three themes of our 2010 Faculty Summit, cloud computing was the one that pervaded all others, from security in the cloud to the presumption of cloud infrastructure behind the social web. But in our more focused discussion on cloud computing last Thursday, we started with the premise of "prodigiousness," a concept introduced by Afred Spector, VP of Research and Special Initiatives.

While we all know that systems are huge and will get even huger, the implications of this size on programmability, manageability, power, etc. is hard to comprehend. Alfred noted that the Internet is predicted to be carrying a zetta-byte (1021 bytes) per year in just a few years. And growth in the number of processing elements per chip may give rise to warehouse computers of having 1010 or more processing elements. To use systems at this scale, we need new solutions for storage and computation. It was these solutions we focused on throughout our discussions.

In the plenary talk, Andrew Fikes spoke on storage system opportunities. Among many topics, he talked about shifting engineering foci to storage management and optimization not just on an individual cluster of co-located systems, but across geographically distributed clusters. The goal is so-called planetary-scale systems. This brings up all manner of diverse challenges ranging from the need to continually balance storage vs. transmission costs, the need to account for variable network latency characteristics, and the desire to optimize storage (e.g., by physically storing only one copy of a file that many feel they have rights to, or own).

We had a few roundtables in the afternoon for deeper discussions. In the table I led, we discussed two systems for "programming the data center" developed by systems researchers at Google Seattle/Kirkland. The first, Dremel, is a scalable, interactive ad-hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested databases. Dremel was recently presented in a paper at VLDB (Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets, Sergey Melnik, Andrey Gubarev, Jing Jing Long, Geoffrey Romer, Shiva Shivakumar, Matt Tolton, Theo Vassilakis. In Proceedings of the 36th Int'l Conf on Very Large Data Bases, 2010). The system serves as the foundational technology behind BigQuery, a product launched in limited preview mode at Google I/O in May.

We also discussed FlumeJava, a Java library that makes it easy to develop, test and run efficient data-parallel pipelines at data center scale. FlumeJava was developed by programming languages researchers at Google Seattle, and is currently in widespread use within Google. It was presented at the recent PLDI conference (FlumeJava: easy, efficient data-parallel pipelines, Craig Chambers, Ashish Raniwala, Frances Perry, Stephen Adams, Robert R. Henry, Robert Bradshaw, Nathan Weizenbaum. In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM SIGPLAN conference on Programming language design and implementation). The work reflects Google's commitment to programming language and compiler technologies at scale.

The field of data center programming has progressed substantially in the last 10 years. Dremel and FlumeJava systems represent abstractions of a higher level than the MapReduce construct we previously introduced, and we think they are easier to use (within their domain of applicability) and more automatically optimizable. With time, the field will discover new "instructions" and even better abstractions leading us to a point where computations which run on nearly unlimited processors can be expressed as easily as sequential programs. We are working hard to make progress here, and I look forward to reporting on our progress in the future.
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-north-american-faculty-summit.html

[G] Table resizing and other niceties in documents

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 06:52 PM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Table resizing and other niceties in documents

Want to add "Googlers" to your document dictionary? (It is a real word, you know...) Need to resize columns and rows in a table? Want to get rid of that pesky ruler permanently? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to copy your Google drawing into your documents? You can with a few new small updates to Google documents.

Add words to your dictionary

You can add words to the spellchecking dictionary by right-clicking on any word that's marked as misspelled and selecting Add to dictionary.


Drag to resize table columns and rows

We just made it much easier to change the sizes of columns and rows in tables. Just click and hold on any of the row dividing lines and drag the line to a different location to adjust the row height or column width.

Persistent show/hide ruler setting

If you want to hide the ruler at the top of documents, uncheck the Show ruler option from the View menu and the setting will now apply to all of your documents.


Copying from web clipboard

Lastly, we added the ability to copy an existing Google drawing into a document. From inside drawings click on the web clipboard icon and select Copy entire drawing to web clipboard.


Then, when you're in your document, you can click on the web clipboard icon again and choose to paste the drawing.

Let us know what you think in the forums.

Posted by: Kristin Stephens, Software Engineering Intern
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/table-resizing-and-other-niceties-in.html

[G] Drag and drop attachments to save them to your desktop

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 05:49 PM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: Drag and drop attachments to save them to your desktop

Posted by Adam de Boor, Software Engineer

Dragging and dropping files is an easy way to save time in Gmail. We've previously blogged about dragging files to upload as attachments and dragging images into new messages. Now, if you're using Google Chrome, you can also drag attachments out of messages you receive to save them to your computer.

Let's say you have an email open containing an attachment. Hover your mouse over the attachment's "Download" link or its file icon and a tooltip appears that says: "Click to view OR drag to your desktop to save."


Simply click and hold, then drag your cursor to anywhere in your file system that you want to save the file. Release the mouse button, and voilà! Your attachment is saved (for large files, you may see a progress dialog).

URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/drag-and-drop-attachments-to-save-them.html

[G] New imagery for Google Earth Pro

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 05:37 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: New imagery for Google Earth Pro

We're pleased to announce the release of new imagery data across the globe within Google Earth Pro.

International coverage is a key feature in this release, including parts of Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, India, and China, to name a few. See the crowds gathering for an soccer match in Johannesburg, or marvel at the rapidly-changing Shanghai skyline.


The United States imagery updates feature key urban sites, such as Boston, San Francisco, El Paso, Des Moines, and Portland, Maine. With the release of exclusive data layers in Google Earth Pro 5.2, professionals can leverage the new imagery with exclusive access to parcel outlines, traffic counts, and demographic data.

Blue car icons offer users historical traffic counts for thousands of locations across the United States, dating back to the 1960's in some locations. Civil engineers in El Paso can leverage the new imagery in addition to analyze traffic counts to determine the best location for a new stop sign.


Parcel data is also available for most urban areas. With the new imagery, a realtor in, say, San Francisco can use parcel data to spec out a property site, determine parcel zoning, market value and parcel number.


The new imagery and exclusive data layers make Google Earth Pro the right choice for industry professionals looking to leverage state-of-the-art imagery with compelling data analysis.

To learn more about the new Google Earth data layers, check out this Google Lat Long blog post.

Posted by Coleman Rusnock, Google Earth Pro team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/were-pleased-to-announce-release-of-new.html

[G] Upgrade your users’ knowledge with Google Apps Tips and Tricks

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 05:37 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Upgrade your users' knowledge with Google Apps Tips and Tricks

As a Google Apps trainer, I've spent more than two years working with Google Apps customers on deployments, researching how they use resources provided by Google or from our professional training partners.

I always learn a lot from "Go Live" week – the first days of deployment, when users start to discover Apps' features and capabilities. But for me, the real "aha" comes a month or so later, when users are familiar enough with Apps that they want to dive in and do more. I often see people beginning to seek out and share power tips and tricks for using Apps around that time.

To help with that sharing, we're announcing a new addition to the Google Apps Deployment Site: a center for Google Apps Tricks and Tips. This center contains a collection of ideas and suggestions that that users can try to take their Apps use to the next level. The first collection of tips focuses on Gmail, but insights on using Docs and other features are in the works.

View this image in detail here.

The tips are short, easy to understand, and incorporate step-by-step graphics to walk the user through the tip. They're designed to encourage users to discover features of Google Apps they may not have known existed, and to educate them when new functionality is incorporated into the products.

We've made it easy for Google Apps administrators to use these resources. Our Tips and Tricks Getting Started Guide walks you through the process of incorporating the tips and tricks in your training site. (If you haven't created a launch or training site, check out our support site templates for an easy way to get started.)

Give Google Apps Tips and Tricks a try and watch how quickly your users become more collaborative, productive, and proficient as they incorporate the newly learned features into their daily routine.

Posted by Gary Giurbino, Google Enterprise Training team


URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/upgrade-your-users-knowledge-with.html

[G] Roberto Cavalli fashions Google Apps

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 05:37 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Roberto Cavalli fashions Google Apps

Editor's note: Continuing our "Going Google Everywhere" series, we're pleased to welcome Roberto Cavalli. Roberto Cavalli, the globally renowned Italian fashion house, has chosen Google Apps to consolidate their IT, boost productivity and support the company's global workforce in a more efficient way. Carlo Di Biagio, Cavalli's Group Chief Operating Officer, tells their story.

We were looking for a solution that would allow us to consolidate all the communication systems currently used by the group into one single system. Having analysed the cost implications and a range of benefits – such as reliability and the 99.9% uptime service level agreements, we selected Google Apps as our new communication and collaboration technology.

We started by adopting Gmail but quickly discovered the power of other applications included as part of Google Apps Premier Edition, such as Sites and Google Video for Business which allow us to easily share videos, pictures and presentations. For people working with product catalogues, picture archives of collections and picture archives for press, accessing those files without overloading their PCs or slowing down their systems while sending large attachments is a great advantage.

The next phase of adoption will use Google Sites to create an intranet to organise, search and share the entire picture archive of collections and catwalk shows within the group. Thanks to Google's technology, our employees will no longer need to send large images via email or to search for them in archives and folders – the pictures will be stored and organized on customised Google Sites and located within seconds thanks to the integrated Google search.

And, going forward, we will use Google Video for Business to upload catwalk videos, making them instantly available to all of Roberto Cavalli's boutiques across the world.
So what is the value of all of this? We estimate that by adopting the tools which simplify our work and allow us to cut down on the time we spend on non-critical tasks, such as searching for old e-mails or organizing meetings, we can save up to 40,000 Euros per year in overhead costs and through increased productivity. However, there is another extremely important point we should not forget, even though more difficult to measure: the satisfaction of our employees who appreciate the technology that helps them work better and more creatively.


Posted by: Malgosia Rigoli, Google Enterprise
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/roberto-cavalli-fashions-google-apps.html

[G] AdWords Campaign Experiments full US rollout and new tracking tag

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 02:53 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: AdWords Campaign Experiments full US rollout and new tracking tag

We're excited to announce that AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) is rolling out to all U.S. advertisers. ACE is a free tool that makes it easier to test and precisely measure the impact of changes to your keywords, bids, ad groups and placements. Over the last two months, advertisers in our beta have reported that ACE has helped them feel more confident in the impact of their campaign changes, making it easier and less risky to try different strategies and optimize more frequently.

Without ACE, you might evaluate optimizations by comparing key metrics before and 2-4 weeks after making campaign changes. Differences in those key metrics are assumed to be the result of the changes. But fluctuations in demand, shifts in competitor tactics, and even changes in the weather can complicate things.

With ACE, experimental campaigns run side-by-side with the original campaign in a simultaneous split test. This approach lets you run shorter tests that start and stop whenever you like, with less concern about your results being affected by seasonality or other factors. You get more precise impact estimates and more chances throughout the year to test and improve performance.

Over the next few weeks, most U.S. advertisers will automatically see ACE under Campaign Settings when they sign in to AdWords. If you're in the U.S., you can also choose to sign up for priority access. If you're outside the U.S., please stay tuned. We look forward to announcing availability in more countries and languages soon.

To learn more about using ACE, check out these videos and the Help Center FAQ.

To make tracking your experiments easier, we've added the ValueTrack parameter {aceid} that enables your tracking system to identify if a click came from the control split or the experiment split of a campaign. You can then segment and compare to understand the impact of an experiment on metrics available in your analytics system.

If your website is www.example.com, you can assign the following destination URL tag for AdWords keywords or creatives: www.example.com?type={aceid}

The new tag will be active later this week. For more details on using ValueTrack tags and ACE, please visit our Help Center.

PostPosted by Helen Schindler, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/08/adwords-campaign-experiments-full-us.html

[G] It’s official: YouTube is more popular than music ;)

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 02:50 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: It's official: YouTube is more popular than music ;)

Today our Facebook page hit an important milestone: over 10 million of you have clicked that "Like" button, making us more popular than Cristiano Ronaldo and -- whoa -- music?! Here's a special message to anyone who's ever clicked the thumb's up button on our page:









Now, that's pretty awesome, but honestly we won't rest until we rock those vampires, sweep by the Prez and topple Lady Gaga. Help us get there by liking this page, writing on our Wall and sharing the videos and news we post daily. And, of course, a huge thanks to anyone and everyone who's already said they "Like" us. It's most definitely mutual!

Mia Quagliarelly, Community Manager, recently posted "Jane Austen's Fight Club" to Facebook.


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/hrDL2j4Fub0/its-official-youtube-is-more-popular.html

[G] Inside AdSense - Meet Katrina

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 07:18 AM PDT

Inside AdSense: Inside AdSense - Meet Katrina

You may have noticed a few posts from me recently, so I wanted to introduce myself to all of you, our fantastic publishers and Inside AdSense blog readers. I've spent the last few years in AdWords (for those of you who are also advertisers, you may remember my name from posts to the Inside AdWords blog) and am very excited to join the AdSense team!

I'm really looking forward to meeting some of you in person at our AdSense in Your City events and engaging with you through our other social media channels. If you don't already, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and leave us some comments so we know what you'd like to hear more about. We want to make sure that you're getting the information you need, and will do our best to provide you with whatever content you find most interesting and useful. To start things off, we're giving the blog a little makeover so it's easier to read and navigate. You should notice the new background soon, and we'd love to hear what you think!

For any technical or account questions, check out the Help Forum, where you can interact with AdSense employees, Top Contributors (expert AdSense users vetted by the AdSense team), and a vibrant community of online publishers ready and willing to answer your toughest questions.

No matter which channel you choose, we look forward to interacting with you. See you in cyberspace!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/08/inside-adsense-meet-katrina.html

[G] Viglink: Easier Way to Monetize Links On Your Blog

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 06:54 AM PDT

Blogger Buzz: Viglink: Easier Way to Monetize Links On Your Blog

Guest post by Oliver Roup, VigLink CEO


If you spend as much time working on your blog as we do, you wonder if there's a way to get paid. Many bloggers monetize by selling ads on their site but now there is a way to get paid for your actual content rather than just the ads that go around it.

Any time you write about a product or service, you're connecting your audience to that product. If someone makes a purchase, the seller benefits from your written word—you influenced a purchase. There are thousands of websites that will pay you a fee for any business you bring them through a form of online advertising called affiliate marketing. With affiliate ads, web publishers are compensated for driving online actions.

VigLink is a content monetization company that makes affiliate marketing very easy for bloggers. We offer a simple snippet of code you can install in your blog that automatically and transparently does all the work for you. We've catalogued and signed up for more than 12,500 affiliate programs and we collect all the performance information and deliver you a single integrated payment. In return, VigLink takes 25% of the incremental revenue you earn.

There are no other costs or fees and nothing changes about how your site looks or behaves. Join VigLink and enroll your blog in less than a minute or learn more by watching this two minute video.




Oliver Roup is the CEO and co-founder of VigLink, a content monetization company backed by Google Ventures. 
URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/08/viglink-easier-way-to-monetize-links-on.html
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)