Thursday, August 5, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Google North American Faculty Summit - Day 2

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 05:07 AM PDT

Official Google Research Blog: Google North American Faculty Summit - Day 2

Posted by Andrew Tomkins, Director of Engineering, Google Research

Friday at the Google Faculty Summit, we discussed ideas around online social capabilities. Chris Messina opened the discussion with a talk about open initiatives for the social web. Damon Horowitz, founder of Aardvark, gave a talk about the Aardvark experience. But in this post, I'd like to talk about a panel I moderated on the future of the social web. The panel consisted of four experts in the area. Joseph Smarr came to Google after eight years as CTO of social networking site Plaxo. Lada Adamic is on the faculty at University of Michigan, where she studies the nature of social and information networks. Eytan Adar is also on the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he studies the evolution of production and consumption of data over time. Luis von Ahn is on the faculty of Carnegie Melon University and also an employee at Google; he studies mechanisms to connect significant human efforts to interesting problems.

One theme that received a lot of attention from panelists and audience members alike was the benefits and pitfalls of social personalization. In the context of an activity stream, there seems to be general agreement that passing lightweight updates among friends is a valuable tool for "social grooming," or keeping light contact with friends as a way of maintaining the state of the friendship. For information discovery, however, the topic received more debate: real-world social networks have always been used to both push and pull information, but in conjunction with high-quality search, it's reasonable to ask which types of information needs can be best addressed by your friends. Social network connections typically display homophily (similarity) in the dimensions of geography and interests, so your friends are more likely to have something interesting to say about your local area and your longstanding hobbies or interests, along with other subjects. If so, the answer you receive has two added bonuses. First, your background knowledge about your friend will aid you in assessing the quality of the answer. And second, an answer from a friend satisfies not just an information need but also a human need to interact and share experiences. This socially augmented information can arrive through a push channel in which your friend already posted (for example) a review for a restaurant, or through a pull channel in which you send to your friends a request for information. The same mechanisms for social information sharing may also operate powerfully in the context of a group coming together around a shared interest or goal, rather than just in the context of an individual. Consider for example a group of students working together to understand some new material. The same two mechanisms apply: knowledge about the other students helps you evaluate their contributions, and the interactions in the group have value beyond the pure information transmitted.

There was considerable discussion about social networks' capacity to funnel information to a user through the lens of a particular viewpoint or ideology. Imagine an individual who arrives on the web as a supporter or detractor of a particular political figure or mindset, and then surrounds him or herself with like-minded people online, enjoying positive and supportive discussions but failing to encounter a diverse set of views and counter-opinions. Literature in the social sciences, beginning with the famous Asch conformity experiments from the 1950s, details the mechanisms that cause people to conform to group expectations and even abandon normal personality traits based on the norms of the new situation. And work by Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling shows that very small and "reasonable" biases we might have towards avoiding becoming an extreme minority might lead a system to evolve into a highly balkanized state. Similar models have been proposed and evaluated in the Internet domain, and some preliminary measurements have been performed. While faculty members in the audience surmised that personalization could lead to more extremism, the group agreed there is no conclusive evidence.

Another topic we touched on is mechanism design: the problem of designing systems so that agents in the system, each acting selfishly, will together produce some desired outcome. Consider a social networking game. If the desired outcome is revenue for the game manufacturer, then the actions that increase status in the game (using real-world currency to purchase items in the game; inviting friends to join and participate in the game; clicking on advertisements in the game) are designed well to support this goal. Rewarding the action of bringing new friends into the game is one obvious approach to increasing the total user population. More subtly, any game system must provide sufficient fun to be worth the expense to users. The dramatic success of casual online games of this form (6 percent of U.S. pageviews come from these games, according to a study by Ravi Kumar and myself in the WWW 2010 conference) is a testimony to the presence of successful mechanisms of this form.

Finally, here is a small sampling of other issues that arose in the panel as controversial points or interesting areas for future research:
  1. Social networks draw massive amounts of user time. We are beginning to get some limited visibility into exactly how this attention is allocated, which raises the research question of how much utility users are actually deriving from this investment of time, either in information, entertainment, social grooming or other intangibles.
  2. In certain online communities, we see behavioral norms that are skewed towards public visibility of essentially all activity. Do these norms reflect the desires of the populations that choose to join the community, or do they emerge specifically because of the technical tools offered by the website that hosts the community?
  3. Social networks are increasingly offering richer tools to users in an attempt to capture nuances of interactions that exist in the real world. In the fullness of time, how close will we get, and when will this happen?
  4. Social networks formalize the status of a friendship, with significant breakpoints at initiation, acceptance and removal of a binary tie. The visibility of these events leads to both "overfriending" and offense when friendships are refused or removed. Are there improved mechanisms to produce and manage the relationships in online social networks, and if so, what are these mechanisms?
  5. Social network graphs are notoriously difficult to partition into large regions with few edges between them (the sole exception being parts of a network that interact using different languages). A series of computational challenges arise when attempting to shard these networks for distributed analysis or serving from multiple computers.
One thing is clear from the discussion on Friday: social networks are increasingly becoming a valuable area for academic study. Faculty from widely disparate areas of computer science have thought deeply about the issues and implications of these tools; active research is ongoing in essentially all top institutions; and social network dynamics are appearing in the undergraduate curriculum. On top of that, they are an interdisciplinary phenomenon, involving not only many aspects of CS (UX, mechanism design, intense system requirements, security and privacy) but also psychology, economics and ethics, to name a few. There is much to study in order to understand these networks and maximize their societal value.
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-north-american-faculty-summit_04.html

[G] Become the ultimate sports fan with Chrome Extensions

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 09:26 PM PDT

Google Chrome Blog: Become the ultimate sports fan with Chrome Extensions

Football season is coming soon. There are also many other sports events like baseball, tennis, golf and soccer that are in full swing. For die-hard sports fans out there, I found some handy Chrome extensions to help you track all the games, matches and player stats.


The Are You Watching This?! Sports extension alerts you when games get interesting via colored icons, so you know when to turn in. It lists the scores, news and TV listings for many professional and college sports in the US.

For those who need an edge in your fantasy sports leagues, there are a few Chrome extensions that can help you improve your fantasy team fast. Pickemfirst Fantasy Sports works with Yahoo!, ESPN, CBS and many other fantasy sports websites. This extension brings you news, stats and blogger opinions about all the players mentioned on the web page currently displayed in your browser.


Tweetbeat Firsthand brings in recent tweets from people and organizations mentioned in the page you're looking at. With this extension, you can see what players, coaches, sports bloggers and commentators think about upcoming matchups.

If following sports online is not enough for you. StubHub's Event Ticket Finder helps you find last-minute tickets to your favorite sports events right in your browser.

These are just a few extensions to help you stay on top of your game, and you can find many more in the Chrome extensions gallery.


Posted by Koh Kim, Associate Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/08/become-ultimate-sports-fan-with-chrome.html

[G] LA’s move to Google Apps continues apace

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 05:42 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: LA's move to Google Apps continues apace

Earlier today, the Los Angeles city council voted unanimously in favor of completing the City's move to Google Apps. More than 10,000 City employees are already using Google Apps for Government, and Los Angeles taxpayers are expected to save more than $5.5 million.

Within a few months and in less than a year since the project began, we expect that all 30,000 city employees, including the 13,000 members of the Los Angeles Police Department and other public safety officials, will be migrated to Google Apps. LA's move to the cloud is the first of its kind, and it's not surprising that it's taken a little longer than anticipated to identify and address all of the City's unique requirements. We're very pleased with the progress to date, and are committed to making this a great success for Los Angeles and a milestone for cloud computing.

Posted by Jocelyn Ding, Director of Operations
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/las-move-to-google-apps-continues-apace.html

[G] Update on Wave for Google Apps

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 05:42 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Update on Wave for Google Apps

Soon we'll be giving Google Apps customers access to many more Google services. In the meantime, we want to share an update on Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, which has been available to customers in Labs since May. Since we first showed Wave as a developer preview at Google I/O last year, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. But despite its compelling features for particular tasks, such as discussing and developing content in small groups, Wave has not grown as quickly as we would have liked. For that reason, we don't plan to continue to develop Wave as a stand-alone product, though we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year. We have already open sourced several components related to Google Wave, so our customers and partners can continue the innovation. In addition, we will work on tools so that users easily "liberate" their content from Wave.

You can read more on future plans for Wave on the Google Blog. We are proud of the work the Wave team has done, which has pushed web technology forward, and we will extend the technology for use in other Google projects. Finally, we are hugely thankful to those who have been testing Google Wave with us over the past couple months.

Posted by Matt Glotzbach, Product Management Director
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-wave-for-google-apps.html

[G] Update on Google Wave

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 03:01 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Update on Google Wave

We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users' lives. Last year at Google I/O, when we launched our developer preview of Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even "playback" the history of changes—all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops.

We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren't quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we've seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code.

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don't plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave's innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily "liberate" their content from Wave.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html

[G] Respond to reviews for your business on Google Place Page

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 02:35 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Respond to reviews for your business on Google Place Page


Whether you're looking for a great lounge to hang out with your friends or a trusty shop to repair your bicycle, the web is a great place to discover and learn about local businesses and services. Some of the listings on Google Maps showcase reviews to help prospective customers make informed decisions and find the places that are just right for them. Reviews on Google Maps are assembled from a variety of sources on the web to give you the best possible overview of what people are saying about a specific place. We also encourage users to share their opinions by writing reviews directly on the Place Page of any place they've visited, be it a local business, tourist attraction or the like.

Starting today, if you're a verified Google Places business owner, you can publicly respond to reviews written by Google Maps users on the Place Page for your business. Engaging with the people who have shared their thoughts about your business is a great way to get to know your customers and find out more. Both positive and negative feedback can be good for your business and help it grow (even though it's sometimes hard to hear). By responding, you can build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers. For example, a thoughtful response acknowledging a problem and offering a solution can often turn a customer who had an initially negative experience into a raving supporter. A simple thank you or a personal message can further reinforce a positive experience. Ultimately, business owner responses give you the opportunity to learn what you do well, what you can do better, and show your customers that you're listening.

Before writing your first response, we recommend reading our handy tips on how to respond to reviewers. Then take a stab at responding by following these instructions. If you have not yet verified ownership for your business on Google, please visit Google Places to claim your listing.

Posted by John Maguire, Google Place Page team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/08/respond-to-reviews-for-your-business-on.html

[G] Back to Basics: Keyword/Landing Page Combinations

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 01:42 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: Back to Basics: Keyword/Landing Page Combinations

Starting today, we're reinstating the Back To Basics series. Each Wednesday, we'll share a Google Analytics tip, usually something that you can try right away with your own data to gain new insights. This week, we'll illustrate a quick way to see how many visits you get from different keyword/landing page combinations.

A friend of mine recently created several new landing pages that she hoped would attract traffic. She wanted to see at a glance whether people who searched on her top keywords were seeing the new pages. While she knew that she could use the Top Landing Pages report to analyze each individual landing page, she wanted to see keyword/landing page combinations in a single report.

There's an easy way to do this. Go to the Keywords report under Traffic Sources. Look over to the right above the table and you'll see Views: followed by a set of buttons. Click the Pivot view (5th button from the left). Now, look to the left, above the table, and you'll see a Pivot by dropdown menu. Select Landing Page from this menu.













Voilà! The keywords will be listed down the side and landing pages will be listed across the top. You can now see how many visits you received for each keyword/landing page combination.














You can see up to five landing pages listed across the top of the report. You can scroll horizontally (across the landing pages) using the arrow buttons at the top right of the table.
















The pivot view is also really useful for seeing at a glance how many visits you get from each keyword and search engine combination. To do this, you'd use the same Keywords report and pivot by Source.

That's this week's tip. We'll be back next Wednesday for another Back to Basics post.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/08/back-to-basics-keywordlanding-page.html

[G] NewTeeVee Guide to Playing WebM

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 06:56 AM PDT
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