Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Your Google stories: finding health information when you need it

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 02:44 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Your Google stories: finding health information when you need it

This is part of a series of stories from people who have shared how Google has helped them in their lives. Check back the rest of this week for more, and if you have a Google story, tell us about it. -Ed.

I work on several projects at Google with the goal of helping people improve their health and that of their loved ones. It's humbling to read the feedback we receive from people who have used Google to find health information. These stories make us proud of what we do and encourage us to work harder to make our products even better.

Joe from Northern Ireland sent this story about how information he found with Google helped him welcome a new member to his family—firsthand:

Received: 12/23/2009
From: Joe
All I can say is thanks to google search engine. Why? My daughter went into labour in the early hours of Wednesday morning ... my wife phoned [emergency services] and my daughter got on her laptop and googled how to deliver a baby in an emergency ... I delivered my grandson just in time for the ambulance to arrive. The ambulance staff were gobsmacked to say the least. It hasn't quite sunk in yet but thanks to google and the emergency services I have a beautiful grandson. So there you have it first there was Google Earth now we have Google Birth. Many thanks.


Michael found resources to help him and his mother cope with the challenges of cancer treatment:

Received: 2/6/2010
From: Michael
I am ... a Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I just wanted to say thank you for your search [engine] and the work it does to make information readily available to the world. I recently found out my mother has cancer in the esophagus. She has been undergoing chemo treatment ... and the last few days I've been on Google reading stories about other cancer survivors, side effects they've had from the treatments and even articles on foods she can eat to help heal her cancer. I get emotional writing this but I think google.com has been a blessing from God in facilitating people like myself to get connected to resources that are helpful, especially in difficult circumstances. Google has saved me countless hours of research that I could be spending in and out of libraries [to] find the information we need to help us get through this ... Thank you and God bless you.


Bettie used Google to find a surgeon who helped save her husband's kidney:

Received: 11/6/2009
From: Bettie
My husband and I have an amazing story to share about a surgeon I found easily through Google. Everyone that hears our story tells us we should write a book. Not sure we'll ever get around to that, but we do want to thank Google for directing us to the best possible surgeon to save my husband's one remaining kidney. He had been to many local, well-respected doctors and nationally recognized hospitals for months. None seemed to have the expertise needed to perform the challenging surgery on four malignant kidney tumors. Not only did Google direct us quickly to an expert in the field, but the site had a place to "Talk to the Doctor". On a Sunday afternoon, the doctor himself responded by email in four minutes ... Thank you for saving my husband's only kidney and possibly his life!


Thanks to Joe, Michael, Bettie and the many others who share their deeply personal stories with us. It's the people behind every search—and our ability to help them—that make my team feel so committed to providing the best services we can.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, MD, Chief Health Strategist
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/your-google-stories-finding-health.html

[G] App Tuesday: nine new apps introduced to the Google Apps Marketplace

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 02:44 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: App Tuesday: nine new apps introduced to the Google Apps Marketplace

It's App Tuesday again, which means we're excited to launch nine new apps in the Google Apps Marketplace. Like the other 150+ installable apps in the Marketplace, these apps help solve some of the toughest challenges that many businesses face today. While all apps are accessible from a user's universal navigation bar, some of these apps integrate even further with Gmail, Calendar, Docs and more.

This new batch of apps helps users seamlessly and easily tackle all kinds of issues—from time management with RescueTime to procurement with Ketera.

Check out our post on the Enterprise Blog for more information on these apps as well as the other seven launching today, or go right to the Marketplace.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/app-tuesday-nine-new-apps-introduced-to.html

[G] New Comments System on Blogger

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 02:41 AM PDT

Blogger Buzz: New Comments System on Blogger

Posted by Saurav Shah and Junho Ryu, Software Engineers

Commenting is one of the most integral parts of blogging: it's what makes blogging a conversation, not a monologue. That's why we are pleased to announce two cool new improvements to Blogger's comments system: much better spam filtering and the ability to view all comments on your blog in one place.


Introducing Comment Spam Filtering

A blog is an open communications system, inviting conversations from all web users. Unfortunately, spammers have been finding their way into these conversations. To fight spam, some of you enabled moderation of all comments or required word verification or login. While somewhat effective, these checks limit real-time conversations around your blog.

To address this, we've integrated Google's spam filtering technologies into the Blogger comment system. Some of you will notice the new "Comments" tab. (Note: We are gradually rolling this out to all users, so some of you may not see the new Comments tab yet.) In the Comments tab, there is a Spam sub-tab that shows all the comments that are likely spam.


The comments in the Spam inbox are not visible to your readers. Here, you can permanently delete spam comments by selecting them and choosing Delete. You can also mark comments as Not Spam that have been incorrectly classified as spam (what we call the "false-positives"). Choose Not Spam and the selected comments will be moved out of the spam list and will be immediately published on your blog.

These feedback actions also help us better identify spam on your blog. We encourage you to occasionally check your Spam inbox to see if any non-spam comments have been marked as spam. Please note that spam filtering currently only applies to new comments.

You can report any issues with our new spam system by clicking on the "Report spam filtering issues" link on the bottom of the Comments | Spam page, or by visiting this Help Forum page.


Comments "Inbox"

We also created a place where you can see all the comments that have been published on your blog. The Comments | Published sub-tab provides a similar view as your email inbox. This view comes in handy when you want to see all of the comments on your blog in one place. With the new comments inbox, it's easy to find new comments on old posts.



In the Comments | Published sub-tab, you can select comments and mark them as spam or delete them. When you mark a comment as Spam, it will be deleted immediately from your blog. You can also Delete comments for editorial reasons or just Remove Content to leave a record of the comment.

Comment moderation has also moved under the Comments tab and has been extended to allow you to mark comments as Spam.

We hope that adding comment spam filtering and the new "inbox" user interface will be a good starting point toward improving the Blogger commenting system and we look forward to your feedback.
URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2010/08/new-comments-system-on-blogger.html

[G] 5 Questions For Ryan Scott, CEO of Causecast.org

Posted: 10 Aug 2010 11:25 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: 5 Questions For Ryan Scott, CEO of Causecast.org

This is the first post in the "BizBlog Series," which was formally its own blog. Check back each week to see articles about partners and advertisers on YouTube.

When the end goal of your online marketing is philanthropy, you have to take a unique approach. We've tried to do our part by providing the tools needed for the task through the YouTube Nonprofit Program. One nonprofit that's leveraged these offerings effectively is Causecast.org. We sat down with their CEO, Ryan Scott, to find out how video has amplified their work.

1) What role does video play in the development of Causecast (both the site, and in campaigns created for your clients)?

Video has always been a core component for Causecast. We covered red carpet events and fundraisers, interviewed celebrities, and created special campaigns like the "Milk" typographic piece, which was commissioned by Focus Features. We also had an ongoing video project called "State Your Change," which was a video wall created by user-generated uploads about the changes people wanted to see in the world, which was then submitted to the newly-elected President Obama. After a year and a half, we've found that we work best when focusing on individual campaigns that are directly tied to a single organization or brand that's connected to a single website or cause. We can (and do) create content for all causes and nonprofits, but each one individually should be focused on one clear goal.

2) Can you provide an example of how you've utilized video in impactful and relevant ways for your clients? Explain why you decided to utilize video over other media and how YouTube was specifically involved in the campaign.

One of our successes was a project called STILLERSTRONG, which we helped create with Ben Stiller and his team. The campaign started as a project to build a school in the central plateau of Haiti and video was used as the main medium to drive awareness and donations to the Stillerstrong platform. Ben applied his unique brand of humor to communicate his message to engage his fellow philanthropists and celebrity friends to publicly support his cause. Lance Armstrong, Owen Wilson and former President Clinton got involved and were part of the video campaign. Ben even did a video with Robert De Niro specifically urging Ashton Kutcher to re-tweet the video, which he did.

We used YouTube annotations to incorporate buttons into the video that allowed people to perform functions, putting links directly into the video. People could donate, post to Facebook, Tweet out the video, buy the STILLERSTRONG HEADBAND, and even upload a video comment. Annotations and the benefits you get with a nonprofit account on YouTube were hugely helpful, saving us a great deal of development work.



3) How has the role of video changed in the past 10 years, with regard specifically to cause marketing?

One word: cost. Ten years ago, there were a handful of websites that had streaming video of any kind. Now there are many options (probably too many), and fortunately most of them are free and very versatile. You can get a decent video HD video camera for $150. And hosting is free. So, there are very few reasons why a nonprofit should not develop and utilize video is some way. The popularity of social networks, which has grown significantly in the last five years, has made sharing videos much easier. More people can learn about your cause through a short video than through landing onto a text-only website. Nonprofits have used video in very effective ways to ask for donations, recruit volunteers, or contact their local representatives, but sometimes the most moving videos are when we see the volunteers in action or how donations are utilized on the field. This closes the donor / volunteer / organization loop.

4) In your opinion, what are recent examples of organizations or campaigns that have utilized video in new or innovative ways?

One video uploaded by the World Food Program in this last year came up with a simple statistic: approximately 1 billion people are active online and yet over 1 billion people are chronically hungry. The video was 60 seconds long. In that amount of time, 145 million emails were sent, $43,000 was spent on eBay, 2,000 tweets were sent, and 10 children died of hunger. Pretty tough to ignore those numbers. They had a simple story to tell, and they kept it simple. They linked the video directly to their donation page, which lists how much money it takes to feed a baby, student or adult for one year.

5) How can/are nonprofits utilizing compelling videos to maximize their reach and funding? What are some tips for nonprofits struggling to create video content on their organization?

The best videos are the simplest: one idea, one cause, one action. You can upload an unlimited number of videos for free, so there's no point to throw in the kitchen sink. Also, viewers have a very short attention span, so presenting too many ideas dilutes the power of all of them. The videos we like most are when volunteers are interviewed on camera or nonprofits show the environment in the field where they are actively distributing or rebuilding. We need to see how the organization is making positive change. Charity Water makes some beautiful videos of their well drilling. Invisible People has a massive library of interviews of homeless people telling their stories. AARP made a video of very inspiring words featuring only scrolling text, and it still gets passed around (and re-made) three years later. Videos are very easy to create and very, very easy to share, and we haven't yet created as strong of a mental "spam filter" for video as we have for emails. Just be sure to keep it simple and direct.

Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits & Activism Manager, recently watched "Lance Responds To Ben Stiller and STILLERSTRONG."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/DVCpBrtfYLA/5-questions-for-ryan-scott-ceo-of.html

[G] Going Google made easier with better IMAP and PST data migration

Posted: 10 Aug 2010 08:31 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Going Google made easier with better IMAP and PST data migration

Customers moving to Google Apps are migrating email, calendar and contacts data from several different legacy systems, and many are doing so from mixed sources including data stored on end user machines and company servers. With this in mind, we're constantly trying to make it really easy, fast and painless for you to migrate data in each of these scenarios.

We launched Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange last March to help Microsoft Exchange administrators perform centrally-managed migrations from Exchange servers. In May we announced Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook, which allows end-users to move their data from PST files and Outlook profiles. Customers are also migrating from other systems such as Novell® GroupWise®, hosted Exchange and sometimes even from previous Gmail accounts. We are happy to announce that we are extending support for these migrations going forward with the introduction of new features to Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange:

  • IMAP support – Administrators can use the tool's new IMAP capabilities to migrate email from systems like Novell Groupwise to Google Apps, or even migrate data between Google Apps accounts.
  • PST support – Administrators can migrate PST files on behalf of users in their domain once they have aggregated users' data files in one location.
  • Better support for hosted Exchange – Administrators can now migrate data from hosted Exchange by running the migration tool on local servers, without requiring the Exchange hosting partner to run any special software on their end.

    Join me on a live webinar on Wednesday, August 25th at 9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT where I'll present the new features and highlight best practices, tips and tricks. Register here

    Posted by Abhishek Bapna, Product Manager
    • URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/going-google-made-easier-with-better.html

    [G] App Tuesday: nine new apps announced for the Apps Marketplace to help your business grow

    Posted: 10 Aug 2010 08:31 PM PDT

    Official Google Enterprise Blog: App Tuesday: nine new apps announced for the Apps Marketplace to help your business grow

    As your business grows, so does the complexity of managing projects, securing data, tracking resource usage, and communicating with coworkers. Today, we are excited to announce nine new installable apps in the Google Apps Marketplace that can help ensure that your business growth doesn't outpace your technological capabilities. So instead of patching servers and updating desktop-based software today, check out some of our more than 150 installable web apps available to Google Apps users. All of these installable apps offer single sign-on functionality so your users can start using them conveniently right from the universal navigation bar in Google Apps. Some have additional integrations with Gmail, Calendar, Docs and other apps, which makes these Marketplace apps more powerful than comparable stand-alone offerings.

    Google Apps Premier, Education and Standard Edition administrators can install Marketplace applications in a few simple steps -- watch this video to see how it works.

    Complex projects and tasks have a potential to grow out of control and lose focus, so we've included a series of project, communication, time, and task-specific management apps in this App Tuesday launch.
    • DeskAway is a simple, yet powerful web-based project collaboration tool that streamlines the way you and your team work by giving you an accurate view of project progress and tackling some common problems that occur when multiple people are collaborating.
    • Acunote is an online project management software. It helps you manage projects, products and requirements, track progress, realistically predict completion dates and analyze company productivity.
    • RescueTime is an automatic time and attention tracker that helps teams work smarter. It is widely used by a range of companies and now has user and team sync for Google Apps accounts, plus a real time stats gadget in Gmail.
    • ToBeeDo is an online task management service. The familiar, fast and intuitive interface helps you to organize your workflow and it doesn't require any setup.
    • Ketera is a network that simultaneously offers savings for business buyers and online sales opportunities for B2B suppliers to help members discover new trading partners and market insights, aiding in billions of dollars in transactions every year.
    Your business also requires additional apps to help manage its growing mounds of internal and external information. These applications can help streamline this process:
    • FormLizard is for when you need paperwork completed properly. You and your customers can complete forms, contracts, and more online, giving you complete, accurate, legible, and professional paperwork every time.
    • LumoFlow provides social collaboration workspaces for enterprises to manage projects, share documents and keep teams in sync. It also helps connect global business operations and manage joint projects with partners and customers.
    • MangoSpring Collaboration Suite seamlessly integrates all the MangoApps to provide next generation collaboration experience. Each MangoApp solves an important part of the business workflow.
    • Backupify provides secure, scalable, and automatic backup for your Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Contacts, and Sites. You can securely access and manage archives of backups from any web browser.

    We encourage you to explore some of these great new apps in the Marketplace. Join us next Wednesday when we hold a live webinar to discuss with a few of the app creators on maximizing your productivity with these apps.

    Webinar: Increase productivity with new Google Apps Marketplace Apps
    Wednesday, August 18, 2010
    11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT
    Register here

    If you've #gonegoogle and tried the #appsmarketplace, let other users know what you recommend via Twitter or submit your suggestion for additional apps.

    Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
    URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/app-tuesday-nine-new-apps-announced-for.html

    [G] Introducing the Google Small Business Blog

    Posted: 10 Aug 2010 04:45 PM PDT

    Inside AdWords: Introducing the Google Small Business Blog

    Cross Posted from the Google Small Business Blog:
    Most every business, including ours, starts small. These days, technology is giving businesses even more ways to grow bigger... faster.

    In our recent Small Business series on the Official Google Blog, a handful of real-life entrepreneurs have shared their experiences building companies from scratch and embracing Internet tools that have taken their businesses to the next level. We've received fantastic feedback about these posts, and realized that there's a healthy appetite among small- and medium-sized business owners who want to know all about the latest web tools and tricks. Fortunately, we have lots more to share with you, too!

    That's why we're introducing the Google Small Business Blog, a central hub that brings together all the information about our products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community. Rather than having to sleuth around in many different locations for details about templates for creating video ads on YouTube, tips for your employees using Gmail or how to respond to the business reviews on your Place Page, you can find all of this helpful information right here in one place.

    Of course, we'll continue to post relevant news about individual services such as AdWords, Apps, Google Places and YouTube on their respective "home" blogs, but feel free to visit or subscribe to this Google Small Business Blog to get everything relating to your small business needs. We're starting small today, but who knows what tomorrow will have in store!

    Posted by Deanna Yick, Small Business Blog Team

    URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/08/introducing-google-small-business-blog.html

    [G] Google and Verizon op-ed: a path to an open Internet

    Posted: 10 Aug 2010 01:43 PM PDT

    Google Public Policy Blog: Google and Verizon op-ed: a path to an open Internet

    Posted by Mistique Cano, Manager, Public Policy Communications

    Eric Schmidt and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg have an op-ed in today's Washington Post that further explains our joint policy proposal for an open Internet. They describe our policy proposal in detail and explain how our conversations were "guided by two principles: our commitment to an open Internet, and the need for continued investment in broadband infrastructure."
    URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-and-verizon-op-ed-path-to-open.html

    [G] Web Analytics TV #11 with Avinash and Nick

    Posted: 10 Aug 2010 12:14 PM PDT

    Google Analytics Blog: Web Analytics TV #11 with Avinash and Nick

    Yay! It's another episode of Web Analytics TV!

    In this exciting series, with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, you ask, and vote on your favorite, web analytics questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them.

    This episode was particularly awesome since there were some fantastic questions. Tough questions that made us think hard. But also questions that made us proud of how sophisticated Google Analytics users are.

    In this action packed episode we discuss:

    • Google Website Optimizer and the ga.js async tracking code issue
    • What is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?
    • Teaching Google Analytics the location of your local __utm.gif image
    • Implementing ecommerce tracking with multiple currencies
    • Goal names in Google Analytics
    • Similarities and differences between Visitors and Unique Visitors metrics
    • Lovely opportunities for developers to build products using our API
    • Reasons why utm_content values show up as (not set)
    • Best practices for applying segments to specific pages (cool answer!)
    • Implementing ecommerce tracking if you don't have an order id
    • Using advanced filters in the connection speed report
    • Why the value "other" shows up in your reports
    • Tracking how a visitor finds a site the first time for attribution
    • Correlating business data with Google Analytics data


    Here are the links to the topics we discuss:

    As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partners.

    If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.

    If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question and vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.


    Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team
    URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/08/web-analytics-tv-11-with-avinash-and.html

    [G] Updates to Contacts and a (slightly) new look for Gmail

    Posted: 10 Aug 2010 10:06 AM PDT

    Official Gmail Blog: Updates to Contacts and a (slightly) new look for Gmail

    Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager

    We're constantly reviewing user feedback about Gmail, and for a while now the number one request has been for a better contacts experience. You've asked us to generally make Contacts easier to use, as well as for specific improvements like sorting by last name, keyboard shortcuts, and custom labels for phone numbers. So, by popular request, we're happy to announce that an overhauled version of Gmail Contacts will be rolling out today.

    Contacts now works more like the rest of Gmail, so if you know how to use Gmail, now you should automatically feel comfortable in Contacts too. And you'll see a bunch of the features you've requested, including:
    • Keyboard shortcuts (go to Contacts and hit "?" for the full list)
    • Sort by last name (look under "More actions")
    • Custom labels for phone numbers and other fields
    • The ability to undo changes you've just made
    • Automatic saving
    • Structured name fields, so you can adjust titles, suffixes, and other name components
    • A bigger, more prominent notes field
    While we were at it, we also improved our layout and made it easier to get to Contacts and Tasks. You'll see these links are now up at the top left corner of your account (along with a link for "Mail" that takes you back to your inbox). If you're not interested in Contacts or Tasks, you can hide these links by clicking near the right edge of "Mail." Overall, there's now a smaller header area that puts the first message in your inbox about 16 pixels higher on the screen than before.

    If you use Google Apps, you won't see these updates to Contacts quite yet. We're actively working on making domain-specific features work well in the new interface and plan to make this new version of Contacts available to Google Apps customers too.

    Please keep the feedback coming, we are always working hard to make Contacts, and all of Gmail, better.
    URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/updates-to-contacts-and-slightly-new.html

    [G] It’s here! America's Got Talent: The YouTube Edition

    Posted: 10 Aug 2010 08:28 AM PDT

    YouTube Blog: It's here! America's Got Talent: The YouTube Edition

    Earlier this year, America's Got Talent turned to YouTube in its ongoing quest to find America's hottest performers. Thousands of people submitted audition videos to perform live on the show and tonight, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC, you can finally see which 12 YouTube contestants made it.

    There are some big dreams riding on this edition of America's Got Talent, along with a lot of support for the singers, musicians, dancers and other aspiring stars who submitted their videos with the hope of being discovered.

    Good luck to all of our talented contestants and to everyone who entered the competition. And don't forget to watch the top entries on the America's Got Talent YouTube channel before tonight's broadcast!

    Lee Hadlow, Marketing Program Manager, recently watched "America's Got Talent Winning Moment Season 4."


    URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/pczCPZHKS3o/its-here-americas-got-talent-youtube.html
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