Thursday, August 12, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Flipping for Gesture Search

Posted: 12 Aug 2010 12:55 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Flipping for Gesture Search

You may already be familiar with Gesture Search, our Android app from Google Labs that lets you search by writing out characters on the touchscreen of your device. Today we're happy to announce a new version, Gesture Search 1.2, which includes a new motion gesture. By doing a "double flip", or flipping your phone away and then back, you can start Gesture Search at any time. This eliminates the need to activate Gesture Search from a home screen shortcut. You can turn the feature on or adjust its sensitivity in Settings. We've also fixed some bugs and improved usability by adding accessibility support. Gesture Search is still in its early stages (as with all things in Google Labs) but we'd love to hear your feedback in the comments below. It is available for Android-powered devices running Android 1.6 and above, and can be downloaded in Android Market.


Update 8/11/10: If you're on an Android-powered device, click here to download Gesture Search. If you're on a computer, go here.

Posted by Yang Li, Research Scientist, Gesture Search team
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/08/flipping-for-gesture-search.html

[G] Collect audience input with Google Sites & Moderator

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 09:36 PM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Collect audience input with Google Sites & Moderator

Google Moderator helps anyone find the best input from their audiences, whether it's suggestions on how to stop the oil spill, debate questions at the Copenhagen climate change conference, or questions for Katy Perry. Starting today, you can use Moderator inside your Google Sites as well. For example, if you have a restaurant site, you can embed Google Moderator on your suggestions page to get input from your restaurant patrons. Here's how:

1. Create a series at Google Moderator.


2. Start editing a page in your Google Site, and go to Insert and then More gadgets. Click on Featured and select Google Moderator at the bottom.


3. Click Select and then you'll see the settings screen below. Copy and paste the URL from the series you created into the Moderator URL box, and make sure to check the Include a scrollbar on gadget when necessary option.


4. Click OK, save the page, and you're all set! Your visitors will be able to start submitting and voting on suggestions immediately.

If you want to learn more about Google Moderator, check out the Google Public Sector Blog. You can also embed Moderator on other web sites, your YouTube channel or in your own applications with our API.

Posted by: Eric Hysen, Software Engineering Intern
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/collect-audience-input-with-google.html

[G] Schedule (or join) a YouTube Meetup!

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 03:39 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Schedule (or join) a YouTube Meetup!

From events like VidCon and 789 to the sheer number of get-togethers reported by folks like YTGathering, we know how much YouTube users love to meet up in the real world. We've even crashed some of these shindigs and always come back to the office totally rejuvenated by your energy.



All of this got us thinking: how can we help spur on more of these gatherings? Turns out our friends at Meetup have just the thing for that: our new Meetup Everywhere page offers a global view of where YouTube users are meeting and an easy way for anyone to suggest a new locale. So if you don't see your town listed, you can schedule a gathering near you, and you don't even need to take on the responsibility of organizing it. Some other social maven may step into that role by clicking "learn more" under "This event needs an organizer," or you can be the one to determine the where, when and why of your local YouTube meetup. Try it, and let's see this map populate with hundreds of happy hoedowns...







Wherever you end up congregating, do shoot lots of video (as if we need to say that!) and send the links to our YouTubeGatherings channel, where we like to create playlists from each event.



So, see you...soon?



Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently watched "YouTube news: YouTube EVENTS!"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/Ip_EtYNmPYE/schedule-or-join-youtube-meetup.html

[G] Your Google stories: finding the right words

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 02:54 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Your Google stories: finding the right words

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 projects to help people communicate between languages—whether to read in foreign languages, write in different scripts or chat with people in other countries. Helping people understand information and each other, regardless of language, is an incredibly rewarding experience. This is why it's always exciting to hear real testimonials from people who have used our language tools—especially in unexpected ways.

Ryan, from Ottawa, shared this moving story of how he used Google Transliteration to learn his future fiancée's native language:

Received: 1/14/2010
From: Ryan
In October 2009, I proposed to my wonderful girlfriend, Irina, and am happy to report we are getting married this Summer. Although we met and fell in love in North America, I am from the United States, while she is originally from Bangladesh.

As our relationship developed, I naturally felt compelled to learn my fiancee's native language, to better understand her life and to learn to communicate to her non-English-speaking family members.
[...]
Recalling my junior high Spanish courses, I put together a list of English words I figured I should learn in Bangla and passed the list to Irina. After she had translated them for me, I clumsily began constructing awkward sentences and surprising her with them.
[...]
To help push my education along further, I transferred my word list into a Google spreadsheet via Google Documents. Whenever Irina would use a Bangla word I hadn't heard before, I would ask her what it meant, and then immediately put the word into my Google Document, which I titled "Bangla Dictionary."; My dictionary grew and grew. Today it contains over 350 words and phrases.

As much as I enjoyed this process, in less than a year I had reached a "peak" and learned as much Bangla as I would ever learn using this method. I realized that if I were ever to learn how to speak Bangla, I would need to become LITERATE in Bangla.
[...]
That was when I discovered Google Transliteration. Irina had already shown me how to express Bangla words in English characters. By using your Transliteration feature I could spell a word the only way I knew how, and see immediately what it looked like in Bangla! With the help of a few online Bengali alphabet sites, I could now start learning the characters in the contexts of words and sentences I understood.

I am happy to report that I am finally learning to read and write in Bangla.
[...]
Thanks to your applications, I have learned a second language, become closer to my fiancee, and have opened the door toward building strong ties in my new Bangladeshi family.


We're always happy to hear how people are using our tools to achieve their goals and, in this case, build relationships with future in-laws across the globe. We wish all the best to Ryan and Irina and here's to many more years of communicating in Bangla!

Posted by Anjali Joshi, Director, Product Management

URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/your-google-stories-finding-right-words.html

[G] DIRECTV partners with Google TV Ads

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 02:16 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: DIRECTV partners with Google TV Ads

Cross-posted from the Google TV Ads Blog

Today, we're announcing a strategic partnership with DIRECTV through which Google TV Ads will offer inventory on a broad selection of television networks available on DIRECTV.

DIRECTV's national satellite inventory on Bloomberg Television, Centric, Chiller, Current TV, Fit TV, Fox Business, Fuel, G4, Ovation, Sleuth and TV Guide will be available through the Google TV Ads platform across all dayparts, including primetime. DIRECTV is the largest satellite provider in the U.S. and the second largest television distributor by household reach. This partnership, combined with our existing relationship with DISH Network, means that you'll be able to reach up to 30 million satellite households with Google TV Ads.

We're partnering with DIRECTV because of our shared commitment to innovation in the television advertising space. You'll have the ability to target this new inventory along with over 98 other cable networks already offered through our platform. To learn more about advertising with Google TV Ads, visit www.google.com/tvads.

Posted By Mike Steib, Director of Emerging Platforms
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/08/directv-partners-with-google-tv-ads.html

[G] Syncing, simplifying, and speeding up with Chrome’s new beta

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 01:39 PM PDT

Google Chrome Blog: Syncing, simplifying, and speeding up with Chrome's new beta

In today's new Google Chrome beta release, we're introducing a host of new beta features which will further improve Chrome's ease of use and speed.

One of my favorite features, Autofill, helps you fill in web forms automatically with information that you specify, such as your name, address, phone number, and the credit card number you use for shopping online. Autofill builds up and saves this information for you over time, so that you can fill in long web forms with just a few clicks without typing in the same information over again. For your security, any personal information stored in Chrome is safely stored and kept private until a user chooses to share the information with a website. Additionally, your credit card information is never saved without first asking you explicitly.

For a demo of Autofill, check out this video:


We also continue to bring more synchronization capabilities to Chrome. In addition to syncing bookmarks, preferences, and themes, you can now choose to sync your Chrome extensions as well as your Autofill data (excluding credit card numbers) through your Google Account. With Chrome's sync features, you can personalize your Chrome experience and access your painstakingly curated set of bookmarks, preferences, themes, extensions, and Autofill data from any computer you choose, as long as you're signed in to your Google Account on Chrome for that computer. To start syncing, go to the the "Sync" section of the "Personal Stuff" tab in Chrome's options.

You may notice that we've given the user interface of the browser a facelift in this beta. As previewed on the developer channel in June, we have streamlined the upper toolbar, made the Omnibox more approachable, and condensed all of our options into a single menu. We hope that these visual changes will make Chrome feel even simpler.

Last, but certainly not least, our new beta release continues to be faster than before. Compared to our previous beta release, our newest beta hits a 15% speed improvement on the V8 benchmark, and a 15% improvement on the SunSpider benchmark, both of which measure JavaScript performance. Additionally, we've improved by 64% on Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests.



As always, Google Chrome will automatically update itself with the latest changes if you are subscribed to the beta channel. Stable channel users, hang tight -- these features and improvements will be available in the stable channel soon once we've given it a good test run on beta!


Posted by James Hawkins, Software Engineer
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/08/syncing-simplifying-and-speeding-up.html

[G] YouTube Summer School, Session 5: Biology

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 12:11 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: YouTube Summer School, Session 5: Biology

Have you ever wondered what makes a queen bee the queen? Or perhaps pondered the process of photosynthesis? We have too (nerd alert...again) and we're glad that we're not the only ones! In fact, a few of our university partners have helped us find the answers to our biology questions and a variety of other topics on YouTube EDU. Take some time to scan this week's playlist to learn more about your immune system, the Alaskan ecosystem and biofuels.









While we've got our thinking caps on, see if you can answer the questions below. If you know the answers, please leave them in the comments below (note: comments are moderated due to spam):

1) Worker bees and queen bees start life with the exact same genome, so what external factor distinguishes the queen bee from all others?
2) Dartmouth guest lecturer Terry Chapin has published nine books and over 300 papers that have been cited more than 27,000 times. What musical instrument does he play?
3) Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station tracks white sharks off the coast of California near what islands?

Finally, answers to last week's quiz, on math:

1. Where did Terrence Tao learn the numbers and letters that enabled him to start teaching his peers at age two? Sesame Street
2. Based on probalistic aggregation studies, Gettysburg College would be able to withstand an attack of how many robots? 252
3. Cornell math professor Allen Knutson holds a world record in what? Juggling

Mandy Albanese, Communications Associate, recently watched "Stanford Tracks White Sharks."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/H5UshSwWHXM/youtube-summer-school-session-5-biology.html

[G] Back to Basics: Filtering Keywords

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 10:26 AM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: Back to Basics: Filtering Keywords

If you've ever wondered how to make sense of the long lists of keywords that appear in your reports, this week's tip is for you. Look at the bottom of most tables in Google Analytics and you'll see an Advanced Filter option. With this option, you can filter the data in your table according to almost any set of conditions you wish.

Let's say you're only interested in keywords that brought in visitors who spent at least 2 minutes on your site.





When you enter the condition for Avg Time on Site, you'll need to use seconds. So, here, we've entered 120 seconds (=2 minutes).

Or, perhaps you only want the keywords with a bounce rate of less than 30%. (Make sure you use .3 for 30%. So, for example, .05 is 5%, .25 is 25%, and 1 is 100%.)






You can even enter multiple conditions. In this case, we want to weed out all the low traffic keywords as well.










Advanced Filters are a great way to focus on your most important keywords. To see this example in action, watch this short video.


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

[G] Toyota Europe uses Google Maps API Premier to power desktop and mobile applications

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 08:44 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Toyota Europe uses Google Maps API Premier to power desktop and mobile applications

Editor's note: Toyota Motor Europe, based in Brussels, provides central content, websites and applications to all of Toyota's country sites in Europe. Thirty-six of Toyota's European country sites are built and hosted at Toyota Motor Europe. Manuel von Rahden, marketing manager for e-services, and Michaël Notté, IT project leader, explain how Google Maps API Premier allows the marketing team to define the direction of the website and allows the developers to easily implement the website design.

At the end of 2009, Toyota Motor Europe decided to create a pilot website which would be entirely optimized for mobile devices. The goal was to create a full mobile version of our website instead of a scaled down, simplified version of the current website. Location-based services are one of the great advantages of the mobile internet, so on top of a fully database driven car configurator, we planned a Google Maps API Premier based "Dealer Finder" for the mobile site. The pilot site http://www.toyota.de/mobile/ went live on time, and all of the main site Dealer Finder applications were migrated to Google Maps successfully.

We decided to use Google Maps on both main and mobile sites for many reasons:

* Our website visitors are already familiar with Google Maps and were very comfortable with using it
* One major goal of the redesign was to increase location-based information on our website
* The Google Maps API is open, allowing us to easily customize the application when creating international websites
* Version 3 of Google Maps API Premier is especially suited to be used for mobile sites and desktop web alike

The mobile website was tested in a usability lab with very good results. We also received very positive comments on the advanced features such as the car configurator and Google Maps based Dealer Finder.



The technical point of view
The goal of the project was to provide a flexible dealer locator solution that would fully integrate with our existing back-end services and CMS. Flexibility was crucial as the service had to be reusable with minimal efforts on both Toyota websites and Lexus websites across 26 markets. Even if we made the functionality quite generic, we always have one or two markets that come with very particular requirements. On top of that, we had to implement Google Maps API in our application and roll it out across Europe in very tight time frame and a strict deadline which we could not miss.

But we made it, thanks to the several advantages that the new Google Maps API v3 provides. Also, the fact that the Google service is available in all the languages we needed saved us considerable translation work. In particular, Google Maps API Version 3 provided us with some great features:

* More object-oriented which means a nicer & more efficient code, but more importantly it made easier to integrate it with our current code.
* Fully optimized for mobile: we were working on our first mobile site at the same time and we wanted to provide our dealer search service on this new platform. Response time of the Google API is very good and it works very smoothly on mobile. By using v3, we were able to implement it very quickly in our mobile site with minimum efforts as the same back-end is used for both platforms.



Google Maps API v3 was definitely a good choice; it is very easy to use for basic functionality, and yet offers all the flexibility and features to implement complex and advanced functionality. It is highly customizable and it gives us full control on our solution. This looks very promising for the future evolution of our application and for new services. And to quote our developer, "It was fun to do this project!"

To check out an example of Toyota Europe's Website using Google Maps API Premier version 3, visit www.toyota.fr.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/toyota-europe-uses-google-maps-api.html

[G] HÔM Real Estate Group - Why we switched to Google Apps

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 08:44 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: HÔM Real Estate Group - Why we switched to Google Apps

Editor's note: Continuing our "Going Google Everywhere" series, we've invited Luke Hagenbach, from HÔM Real Estate Group, who specializes in the representation of professional athletes and celebrities in California's coastal Orange County, and was the project lead on their deployment. HÔM Real Estate Group is a high-end real estate brokerage that facilitates the acquisition and sale of some of the region's most sought-after properties. Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our community map.

HÔM has been growing quickly since opening our doors a few years ago, opening two new offices last year. Despite the economic downturn, HÔM has been focused on innovation and growth. When we decided to take a hard look at our email and calendar system, we focused on providing our users with better communication and collaboration tools that allowed them the flexibility they need to be successful in this industry.

A key to growth in the real estate industry is the ability to easily communicate within the company and with clients, and to always have up to the minute information. With many of our real estate agents in the field more than the office, it's essential that they be able to access their email, calendar, contacts and documents from any computer or mobile device. Real estate agents also regularly deal with large email attachments containing property photographs, contract documents, and marketing collateral proofs, so it didn't take long for users to fill up their 500MB inbox limit. With most of our agents prominently displaying their email addresses on several websites, spam was also a problem. The IT department used to spend a lot of time dealing with spam issues and asking users to reduce their mailbox size.

Prior to switching to Google Apps, we had been using Microsoft Exchange Server with Outlook Web Access, and also had a subset of users on Outlook and Entourage. After switching to Google Apps, spam and storage issues have become a thing of the past. Plus, since Google Apps is in the cloud, users have the power of choice. They no longer have to lug around a specific laptop. And, Google Apps has the interoperability to provide a smooth experience for users who choose to use other applications.

Switching to Google Apps was an easy adjustment for our employees. Gmail makes sense right "out of the box" and is great for users who just want to get in and get things done. We also chose to enable Labs and it's been a huge hit. Some of the company favorites are "Got the wrong Bob", "Undo Send", and "Canned Responses".

While cutting costs wasn't our first priority, outsourcing our servers and maintenance of those servers to Google allowed us to save tens of thousands of dollars on future costs, and benefit from their 99.9% guaranteed up-time. An added plus that we didn't realize going into this decision, was that our IT department would now have more time to focus on strategic activities that improve our competitive advantage, rather than on infrastructure commodities.

Migrating to Google Apps was straightforward. There was no software to install and no hardware to deal with. We started with a small pilot group of users until we felt comfortable in the new ecosystem. With the help of our Google Apps reseller, Dito, we migrated everyone over just a short time later. They provided webinar and in-person training to our users that really helped us get off to a good start. Also, Google's own deployment site has a wealth of resources that we have used for ongoing training and support. We have only been deployed a few months and Google has already added dozens of improvements and new features, without us having to do anything to install them. If we were still on Exchange, we could be waiting a long time for an upgrade.

For a growing company with agents always on the go, there is no better option for us than Google Apps. We're happy to say HÔM Real Estate Group has gone Google.



Posted by: Ashley Chandler, Google Apps team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/hom-real-estate-group-why-we-switched.html
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