Saturday, August 28, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] An update on our ITA Software acquisition

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 09:53 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: An update on our ITA Software acquisition

Posted by Andrew Silverman, Senior Product Manager

Last month we announced our plans to acquire ITA Software. Today, after meeting with many companies in the industry, we're even more excited about building new tools that will make it easier for consumers to search for flights, compare flight options, and get you quickly to a site where you can buy a ticket.

We've been encouraged by the travel industry support we've seen for this acquisition -- from airlines to online travel agencies. Even longtime travel guru Arthur Frommer said that "the existence of so many competing airfare search engines convinces me that the field will remain competitive even after Google enters it."

While we think this acquisition will benefit travelers as well as those seeking their business, we know that closer scrutiny has been one consequence of Google's success, and we said that we wouldn't be surprised if there were a regulatory review before the deal closes. This week we received what's called a "second request," which means that the U.S. Department of Justice is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal.

While this means we won't be closing the deal right away, we're confident that the DOJ will conclude that online travel will remain competitive after this acquisition closes. In fact, over the past few weeks online travel companies have noted that they have alternatives to ITA's product: Kayak's CEO called Expedia's Best Fare Search alternative "awesome"; Orbitz said that "Worldspan's e-Pricing search technology is a good solution that Travelport is devoting resources to develop. So we have alternatives available to us"; and Continental Airlines noted that "there are alternatives to the [ITA] shopping solution in the marketplace, both internally and externally."

While we of course hope to continue working with ITA's current customers, these comments demonstrate that competition will remain alive and well. We'll be working cooperatively with the Department of Justice as they continue their review.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-our-ita-software-acquisition.html

[G] Going Google across the 50 States: Bowery Lane Bicycles in New York rides towards success with Google Apps

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 07:42 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Going Google across the 50 States: Bowery Lane Bicycles in New York rides towards success with Google Apps

Editor's note: Over the past couple months, thousands of businesses have added their Gone Google story to our community map and even more have used the Go Google cloud calculator to test drive life in the cloud. To highlight some of these companies' Gone Google stories, we decided to talk to Google Apps customers across the United States. Check back each week to see which state we visit next. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map.

Two years ago, Patrick Benard and Sean Naughton completed their first handmade bicycle. Shortly after, they opened Bowery Lane Bicycles in Manhattan with a commitment to having a positive impact on the environment and the local community. Today, they continue to design bicycles for the urban cyclist, build them by hand in New York – in a local factory that uses solar panels to generate 30% of its power – and sell them from their showroom and at city cycling events. Even on the business side, the founders have taken a community approach, working only with local vendors and freelancers.

A year after Bowery Lane Bicycles opened, Michael Salvatore, chief officer of just about everything, was brought on board to help run the business. His first task was to get the company operating and communicating on a more professional level by implementing Google Apps so everyone had @bowerylanebicycles.com email addresses. From experience at previous companies, Michael knew that email addresses were only the beginning and started using Google Apps to improve other business processes. He shares with us how this was done.

"We rely on freelancers and friends located throughout the city to get projects done, and Google Docs makes this possible. Our friends have day jobs so being able to access everything online and collaborate with us in real-time, from anywhere, is not only convenient, it's essential.

Google Calendar also helps us quickly spread the word among our friends about upcoming cycling and charity events where we'll need staffing help. We keep a master calendar of all events and send out invites directly from Google Calendar. On the sales end, our showroom is viewed by appointment only, so we use a shared calendar for all of our scheduling.

To track inventory, I use Google forms. When a sale is made the model number of the bicycle purchased and other relevant information is inputted into a form. All the details are then populated directly into my spreadsheet and I can keep track of which bikes are low in inventory and when I need to order more. It's simple but efficient.

With most of our business software needs taken care of, we can focus on our main goal – manufacturing the best bikes we can. Yes, we're a small start-up, but we realized early on that successful companies need to be able to communicate quickly and keep track of their business as they expand. We can do just that, thanks to Google Apps."

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/going-google-across-50-states-bowery.html

[G] Conflicitivism

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 05:14 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Conflicitivism

For our second cross-post from the Guggenheim's The Take blog, inspired by YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video, Jaime Davidovich pontificates on YouTube as "public access gone ballistic" and how the 21st century artist might deal with the site's cacophony of image and sound.

Davidovich was one of the first artists to recognize cable television for its potential for contemporary art, producing The Live! Show, a weekly public-access television program that featured avant-garde performances, artwork, political satire and social commentary. He's currently working on pieces for his YouTube channel, as well as "video paintings," or video images projected onto a gestural painting surface. You can read his original article here.

In his recent book Feedback: Television Against Democracy (2007), David Joselit challenges artists with a manifesto that echoes a sentiment common among us: "How is your image going to circulate? Use the resources of the 'art world' as a base of operations, but don't remain there. Use images to build publics."

I have been practicing Joselit's principle since 1976, putting art into the public arena through public-access television. One of my first programs was The Live! Show, a satirical variety show about the art world, which ran from 1979 to 1984 on New York cable television.



In the series I appeared as Dr. Videovich, my alter ego, interviewing artists such as Eric Bogosian, Tony Oursler, and Martha Wilson, as well as Marcia Tucker, founder of the New Museum, and the present-day director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, Richard Armstrong. The idea of The Live! Show was to showcase art on a popular medium — TV — allowing people to watch these works in the comfort of their homes.

Continuing the first-come, first-serve spirit of public-access TV, YouTube, with the tagline "Broadcast Yourself," is the current medium for circulating art outside the pristine walls of the art gallery. YouTube is public access gone ballistic — an anarchist brain on steroids. While public-access television was one channel at a time, YouTube features dozens of channels at the same time, and they are not listed anywhere, but found by user searching. And while public-access television was low tech and a 30-minute format, YouTube is all tech and features short clips with a maximum length of 15 minutes. I currently have a work on YouTube that is a close-up video of a delete key with audio accompaniment. The concept of this piece is to provide a break in the cacophonous overload of YouTube images and sound.



I am a conflictivist, an artist who explores the conflict between high and low culture. The artist of the 21st century cannot live solely in the art world or the "real world." Rather, he or she should commute between the two.

How should artists today deal with new forms and media? Please comment below (note comments are moderated due to spam) or directly on The Take.


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/9jcak7bwoDk/conflicitivism.html

[G] An update on JavaOne

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 05:00 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: An update on JavaOne

(Cross-posted from the Google Code Blog)

Like many of you, every year we look forward to the workshops, conferences and events related to open source software. In our view, these are among the best ways we can engage the community, by sharing our experiences and learning from yours. So we're sad to announce that we won't be able to present at JavaOne this year. We wish that we could, but Oracle's recent lawsuit against Google and open source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and open source generally. This is a painful realization for us, as we've participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996.

We understand that this may disappoint and inconvenience many of you, but we look forward to presenting at other venues soon. We're proud to participate in the open source Java community, and look forward to finding additional ways to engage and contribute.

By
Joshua Bloch, Google Open Source Programs Office
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-javaone.html

[G] Interviews from GUADEC, Part 2

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 05:00 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Interviews from GUADEC, Part 2



At many open source conferences, discussions about diversity come up and there is a lot of talk about how to make the open source community more inclusive and welcoming. While the Open Source Programs Office's Jeremy Allison was at GUADEC, he had a chance to talk to someone who is actively doing something to get more women involved in free software. Marina Zhurakhinskaya, GNOME Shell developer and Senior Software Engineer at Red Hat, is an organizer of the GNOME Outreach Program for Women and she spoke to Jeremy on camera about the program's activities.

On of the projects that the program has completed was a mentoring program similar to Google Summer of Code, which provided six women with mentors and stipends to help stimulate open source development. They plan to repeat their success again this year with the 2010 GNOME Outreach Program for Women, which will run from mid-December through mid-March to coincide with the Southern Hemisphere's school break. If you're interested in participating, take a look at the list of participating projects to see what sparks your interest, check out the mailing list, or help spread the word to anyone who you think should apply!

Thanks to Fabian Scherschel of Sixgun Productions for operating the camera.

By Ellen Ko, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/08/interviews-from-guadec-part-2.html

[G] Remembering Hurricane Katrina

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:55 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Remembering Hurricane Katrina


Before coming to Google, I worked at a non-profit organization that responded to Hurricane Katrina by sending mobile health clinics to the Gulf Coast, where there was critical shortage of medical and mental health care providers. I traveled through the region regularly for nearly two years following the storm and each time I would visit the same spots, trying to get a sense of how they were recovering. In some places I saw rapid change and in others hardly any.

Since moving to California I haven't been able to get back to the Gulf, but I think about that time often. I was excited back in 2008 when we made Street View imagery of New Orleans available, and I've kept track of updates to our overhead imagery of the area in Google Earth and Maps.

With the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, my mind has been with the hardworking and resilient residents of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi. I used the Historical Imagery feature in Google Earth to look back at some of the places I used to visit, and created these slideshows to show the change over time.

These by-now-familiar images of the Lower Ninth Ward are no less heartbreaking today than they were when we first saw them.



The Biloxi Bay Bridge, which connects Biloxi to Ocean Springs, MS, was heavily damaged in the hurricane and had to be rebuilt. The new bridge opened to traffic in November, 2007.



Posted by Kate Hurowitz, Lat Long Blog Team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/08/remembering-hurricane-katrina.html

[G] Go East!

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:55 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Go East!


The Google Earth and Maps Imagery team has just finished rolling out new imagery across the globe, including a significant amount of aerial imagery in Eastern Europe. It's been a while since we had a big update in that part of the world, and there are a ton of fantastic sights for all you armchair geographers out there to explore. Break out the Slavic dictionary, crank up the techno, and start zooming in!


Wawel Castle, Krakow, Poland


Airport/Racetrack, Dolna Mitropoliya, Bulgaria


Struga, Macedonia


High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Pittsburgh, Kane County (IL)
Poland: Krakow, Tarnow, Nowy Sacz, Bielsko-Biala, Zory, Chorzow, Krosno, Kolbuszowa, Chorzow, Czestochowa, Kielce, Radomsko, Belchatow, Skarzysko-Kamienna, Kielce, Starachowice, Radom, Ostrowiec, Pulawy, Zamosc, Jelenia Gora, Swidnica, Glogow,
Czech Republic: Vysocina, Jihomoravsky, Olomoucky, Moravskoslezsky
Macedonia: entire country

Countries receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Cuba, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Murkina Faso, Nigeria, Benin, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola, Botswana, South Africa, Madagascar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, Israel, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, The Philippines, Japan, North Korea, Mongolia

Countries receiving Medium Resolution Satellite Updates:
Myanmar

These updates are currently only available in Google Earth, but they'll also be in Google Maps soon. To get a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Posted by Matt Manolides, Senior Geo Data Strategist
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/08/go-east.html

[G] This week in search 8/27/10

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:24 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: This week in search 8/27/10

This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Searches come in many flavors, but it's our job to determine what type of search you're doing once you've clicked your way out of the search box. Whether you're looking for a blog or a business, our goal is to get you the most relevant type of result back to you—fast. Ultimately, it's that combination of relevance and speed that we think will give you the best experience. Here are some of our newest search enhancements:

Improved Blog Search
With the proliferation of specialized blogs all across the web, you'll often find great content on blogs—whether you're planning a trip to Florida, looking to bring home a new golden retriever or learning how to make a delicious Italian dinner. Recently, our blog search team made it much easier to find full blogs about your query, rather than single posts on the topic. This is especially useful if you're looking for bloggers that post on an ongoing basis about the subject of your query. Try it with one of your search queries by clicking "Blogs," then "Homepages," in the left-hand panel of your search results.

Example searches: [tesla car], [google], [android]

A new home for Realtime Search
When we think about relevancy, often what you're looking for may have just happened. It's been more than nine months since we first announced our real-time search features, and this week we gave it a new home at www.google.com/realtime as well as some great new tools to you refine and understand your results. You can use geographic refinements to find updates and news that's happening right near you or in the area of your choice. We also added conversations view, so you can follow a discussion more easily by browsing a full timeline of tweets and seeing how the conversation evolved. And in Google Alerts, you can now create an alert specifically for "updates" to get an email the moment a topic of interest shows up on Twitter or other short-form services.

Realtime Search and updates in Google Alerts are available globally in 40 languages, and the geographic refinements and conversations views are available in English, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.

Example search: [egg recall]

More local results in maps and clickable markers
We made some changes to local results in web search that will help you learn more about the results and save you time by saving you clicks. Starting this week, when you search for places we'll show you all of the results that match your query on the map. Results after the first seven will be shown with small circle markers. This can be very useful in identifying the density of stores and helping you find the right neighborhood to visit. For example, when you search for [fabric stores nyc], you can now easily identify the Garment District:


When you see a result on the map that you like, you can now click directly on the marker (the pin or the circle) and go to Google Maps with that place selected and the "Info" window open. The other results will still be there if you want to explore more places.

Example searches: [fabric stores nyc], [coffee in seattle], [resort near ko samui, thailand]

We hope you find these updates useful. Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks.

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director, Search Product Management
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/this-week-in-search-82710.html

[G] Find out what’s hot on search with the Google Beat

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 04:24 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Find out what's hot on search with the Google Beat

Every day, there are more than a billion searches for information on Google. Have you ever wondered what those searches are about—or whether what you're searching for also happens to be on the minds of millions of others across the country? We're introducing a new way to find out—a regular video series called the Google Beat that highlights some of the hottest searches on Google in the U.S.

Using data from Google Trends, Google Insights for Search and some additional tools, the Google Beat will give you a snapshot of some of the topics that prompted people to turn to the web over the past week. You've probably seen our previous deep dives into Google search trends, like our annual year-end Zeitgeist and posts here about search trends related to events like the World Cup, the Oscars® and beyond. Searches can be unexpected, and sometimes what's popular one week could never have been predicted the week before (think of Falcon Heene, last October's "balloon boy" or Steven Slater). We're looking forward to seeing what our data will reveal.

Check out this week's premier video below, and subscribe to the Google Beat YouTube channel to get regular updates. We hope you enjoy.



Posted by Emily Wood, Editor, Google Blog team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/find-out-whats-hot-on-search-with.html

[G] Bigger, better Google Finance charts -- and how to get the most out of them

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 03:51 PM PDT

Google Finance Blog: Bigger, better Google Finance charts -- and how to get the most out of them

Posted by Patrick Cosken, Software Engineer

One of the most popular features on Google Finance is our charts. In fact, we like them so much we thought they'd benefit from being bigger. So today we launched a new feature on our individual stock and market charts: the ability to expand them to fill the page and allow for further refinement.

Here are our top tips & tricks for using Google Finance charts, including a few longstanding ones you may not have seen before.

1) Big charts (NEW)
To expand a stock chart, click the arrow button in the upper-right corner. Voilà! The chart fills the page, making it easier than ever to see and manipulate. If you want to collapse it, just click the arrow button again.

Before:


After:





2) Customize your chart view in 'Settings'
You can change the content of the charts to include or exclude news flags, dividends, splits, volume, and after hours trading data by clicking on the 'Settings' tab under the chart. From this panel, you can also change the scale from linear to logarithmic and change the default zoom for your charts. Also on the Settings tab, you can switch your charts to a variety of types. Instead of a line graph, you can opt to view candlestick or OHLC (Open, High, Low, Close) charts.


3) Plot custom news feeds on your charts
Using the 'Plot Feeds' tab, you can customize the news annotations on your chart to come from a favorite RSS feed or news source. Simply click the tab, enter the Feed Address, and click Plot Feeds. Here you can see I'm tracking The Apple Blog.


4) Let's get technical
The 'Technicals' tab allows you to add a variety of technical data to your charts for more advanced tracking. Available technicals range from Simple and Exponential Moving Averages to KDJ Indicators and Bollinger Bands, among many more. You can set up as many technical data series' to your charts as you like and view up to six at a time.

Try these tips out and let us know what you think or submit your suggestions for Google Finance on our Product Ideas page. Stay tuned for more as we keep building out Google Finance and catch the latest from the Google Finance team by following us on Twitter.
URL: http://googlefinanceblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/bigger-better-google-finance-charts-and.html

[G] Analyze Competition live in all English language accounts

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 01:45 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Analyze Competition live in all English language accounts

In June we announced the Analyze Competition feature in the Opportunities tab. At first, this feature was only available to a small number of advertisers using the English language AdWords interface, but now this feature is available to all English language accounts.

Analyze Competition helps you understand how your AdWords performance compares to that of other advertisers competing on similar keyword categories. Using the data in Analyze Competition, we hope you can make more informed decisions about which types of optimization changes are right for your account.

In addition to the feature's core functionality, you can now also see the Google search terms that triggered your ad for each of the most specific sub-categories in your account. Click a category name to see more specific sub-categories. When the category name is no longer a link, you'll know you're at the most specific sub-category -- this is where you'll see a "See search terms" link. Seeing the search terms that triggered your ad can serve as inspiration for new keyword ideas or help you understand if your keywords have been miscategorized by our system. If you see that the search terms listed for a given category are not related to the keywords in your ad groups, you may consider making keywords more specific or adding new negative keywords.

We hope to bring even more features to Analyze Competition in the future. To learn more about Analyze Competition, visit the Help Center, or watch this short video. You can also visit our page on the Ad Innovations site, which is the destination site for the newest, most innovative developments in AdWords.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/08/analyze-competition-live-in-all-english.html
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