Saturday, September 11, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Looking Forward to Fall

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 10:33 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Looking Forward to Fall


With Labor Day behind us, the summer is officially over for those of us in the United States. No need to fret, though. Autumn brings us many wonderful events - two of my favorites being baseball pennant races and, of course, Halloween. Our latest batch of imagery updates just happens to include a few places that capture the essence of the upcoming season and are getting me excited about all the great times to be had in the months ahead. Check out the images below:

corn maze in Petaluma, California


pumpkin patch in Petaluma, California


giant Louisville Slugger in Louisville, Kentucky


High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Santa Rosa, Spokane, El Paso, Waco, Houston, Richmond, Louisville, Dover (DE), Perquimans County (NC), Pasquotank County (NC), Cass County (MO)
Poland: Warsaw, Lublin, Chelm, Piotrkow Trybunalski, Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Opole, Wroclaw, Swidnica, Walbrzych, Zielona Gora, Leszno, Torun
Sweden: Malmo, Nybro, Ulricehamn, Linkoping, Amal, Karlskoga, Kumla, Nynashamn
Spain: Euskadi, Basque Country
Mexico: Merida, Playa del Carmen

Countries receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Guyana, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Senegal, Guinea-Bussau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, Lesotho, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, Syria, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kyrgzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, China, Mongolia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, The Philippines, Korea, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Figi

Countries receiving Medium Resolution Satellite Updates:
Canada, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, China, Thailand

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/2010/09/looking-forward-to-fall.html

[G] Responding to the fires in San Bruno

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 10:33 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Responding to the fires in San Bruno


Update at 6:27pm: We now have updated satellite imagery (from GeoEye) of the area. You can download it here and view it in Google Earth.

Like many friends in the Bay Area and across the country, I've been stunned by the images of raging fires in San Bruno. Nearly 40 structures have been destroyed and 120 damaged, with several fatalities and multiple injuries after the explosion of a gas line. More than 100 people have been evacuated to nearby shelters.

This disaster strikes close to home; our YouTube offices are about two miles away from the main gas explosion. We're thankful that no Google employee was hurt, but remain concerned for the well-being of our neighbors in the area.

We are donating an initial amount of $50,000 to the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter to help with relief efforts. We're directing Googlers to the local blood drives today and will be hosting blood drives in our San Bruno, Mountain View and San Francisco offices early next week.

We've created this map to show the location of the explosion and highlight nearby shelters and resources. The map is open for collaboration and welcomes additional useful information. We encourage you to embed it in your website or blog. We are also exploring the possibility of obtaining updated imagery of the area to help responders visualize the scope of the disaster.


View San Bruno Gas Explosion in a larger map

Our hearts go out to our neighbors who have been affected by the explosion. We thank the firefighters and first responders who have been working tirelessly to contain the fires and help the residents of San Bruno. You can donate to help here.

Posted by Laszlo Bock, VP of People Operations
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/09/responding-to-fires-in-san-bruno.html

[G] Site Maintenance on Saturday, September 11

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 09:00 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Site Maintenance on Saturday, September 11

This Saturday, our engineers will be performing routine site maintenance from 10am to 2pm PDT. You'll be unable to log in to your AdSense account during this time, but we'll continue serving ads to your pages and tracking your clicks, impressions, and earnings as usual. In addition, your ad targeting won't be affected.

We've converted the maintenance start time for a few cities around the world:

London - 6pm Saturday
Alexandria - 8pm Saturday
Hyderabad - 10:30pm Saturday
Jakarta - 12am Sunday
Perth - 1am Sunday

To learn more about what goes on during these maintenance periods, check out this Inside AdSense post.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/09/site-maintenance-on-saturday-september.html

[G] Online censorship as a trade barrier?

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 08:59 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Online censorship as a trade barrier?

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director of Public Policy



Earlier this week U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Ron Kirk held a roundtable with a cross section of Silicon Valley companies to discuss trade challenges and opportunities faced by the U.S. tech sector.

One of the strongest themes? How online censorship functions as a trade barrier for U.S. technology companies abroad. Both Google and Facebook discussed the importance of strengthening laws and treaties to ensure the free flow of information online so that U.S. companies can compete on a level playing field abroad.

The event was hosted by the Global Innovation Forum, a project of the National Foreign Trade Council, and can be watched here.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/09/online-censorship-as-trade-barrier.html

[G] License Evolution and Hosting Projects on Code.Google.Com

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 08:39 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: License Evolution and Hosting Projects on Code.Google.Com

Nearly 6 years ago when we first started thinking about doing project hosting on code.google.com we noticed something particular about the other open source project hosting sites. They either accepted all Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved licenses, like Sourceforge, or they only accepted one, like the Free Software Foundation's Savannah project, which only accepted GPL'd projects.

In our day-to-day work looking after open source licensing, we lamented the proliferation of licenses and decided that we would split the difference and only offer a very limited subset of the approved OSI licenses choices to our users as a stand against the proliferation of the same. You see, we felt then and still feel now that the excessive number of open source licenses presents a problem for open source developers and those that adopt that software. Thus when we launched project hosting on code.google.com, we only launched with a small subset of licenses.

This was hardly a barrier to adoption. While there were some complaints from some corners, in the intervening 5+ years since then, we've grown to become one of the largest hosts while allowing that ethic behind license choice to persist.

What's changing and why change now?

We've added an option to the license selector to allow any project to use an OSI approved license. Simply select "other open source" and indicate in your LICENSING, COPYING or similar file which license you are using.

Public domain projects are still only allowed on a case by case basis, as true public domain projects are quite rare and, in some countries, impossible. We encourage those that want to truly ship public domain to look at how D. Richard Hipp does things around SQLite and emulate his style. Email google-code-hosting@googlegroups.com if you'd like to request that license be applied to your project.

(Please note: we will continue to hunt down and kill non-open source projects or other projects using Google Code as a generic file-hosting service.)

Why change now? The TL;DR version is that we think we've made our point and that this new way of doing things is a better fit to our goal of supporting open source software developers.

The longer form of the reason why is that we never really liked turning away projects that were under real, compatible licenses like the zlib or other permissive licenses, nor did we really like turning away projects under licenses that serve a truly new function, like the AGPL. We also think that there were inconsistencies in how we handled multi-licensed projects (for instance: a project that is under an Apache license, but has a zlib component.)

To rectify this, we decided to add an additional option to the license selector that would accommodate some flexibility around open source licenses. We hope you find it useful and look forward to seeing how you use the site!

By Chris DiBona, for the Project Hosting Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/09/license-evolution-and-hosting-projects.html

[G] Interviews from GUADEC, Part 4

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 08:39 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Interviews from GUADEC, Part 4


Stormy Peters is the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, and when Jeremy Allison from the Google Open Source Programs Office ran into her at GUADEC, he was eager to talk to her about the direction that GNOME is heading. In the video above, Stormy and Jeremy discuss release schedules, GNOME 3, and hackfests. Enjoy!

By Ellen Ko, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/09/interviews-from-guadec-part-4.html

[G] OAuth Sign-in Controllers for iOS and Mac OS X Applications

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 08:30 PM PDT

Official Google Mac Blog: OAuth Sign-in Controllers for iOS and Mac OS X Applications

By Greg Robbins, Software Engineer

(Editor's note: Long-time readers know we sometimes publish posts aimed at programmers, and this is one of those. If you're not a software developer, don't worry. Our usual non-technical stuff will return.)

It's rare today for any software to live in isolation. And often, applications want to connect to data in your Google Account. Social networks seek access to your Gmail contacts, finance programs try to sync with your Google Finance portfolio, and photo editing software would like to add eyeglasses and mustaches to the photos in your Picasa Web Albums account. But you probably don't want your photo editing program to be able to download your financial portfolio, spend money with your Google Checkout account, or have access to any of your other personal data.

The fundamental problem is that giving your username and password to a program hands it access to all of your data. Recently, Internet software developers have converged on a solution called OAuth. When sites and software support OAuth, you only need to give your username and password—your credentials—to the site where your data belongs, and that site passes a token with strictly limited authorization rights back to other sites and software.

For example, if you want to use the new SuperAwesomeEditor application to trim your YouTube videos, the editing program can use OAuth to ask YouTube for permission to edit your videos, and then YouTube will ask you to verify your identify. Once you give your username and password to YouTube, it will hand back to SuperAwesomeEditor a token allowing it access just to your YouTube videos for editing. SuperAwesomeEditor won't know your password, so it won't be able to grab your financial documents or check out your Gmail contacts. And tomorrow, if you change your mind, you can tell YouTube to cancel that token, and suddenly SuperAwesomeEditor will be unable to access your videos at all. Now you're in control of your personal data.

OAuth offers another big advantage: it gives the data provider flexibility in how it authenticates you. So today you may be asked for your username and password, and also to solve a captcha to prove you're human. Tomorrow, with tighter security, the provider can add another means of authentication, perhaps by sending a text message to your phone with an extra passcode to type when signing in. Improvements in user authentication over time like this aren't possible in software that only knows how to ask for a username and password.

Unfortunately, the rose of OAuth comes with thorns. One bit of pain is that it takes a lot of tricky programming for applications to use OAuth for authentication. Another downside stems from OAuth having been designed to allow one website to obtain authorization from another; it is not well-suited for use in installed applications, such as native iPhone, iPad, or Mac OS X software.

To encourage adoption of OAuth by Mac and iOS apps, we have released the Google Toolbox for Mac OAuth Controllers. This small set of Objective-C classes makes it easy for developers to add OAuth sign-in embedded into Cocoa apps. Since adoption of OAuth extends beyond Google, the OAuth controllers work with both Google and non-Google data providers.

Here's how easy it is for developers to let users sign in to Google Contacts with OAuth from an iPhone application:

#import "GTMOAuthViewControllerTouch.h"

NSString *keychainItemName = @"HotSocialNetwork: Google Contacts"
NSString *scope = @"http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/"; 
 // scope for Google Contacts API

GTMOAuthViewControllerTouch *viewController =
 [[[GTMOAuthViewControllerTouch alloc] initWithScope:scope
  language:nil
  appServiceName:keychainItemName
  delegate:self
  finishedSelector:@selector(viewController:finishedWithAuth:error:)] 
    autorelease];
[[self navigationController] pushViewController:controller animated:YES];

When the user finishes signing in, the controller will invoke the application's callback method:
                    
- (void)viewController:(GTMOAuthViewControllerTouch *)viewController
  finishedWithAuth:(GTMOAuthAuthentication *)auth
             error:(NSError *)error {
 if (error == nil) {
   // Authentication succeeded; retain the auth object
 }
}

That's it. The controllers handle displaying an embedded web view and interacting with the server, and optionally saving the authorization token in the keychain. Later on, the application can use the auth object provided to the callback to authenticate and sign requests it makes to the server, like this:

[auth authorizeRequest:myNSURLMutableRequest];

Authenticating to non-Google services takes a few more lines of code to specify the application's identity and the server addresses needed for authorization, but it's almost as simple.



The OAuth protocol is in transition, as a newer version is currently being developed. But if you are a developer, there is already benefit to adopting OAuth for letting your users sign in to Google and other services. For more information about using the GTM OAuth controllers in your app, read the introduction at the project site, and join the discussion group. Google also maintains a site for our ongoing research into OAuth and related subjects.

The OAuth Controllers are an independent sibling project to the Google Toolbox for Mac, a collection of useful classes for iPhone and Mac developers. The controllers incorporate the newly-liberated GTM HTTP Fetcher project, our networking wrapper class, which I'll discuss in an upcoming post. You can find more of our open-source Mac and iPhone toys on the Google Mac Developer Playground at http://code.google.com/mac.
URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2010/09/oauth-sign-in-controllers-for-ios-and.html

[G] Going Google across the 50 States: Google Apps and Google App Engine are a powerful combination for West Virginia business

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 05:21 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Going Google across the 50 States: Google Apps and Google App Engine are a powerful combination for West Virginia business

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.

As the former VP of Technology at a major financial services firm, Ray Malone has spent most of his career focused on business intelligence, data warehousing, and development of web-based applications. So, when his wife, Tina Malone, decided to start a new business out of their home in West Virginia, Ray naturally helped her pick out the technology that best suited her needs.

Today, with Ray's help, Tina is running MSaven.com, a successful marketing business that provides companies with text message marketing, print advertising, and the ability to offer online coupons. The technology that powers the company is an important part of its success, and Ray shares with us how Google Apps and Google App Engine play a pivotal role.

"In 2008, my wife Tina came up with the idea for MSaven.com, but there was a catch – she expected me to set up our IT infrastructure with little to no money. I had been using Gmail and almost every other Google product for a long time so it was an easy decision to use Google to build the business. Now, our entire operation runs using both Google Apps and Google App Engine, and the combination of performance and scalability has been awesome.


We use Google Apps for everything from emailing to creating online documents and spreadsheets. I recently used a Google spreadsheet to create a financial calculator showing advertisers how much they could potentially make with our firm – I shared the spreadsheet with a prospective advertiser and walked him through it over the phone. We were both able to tweak specific inputs on the spreadsheet and see the results in real-time. It was a powerful way to communicate without having to be in the same room.

I'm constantly using Gmail and Google Calendar, and access them extensively from my Android-powered device. Both allow me to coordinate with our sales reps and contractors. Some of our contractors are located internationally so the Talk feature, integrated in Gmail, has been the primary communication channel.

With Google App Engine, I've built our entire web application. Python was a new language for us, but within a few months we were building dynamic content and connecting to vendor systems. Here's an example of how it works – when a consumer sends us a text message requesting a coupon, we connect to the vendor's system through an API (this is the vendor that is providing the coupon), and the right coupon is dynamically generated and sent back. If this is the second time the consumer has contacted us, a different coupon or message is sent back. All of the logic, and the ability to generate and send coupons is built with Google App Engine.

I've developed many systems over the years and used other well-known email clients, and this type of performance can't be beat. You can do everything better with Google Apps."

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/09/going-google-across-50-states-google.html

[G] Responding to the fires in San Bruno

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 04:55 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Responding to the fires in San Bruno

Like many friends in the Bay Area and across the country, I've been stunned by the images of raging fires in San Bruno. Nearly 40 structures have been destroyed and 120 damaged, with several fatalities and multiple injuries after the explosion of a gas line. More than 100 people have been evacuated to nearby shelters.

This disaster strikes close to home; our YouTube offices are about two miles away from the main gas explosion. We're thankful that no Google employee was hurt, but remain concerned for the well-being of our neighbors in the area.

We are donating an initial amount of $50,000 to the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter to help with relief efforts. We're directing Googlers to the local blood drives today and will be hosting blood drives in our San Bruno, Mountain View and San Francisco offices early next week.

We've created this map to show the location of the explosion and highlight nearby shelters and resources. The map is open for collaboration and welcomes additional useful information. We encourage you to embed it in your website or blog. We are also exploring the possibility of obtaining updated imagery of the area to help responders visualize the scope of the disaster.


View San Bruno Gas Explosion in a larger map

Our hearts go out to our neighbors who have been affected by the explosion. We thank the firefighters and first responders who have been working tirelessly to contain the fires and help the residents of San Bruno. You can donate to help here.

Posted by Laszlo Bock, VP of People Operations
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/responding-to-fires-in-san-bruno.html

[G] More On Instant Search

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 12:49 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: More On Instant Search

Since this week's launch of Instant Search, we've been asked how to track Instant Search in Google Analytics, and in particular, whether it's possible to see partial Instant Search queries in your reports.

You actually don't need to do anything to track Instant Search queries in Google Analytics. All search referrals are tracked just as they've always been.

We've seen several clever profile filters in the blogosphere that are designed to parse out the values of the "oq" parameter so that partial queries can be easily seen in Google Analytics. However, the "oq" parameter is not related to Instant Search and is often not passed in the request.

Some answers to your other questions:

Should I change my search advertising strategy to serve ads on to partial keywords (e.g. if I sell flowers, should I advertise on "flow")?
This is not a productive strategy. Please note that ads are triggered based on the "predicted query" and not the stem that the users types in. So, in this example, the partial query "flow" triggers results for the predicted query of "flowers". The only way someone can see your ad for "flow" is if they specifically searched for that word and hit enter or clicked search. And since you sell flowers, it's not likely that your ad for flowers will be served alongside such a generic and irrelevant word.

Does this change impact the ranking of search results?
No, this change does not impact the ranking of search results.

What term will I see in Google Analytics if a visitor comes on a partial query?
The keyword analytics sends is not the partial one but the predicted query. If a user was typing "web metrics" but got the search result she wanted at "web met" with the predicted term being "web metrics", then you will see "web metrics" in your Google Analytics reports.

How will this affect my AdWords impression count?
When someone searches using Google Instant, ad impressions are counted in these situations:
  • The user begins to type a query on Google and clicks anywhere on the page (a search result, an ad, a spell correction, a related search).
  • The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter, or selecting one of the predicted queries.
  • The user stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds."
Many of your questions related to ads can be answered here.

We hope this helps. Feel free to comment below.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-on-instant-search.html

[G] Back to School with Google forms

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 12:42 PM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Back to School with Google forms

Cross posted on the Google Student Blog

Guest Post: Emily is a senior at Emory University, majoring in Business and Biology. This summer, she worked as an intern on the Google Apps for Education team and here she shares her thoughts on using Google forms on campus.

During the hectic first few weeks back at school – which can be the busiest time of year for a college student – one of the things that helps me get things done and stay organized is Google forms. I started using this functionality a lot during my summer internship to survey the intern community and other groups across the company. It's an easy and efficient way to obtain and interpret information from many people and that's why I'm excited to use it now that I'm back at school.

Google forms allows me to quickly create a survey with various information gathering formats (multiple choice, free answer, check box, and more). Then I can simply send a link for the published form to the desired respondents and their answers automatically feed into a spreadsheet in Google Docs.

For example, I recently used Google forms for a club I'm involved in called Goizueta International Network, an organization that helps incoming and outgoing exchange students make the most of their abroad experiences. Google forms allowed me to survey the international exchange students about what activities they would be interested in for the upcoming year.

All the international students are from different countries and live all across campus, so creating a survey using Forms was a convenient and universally understandable way to get information. Plus I was able to spice up the appearance of the survey with a new Google form theme.


After collecting all of the responses, I could easily view the results of my data. All I had to do was go to the "Form" tab in the spreadsheet housing all of the survey information and select "Show summary of responses." This produced the data in a simple, clear graphical format making the data easy to use.

Check out the responses to the question "I am interested in the Goizueta International Network organizing the following..."


We've decided to focus on the ideas that had the most support. We know they will benefit and excite both local and foreign students because they all participated in the decision process.

Google forms can be useful in any area of a college student's life. It can classify and coordinate information for classes, clubs, athletic teams, fraternities or sororities, friends, family, or any group or organization. As a Google Student Ambassador I plan to educate more people on my campus about how Google forms (along with the rest of the Docs and Apps suite) can make all their activities run more quickly and easily.

Without putting in too much effort, we got a solid response rate and now have some great ideas for next year.

Posted by: Emily Rubin, Emory University
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/09/back-to-school-with-google-forms.html

[G] Monthly charging limits for unchanged budgets

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 12:38 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Monthly charging limits for unchanged budgets

Over the years, many of you have told us that you'd like to be charged a consistent amount each calendar month. We're happy to help you by introducing a monthly charging limit for campaigns, which is automatically calculated based on your daily budget.

When your daily budget is unchanged throughout an entire calendar month, We'll set a monthly charging limit for that campaign by multiplying your daily budget by 30.4, which is roughly the average number of days in a month (365 days in a year / 12 months = 30.417 days/month). For example, if your daily budget is US$10 throughout a month, you won't be charged more than $304 during that month (US$10 daily budget * 30.4 average days per month). As usual, actual daily spend may vary.

Accounts will transition to monthly charging limits over the next several weeks. When you edit your budget from Campaign Settings, a new tooltip will also be visible describing this change.

To learn more about this change, please see our FAQs on the monthly charging limit and on what happens when you change your budget.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/09/monthly-charging-limits-for-unchanged.html

[G] AdWords system maintenance on September 11th

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 12:38 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: AdWords system maintenance on September 11th

On Saturday, September 11th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to our regularly scheduled system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your account during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month during the above times. We'll continue to update you here as we always have, but you may want to take note of our intended dates and times to help you plan for any scheduled downtimes further down the road.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/09/adwords-system-maintenance-on-september.html

[G] WebM Decoding Improvements in Google Chrome 6

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 12:05 PM PDT

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: WebM Decoding Improvements in Google Chrome 6

Google Chrome 6 for Windows, Mac and Linux was released last week. We want to congratulate the Chrome team and thank them for their contributions to the WebM project.

Making the web faster is a core goal of Chrome, and we are happy to report that across a set of test clips Chrome 6 decodes VP8 video significantly faster than the developer version that was released at our launch in May. On single-core Intel machines the average improvement is about 20%; on multicore processors it ranges from 15% (two cores) to 50% (four cores). If you want to try it for yourself, get Chrome 6 and then follow our instructions for playing WebM videos on Youtube.

We've made further decoding speed gains in Chrome 7 dev channel, and are working on better video rendering to further improve the WebM user experience.
URL: http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/09/webm-decoding-improvements-in-google.html

[G] Responding to the fires in San Bruno

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 11:59 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Responding to the fires in San Bruno

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog



Like many friends in the Bay Area and across the country, I've been stunned by the images of raging fires in San Bruno. Nearly 40 structures have been destroyed and 120 damaged, with several fatalities and multiple injuries after the explosion of a gas line. More than 100 people have been evacuated to nearby shelters.



This disaster strikes close to home; our YouTube offices are about two miles away from the main gas explosion. We're thankful that no Google employee was hurt, but remain concerned for the well-being of our neighbors in the area.



We are donating an initial amount of $50,000 to the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter to help with relief efforts. We're directing Googlers to the local blood drives today and will be hosting blood drives in our San Bruno, Mountain View and San Francisco offices early next week.



We've created this map to show the location of the explosion and highlight nearby shelters and resources. The map is open for collaboration and welcomes additional useful information. We encourage you to embed it in your website or blog. We are also exploring the possibility of obtaining updated imagery of the area to help responders visualize the scope of the disaster.





View San Bruno Gas Explosion in a larger map



Our hearts go out to our neighbors who have been affected by the explosion. We thank the firefighters and first responders who have been working tirelessly to contain the fires and help the residents of San Bruno. You can donate to help here.



Posted by Laszlo Bock, VP of People Operations


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/rScEs91ldOw/responding-to-fires-in-san-bruno.html

[G] Hasbro Brings Trivial Pursuit to YouTube

Posted: 10 Sep 2010 08:25 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Hasbro Brings Trivial Pursuit to YouTube

What do you figure the Numa Numa guy knows about arts and literature? What about Tay Zonday's knowledge of world history? Would you be willing to bet on whether Michael Buckley knows his geography? This week, Hasbro brings the world 'You vs. YouTube' Trivial Pursuit experiment, which asks players to do just that.







Hasbro has upgraded the old version of Trivial Pursuit to their 'Bet You Know It' edition, adding an interactive element where you bet on whether or not your opponents know the answer. In the 'You vs. YouTube' experiment, they've pitted the public against YouTube stars like the Davies-Carr brothers (from 'Charlie Bit My Finger') in a giant online tournament.



We're excited about this at YouTube because it gives our partners a chance to shine, it provides users a fun gaming experience, and it gives Hasbro a chance to get the word out about their new game. Hasbro's Group Executive, Jane Ritson-Parsons, said of the online competition, "We know our consumers are online and watching as many of today's stars are discovered online -- and many through YouTube — that we felt that a partnership with the world's most popular video site would be a natural fit. It provides us with great context and relevance for our game introduction". In our opinion, they've done a number of innovative things from a marketing perspective:



  • They evolved their product. Hasbro listened to their customers when they said the game questions were too hard or obscure, and tweaked their product accordingly. Questions were re-written, and they made the game more interactive through the 'betting' element.

  • They recognized the power of viral video. Hasbro knew that YouTube stars have built an audience that resembles their own. By teaming up with our partners, they've added unique voices to their campaign. For example, on Michael Buckley's channel, he talks about his 'Trivial Pursuit Story'. Tay Zonday wrote a special song for the game. Gary Brolsma dances in his living room with friends during their Trivial Pursuit night. And the Davies-Carr brothers warn you to challenge them, or they'll bite your finger...





  • They share the love with the YouTube community. On the Trivial Pursuit channel, Hasbro has uploads of other partner videos discussing the challenge. Of particular note is mediocrefilms' 'REJECTED Trivial Pursuit Commercial' By allowing other content creators to participate, they get a lot more reach into audiences they might not have considered directly targeting.Brand advertisers are starting to recognize the power of the YouTube community and popular partners.

We look forward to providing more fun and entertaining brand integration in the future. In the meantime, try out the game! 'The People's' chips are down!

    Margaret Healy, Strategic Partner Manager, recently watched "You vs. YouTube-EDBASSMASTER-Skippy Calls Hasbro"


    URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/LfeCmzazCpA/hasbro-brings-trivial-pursuit-to.html
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