Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Announcing a new white spaces trial in Logan, Ohio

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 08:32 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Announcing a new white spaces trial in Logan, Ohio

Posted by Larry Alder, Business Operations Project Manager

I'm in Logan, Ohio, today to announce that Spectrum Bridge, the Hocking Valley Community Hospital, and Google have teamed up to deploy a broadband network using the TV white spaces.

This is an exciting new deployment – the first of its kind for a hospital – demonstrating the potential of the TV white spaces to improve broadband and spark new applications in healthcare. First responder vehicles, hospital grounds as well as the health department are being equipped with high-speed wireless Internet access. Additionally, the hospital is using the network to manage its outdoor video surveillance system.

To prevent interference with other signals, the network is using Spectrum Bridge's real-time TV white spaces database (to determine TV white spaces availability at any location, check out Spectrum Bridge's free search tool.)

This deployment is operating on an experimental white spaces license granted by the FCC. Next Thursday, September 23, the Commission will be voting on final technical rules governing the white spaces – a vote that could pave the way for unlicensed white spaces deployments across the country.

We're excited that the final rules are up for a vote, and can't wait to see how entrepreneurs and innovators nationwide will use unlicensed white spaces to introduce cool new products and services.

Stay tuned to this blog for an update from this morning's launch event.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/09/announcing-new-white-spaces-trial-in.html

[G] Google D.C. Talks: 10 Things You Don't Know About Online Advertising

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 08:32 PM PDT

Google Public Policy Blog: Google D.C. Talks: 10 Things You Don't Know About Online Advertising

Posted by Mistique Cano, Policy Communications Manager

Let's say you go to a documentary screening at the National Archives. After the screening your friend really wants gelato. You search for a place nearby on your phone. Along with your search results you see an ad for a gelato bar that, turns out, is only a block away. Your friend gets bourbon vanilla and you get pistachio. Everyone is happy. How did your phone know to serve you a gelato ad for a place around the corner instead of Georgetown? It's called geo-location advertising, and along with innovations like social advertising, interest-based advertising, and pay-per-click search ads, it's one of the biggest things in online advertising.

The U.S. online advertising economy is now $25 billion a year. But this growing space is little understood in Washington. Why are advertisers shifting money from TV and print to the web? How are ad prices set? Do those banner ads really work? Is geo-location a threat or new way to get discounts from your favorite stores? Will the iPad and tablet devices hurt newspapers or lead to their rebirth?

As part of our ongoing Google D.C. Talks series, and in conjunction with DC AdWeek, we'll discuss these questions and more with the Interactive Advertising Bureau's leader Randall Rothenberg and industry experts in search, display, and social advertising. The discussion will cover the basics of online advertising as well as emerging trends and interesting uses.

Google D.C. Talks Presents
10 Things You Don't Know About Online Advertising
Monday, September 20th
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Google DC
1101 New York Avenue, NW
2nd Floor
Washington, DC 20005Please
Click here to RSVP.

We hope you can join us. All are invited to submit questions in advance via Google Moderator.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-dc-talks-10-things-you-dont-know.html

[G] What you say is what you search

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 08:31 PM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: What you say is what you search

Many of you have searched the web by speaking since the launch of voice search in 2008. In fact, one in every four searches from an Android phone in the US is by voice. In certain situations, voice search just works much better than typing. It's a lot faster than typing on a small phone screen. You can search things even when you don't know the correct spelling. It's more fun as you can share what you're doing with your friends. And it's safer when you're walking around. Once you start using voice search, you start discovering all sorts of new ways to use it.

We've thought of a few interesting uses for voice search and made some short videos out of them. Check them out on our new YouTube channel. But we know you can do better. What are some of your most frequent or unusual voice search queries? Leave us a comment below or on our YouTube channel.



Posted by Heaven Kim, Product Marketing, Google Mobile
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-you-say-is-what-you-search.html

[G] Revisiting Domestic Trends

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 07:51 PM PDT

Google Finance Blog: Revisiting Domestic Trends

Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager

A couple weeks ago we showed you our best tips for the Google Finance Stock Screener. But this tool is just one of many features on the site that is designed to help you make informed investing decisions. Today we'd like to reintroduce you to Google's Domestic Trends - a powerful tool for exploring the economy and financial markets.

We first introduced Google Domestic Trends last September in partnership with Hal Varian and the Google team of economists. The ultimate goal was to explore the link between relative search query volume of terms related each of 23 major economic industries in the United States and stock market performance. In this way, we sought to provide unique insight into the broader economy and help users to take a holistic view of the market.

The tool is easy to use - just select the industry you're interested in to see a sample of the keywords we track for that industry. Then, compare searches for those terms with price performance of the major market indices or individual stocks. As a reminder, each index value is set to 1.0 as of January 1, 2005 and is calculated and displayed on the Google Finance charts as a 7-day moving average. You can easily compare actual stocks and market indexes to these Google Trends on the charts.

To mark the anniversary of these tools, the Google Finance team decided to have some fun with the data to see what interesting trends we could find. Here are some of our favorites:

Luxury Goods

Over the past year, the luxury goods index has shown a predictable pattern with spikes in searches for terms related to jewelry, diamonds, and more around the winter holiday season and Valentine's day. However, the comparison chart below shows that the traditional luxury goods stocks did not show huge spikes during those periods and instead followed the trend of the broader market index (in this example, the Dow Jones Index), including a continued trend upwards in spring of this year even as relative searches for luxury goods fell, with the exception of the Valentine's day spike in February.


Automotive Index

Over the lifetime of the Domestic Trends Index, we've seen a regular spike in search traffic for automotive related queries each summer - regardless of broader market performance. In 2010, however, the spike was significantly smaller, as shown in the graph below.


The stock performance of most major automotive stocks for 2010, reflects this trend. With the marked exception of Ford Motor Company, which is up nearly 19.7% as of September 14, and Tata Motors which is up 40.8% for the year, other major automotive stocks are all down for 2010.


Explore Domestic Trends to discover more interesting trends and indicators for the economy and markets. And to catch the latest from the Google Finance team, follow us on Twitter.
URL: http://googlefinanceblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/revisiting-domestic-trends.html

[G] App Tuesday: Celebrate Google Apps Marketplace’s half birthday with 12 new apps

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 07:16 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: App Tuesday: Celebrate Google Apps Marketplace's half birthday with 12 new apps

Six months ago, the Google Apps Marketplace was born, and we're excited to celebrate its growth in this short time. Today, more than 4 million Google Apps users have Marketplace apps installed on their domain. In addition, there are now more than 200 integrated apps available to Google Apps users, covering customer relationship management, accounting, finance, project management, and more. Almost every week, third-party applications are joining the Apps Marketplace to address an expanding range of business needs.

This App Tuesday, we're celebrating our half birthday by launching 12 new apps to the Marketplace. If you are an Apps domain admin, you can extend your Google Apps functionality with just a few easy clicks. All of these installable apps offer single sign-on, so your users can start using them conveniently right from the universal navigation bar in Google Apps. In addition, many applications have implemented deeper integrations with Google Apps, such as Calendar sync or Gmail contextual gadgets, which present relevant information from third-party apps in-line within a Gmail message. Try out these apps and join the other 4 million Apps Marketplace users:

  • Grockit - Social Learning Platform for Students
    A social platform for learning that provides students with collaborative, real-time study rooms and relevant coursework to achieve various educational goals.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Calendar sync, Google Docs
  • Elance - Talent Acquisition and Management
    An employment platform that offers talent-hungry companies instant access to qualified online workers and the tools to hire, evaluate, and compensate them.
    Integrations: Single sign-on
  • ERPLY - Enterprise Resource Planning
    An ERP software that helps you easily manage your points of sale (POS), inventory, relationships and billing by providing real time information.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Calendar
  • Insync - Document Management
    A dropbox for Google Apps that bi-directionally syncs Google Docs to Finder and Explorer, allowing a user to work seamlessly across a desktop and browser.
    Intergrations: Single sign-on, Google Docs sync, Google Contacts
  • Rainmaker - Social CRM
    A tool to supercharge your contacts by searching a user's social networks to auto-populate critical information and merging it right into Google Contacts.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Contact Sync
  • Pipeline Deals - Customer Management
    A CRM tool to help manage your sales pipeline by overseeing deal flow, tracking leads, and running reports. Current PipelineDeals users manage a combined sales pipeline of $60 billion.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Calendar Sync, Google Contacts Sync
  • Idea2 - Customer Management
    A CRM tool that organizes data according to employees' usage patterns and makes critical data available to them in the most relevant locations.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Gmail, Google Calendar
  • Kashoo - Accounting and Finance
    Accounting software that creates and sends invoices, manages expenses, reconciles bank statements, tracks cash flow, and generates financial reports.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail
  • SimplifyThis - Productivity
    A tool to help employees book appointments, manage billing, and track clients through a fluid interface with Google Apps.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Calendar
  • OffiServ - Productivity
    An application that supports administrative processes by automating various functions, such as purchase order approval, vacation management, and resource distribution.
    Integrations: Single sign-on
  • Mindquilt - Productivity
    An internal question and answer platform for companies to help streamline the process of employee inquiries and knowledge distribution.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Gmail, Google Talk
  • RecMan - Security and Compliance
    A tool that provides transparent records management and compliance features, centralized document access control, and retention, legal holds and disposition policy management.
    Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Docs, Gmail

Check out our Apps Marketplace to explore one of these new apps or the other over 200 existing apps. If you've #gonegoogle and tried the #appsmarketplace, let other users know what you recommend via Twitter or submit your suggestions for additional apps.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/09/app-tuesday-celebrate-google-apps.html

[G] Introducing the Mobile Bookmark Bubble

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 05:18 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: Introducing the Mobile Bookmark Bubble

Today, we're pleased to announce that we're open-sourcing the Mobile Bookmark Bubble, a JavaScript library that helps users of your web application bookmark the app to their home screen, just like a native app. We've been using this library in several of our own web apps, and hope you'll find it useful for your users, too.

The bubble, which currently supports iPhone, iPod and iPad devices running iPhone OS 3 and above, slides in at the bottom of the application with instructions for creating the bookmark. The bubble automatically slides back out again after a few seconds if the user does not interact with it. HTML5 local storage is used to prevent the bubble from being shown after the user has dismissed it too many times. The amount of time the bubble remains visible, as well as the number of times the bubble can be dismissed, can be easily configured.

The Mobile Bookmark Bubble is released as an open source project under the Apache license, and is available now on Google Code. The repository includes a small sample application demonstrating how the library can be used. If you'd like to send feedback or have any questions, please see our discussion group. Happy hacking!

By Neil Thomas, Software Engineering Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/09/introducing-mobile-bookmark-bubble.html

[G] Behind the Video: Chris Anderson’s “Meet the Flood Victims of Pakistan”

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 04:29 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Behind the Video: Chris Anderson's "Meet the Flood Victims of Pakistan"

In this new series, YouTube users take you behind the scenes of a video they've made and explain, in their own words, how the video came to be and what they hope it achieves. First up, TED Curator Chris Anderson captures the stark faces he encountered on a recent trip to a ravaged area of Pakistan.

When Jacqueline Novogratz and I returned last week from a visit to Pakistan's flood-hit areas, we couldn't get out of our heads the faces of the people we'd seen -- in equal measures beautiful... haunting... hopeless... hopeful... These faces are the best possible answer to the troubling indifference so much of the world has shown in response to this crisis, which by any objective measure is one of the worst this century.

We wanted to spread the word about what we'd seen, so we wrote to one of our heroes, Peter Gabriel, and he generously agreed to let us use an unforgettable song of his as the soundtrack to a video that will show you the people we met.

Every one of these people has lost almost everything they own: their homes, their possessions, their animals...in most cases, all but the clothes they're wearing. Please stop what you're doing for five minutes, take a deep breath, sit down next to someone you care about, click the full-screen button below the video, and then press play.



Chris Anderson, Curator of TED


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/XR08D2K8KrY/behind-video-chris-andersons-meet-flood.html

[G] App Tuesday: Happy half-birthday Google Apps Marketplace & 12 new apps

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 02:38 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: App Tuesday: Happy half-birthday Google Apps Marketplace & 12 new apps

Over the last six months, the Google Apps Marketplace has offered a variety of third party applications to extend Google Apps functionality and make businesses more efficient. Now, more than 4 million Google Apps users have installed applications from our storefront, which is packed with a quickly-growing set of more than 200 apps, including the 12 new apps we're introducing today.

As the Marketplace grows, Google Apps users can access integrated apps that address more and more new areas, like marketing, accounting and project management. They can fluidly navigate between native Google Apps and third party solutions through our universal navigation bar at the top of Gmail, Docs and other Google apps. And Marketplace integrations give users a range of features, from having relevant customer data from a customer relationship management application populate in-line within an email to auto-syncing due dates between a project management application and Google Calendar.

We strive to bring solutions that address every one of a business's unique needs. In that spirit, we welcome a few "firsts" among today's 12 new apps:
  • Elance - a talent acquisition and management tool
  • Grockit - the first education app in the Marketplace for students
  • ERPLY - a specialized enterprise resource planning tool to manage retail points of sale.
Find out more about this App Tuesday launch on the Google Enterprise Blog, or by visiting the Apps Marketplace directly.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/app-tuesday-happy-half-birthday-google.html

[G] Increase Your Productivity with the API

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 01:32 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: Increase Your Productivity with the API

Back in Episode 10 of Web Analytics TV, (32:00), Lisa C from Melbourne asked how to pull a trending report from Google Analytics for the top organic search landing pages. This was such a great question, that we wrote 2 articles and released sample code describing how you can automate retrieving this data from Google Analytics Data Export API. But first let's look at the results.

Here is a graph plotting traffic to the top 100 landing pages for organic search for all of June for www.googlestore.com.

Let's Analyze. This is the typical trend graph you can find across the Google Analytics web interface. By itself, all you can tell is that something happened during the spike. What you can't figure out is which page actually increased in traffic; to do so would require lots more digging.

Now let's try again. Here is a stacked area graph of each of the top 100 landing pages for organic search.

Let's analyze again. Awesome, right? It's obvious why this is better - there's more context. Notice how much more we can get from this graph. We can see the green page is what caused the big spike. Also we see that the blue and orange pages had interesting changes in traffic patterns; changes we couldn't identify from the first graph. Being able to break down the totals is indeed a gold mine for analysis.

What actions might you take from these insights? Perhaps you should get your organic search keywords to send traffic to the blue page. Then, identify the keywords sending traffic to the green and orange page and see if you can increase traffic to other pages.

Exporting the Data from the web interface:
Anybody can pull this data from the Google Analytics web interface - but it's a bit of work. You create a custom report with landing pages and entrances. Then drill into each landing page, and export the data to a csv file. Finally you go through all csv files and compile them into a single file for analysis. Let's illustrate:

Going through each report individually is a LOT of manual work, but we can automate all of this using the Data Export API, reducing hours of work into a few minutes!

Using the Data Export API to Automate

We mentioned we wrote two articles about the above graph. In the first article, we demonstrate how to use the Data Export API to automate the exact task above. A user specifies 1 query to determine the top landing pages. Then, for each landing page, a separate query is used to get the data over time.

This is great and we built it to work with any query with a single dimension. But notice that the number of queries grows with the number dimensions. In fact this program requires n + 1 queries so if you want data for 1,000 dimensions, it will take 1,001 queries.

This is bad because there is a daily quota of 10,000 queries for the Data Export API. So if you ran this program 10 times, with 1,000 dimensions, it would require 10,010 queries completely using your quota. ouch!

Optimizing Data Export API Requests

The second article describes an alternate approach to retrieving the same data, but minimizes the number of queries required. In this article, we use Data Export API filter expressions to return data for multiple dimensions in each request.

This approach dramatically reduces the amount of quota required. In the best case, only 2 queries are required.

Using this second approach allows analysts to run this report to their hearts content; for different time frames and different dimensions, comparing organic vs paid traffic, trends of keywords by search engine,and even traffic by geography.

In addition to the two articles describing both approaches, we've released the sample code for the application. We hope you use it! In the comments below, let us know the insights you find through using this tool.


Posted by Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/09/increase-your-productivity-with-api.html

[G] Introducing ‘Improving Online Conversions for Dummies’

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 11:49 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Introducing 'Improving Online Conversions for Dummies'

Cross posted from the Conversion Room Blog:

Are you eager to optimise your Conversion Rate, but feel a little bit overwhelmed by all of the tools available to help you? Today we're delighted to introduce Improving Online Conversions for Dummies.

We have just released a simple, easy to follow mini book, in conjunction with John Wiley Publications, to help you get a better grasp of the conversion improvement tools offered by Google. Improving Online Conversions for Dummies explains how you can make sure your ads show on searches that are most likely to convert into sales. Understand which ad clicks and impressions lead to conversions, better apportion your marketing spend and even develop your own conversion attribution model. Discover the secrets to getting more bang for your buck with this ebook.



For more information, visit www.google.com/conversion/fordummies

Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew


URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/09/introducing-improving-online.html

[G] How-to videos put more sexy golf carts on the road

Posted: 14 Sep 2010 09:49 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: How-to videos put more sexy golf carts on the road

This post is part of the "BizBlog Series". Check back each week to see articles about partners and advertisers on YouTube, or search under the label "BizBlog".



We all have a dream. America's 25 million small business owners are making their dreams happen. But it's never easy.



For E.C. Hundley, his dream had four wheels, an engine, and a smooth ride. As the proprietor of Everything Carts in Martinsville, Va., E.C. built a business that custom assembles souped-up, street-legal golf carts. He also sells cart accessories online, and his business now employs eight people. With your dream, some hard work, guile and a penchant for online marketing, you can do something like this, too.



Let's see how E.C. is using YouTube to build his business.


Did you get your business online from the start?

Oddly enough, we started out as a local retail store, and we never thought about taking our business online. After the first 8 months, we were going broke with just one employee, and I figured we had to do something if we were going to survive.



So you took your business online just to keep it alive.

Yes. At that point we had maybe $1,500 in inventory sitting on the shelf, so we started putting some of it on eBay. We then got with a friend who's a web designer, and he built our website. Since then we have revamped the site about four times to make it friendly for our customers. It saved our business.



How much of your business comes from people finding you on the web, compared to other channels?

Our direct web activity is about 70% of our sales. Most of the rest is via telephone, and we also promote our business via a print catalog.



Tell us about your YouTube channel. What kind of videos do you make, and how do they help your customers?

I help people with installation of the products we sell. Our call volume had gotten really high on some of our products, so helping people over the phone was taking a lot of time. Then I remembered watching a Photoshop tutorial on YouTube, and I thought to myself this is the answer to our problem. So we started shooting a few how-to videos and posted them on our YouTube channel, and soon those calls stopped completely. 








Do the videos help you sell more, too?

Yes. The videos also help us earn new business, because our customers can see that we know the products we sell, and they can buy with confidence.



What are your future plans for online video?

With the success we've had with the few videos we have done, we have now built a studio just for shooting how-to videos. This way the customer can see how the products are installed and get a better idea of how it is going to look. One of the toughest parts of selling a product online is that the customer usually just gets to see a picture of what they're interested in. With video they get a better idea of the real look and size. It is the closest thing you can get to seeing, touching, feeling the product.



That's the real power of video, isn't it? How hard was it to get started building a YouTube channel?

It was the easiest Internet task we had ever done. It's pretty easy and inexpensive to make good-looking videos today, too.



What advice would you have for other business owners or managers who are considering YouTube as a marketing channel?

The main advantage of producing online videos, especially for an online business, is it makes your business real. Customers need to see that your company has real people behind the website.



Eric Meyerson, Video Business Marketing Lead recently watched "1981 primitive Internet report on KRON"





URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/_wDU33ps_yQ/how-to-videos-put-more-sexy-golf-carts.html
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