Friday, October 1, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Keyboard shortcuts in Google Sites

Posted: 01 Oct 2010 02:55 AM PDT

Official Google Docs Blog: Keyboard shortcuts in Google Sites

We're big believers in speed and saving time, which is why we're happy to announce that we've added keyboard shortcuts to common actions like create page and edit page for site collaborators using Google Sites. You can see a full list of keyboard shortcuts here, or simply type Ctrl / (⌘ / on a Mac) to open the shortcut help.

You can disable keyboard shortcuts on the Sites user setting page. Are there other common actions that you'd like to see added to keyboard shortcuts? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by: Michael Verrilli, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/09/keyboard-shortcuts-in-google-sites.html

[G] Explore seven continents with Street View on your phone

Posted: 01 Oct 2010 02:52 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Explore seven continents with Street View on your phone

Head over to the Official Google Blog to read more about Street View on seven continents.

Two years ago, we added Street View to Google Maps for mobile so you could explore the world at street level right from your phone. Today, we're happy to announce that you can see Street View imagery on all seven continents, with the addition of Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica – specifically, an area called Half Moon Island. Now, you can really explore the world from the palm of your hand.

We encourage you to go ahead and check out the beaches of Brazil, visit the moors of Ireland or see penguins in Antarctica for yourself.








To use Street View on Google Maps for your supported phone, select a place on the map and then choose the Street View option if available. With an Android-powered phone, try hopping across each continent with the new Street View smart navigation.

Posted by Michael Siliski, Google Mobile Team
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/09/explore-seven-continents-with-street.html

[G] Insight into your earnings (Part II): How smart pricing fits in

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 11:51 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Insight into your earnings (Part II): How smart pricing fits in

Last week, in the first half of our series designed to help you better understand your earnings, we introduced you to the ad auction for AdSense for content. To recap, eligible ads compete to appear on your pages; our ad auction determines which ads show, and how much you can potentially earn from them.

Now, let's talk about smart pricing, a tool designed to help advertisers bid efficiently and effectively on many publishers' ad auctions at once. Our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, explains the purpose of smart pricing, how it plays a role in the ad auction, and how it benefits the entire advertising ecosystem of publishers, advertisers, and users.

Although we aren't able to provide detailed explanations of our algorithms, we'd like to address a common misconception and show that smart pricing isn't intended to be a 'punishment' for publishers. It's designed to increase advertiser confidence in AdSense sites by helping them set more accurate bids that reflect the business results they're looking for. This then allows advertisers to increase their maximum bids, which ultimately helps publishers earn more in the long run.

We'll let Hal explain the concept of smart pricing in more detail:




Finally, we'd like to take a moment to address some of the questions we've received about the relationship between smart pricing and the AdSense for content revenue share. Smart pricing can impact which ad wins an auction for a particular content page. However, since the revenue share is fixed for all publishers, smart pricing doesn't impact the percentage you actually earn for a valid click. Any changes to advertiser bids as a result of smart pricing will proportionately affect the amount both Google and the publisher earn.

Thanks for following our two-part earnings series. We hope you found the content useful, and that you now have a better understanding of the factors that influence your earnings.

Posted by Arlene Lee - Inside AdSense Team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/09/insight-into-your-earnings-part-ii-how.html

[G] Google URL Shortener Gets a Website

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 10:52 PM PDT

Social Web Blog: Google URL Shortener Gets a Website

We first introduced the Google URL Shortener (goo.gl) last December as part of Google Toolbar and Feedburner. Since our initial release, we've integrated the technology into many other Google products including News, Blogger, Maps, Picasa Web Albums, and Moderator, but people have been asking for a direct way to use the service. Today we're giving goo.gl its own website (http://goo.gl/, of course!). We don't intend to overload goo.gl with features, but we do want it to be the stablest, most secure, and fastest URL shortener on the web.

There are many shorteners out there with great features, so some people may wonder whether the world really needs yet another. As we said late last year, we built goo.gl with a focus on quality. With goo.gl, every time you shorten a URL, you know it will work, it will work fast, and it will keep working. You also know that when you click a goo.gl shortened URL, you're protected against malware, phishing and spam using the same industry-leading technology we use in search and other products. Since our initial release, we've continued to invest in the core quality of the service:

  • Stability: We've had near 100% uptime since our initial launch, and we've worked behind the scenes to make goo.gl even stabler and more robust.
  • Security: We've added automatic spam detection based on the same type of filtering technology we use in Gmail.
  • Speed: We've more than doubled our speed in just over nine months.

To access the new website and start taking advantage of these improvements, simply type "goo.gl" in your web browser and hit enter. There you'll find a simple interface where you can quickly shorten a URL.


We've focused on making the service lean, but you will find some helpful features. If you sign-in to your Google Account, you'll see a list of URLs you've shortened in the past. Click the "details" link next to any of shortened URL and you'll find public, real-time analytics data, complete with traffic over time, top referrers, and visitor profiles. This can be a great way to better understand who's interested in your links, how they're finding them and when they're reading.

We also wanted to thank the many application developers out there who took the time to build extensions and other services integrating goo.gl technology. Even without an official API, there are extensions available for browsers like Chrome (eg: goo.gl URL Shortener, Shareaholic for Google Chrome) and Firefox (eg: goo.gl lite). Before people start writing code to incorporate our new features, we wanted to let you know we do plan to release an official API for goo.gl in the future. You'll be able to use the API to shorten URLs, expand URLs, and view analytics from directly within your own applications.

Happy shortening!

Posted by Muthu Muthusrinivasan, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-url-shortener-gets-website.html

[G] A galaxy of your own

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 10:35 PM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: A galaxy of your own

Last December, we wrote about our immersive Google Earth environment, Liquid Galaxy: eight 55-inch LCD screens showing Google Earth in a unified, surround view.

Liquid Galaxy at TED 2010

Since then, we've taken it to a lot of conferences, built Liquid Galaxies in Google offices all over the world and even put one in the Tech Museum in San Jose, Calif. We love watching people try it for the first time. Almost everybody wants to see their own house first; but then they start to explore, and we can never guess where they'll choose to go next.

But we just couldn't bring it to enough people—we could only go to so many conferences, and only friends and family of Googlers could try out the Liquid Galaxies in our offices.

So we decided to put the features that make Liquid Galaxy possible into the latest release of Google Earth, and open-source all the supporting work, from our Ubuntu sysadmin scripts to the mechanical design of our custom frames.


Not everyone will have the know-how to network computers together and get view synchronization working, but we tried to make it as easy as possible. If you think you're up to the challenge, check out our Quick Start page. You can also contact our supplier End Point if you'd rather buy than build (or just need some professional assistance). Here's a video they made that shows Liquid Galaxy in action:



Liquid Galaxies don't have to be made from eight big LCD screens; the view sync features scale just fine from two to dozens of screens. And they can run more than just Google Earth; we've had success playing video in sync in our Liquid Galaxies, and even modified a Free Software video game for after-hours fun. We've daydreamed about making panoramic movies, head tracking or even real-time video from distant panoramic cameras. We're excited to see what you come up with! Show off your creations in the liquid-galaxy discussion group.

Check out the Liquid Galaxy project at code.google.com.

By Jason Holt, Software Engineer, Liquid Galaxy 20% Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/09/galaxy-of-your-own.html

[G] Multicultural Spotlight: Reaching US Hispanics

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 07:00 PM PDT

Official Google CPG Blog: Multicultural Spotlight: Reaching US Hispanics

Cross posted from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog.
Original post written by Meghan Sherlock, US Hispanic Specialist

Cristina is a person who interacts with media all day long. In the morning, she browses beauty sites before biking to work. Over lunch, she reads a Colombian newspaper to check in on the results of the presidential elections, and then texts her friend about dinner plans from her iPhone. She searches for restaurant recommendations, meets her friends at the restaurant, and finally goes home to watch her favorite telenovelas. Connected with technology and her culture, Cristina is a modern Latina, proud of being Hispanic and American at the same time.

Why should marketers care about Cristina, and others like her? Hispanics are the fastest growing US population, and their buying power is projected to reach $1.4T by 20131. Hispanics are also coming online extremely quickly: the total time Hispanics spent online grew by 6.9% in 20092, 3.9 times faster than the general market rate.

To connect with Hispanics like Cristina online, it's important to understand a few key myths about the market.

Myth #1: I need to have a Spanish-language website in order to market to Hispanics.
While 22% of Hispanics speak only Spanish and another third prefer it, most US Hispanics are comfortable with English3 and feel that English sites are more comprehensive4. While a Spanish-language website can be an asset, it won't make or break the success of your campaign so long as you think carefully about your message and present a compelling value proposition on your site.

Myth #2: The return on investment from Hispanic marketing isn't big enough.
Hispanic advertising campaigns are often more cost-effective than main-market campaigns. Online CPCs and CPMs tend to be much cheaper due to low competition, and Hispanics are actually more likely than their general market counterparts to take action based on search and banner ads5. Moreover, over half of online Hispanics complete a purchase at least once a month6, so direct response marketers can engage as deeply as brand builders can.

Myth #3: My general market campaign covers the Hispanic market.
Hispanics may be comfortable with English content, but marketers are missing the opportunity to win Hispanics' loyalty if they use their general market campaign as a catch-all. Hispanics value their identity, and 66% of US Hispanics appreciate being marketed to in a culturally relevant way7. A recent campaign by Ford demonstrated how bilingual marketing can improve sales: Ford's marketing team doubled the incremental lift of their English creative when they rolled out dual-language, culturally relevant creative8 in a recent direct mail campaign.

Interested in learning more about Hispanics in the US? Email multicultural@google.com to stay in touch, and keep an eye out for fresh primary research in Q4 and Q1.

[1] Selig Center for Economic Growth, Terry College of Business, The University of Georgia. "The Multicultural Economy 2008." January 2009.
[2] Comscore, April 2009. "U.S. Hispanic Internet Audience Growth Outpaces Total U.S. Online Population by 50 Percent."
[3] Juan Tornoe. "Hispanic Marketing Is Not Spanish Marketing." http://nglc.biz/2010/07/22/hispanic-marketing-is-not-spanish-marketing/. July 2010. http://advertising.aol.com/sites/default/files/webfm/research/HispanicCyberStudy-2010.pdf.
[4] AOL Hispanic Cyberstudy. 2010.
[5] "Search ads": ARAnet Adfusion survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, provided by eMarketer, March 16 2009. "Banner ads": eMarketer. "US Internet Users Likely to Read And Take Action After Viewing Banner Ads, by Race/Ethnicity." June 2009.
[6] RTO Online, Hispanic Internet Usage Report, February 2009.
[7] Alvaro Cabrera, Executive Director of Integration at Diest, Inc. June 25, 2009. "10 Things You Should Know About US Hispanics." http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2009/06/10-things-you-should-know-about-us-hispanics.html.
[8] Deliver Magazine. August 2010. "Talk, Don't Translate."
URL: http://google-cpg.blogspot.com/2010/09/multicultural-spotlight-reaching-us.html

[G] Release Notes: Seven new languages, five new countries get partner program, and lots more...

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 06:21 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Release Notes: Seven new languages, five new countries get partner program, and lots more...

Bits and bobs that've gone live since our last Release Notes...

YouTube is now available in...: Arabic, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Slovenian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese!

Five new countries get YouTube Partner Program: The Partner Program continued its expansion this quarter, with launches in Argentina, Sweden, Poland, New Zealand and the Czech Republic. That makes 21 countries in which people can make money from their videos. For more information about partnerships, click here.

Crossfades, wipes and slides: The video editor lets you combine and trim your videos right on YouTube.com, without installing any software. Now you can add transitions, like crossfades and wipes, between video clips. Just select the transitions tab in the media picker, drag the transition and drop it between any two videos in the storyboard.

MySpace Autoshare: Automatically share your YouTube activities on your MySpace account (you can already do this on your Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Reader and Orkut accounts). To hook this up, go to Account > ActivitySharing and click "Connect accounts" next to the MySpace logo.

More filtering for charts: YouTube Charts can now be filtered by categories such as Comedy, Gaming and Pets & Animals, in addition to time and popularity "slices." We also show more results (20) per page.



Improved screen reader accessibility for YouTube player: One of our engineering interns spent part of his summer improving video accessibility for visually impaired people. If you use a screen reader that supports Flash, we hope you'll find it easier to enjoy videos on YouTube now. We've also added some more captioning features to the YouTube Data API. You can list tracks, request auto-timing, and download the speech recognition captions for videos that you own.

Shows in France: If you're a YouTube viewer in France, now you can watch full-length TV shows, like BFMTV: Bourdin Direct and Britain's Got Talent. Check out the page here.

HD and CC badges on search results page: When you search for a video on YouTube, the search results now show HD and CC (Closed Caption) badges, in addition to the NEW, CHANNEL and PLAYLIST badges that already exist. If you click on the badge, it will filter out results that don't fall under that category.


"Add-to playlist" widget: The [+] button on video thumbnails in search results now includes a menu that allows you to add the video to any one of your playlists or start a new playlist. Additionally, the "save to" button below the video is being renamed "add to" and will have the same functionality.


Visited video styling on search results and video pages: Browsers help people remember links they have previously clicked on by giving them a different color, the standard generally being that links are in blue and visited links are in purple. Many sites, including YouTube, opt to make all links blue regardless of visited state to give a more consistent look to the site and better reflect its dynamic nature. However, having a visited state is specifically useful when exhaustively exploring search results or related videos, and so we are launching a new style for thumbnails and links to videos in related and search results: the thumbnail for visited videos is slightly grayed, and the link color has changed. This should help you explore the site deeper without going in circles.


The YouTube Team


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/JgrXyepB80Y/release-notes-seven-new-languages-five.html

[G] Reaching for the top spot? "Estimated Top Impressions" now available in the Bid Simulator

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 04:29 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Reaching for the top spot? "Estimated Top Impressions" now available in the Bid Simulator

A year ago, we launched the Bid Simulator, a feature that allows you to see how different keyword-level bids may have impacted your advertising results. Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator re-calculates the number of clicks and impressions your ad could have received with different maximum CPC bids.

Today we're announcing a new metric in Bid Simulator, "Estimated Top Impressions," which shows you how many times your ad appeared above the search results in the past seven days and how this metric could have changed had you used different keyword level maximum CPC bids.

Access the Bid Simulator by clicking the icon next to your maximum CPC bid.


Whether you carefully manage a handful of valuable keywords or simply want users to see your ad as often as possible, Estimated Top Impressions can be a useful metric. Ads that appear above the search results are more visible to users and tend to receive more clicks than ads that appear along the right side of the search results page.

Let's look at an example of how to use the Estimated Top Impressions column:



In this table, the current maximum CPC bid of $1.07 captures most of the impressions that a higher bid of $1.93 could have captured (7,520 vs. 7,930). However, when we look at the 'Estimated Top Impressions' column, we see that the current bid of $1.07 only captures a fraction of the top impressions (4,780 vs. 6,380). Increasing the bid to $1.93 would have placed the ad at the top of the search results page for many more queries, resulting in more users seeing the ad and clicking through to the site (591 vs 662).

If one of your goals is to appear in the top position and you've been focusing on the 'average position' of your ad to gauge how prominently it's displayed to users, Estimated Top Impressions may be a better metric for you to focus on. While average position indicates where your ad is appearing in relation to other ads on the page, it doesn't indicate whether your ad is appearing above the search results or on the right side of the page.

Note that past performance does not guarantee future results, and simulations will only be provided if there is enough traffic on a given keyword to conduct a meaningful analysis. Additionally, top of page impressions are counted only for impressions on Google, since other sites within the Search Network may display ads differently. Estimated Top Impressions data is currently only available in the Bid Simulator, and we're working to incorporate this metric into more AdWords reports.

For an in-depth look at bidding, check out this tutorial from Hal Varian, the Google Chief Economist: Bidding Strategy Overview.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/09/reaching-for-top-spot-estimated-top.html

[G] A galaxy of your own

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 04:07 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: A galaxy of your own

Last December, we wrote about our immersive Google Earth environment, Liquid Galaxy: eight 55-inch LCD screens showing Google Earth in a unified, surround view.

Liquid Galaxy at TED 2010

Since then, we've taken it to a lot of conferences, built Liquid Galaxies in Google offices all over the world and even put one in the Tech Museum in San Jose, Calif. We love watching people try it for the first time. Almost everybody wants to see their own house first; but then they start to explore, and we can never guess where they'll choose to go next.

But we just couldn't bring it to enough people—we could only go to so many conferences, and only friends and family of Googlers could try out the Liquid Galaxies in our offices.

So we decided to put the features that make Liquid Galaxy possible into the latest release of Google Earth, and open-source all the supporting work, from our Ubuntu sysadmin scripts to the mechanical design of our custom frames.


Not everyone will have the know-how to network computers together and get view synchronization working, but we tried to make it as easy as possible. If you think you're up to the challenge, check out our Quick Start page. You can also contact our supplier End Point if you'd rather buy than build (or just need some professional assistance). Here's a video they made that shows Liquid Galaxy in action:



Liquid Galaxies don't have to be made from eight big LCD screens; the view sync features scale just fine from two to dozens of screens. And they can run more than just Google Earth; we've had success playing video in sync in our Liquid Galaxies, and even modified a Free Software video game for after-hours fun. We've daydreamed about making panoramic movies, head tracking or even real-time video from distant panoramic cameras. Read more on the Liquid Galaxy page at earth.google.com, and show off your creations in the liquid-galaxy discussion group. We're excited to see what you come up with!

Posted by Jason Holt, Software Engineer, Liquid Galaxy 20% Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/galaxy-of-your-own.html

[G] Document revision history, in-cell dropdown, and more new features in Google Apps

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 02:17 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Document revision history, in-cell dropdown, and more new features in Google Apps

Over the last few weeks, we launched some exciting new updates that make it even easier for business users to create and collaborate on to Google Sites, Google documents, and Google spreadsheets.
  • In Google documents, we launched a new revision history interface which lets you easily see what changes have been made to a document. Changes are color-coded based on each collaborator, so it's clear who did what. You can click on a time stamp in the right column to see what changes were made at a given time, or use the arrow keys to quickly scan through many revisions. To learn more about revisions history, see the Google Docs blog.


  • We've also made it easier to anticipate the changes other real-time co-editors are about to make in Google documents. Text that another editor is selecting is highlighted, so you'll know if someone may be about to delete or drag that block of text.


  • In addition we've recently added six new web fonts in Google documents: Droid Serif, Droid Sans, Calibri, Cambria, Corsiva, and Consolas. These web fonts are stored in the cloud rather than on your particular computer, so you aren't limited to the set of common fonts that most people have installed on their computers.
  • In Google Spreadsheets, we've improved the import function with more options for your imported data. For example, when importing a .csv file, you can create a whole new spreadsheet, append data to the current sheet, add a new sheet to your existing spreadsheet or even replace your entire spreadsheet with the data you're uploading. We also added a preview pane so you can see how the imported data will look in your spreadsheet.


  • Google spreadsheets also now has in-cell dropdown and data validation. This makes it easy to constrain the values of an individual cell to a specific range or list, reducing unnecessary typing and data entry errors. For example, if you are planning a business trip, you can limit the options in the travel destination column to only allow a certain set of city names.


  • You can create dropdown options in individual cells through the data validation tool, which lets you pull data from a range of cells in your sheet or by creating a custom list. For more information on data validation and in-cell dropdowns in Google spreadsheets, head to the Google Docs blog.


  • Lastly, Google spreadsheets now offers new printing options including selection printing, which lets you print a highlighted area in your spreadsheet, and the option to not print the cell gridlines if you want to save on ink.



  • Organizing your site's hierarchy of pages is an important part of using Google Sites. To make it faster and easier to change the structure of your site, now you can drag and drop pages to change the hierarchy.



As with all updates in Google Apps, users get access to new features each time they open their browsers, and improvements roll out to customers with no need for administrators to manage patches or install software. Stay tuned for more updates to Google Docs and Google Sites.

Posted by Ronald Ho, Google Docs Product Manager
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/09/document-revision-history-in-cell.html

[G] The more you know: switching to Gmail like a pro

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 02:17 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: The more you know: switching to Gmail like a pro

Every day, tens of thousands of people switch from Microsoft Outlook® and other client-based software to Google Apps. To make the transition as smooth as possible, we thought we'd share some tips on using Gmail.

Embrace conversations
Emails rarely come just one at a time; they're usually part of a larger exchange. Gmail helps you manage messages more efficiently by grouping related emails into conversations. Conversations are a collection of messages with the same subject line and other similarities. When you click to read a conversation, you'll see all of the back-and-forth email responses that happen over the course of the entire email conversation.

This makes it easier to follow the full context of a conversation, and keeps your inbox less cluttered and more organized. If you prefer a more traditional view of your Inbox, you can always turn off Conversation view so that all emails arrive individually.


Forget delete, and archive your way to "Inbox Zero"
The average corporate inbox is only 300MB, which means too many people are forced to spend way too much time managing their inbox -- deciding which email to keep, and deleting the rest. With 25GB of storage, you probably won't ever need to delete an email again because of storage limitations. And if you thrive on clearing your inbox, simply archive your emails to clear the clutter. They're still fully searchable in an instant!

Search to sort
You may be accustomed to sorting email to find saved messages, which is a pretty limited way to find information because you usually know what you're looking for. Gmail uses the power of search to help you quickly find what you want. You can even use advanced search operators to search by sender, date, attachment or a variety of other attributes. Try it and you'll find some of the qualities that Google.com is known for: great accuracy and really fast search results. Search is particularly more effective than sorting when you're looking through multiple gigabytes of email!


Labels instead of folders
While you won't find folders in Gmail, labels give you even more flexibility to organize your email. You can't put an email into multiple folders, but you can apply multiple labels to the same message, which makes it easy to manage information that may fall into more than one category.


By clicking on a label, you can view a chronological list of all conversations that have been tagged with that label. And you can even organize labels hierarchically, using the "Nested Labels" lab. (Your administrator needs to have enabled Labs for you to access them.)

Work offline
These days you're probably almost always connected to the Internet. But in those increasingly rare moments when you're not, you can still access Gmail. When you're offline, you can work in your browser to compose messages, search, organize mail, and do all of the things you're used to doing while accessing your email online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. To enable offline Gmail, go to the 'offline' tab in Settings, select 'Enable' and then save changes.

New features
As a web application, Gmail can be updated and improved without the trouble of purchasing, downloading and installing updates. This means Gmail will continually offer new functionality to help you be even more productive, like Priority Inbox, integrated voice and video chat, and labs such as Apps Search and Desktop Notifications. To stay current on new features, we encourage you to subscribe to our RSS feed for updates to the Google Apps suite.

We hope you enjoy the experience we offer -- we believe that ultimately, a fully-searchable, delete-nothing inbox makes for happy, productive people. But if you're still not quite ready to use Gmail's web interface, you can keep using Outlook or other clients of your choice. For more tips, check out our detailed transition documentation, and let us know what else we can do to make your move to Gmail easier in the comments below.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Product Manager
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/09/more-you-know-switching-to-gmail-like.html

[G] A galaxy of your own

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 02:15 PM PDT

Google LatLong: A galaxy of your own

(Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog)

Last December, we wrote about our immersive Google Earth environment, Liquid Galaxy: eight 55-inch LCD screens showing Google Earth in a unified, surround view.

Liquid Galaxy at TED 2010


Since then, we've taken it to a lot of conferences, built Liquid Galaxies in Google offices all over the world and even put one in the Tech Museum in San Jose, Calif. We love watching people try it for the first time. Almost everybody wants to see their own house first; but then they start to explore, and we can never guess where they'll choose to go next.

But we just couldn't bring it to enough people—we could only go to so many conferences, and only friends and family of Googlers could try out the Liquid Galaxies in our offices.

So we decided to put the features that make Liquid Galaxy possible into the latest release of Google Earth, and open-source all the supporting work, from our Ubuntu sysadmin scripts to the mechanical design of our custom frames.



Not everyone will have the know-how to network computers together and get view synchronization working, but we tried to make it as easy as possible. If you think you're up to the challenge, check out our Quick Start page. You can also contact our supplier End Point if you'd rather buy than build (or just need some professional assistance). Here's a video they made that shows Liquid Galaxy in action:



Liquid Galaxies don't have to be made from eight big LCD screens; the view sync features scale just fine from two to dozens of screens. And they can run more than just Google Earth; we've had success playing video in sync in our Liquid Galaxies, and even modified a Free Software video game for after-hours fun. We've daydreamed about making panoramic movies, head tracking or even real-time video from distant panoramic cameras. Read more on the Liquid Galaxy page at earth.google.com, and show off your creations in the liquid-galaxy discussion group. We're excited to see what you come up with!


Posted by Jason Holt, Software Engineer, Liquid Galaxy 20% Team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/09/galaxy-of-your-own.html

[G] Explore the world with Street View, now on all seven continents

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 02:15 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Explore the world with Street View, now on all seven continents

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Update 12:01PM: To clarify, the Street View imagery for Antarctica includes panoramas of an area called Half Moon Island – such as this view of penguins and this one of the landscape. The blue dots you see throughout the continent when dragging the pegman are user-contributed photos.

We introduced Street View back in May 2007, enabling people to explore street-level imagery in five U.S. cities. We were excited to share a virtual reflection of the real world to enable armchair exploration. Since then, we've expanded our 360-degree panoramic views to many more places, allowing you to check out a restaurant before dining there, to explore a neighborhood before moving there and to find landmarks along the route of your driving directions.

Three years later, we're happy to announce that you can now explore Street View imagery on all seven continents, with the addition today of Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica. You can now see images from around the world spanning from the beaches of Brazil, to the moors of Ireland, to the icy terrain in Antarctica.

We often consider Street View to be the last zoom layer on the map, and a way to show you what a place looks like as if you were there in person—whether you're checking out a coffee shop across town or planning a vacation across the globe. We hope this new imagery will help people in Ireland, Brazil, and even the penguins of Antarctica to navigate nearby, as well as enable people around the world to learn more about these areas.

For example, as summer winds down here in Mountain View, Calif., the famous beaches of Copacabana, Brazil are an enticing virtual travel destination.


The Ring of Kerry in Ireland, with its picturesque rolling landscape, is another favorite new place in Street View.


Speaking of travel, my wife BethEllyn and I embarked on the Minerva for an expedition to Antarctica in late January. We enjoyed stunning vistas, and I found that any minute not spent on deck was a spectacular view missed. Fortunately, we'd planned to take some Street View photos, and are now able to share with you the incredible visuals from Half Moon Island, Antarctica.

Here is a group of Chinstrap penguins we saw on the island.


And this is one of my favorite views. You can see part of the crescent shape that gives the island its name.


I'm very proud of the worldwide Street View team and thrilled that everyone can now see places from all seven continents, including the amazing landscapes and natural beauty I saw in Antarctica, through the street-level images in Google Maps and Google Earth. To see more highlights from Street View around the world, visit the Street View gallery and start exploring!

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/09/explore-world-with-street-view-now-on.html

[G] Use Chrome like a pro (Now for Mac!)

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 02:08 PM PDT

Google Chrome Blog: Use Chrome like a pro (Now for Mac!)

(Cross posted on Official Google Mac Blog.)

Two months ago, Chrome team members shared a list of their favorite extensions on the Official Google Blog. This time around, we asked Mac aficionados on the Chrome team to share with us the extensions they like the most. Below is a list of their favorite extensions.
  • Google Voice - Make calls, send SMS, preview inbox and get notified of new messages right in your browser (US only)

  • Send from Gmail - Makes Gmail your default email application and provides a button to compose a Gmail message to quickly share a link via email.

  • iReader - View news stories and other articles in a very easy to read, clutter-free, scrollable display.

  • Google Dictionary - View definitions easily as you browse the web, similar to using ⌘-Option-D in other Mac applications.

  • delicious bookmarks - Integrate your bookmarks with Google Chrome with the official Chrome extension for Delicious, the world's leading social bookmarking service.

  • Instachrome - Collect articles from around the Internet to read them on the web with Instapaper.

These are just a few extensions to help our Mac users enhance their web browsing experience and address the most requested features. There are more than 7,000 extensions to choose from in our Google Chrome Extensions gallery, so you'll be sure to find the right extensions for you.

Posted by Mike Pinkerton, Staff Software Engineer
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/09/use-chrome-like-pro-now-for-mac.html

[G] Checking in on Google Checkout

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 01:33 PM PDT

Official Google Checkout Blog: Checking in on Google Checkout

Some exciting news today on the Android Developers blog: Google Checkout is now supporting Android developers in 20 new countries, from Portugal to Mexico and beyond, bringing the total number of developer countries on Android Market to 29.

This comes at a very exciting time for Google Checkout. Looking back at the last year in particular, what stands out is the promising growth we've seen in the use of the service: The number of transactions on Checkout has tripled, the user base has grown 50 percent, and the number of active users is up by 120 percent -- all in the last 12 months. We're now helping improve the online checkout experience for hundreds of thousands of sellers and developers, and tens of millions of buyers, in many locations around the world.

Checkout has also played a valuable role in enabling a fast, safe, and convenient purchase experience across Google products ranging from Android Market to YouTube Rentals. Looking ahead, Checkout will be featured as a payment method in upcoming initiatives like the Apps Marketplace, Chrome Web Store, and Google Editions, and we're looking forward to working with an even larger set of developers, publishers, and buyers on them.

Like most of you, we're focusing much of our energy right now on gearing up for the holiday season, and on helping merchants drive even more traffic and conversions from our rapidly growing user base during that crucial time of year. U.S. merchants should look for information about holiday promotions in your account and your inbox soon. (To be sure you don't miss any promotion announcements, remember to opt in to receive emails from Google Checkout.)

Meanwhile, we want to thank all the sellers and developers who have helped us grow and improve Checkout over the last few years. We are more excited than ever to innovate for you, and we'll continue to work toward delivering the fastest, the safest, and the most convenient purchase experience across the web and the mobile. Stay tuned!

Posted by Arun Balaraman, Group Product Manager
URL: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2010/09/checking-in-on-google-checkout.html

[G] In the YouTube lab, promotion works

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 12:08 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: In the YouTube lab, promotion works

Remember high school chemistry? Beakers, test tubes, Bunsen burners...aqueous solution dilutions? Alright, so maybe the recall isn't as strong on the last one. Hypothetically speaking, our product teams have never left that lab. They've been hard at work, testing away to find what's effective in getting your videos watched - whether you're a partner or an advertiser.



This past spring, we looked closely at our promotion tools, including Promoted Videos, to see what would happen in the 'petri dish of promotion'. This past spring, we looked closely at our promotion tools, including Promoted Videos, to see what would happen in the 'petri dish of promotion'. Our team selected 20 partner videos who upload fresh videos regularly and then we drove as many views to them as possible with a cost per view (CPV) of $0.03. Guess what they found?





Conclusion #1: Promotion at $0.03 per view increases views per day by 30x when compared to two weeks prior to promotion. Thirty times? That's a steal at three pennies for each view.



Conclusion #2: Partners in the test got 46,000 subscriptions that were directly attributed to sessions with a Promoted Video click. The cost averaged out to be between $4-$6 a subscriber. In other words, promotion of content has a direct impact on growth of subscriptions.



Conclusion #3: Promotion of newer videos is far more successful than older videos. No 'Aha Moment', but the lesson here is to keep your content fresh.



Conclusion #4: Users are twice as likely to watch a second video by the partner when driven to the channel page rather than the watch page. Naturally, someone will want to watch more of your videos if you can get them where they can clearly select one. Getting that user to the channel page is half the battle. Investment in the channel once you have them there is the rest.



If our experiment had begun with the hypothesis that Promoted Videos drive views at scale at a low cost, we would have been proven correct. You make great content, so promote it. Big players on YouTube didn't find success overnight, and we're finding that - more than ever - promotion is key to getting your videos seen and shared.



Jay Akkad, Product Manager recently watched "The Scientific Method"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/_WulkwB-BSg/in-youtube-lab-promotion-works.html

[G] Join the Conversation.

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 12:04 PM PDT

Google Affiliate Network: Join the Conversation.

If you've ever had a question about your Google Affiliate Network account, you've likely visited our Help Forum, a virtual meeting place where a community of affiliate publishers, advertisers, industry experts, and Google employees discuss all things Google Affiliate Network. We rely on all of you to keep the conversations lively, ensuring that the forum is a fantastic place for you to interact, troubleshoot, and learn from one another. Take a look through the current forum discussions and join the conversation!

As a forum user, we would love to know more about you, your site, your experience with Google Affiliate Network, and anything else that you want to share. Please visit our forum post and introduce yourself to the community.

And to complete your introduction, please take a minute to add your location to our Google Affiliate Network Map!

Follow these steps to add yourself to the map:
  1. Go to our map, Google Affiliate Network U2U Forum
  2. Enter the name of your location into the search bar at the top of the Maps page.
  3. Click, "Save to My Maps"
  4. Select the map, "Google Affiliate Network U2U Forum"
  5. Click on the "Title" and add your username
  6. Click "OK"
- Posted by Erica Sievert, Google Affiliate Network team
URL: http://googleaffiliatenetwork-blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/join-conversation.html

[G] Introducing the Google Phone Gallery

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 11:11 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Introducing the Google Phone Gallery

Here at Google, we're thrilled with the global adoption of Android and with the high quality of devices that are coming to market around the world. Since there are so many great phones, we wanted to make the selection process a little easier for people who are in the market for a new one. Today we're rolling out the Google Phone Gallery -- a showcase of Android-powered devices that deliver the best Google experience today. Check it out at http://www.google.com/phone.

All the phones in the gallery include Android Market, Google Search, and other Google Mobile services such as Gmail, Maps, and YouTube. There are tools that make it easy to compare phones side by side: you can filter phones by country, manufacturer, and carrier; view and compare technical specifications and features; and find where each phone is available for sale.



We'll continue adding phones and countries over time, both to round out the gallery and as new phones come to market.

Posted by Ben Serridge, Product Manager, Android
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/09/introducing-google-phone-gallery.html

[G] Veni, Vidi, Verba Verti

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 10:54 AM PDT

Official Google Research Blog: Veni, Vidi, Verba Verti

Posted by Jakob Uszkoreit, Ingeniarius Programmandi

Ut munimenta linguarum convellamus et scientiam mundi patentem utilemque faciamus, instrumenta convertendi multarum nationum linguas creavimus. Hodie nuntiamus primum instrumentum convertendi linguam qua nulli nativi nunc utuntur: Latinam. Cum pauci cotidie Latine loquantur, quotannis amplius centum milia discipuli Americani Domesticam Latinam Probationem suscipiunt. Praeterea plures ex omnibus mundi populis Latinae student.

Hoc instrumentum convertendi Latinam rare usurum ut convertat nuntios electronicos vel epigrammata effigierum YouTubis intellegemus. Multi autem vetusti libri de philosophia, de physicis, et de mathematica lingua Latina scripti sunt. Libri enim vero multi milia in Libris Googlis sunt qui praeclaros locos Latinos habent.

Convertere instrumentis computatoriis ex Latina difficile est et intellegamus grammatica nostra non sine culpa esse. Autem Latina singularis est quia plurimi libri lingua Latina iampridem scripti erant et pauci novi posthac erunt. Multi in alias linguas conversi sunt et his conversis utamur ut nostra instrumenta convertendi edoceamus. Cum hoc instrumentum facile convertat libros similes his ex quibus edidicit, nostra virtus convertendi libros celebratos (ut Commentarios de Bello Gallico Caesaris) iam bona est.

Proximo tempore locum Latinum invenies vel auxilio tibi opus erit cum litteris Latinis, conare hunc.
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/09/veni-vidi-verba-verti.html

[G] Explore the world with Street View, now on all seven continents

Posted: 30 Sep 2010 09:36 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Explore the world with Street View, now on all seven continents

(Cross-posted with the Google Lat Long Blog)

We introduced Street View back in May 2007, enabling people to explore street-level imagery in five U.S. cities. We were excited to share a virtual reflection of the real world to enable armchair exploration. Since then, we've expanded our 360-degree panoramic views to many more places, allowing you to check out a restaurant before dining there, to explore a neighborhood before moving there and to find landmarks along the route of your driving directions.

Three years later, we're happy to announce that you can now explore Street View imagery on all seven continents, with the addition today of Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica. You can now see images from around the world spanning from the beaches of Brazil, to the moors of Ireland, to the icy terrain in Antarctica.

We often consider Street View to be the last zoom layer on the map, and a way to show you what a place looks like as if you were there in person—whether you're checking out a coffee shop across town or planning a vacation across the globe. We hope this new imagery will help people in Ireland, Brazil, and even the penguins of Antarctica to navigate nearby, as well as enable people around the world to learn more about these areas.

For example, as summer winds down here in Mountain View, Calif., the famous beaches of Copacabana, Brazil are an enticing virtual travel destination.


The Ring of Kerry in Ireland, with its picturesque rolling landscape, is another favorite new place in Street View.


Speaking of travel, my wife BethEllyn and I embarked on the Minerva for an expedition to Antarctica in late January. We enjoyed stunning vistas, and I found that any minute not spent on deck was a spectacular view missed. Fortunately, we'd planned to take some Street View photos, and are now able to share with you the incredible visuals from Half Moon Island, Antarctica.

Here is a group of Chinstrap penguins we saw on the island.


And this is one of my favorite views. You can see part of the crescent shape that gives the island its name.


I'm very proud of the worldwide Street View team and thrilled that everyone can now see places from all seven continents, including the amazing landscapes and natural beauty I saw in Antarctica, through the street-level images in Google Maps and Google Earth. To see more highlights from Street View around the world, visit the Street View gallery and start exploring!

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Engineering, Google Earth and Maps
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/explore-world-with-street-view-now-on.html
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