Thursday, October 14, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] The world as the eagle and the wild goose see it

Posted: 14 Oct 2010 03:34 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: The world as the eagle and the wild goose see it

One-hundred and fifty years ago today, on October 13, 1860, James Wallace Black shot the earliest still-existing aerial photograph in the U.S. He took the picture from a hot air balloon suspended above Boston Common, and the result, titled "Boston as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It," is truly beautiful. The photo is part of the archive at the venerable Boston Public Library, along with other important historical images of the Boston area, and is particularly significant because most of the area visible in the photo was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1872.

James Wallace Black, Balloon View of Boston, 1860.
From the collections of the Boston Public Library, Print Department, Boston Pictorial Archive.


Flash forward 150 years: Aerial imagery is widely available and used in countless professions, from archaeology to conceptual art. The folks who created Google Earth devised a way to stitch aerial and satellite imagery together into a seamless, searchable map of the world and make it available to anyone with a computer. On top of that basemap of imagery, Google Earth users have contributed to the creation of a 3D, photo-realistic virtual world by using tools like Google Building Maker, which makes it easy for anyone to use aerial imagery to model 3D buildings for display in Google Earth.

We at Google owe James Wallace Black a debt of gratitude; without his early experimentation with aerial imagery, Google Earth may never have come to be.



In a happy coincidence, October 13 is also the first anniversary of Building Maker, and we're taking the opportunity to celebrate the contributions of a dedicated community of 3D modelers in the 101 cities around the world where Building Maker is available. Here's a look at two of our top modelers and their creations:

Peter Sih (aka PeterX), lives in San Jose, Calif., but has created models all over the world. He tells us: "Modeling with Building Maker you get almost instant gratification. I learn a lot by modeling places I don't know as well as places I know well. Modeling for GE ties together my lifelong fascination with geography, architecture, travel, photography and computers."

Pavilhão Carlos Lopes - Lisbon, Portugal

Grant Firl (aka Grant F) lives in Fort Collins, Colo., but concentrates most of his modeling efforts on Albuquerque, N.M. He tells us: "I choose to model with 3D Building Maker for many reasons. Principally, I think that the 3D buildings layer is a very worthwhile tool and I view it as both a privilege and a kind of duty to help fill in content. Secondly, it is both fun and rewarding to create models of physical buildings, especially given the opportunity to share them to Google's users for their use and enjoyment. Thirdly, the 3D buildings layer provides a unique way to preserve and share the hard work and inspiration of actual builders and architects."

Albuquerque Plaza - Albuquerque, N.M.

If you haven't tried Building Maker yet, it's very easy and fun. You pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes—both of which we provide. When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth. You can make a whole building in a few minutes.

Technology has come a long way since James Wallace Black took his photo of Boston, and glass-plate-negative box cameras in hot air balloons have given way to airplanes with mounted camera arrays. But what hasn't changed is how technology gives us new ways to look at out world. Check out Google Building Maker and build the picture of your world.

Posted by Nicole Drobeck, Building Maker Community Advocate
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/world-as-eagle-and-wild-goose-see-it.html

[G] The world as the eagle and the wild goose see it

Posted: 14 Oct 2010 03:07 AM PDT

Google LatLong: The world as the eagle and the wild goose see it

One-hundred and fifty years ago today, on October 13, 1860, James Wallace Black shot the earliest still-existing aerial photograph in the U.S. He took the picture from a hot air balloon suspended above Boston Common, and the result, titled "Boston as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It," is truly beautiful. The photo is part of the archive at the venerable Boston Public Library, along with other important historical images of the Boston area, and is particularly significant because most of the area visible in the photo was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1872.

James Wallace Black, Balloon View of Boston, 1860.
From the collections of the Boston Public Library, Print Department, Boston Pictorial Archive.

Flash forward 150 years: Aerial imagery is widely available and used in countless professions, from archaeology to conceptual art. The folks who created Google Earth devised a way to stitch aerial and satellite imagery together into a seamless, searchable map of the world and make it available to anyone with a computer. On top of that basemap of imagery, Google Earth users have contributed to the creation of a 3D, photo-realistic virtual world by using tools like Google Building Maker, which makes it easy for anyone to use aerial imagery to model 3D buildings for display in Google Earth.

We at Google owe James Wallace Black a debt of gratitude; without his early experimentation with aerial imagery, Google Earth may never have come to be.



In a happy coincidence, October 13 is also the first anniversary of Building Maker, and we're taking the opportunity to celebrate the contributions of a dedicated community of 3D modelers in the 101 cities around the world where Building Maker is available. Here's a look at two of our top modelers and their creations:

Peter Sih (aka PeterX), lives in San Jose, Calif., but has created models all over the world. He tells us: "Modeling with Building Maker you get almost instant gratification. I learn a lot by modeling places I don't know as well as places I know well. Modeling for GE ties together my lifelong fascination with geography, architecture, travel, photography and computers."

Pavilhão Carlos Lopes - Lisbon, Portugal

Grant Firl (aka Grant F) lives in Fort Collins, Colo., but concentrates most of his modeling efforts on Albuquerque, N.M. He tells us: "I choose to model with 3D Building Maker for many reasons. Principally, I think that the 3D buildings layer is a very worthwhile tool and I view it as both a privilege and a kind of duty to help fill in content. Secondly, it is both fun and rewarding to create models of physical buildings, especially given the opportunity to share them to Google's users for their use and enjoyment. Thirdly, the 3D buildings layer provides a unique way to preserve and share the hard work and inspiration of actual builders and architects."

Albuquerque Plaza - Albuquerque, N.M.

If you haven't tried Building Maker yet, it's very easy and fun. You pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes—both of which we provide. When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth. You can make a whole building in a few minutes.

Technology has come a long way since James Wallace Black took his photo of Boston, and glass-plate-negative box cameras in hot air balloons have given way to airplanes with mounted camera arrays. But what hasn't changed is how technology gives us new ways to look at out world. Check out Google Building Maker and build the picture of your world.

Posted by Nicole Drobeck, Building Maker Community Advocate
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/10/world-as-eagle-and-wild-goose-see-it.html

[G] Back-to-Basics: Non-Brand Keywords

Posted: 14 Oct 2010 12:57 AM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: Back-to-Basics: Non-Brand Keywords

The majority of search referrals to the Google Store come from brand related searches -- searches that include brand references like "google store", "android t-shirt", or "youtube jacket". But, as I dug into the data, I was surprised to find that googlestore.com gets many non-brand related search referrals as well.

Take a look at the non-brand searches that send traffic to your own site -- I think you'll find the data interesting. By isolating non-brand keywords, you take brand recognition out of the equation and focus on the products that people look for -- and click over to find on your site.

Here's a quick way to see your non-brand keyword traffic. Under Traffic Sources, go to the Keywords report. Then, in the Filter Keyword box at the bottom of the table, select Excluding, and type in your brand name.






If you have multiple brands, type them all in separated by the | sign. Here's how this looks for googlestore.com:

google|android|youtube|content

You'll notice that I also excluded the word "content". This is because the report includes "content targeting" and I don't want to include content targeting referrals.

Click Go to see the filtered keywords. If there's anything else you've missed, just add it to your exclude list and click Go again. Here are the results for the Google Store.















That's all there is to it. Try it on your own data and leave us a comment letting us know what you find!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/10/back-to-basics-non-brand-keywords.html

[G] AdWords system maintenance on October 16

Posted: 13 Oct 2010 11:14 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: AdWords system maintenance on October 16

On Saturday, October 16, 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 Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/10/adwords-system-maintenance-on-october.html

[G] New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

Posted: 13 Oct 2010 08:53 AM PDT

Official Google Website Optimizer Blog: New Google Website Optimizer Online Video Training Released!

A new online video training course is now available from lynda.com to help you get the most out of using Google Website Optimizer. It's called Google Website Optimizer: Essential Training, and it's created by David Booth of WebShare, one of our Website Optimizer Certified Partners and Seminars for Success Leaders.

The course itself is available both online and on DVD and contains almost 4 full hours of step by step instruction around how to identify test pages, plan and implement your experiments, and read and interpret the reports. Advanced topics like sample size calculation, Google Analytics integrations and dynamic page testing are also covered among a wide variety of conversion optimization and testing topics.

I sat down with David and asked him to share with us what he likes best about this new course, and here's what he had to say:
A video course is great for a few reasons: First, it lets you accomplish things you can't necessarily do in other formats. As an example, in this course we have start to finish screen captured demonstrations of how to create a new test, tag your pages with Javascript, and then launch both A/B and Multivariate tests. Someone watching this course can actually see it happening and not have to rely on instructions or a help file.

I also like the variety of learning styles that can be accommodated by what the lynda.com team has put together. If you're a visual learner, you'll love this - there's a nice mix of presentation styles, screen captures and visual aides throughout the whole course. If you learn by doing, you'll enjoy the step by step, narrated demonstrations you can follow along with.

And it's all broken up into videos that are just a few minutes long. If you want to block off a morning and watch it straight through you can, but if you want to catch a couple of videos when you've got 15 minutes of down time you can get through it that way too. Or if you just have a question on a specific topic, such as when to use A/B vs Multivariate, you can jump directly to that video and have your answer a few minutes later.
Take a look at the trailer below:


Well, we like things that make it even easier to use Google Website Optimizer in even more effective ways, so thanks Dave. You can find the course at lynda.com!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team
URL: http://websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-google-website-optimizer-online.html
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