Friday, December 3, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] ‘Tis the season for Product Ads

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 10:30 PM PST

Inside AdWords: 'Tis the season for Product Ads

Earlier this month we announced the U.S. launch of Product Listing Ads, which lets you easily promote products from your Merchant Center account on Google.com. In the past few weeks we've seen advertisers promote over 150 million unique products using Product Listing Ads.

Given all that inventory, we were curious to see what people were clicking on during one of the busiest online shopping weekends of the year.

We thought that this was a fairly interesting sneak peak into what you might expect to see under the tree this season. So, with that, here are the most clicked searches for Product Listing Ads over the holiday weekend:
To learn more about Product Ads, check out the video below or visit the AdWords help center.



Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/tis-season-for-product-ads.html

[G] TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over ads

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 10:30 PM PST

Inside AdWords: TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over ads

Today we're announcing a new family of ad formats called TrueView Video Ads. TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over which advertiser's message they want to see and when. And we charge advertisers only when a viewer has chosen to watch your ad, not when an impression is served.

We believe offering a cost-per-view video ad model is good for everyone: consumers choose ads that are more relevant to them; you more precisely find the audiences you want; and content creators continue to fund great content with an ad experience that is less intrusive. Our experience with Promoted Videos, which you buy on a cost-per-click basis, shows that viewers will choose to watch ads that are relevant and engaging.

Our first available cost-per-view format is TrueView Video Ads - InStream. Viewers can choose to skip a video ad after 5 seconds, and you only pay when the viewer has watched the full ad or 30 seconds, whichever is shorter.



We've tested this ad format across thousands of viewer hours, serving millions of video views for a wide range of advertisers. If you counted up all the video views watched, they would stretch out for nearly five years. Early results are encouraging with view-through rates of 20-70%. A view-through rate measures how many viewers have opted-in to watch your ad - a valuable signal which you can use in connecting the right message with the right audience at the right time.

Check out the experience of some of our early advertisers. GoPro makes and sells the HD HERO line of wearable, gear-mountable HD cameras. Lee Topar, Director of Online Marketing for GoPro, says, "We like how TrueView Video Ads give us the ability to target our audience, and gives viewers the choice to opt-in to watch our ads. Thus far, we've seen about a 40% view-through rate -- and since we only pay when potential customers actually watch a video, we have more control over our budget."



In the run-up to the recent US midterm elections, many political campaigns tested TrueView with positive results. Peter Pasi heads up Emotive LLC, an online marketing firm which recently helped to elect Senator-elect Rob Portman and Governor-elect John Kasich in Ohio. He says, "TrueView allows us to deliver our message in a scalable way specifically to the voters we want to reach. For example, we used its geo-targeting capabilities to execute a county-by-county media strategy. TrueView also provides a rich experience for the voter and allows the viewer choice and freedom. It's easy to deploy, and it's a fraction of the cost of television."



Robert Wray served as the director of technology in Governor Martin O'Malley's re-election campaign in Maryland. He says, "The Governor had used YouTube prior to the re-election so it was a no-brainer to use it in the campaign. We achieved a 45% view-through rate with TrueView ads and found them to be effective when you look at the raw numbers of total video views and the amount we paid for them."



This ad format is available for customers in the US and Canada and in limited testing for advertisers in the UK. We are working to add availability in additional countries.

Several other developments are also in the works. Soon, you'll be able to use TrueView Video Ads to increase a video's view count. We are working to make TrueView Video Ads available for our self-service customers and to simplify the buying experience and reporting for everyone.

If you're interested in trying out TrueView Video Ads, contact your account manager today.

Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/trueview-video-ads-give-viewers-choice.html

[G] 2011 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 09:28 PM PST

Official Google Blog: 2011 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship

(Cross-posted on the Google Students Blog)

Dr. Anita Borg devoted her life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology and dismantling the barriers that keep women and minorities from entering the computing and technology fields. In honor of Anita's vision, we established the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2004, awarding scholarships to women who share her passion for technology. Once again, we're proud to announce the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships in the U.S. and Canada. The deadline to apply for the 2011 scholarship is Tuesday, February 1, 2011.
  • The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship is open to current female students who are entering their senior year of undergraduate study or enrolled in a graduate program in the 2011-2012 academic year at a university in the United States or Canada. Students should be enrolled in a computer science, computer engineering or a closely related technical program, and maintain a record of strong academic performance. Scholars and finalists will be announced in May 2011 and will be invited to attend the annual Google Scholars' Retreat—a three-day networking retreat at the Googleplex in Mountain View in the summer of 2011.

  • The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship for First Years is open to current female high school seniors who are intending to enroll as full-time students at a university in the U.S. for the 2011-2012 academic year. Applicants should have a record of strong academic performance and plan to pursue a degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a closely related technical program. The winning scholars will be invited to attend the Google FUSE networking retreat in 2012.
You can hear from some of this year's scholars on how receiving the Anita Borg scholarship has impacted them:



For those of you outside of North America, the Google Anita Borg Scholarship program is also available in Asia, Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and New Zealand—visit www.google.com/anitaborg for more information.

Finally, the Anita Borg Scholarship is just one of many scholarships and networking opportunities we offer to students in order to encourage them to excel in technology and become active role models and leaders in the field. For more information about all of Google's scholarship programs, please visit www.google.com/jobs/scholarships.

Posted by Azusa Hanashima, Talent & Outreach Programs
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/2011-google-anita-borg-memorial.html

[G] Google Apps and Smartsheet support an evolution in real estate

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:26 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Apps and Smartsheet support an evolution in real estate

Editor's Note: Guest blogger, Brent Frei, is the founder of Smartsheet.com, an online project management from the Google Apps Marketplace. His post explores the technology trends in the real estate industry, highlighting several firms who have moved their businesses to Google Apps and deployed Smartsheet.

Google Apps and the Real Estate Industry

A growing number of real estate firms manage their businesses with Smartsheet - for project management, buy & sell coordination, deal management and so on. We spent some time talking with our real estate customers to better understand how and why they use Smartsheet. Several themes emerged consistently, regardless of whether the customers were individual users or international enterprise teams. Most notably, the majority are Google Apps users, and Smartsheet's integration with Apps is key to their overall success.

Here are several of the companies we surveyed across a range of real estate services.
These firms have several things in common:
  1. They deal with a wide range of stakeholders: Real estate companies are diverse collaborations between sellers, buyers, agents, title, insurance, mortgage, brokers, contractors, inspectors, escrow agents, and many others. Finding tools that work well for the company and will be readily adopted by external collaborators is often nearly impossible.
  2. They use spreadsheets and email as their primary tools - Email and spreadsheets are the only commonly adopted tools amongst all the stakeholders. Emails get reliable responses, and spreadsheets are familiar and effective - both are available from anywhere in Google Apps.
  3. They want more specialized tools to be pre-integrated with Google Apps - The specialty tools that work best alongside Gmail have had the highest adoption rates. Project management is one of the highest priority specialty applications.
Google Apps and Smartsheet are a perfect combination
Smartsheet's spreadsheet-like layout and tight integration with Gmail and Google Docs have made it a successful project management tool where other tools have failed in the real estate vertical. Users who are logged into Gmail are automatically logged into Smartsheet, and existing spreadsheets can be imported "as is" into Smartsheet where those sheets gain the ability to attach files and Google Docs as well as threaded discussions to any row. Updates to discrete parts of a sheet can be managed through email by stakeholders who have not had the entire sheet shared with them.

All the project management automation is embedded in the tools that the stakeholders will use - without training. You can read the full case studies on Smartsheet's blog, but here are a few choice excerpts:
"We have 10 full time employees, each collaborating with dozens of stakeholders," reported NetGeneration co-founder Brian Davis. He found himself with an unmanageable portfolio of specialty solutions, few of which were integrated. "We tried multiple project and task management solutions but none were adopted as part of the daily work flow. Emails and traditional spreadsheets became the default...."
"Moving over to Google Apps was pivotal moment for us," says Chad Johnson, president and COO of Agent Evolution. "We wanted to do everything under one umbrella. With Google Apps we had our business suite set and Google Apps Marketplace gave us partner solutions that were already integrated, like Smartsheet for online project management."
"Google Apps and Smartsheet are easy to use right out of the gate," says John Stilwell, President and Founder of Encore Development Properties and Realty. "Our members can jump in and use the tools right away. By using Google Apps and Gmail it enables us to have everything in one place. It makes a complex and sophisticated process streamlined and efficient and gives us a great selling tool for prospective investors and clients. It shows them that we are professional and have the capabilities to track our business."
Conclusion
The real estate business has a plethora of stakeholders and moving parts. That doesn't mean the software tools need to be equally complex. Google Apps and Smartsheet are a combination that works simply and effectively the way people do for a wide range of operational needs in real estate.

To learn more about how customers use Smartsheet with Google Apps and other Marketplace apps, come to a live Google webinar featuring Dlink CIO, Michael Walsh.
 
Optimizing Business Processes with the Google Apps Marketplace
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT
Register here

Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/google-apps-and-smartsheet-support.html

[G] Now available with Google Apps: Google Translator Toolkit

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:26 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Now available with Google Apps: Google Translator Toolkit



Editor's note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what's new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Translator Toolkit
As the world's citizens come online, more and more businesses are seeing the value of offering their services in multiple languages. Translation, however, can be costly and time-consuming, making it hard for businesses to take the first step. Whether you have an in-house translator or are a small translation service yourself, we think you will be excited by the newest addition to Google Apps: Google Translator Toolkit.

Translator Toolkit is a web-based translation editor that makes it easier and faster for translators to translate documents, web pages, and other content into dozens of other languages. To begin, upload a document from your desktop or enter the URL of a website that you want to translate. Translator Toolkit will then automatically load the text and generate a machine translation.


Once the translated content appears in Translator Toolkit, a user can easily make changes directly to the text or use tools designed to help make the translation process easier – such as the ability to see previous translations provided by others or the ability to reference bilingual dictionaries. Using Translator Toolkit with your Google Apps account makes it easy to collaborate on translations with colleagues. Others you share translations with can access your document and contribute in real-time, much like collaboration works in Google Docs.



Many professionals, individuals, and institutions have already started using Translator Toolkit to help bring their content into other languages and reach new markets. For example, within Google's philanthropic arm Google.org, the Health Speaks team uses Translator Toolkit to make public health education more widely accessible across languages. In the coming weeks we plan to translate critical public health information into Arabic, Hindi and Swahili – all with the help of Translator Toolkit.

Learn more and get started
Google Translator Toolkit can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn't using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

You can learn more about Google Translator Toolkit in the Help Center or stay up-to-date on the latest launches on the Google Translate Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Translator Toolkit at your organization, or plan to now that it's available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Mike Galvez, Product Manager, Google Translator Toolkit

Note: Google Translator Toolkit may not be available in all areas.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/now-available-with-google-apps-google.html

[G] Expanding the Google Apps Reporting API for resellers

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:26 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Expanding the Google Apps Reporting API for resellers

Cross-posted on the Google Apps Developer Blog

The Google Apps Reporting API lets administrators programmatically get information about their Google Apps environment, and today we're expanding access to the API for Google Apps Authorized Resellers. Resellers can use the API to gain a better understanding of how their customers are using Google Apps, so they can better personalize the service they provide to their customers.

Specifically, resellers can retrieve the following usage reports with the API:
  • Accounts – Contains a list of the customer's end-user accounts on a particular day.
  • Activity – Identifies the number of customer end-user accounts as well as the number of active and idle accounts over several different time periods.
  • Disk Space – Shows the amount of disk space used by a customer's mailboxes.
  • Email Clients – Identifies how the customer's end-users access their accounts on a day-by-day basis.
  • Summary – Contains the customer's total number of accounts, total mailbox storage usage and total mailbox quota.
The Reporting API is one of several features we've been working on to let Google Apps resellers – over 2,000 and growing – understand and serve their customers better. If you're an IT solution provider, we invite you to learn more and get started building a practice around bringing Google Apps to your customers. The Google Apps Authorized Reseller program is designed to help you enhance and strengthen your customer relationships.

Posted by Namrata Gupta, Google Apps Engineer
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/expanding-google-apps-reporting-api-for.html

[G] Google Earth Pro 6: Measure your world in 3D

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:25 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Earth Pro 6: Measure your world in 3D

(Cross posted from the Google Lat Long Blog)


We're excited to announce a new addition to the Advanced Measurement Tool Suite in Google Earth Pro: you can now measure in 3D!

Pro customers recently ranked Area Measurement as one of the most valuable Google Earth Pro tools, so we wanted to add more to the package. In a continued effort to mirror the real world, allowing you to lift measurements off the ground and extend them in to the 3D realm seemed a natural next step.

We think these tools will be beneficial to our customers as there are limitless applications for their use. 3D Measurements can be used by engineers to plan wind farms, real estate firms to determine skyline views for new high rise buildings, construction companies to measure the materials needed for a retrofitting, architects to calculate the space between buildings, and more.
To measure buildings and distances between buildings, just turn on the 3D Buildings layer and click the Ruler Tool icon in the toolbar. If you're running Google Earth Pro, you'll notice two new tabs for measuring in 3D: 3D Path and 3D Polygon.

Here are a few examples of what the new Pro 3D Measurement Tools have to offer:

Measure the height or width of a 3D building:


Measure the area of the face of a 3D building:


Measure the distance between a building and a point on the ground or another building:


If you're new to Google Earth Pro, try it for free for 7 days or buy Google Earth Pro today and discover how 3D Measurements can benefit your business. Onward and upward!

Posted by Cristelle Blackford, Google Earth Pro Team

Editor's note: Updated the post with the correct measurement image.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/google-earth-pro-6-measure-your-world.html

[G] U.S. General Services Administration is going Google

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:25 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: U.S. General Services Administration is going Google

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today announced its decision to move 17,000 employees and contractors to Google Apps for Government. GSA oversees the business of the U.S. federal government, providing real estate and building management services as well as acquisition and procurement assistance to other federal agencies.

GSA's decision to switch to Google Apps resulted from a competitive request for proposal (RFP) process that took place over the past six months, during which the agency evaluated multiple proposals for replacing their existing on-premises email system. GSA selected Google partner Unisys as the prime contractor to migrate all employees in 17 locations around the world to an integrated, flexible and robust email and collaboration service in 2011.

By making this switch, GSA will benefit in a number of ways. Modern email and collaboration tools will help make employees more efficient and effective. Google Apps will bring GSA a continual stream of new and innovative features, helping the agency keep pace with advances in technology in the years ahead. And taxpayers will benefit too—by reducing the burden of in-house maintenance and eliminating the need to replace hardware to host its email systems, GSA expects to lower costs by 50 percent over the next five years.

Earlier this year, Google Apps became the first suite of cloud computing email and collaboration applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification, enabling agencies to compare the security features of Google Apps to that of existing systems.

GSA is leading the way in embracing the federal government's "cloud first" policy, under which agencies should opt for hosted applications when secure, reliable, cost-effective options are available. We are thrilled that GSA has chosen to move to the cloud with Google and look forward to expanding our productive partnership with them.

Posted by Mike Bradshaw, Director, Federal Enterprise team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/us-general-services-administration-is.html

[G] Extending the reach of GIS with Google Maps: Ubisense myWorld

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:25 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Extending the reach of GIS with Google Maps: Ubisense myWorld

Editor's note: Today we have Peter Batty from Ubisense to talk about how the company is using Google Maps API Premier to make sense of complicated GIS data. This is cross-posted from the Google Geo Developer blog.



Large utilities and telcos have very large amounts of geospatial data about their network assets, typically hundreds of tables and millions of records, and complex rules for how these should be displayed on a map. Ubisense myWorld is a Software as a Service (SaaS) product that brings the ease of use and performance of Google Maps to the challenge of presenting these complex network maps in a way which is simple to use. myWorld uses the Google Maps JavaScript API V3 with Google Maps API Premier.

The data for these network maps is stored and maintained in a Geographic Information System (GIS). These systems have been around a lot longer than Google Maps, for 30 years or so, and tend to be powerful but complex to use. We have focused on working with data from GE Smallworld for utility GIS, but can also work with data from ESRI and others. We render the network data from the GIS to raster map tiles to create an image map overlay that is displayed on top of the Google Maps basemap. The advantage of this approach versus using a vector data format is that it is much easier to match the cartographic design of the network maps used in the GIS, and the users expect consistency between the systems.

All features on the map need to be clickable so that users can display information about any of the network items such as cables, poles, transformers, etc. To handle this we just define a click event that queries a server to find items close to that point. We use a system called Arc2Earth Cloud, which stores spatial data in Google App Engine.

One cool feature of our application is its tight integration with Google Street View. You can click on an object on the map, such as a pole or a building, and see a Street View of that object. This gives the user additional information that they can't get from their existing GIS database. We calculate the right bearing for the Street View automatically, and this works surprisingly well, given the potential for mismatches between the Street View and GIS location data. When necessary, the user can adjust and save the view, over-riding the automatic view. We can display markers in the Street View and click on them to display attributes of poles or other characterisitcs - this is a great feature of the V3 API.

The JavaScript API gives us great portability across multiple platforms. Mobile applications are very important in utilities, as access to and update of map data is often done by field workers. Being able to access the same functionality not only in desktop browsers but on smart phones such as the iPhone or Android, or tablets such as the iPad, is a major benefit. Our main application runs really well on the iPad without any change, and we also provide the same functionality but with modified layout on smart phones. We take advantage of the GPS devices in the phones and link to the built-in maps applications for routing.

I've developed geospatial applications on many platforms over the past 20 years, and have been really impressed with how quickly we were able to develop a pretty sophisticated application with Google Maps V3 JavaScript API, while keeping everything very simple for users. We have a lot of ideas for further enhancements, we are just scratching the surface!




Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Product Marketing Manager, Google Maps and Earth
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/extending-reach-of-gis-with-google-maps.html

[G] Tell Us Your Biggest Wish for 2011

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:25 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Tell Us Your Biggest Wish for 2011

Editor's note: Millions of small businesses use Google Enterprise products and thousands more sign up every day. As the new year approaches, teams across Google are focused on ways to help small businesses succeed and we want to know what's important to you. We're sharing a cross-post from the Google Small Business Blog to start the conversation - what's your wish for 2011?

This week the Google Small Business team is kicking off a conversation about the hopes and wishes you have for your business next year. We are working on a project to help small businesses succeed in 2011 and we want to hear from you.

We'll start by asking, if you had one wish for your small business in 2011, what would it be? This is just the beginning and we'll be looking for common themes to share with everyone. We'll pull out the common themes from submissions all over the web or via the form below and share them, anonymously, in aggregate.

Think big and audacious, or be more practical – but narrow it down to just one single wish. We're trying to understand what's most important to small businesses in general, so your wish doesn't have to be specific to Google. It might be something that helps your business prosper and grow. Or, it might be something that gives you personal peace of mind.

Just complete the form below. Or, tell us on Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag #Wish2011. We would like to share some of the specific wishes we hear from businesses. If you'd like us to share your wish (not anonymously), please provide us your email and we'll be in touch.

Spread the word and tell your friends -- we want to know their wish too. Let's get this conversation started.

The one wish I have for my small business in 2011 is....
Email address
Please provide your email address if you're willing to share your specific wish publicly.


Our online conversation about your wishes is intended to be viral with shared responses. Your response in this blog form will be used anonymously and will be kept anonymous. We may share your publicly posted Tweets and Facebook updates by re-tweeting or sharing your update. In those cases, the public usernames on your Twitter and Facebook posts will be included in our retweets and status updates, however, we are only looking at responses to identify common themes to share with everyone. Let's keep the conversation focused on your 2011 wish for your business.

We would like to share some of the specific wishes that we hear from businesses. If you'd like us to share your wish (not anonymously) on our blog, please provide us your email and we'll be in touch. We will only use your data as indicated above - please see our privacy policy for more information.

Posted by Leslie Hernandez, Product Marketing Manager, Google Small Businesses Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/tell-us-your-biggest-wish-for-2011.html

[G] Now available with Google Apps: YouTube

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:25 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Now available with Google Apps: YouTube



Editor's note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what's new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to YouTube
With more than 1 billion subscribers and 2 billion video views per day, YouTube is one of the top destinations for watching, uploading, and discussing video. Now, your company can benefit from the tools and scale provided by YouTube integrated with your users' Google Apps accounts.

Many companies are already using YouTube in interesting ways to promote communication, both within the organization and to external audiences. Here are some examples:
  • Build a public YouTube channel for your brand or product: You can maintain a public YouTube channel for your entire organization or for individual departments. For example, your marketing team can create a brand channel on YouTube to advertise your company to external customers. Take a look at HP's brand channel for a nice example of how a business can use YouTube to build a community around the exchange of product knowledge.

  • Build an archive of all your company's videos in one place: From training videos to strategy updates, you can centralize both externally-facing and internally-facing video in one video archive. YouTube's sharing options let you choose whether you want your videos to be accessible publicly on YouTube or privately to people who you individually invite to watch, giving you control over your content.

  • Build a channel to support your business processes: Customers and employees can stay up-to-date on new videos and channel activity by subscribing to the appropriate channels. Recent activity from those channels, such as new video content uploads, will then be delivered automatically to the subscriber's homepage or to their email inbox, if they choose. For example, P&G maintains a hiring channel on YouTube targeting potential employees, so interested candidates can subscribe to the channel and ensure they don't miss P&G's latest hiring updates.


End users can also engage in conversations relating to the video content using the YouTube Moderator feature, which provides a forum for questions and answers directly in the video interface. This type of conversation can bring invaluable product or service feedback directly from customers to your organization.

YouTube provides a platform on which your organization can manage and archive video communications and control how those videos are shared both internally and externally. YouTube's features also allow for easy and intuitive uploading, viewing, collaboration, and conversation covering all of your organization's video collateral. And now that YouTube is integrated with Google Apps, sharing content with colleagues and distribution lists is easy with contact list integration.

Learn more and get started
YouTube sign-in can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn't using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For the latest information on YouTube features and updates, check out the Official YouTube Channel and the YouTube Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using YouTube at your organization, or plan to now that it's available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Becky Chappell, YouTube Team

Note: YouTube may not be available in all areas.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/now-available-with-google-apps-youtube.html

[G] Happy 1st birthday Google Commerce Search!

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 07:25 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Happy 1st birthday Google Commerce Search!

It's Google Commerce Search's first birthday and we are celebrating it with Jack Kiefer, CEO of BabyAge.com, one of the top 500 online retailers in North America. Since implementing Google Commerce Search, BabyAge.com has seen searches rise 58% and search page views grow 64%, contributing to a 34% increase in sales conversions. You can read about Jack's experience in this case study or watch this video to hear more:



Google Commerce Search (GCS) is Google's core search technology tailored for retailers. It's an e-commerce search solution that's hosted in the cloud, meaning you don't need to install any hardware or software. It also uses the exact same product feed that many retailers already submit to Google Products – so most of the work associated with the typical e-commerce search implementation is already complete. Finally, GCS provides extensive administrative controls to customize search results and navigation so that they are just right for your website.

Since our debut last November we've expanded geographically – we now offer GCS in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany and Japan – and have added many new features like query auto-completions and a merchandising dashboard. Needless to say we've grown quite a bit in a year!

Just as we've progressed in our first year, the Google Commerce Search team strives to continue to improve online shopping and we need your help! Share your best and worst experiences from Cyber Monday, and we'll publish select submissions in a few weeks. If you're one of the first 50 respondents we'll send you a Google sticker as a "thank you" gift.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Search
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/happy-1st-birthday-google-commerce.html

[G] Optimize And Analyze For Mobile, part 2

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 04:38 PM PST

Google Analytics Blog: Optimize And Analyze For Mobile, part 2

This is part 2 of a timely 3 part guest post on mobile analytics strategy and implementation by Feras Alhlou at E-Nor, a Certified Partner in Northern California. Here's part 1, which explained how to look for trends in mobile traffic to your website. Look forward to Part 3, "Act on your ROI", coming soon.

2. Give Your Reports More Dollar Power
Now that you know where your mobile trends stand (and hopefully it's positive), make sure to analyze the data carefully. What does the trend signify and where do you want to go with the data?

After your CMO sees this amazing upward trend in mobile traffic (see the graph in the previous post), he will probably send the report to the CEO. The important question here is, can you show her the money? Surely, your CEO will be interested in how this trend impacts the company's bottom line.

Again, check the Vistors->Mobile Devices report. This time, choose the Pie Graph version of the report to look at. You can pivot the table by Revenue if you are tracking E-Commerce or Goals with a monetary value. The report below graphs the revenue generated by mobile traffic segmented by mobile device.

Click to enlarge

Wow - iPad is bringing in the cash. This is highly actionable. You might want to ask yourself: is your site optimized for iPad? Is there a cross-promotional opportunity or coupon you can create with iPad?

And if you add up the total revenue from mobile devices, its more than $25k over the date range you're looking at. Let's say that's a week of data. Whatever you're paying to make your website ready for mobile, well, now you know - it's worth it.

If the $25K in revenue didn't make analytics actionable, nothing else will. Your CEO can now easily connect the dots all the way to the bottom line.


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team and Feras Alhlou, E-Nor
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/11/optimize-and-analyze-for-mobile-part-2.html

[G] YouTube highlights – 12/2/2010

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 03:05 PM PST

Official Google Blog: YouTube highlights – 12/2/2010

This is the latest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you regular updates on new product features, interesting programs to watch and tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube. Just look for the label "YouTube Highlights" and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

Since our last update, we've premiered a new film on YouTube, highlighted a host of holiday content to get you geared up for cooking, entertaining and decorating with style, celebrated the one-year anniversary of auto-captions on YouTube and introduced a "viewer's choice" video ad format.

New film premieres on YouTube
Wong Fu Productions (Wesley Chan, Ted Fu, Philip Wang) and Ryan Higa premiered their new film, Agents of Secret Stuff, on YouTube. Written in a few days and shot in an intense week by a small crew, the movie is a powerful example of what a little ingenuity and a video camera can do. More than 3 million people have already checked out the film, which is about an assassin trying to fit into high school while carrying out an assignment.



Cooking for the holidays
If you're looking to pick up a few new culinary tricks for the holidays, you can learn how to make chocolate sea salt crostini, scalloped oysters and more from Chef John Mitzewich, star of YouTube's most subscribed cooking channel, FoodWishes. More than 97,000 foodies have viewed Chef John's 500th video posted to YouTube, Potato Ball in Potato Box. He recently answered a few questions about how he makes his videos and the trends he's seeing in viewer demand for recipes.



More recipes and how-to tips on the YouTube Holiday Solutions Center
Every holiday season we see a surge in viewers searching for cooking videos and recipes on YouTube. To discover a delicious new dish, check out the YouTube Holiday Solutions Center, where we've collected a range of videos on a single channel from party-planning experts such as Chow.com, Cool Mom, the Food Network, Real Simple, Southern Living and Target. In addition to recipes, this channel also includes fun projects and home decorating tips.

Happy birthday to YouTube's automatic captions
November 19 marked one year since we launched automatic captions on YouTube. Captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also let people around the world access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable people to jump to the exact parts of the videos they're looking for. Since last year, people have watched video with automatic captions more than 23 million times. We've also seen more than 7.6 million caption translations.

How to upload great-looking web video and other helpful tips
Heather Menicucci, director of the Howcast Filmmakers Program, has returned to the YouTube Blog for her series of tips on improving your video-making skills. In one post, Clayton Long, producer for the Bajillionaires Club, offers his expertise on the preferred genres, cameras and workflows for making web videos. For advanced videomakers, Professor Compressor provides insights on best-quality codecs (H.264 and MP4), how to fix common issues such as video that looks squished or stretched, why multi-pass encoding is important and more.

Choice and control with TrueView Video Ads
Our new family of ad formats called TrueView Video Ads gives viewers choice and control over which advertiser's message they want to see and when. We think TrueView has something for everyone: consumers choose ads that are more relevant to them, advertisers more precisely find the audiences they want, and content creators continue to fund great content with an ad experience that is less intrusive. Read our announcement on the InsideAdWords blog.

We'll update you again in a few weeks. Till then, for more information on what we're up to, head on over to our YouTube Blog.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, The YouTube Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/youtube-highlights-1222010.html

[G] Introducing Google Earth Engine

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 03:05 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Earth Engine

(Cross-posted from the Google.org blog)

Today, we launched a new Google Labs product called Google Earth Engine at the International Climate Change Conference in sunny Cancun, Mexico. Google Earth Engine is a new technology platform that puts an unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data—current and historical—online for the first time. It enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth's environment. The platform will enable scientists to use our extensive computing infrastructure—the Google "cloud"—to analyze this imagery. Last year, we demonstrated an early prototype. Since then, we have developed the platform, and are excited now to offer scientists around the world access to Earth Engine to implement their applications.

Why is this important? The images of our planet from space contain a wealth of information, ready to be extracted and applied to many societal challenges. Scientific analysis can transform these images from a mere set of pixels into useful information—such as the locations and extent of global forests, detecting how our forests are changing over time, directing resources for disaster response or water resource mapping.

The challenge has been to cope with the massive scale of satellite imagery archives, and the computational resources required for their analysis. As a result, many of these images have never been seen, much less analyzed. Now, scientists will be able to build applications to mine this treasure trove of data on Google Earth Engine, providing several advantages:
  • Landsat satellite data archives over the last 25 years for most of the developing world available online, ready to be used together with other datasets including MODIS. And we will soon offer a complete global archive of Landsat.
  • Reduced time to do analyses, using Google's computing infrastructure. By running analyses across thousands of computers, for example, unthinkable tasks are now possible for the first time.
  • New features that will make analysis easier, such as tools that pre-process the images to remove clouds and haze.
  • Collaboration and standardization by creating a common platform for global data analysis.
Google Earth Engine can be used for a wide range of applications—from mapping water resources to ecosystem services to deforestation. It's part of our broader effort at Google to build a more sustainable future. We're particularly excited about an initial use of Google Earth Engine to support development of systems to monitor, report and verify (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation.

Deforestation releases a significant amount of carbon into the atmosphere, accounting for 12-18% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. The world loses 32 million acres of tropical forests every year, an area the size of Greece. The United Nations has proposed a framework known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) that would provide financial incentives to tropical nations to protect their forests. Reaching an agreement on early development of REDD is a key agenda item here in Cancun.

Today, we announced that we are donating 10 million CPU-hours a year over the next two years on the Google Earth Engine platform, to strengthen the capacity of developing world nations to track the state of their forests, in preparation for REDD. For the least developed nations, Google Earth Engine will provide critical access to terabytes of data, a growing set of analytical tools and our high-performance processing capabilities. We believe Google Earth Engine will bring transparency and more certainty to global efforts to stop deforestation.

Over the past two years, we've been working with several top scientists to fully develop this platform and integrate their desktop software to work online with the data available in Google Earth Engine. Those scientists—Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Carlos Souza of Imazon and Matt Hansen of the Geographic Information Science Center at South Dakota State University—are at the cutting edge of forest monitoring in support of climate science.

In collaboration with Matt Hansen and CONAFOR, Mexico's National Forestry Commission, we've produced a forest cover and water map of Mexico. This is the finest-scale forest map produced of Mexico to date. The map required 15,000 hours of computation, but was completed in less than a day on Google Earth Engine, using 1,000 computers over more than 53,000 Landsat scenes (1984-2010). CONAFOR provided National Forest Inventory ground-sampled data to calibrate and validate the algorithm.

A forest cover and water map of Mexico (southern portion, including the Yucatan peninsula), produced in collaboration with scientist Matthew Hansen and CONAFOR.

We hope that Google Earth Engine will be an important tool to help institutions around the world manage forests more wisely. As we fully develop the platform, we hope more scientists will use new Earth Engine API to integrate their applications online—for deforestation, disease mitigation, disaster response, water resource mapping and other beneficial uses. If you're interested in partnering with us, we want to hear from you—visit our website! We look forward to seeing what's possible when scientists, governments, NGO's, universities, and others gain access to data and computing resources to collaborate online to help protect the earth's environment.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager, Google Earth Engine
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/introducing-google-earth-engine.html

[G] Live Streaming WebM with Wowza Server

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 01:47 PM PST

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Live Streaming WebM with Wowza Server

Guest blogger Charlie Good is CTO and co-founder of Wowza Media Systems

As a company, we at Wowza move fast and like to tinker. When WebM was announced in May, we saw it as a promising new approach to HTML5 video and decided to do an experiment with live WebM streaming over http.

Adding WebM VP8 video and Vorbis audio to the other encoding formats that our server supported was easy (we designed the Wowza server to be codec-agnostic). We then created a WebMfile and implemented WebM HTTP streaming.

We originally created the demo as a proof-of-concept for the IBC show in September, 2010 but have made it available to watch on our web site.

The file is streamed live (more precisely, "pseudo-live") over http using the Wowza server-side publishing API (PDF). The result is very impressive; playback starts fast and the VP8 image quality is fantastic.

You will need a WebM-enabled browser or VLC media player 1.1.5 to view the live stream.

If you're interested in keeping up with Wowza's WebM progress, visit Wowza Labs or drop us a note at info@wowzamedia.com.
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/12/live-streaming-webm-with-wowza-server.html

[G] The Art of Bling!

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 08:48 AM PST

Inside Google Books: The Art of Bling!

Posted by Archi Sarkar, Google Books Support Team

The art of making jewelry is one of those popular hobbies that have truly withstood the test of time. Since adornments have customarily accentuated haute couture, the craft has long been an attractive recreation for creative fashionistas.

Traditional jewelry making has historically been associated with intricately carved precious metals like gold or silver, sometimes embedded with gemstones, diamonds or rubies. Contemporary art jewelry, on the other hand, is made from various materials such as glass, wood, plastic or clay and can be just as exquisite.


Jewelry belonging to Indus Valley civilization 2500-1500 BC.
Source: LIFE Magazine


For instance, "Winged Lady" and "Dragonfly" are some masterpieces of contemporary art by René Jules Lalique. Lalique has often been credited with restyling the art of conventional jewelry in the late 19th century, by experimenting with a variety of materials like glass and creating brilliant works. Ever since, art jewelry has been a powerful medium of expression for designers worldwide.


Gem jewelry.
Source: LIFE Magazine


The avid use of mixed media in contemporary art jewelry has prompted consumers to cultivate distinct tastes and preferences for the craft, thereby making some styles more popular than others. While adornments made with glass, bead and wire, wood and clay have been in vogue among buyers, paper jewelry has not had as much traction.

People are becoming more open to different types of accessories to complement their personal styles. By being trendier and economical, contemporary jewelry is gradually gaining demand among jewelry collectors.

So, if this brief introduction to art jewelry has whet your creative appetite, check out some cool ideas on Google Books and learn more about this splendid craft. Go ahead, accessorize!
URL: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/art-of-bling.html

[G] Content ID turns three

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 08:33 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Content ID turns three

Three years ago we announced Video Identification, a technology that broke new ground in the area of online rights management. It marked the first step towards what is known today as Content ID, a full set of audio and video matching tools that give rights holders fine-grained controls for managing their content if someone uploads it YouTube. Participating rights holders provide us with reference files of their content, and before we publish any videos to YouTube we check them against these reference files. If we find a match, the rights holder gets the choice of blocking, tracking, or making money from the video. Here's how it works:



Fast forward to 2010. We've just passed a significant milestone: more than 100 million videos have been claimed with Content ID. Nearly every major media company and music label in the world uses our tools. The number of reference files provided to us by rights holders now stands at more than four million, or over 300,000 hours of content - we think it's the most comprehensive database of its kind in the world.

Rights holders who claim their content with Content ID generally more than double the number of views against which we can run ads, doubling their potential revenue. And we're seeing media companies make the most of this revenue opportunity - in the last quarter alone, claims to make money from videos increased 200%. Content ID contributes more than a third of YouTube's monetized views each week.

The revenue generated by Content ID is financing the ongoing creation of culture, both by established artists and new ones. Content ID allows for new creative works -- that use mashups and sampling -- to find a home on YouTube. Fan-made trailers and fan-made music videos are very popular on the site, and Content ID has made licensing of clips and samples for everyday people easier than ever before.

When we developed Content ID, we were hopeful that we'd gone some way toward helping solve a really tough problem -- how to manage rights issues, across platforms and countries, in a quickly evolving technology world. We've already invested tens of millions of dollars in this technology, and we'll keep investigating new ways to give rights holders ever better tools, while supporting new forms of creative expression.

Posted by David King, product manager, recently watched "Milky vs Lil Demon".


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/k4pul57Q4aA/content-id-turns-three.html

[G] TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over ads

Posted: 02 Dec 2010 08:25 AM PST

YouTube Blog: TrueView Video Ads give viewers choice and control over ads

Advertising is what allows many of YouTube's most creative video producers to keep producing their great material - it directly funds their creative process. And advertising is evolving. Increasingly, we're seeing the distinction between advertisements and 'regular videos' blurring as advertisers start to make ads viewers want to watch.

We think that giving viewers a choice of which ads they want to watch means it's even more likely that they'll be engaged with the ad, and that advertisers will get their messages across to the right person. So YouTube has introduced a new kind of ad, known as TrueView Video Ads, which you'll start seeing on the site today. It works like this: when you see an ad start to play, look for a 5-second countdown button that will allow you to "skip" it. If the ad doesn't seem relevant or engaging to you, skip it and continue to the video you wanted to watch. Not every ad you see will have this "skip" option but we are working to bring you more choice and control in advertising where possible.


More compelling ads and viewer choice about which ads to watch (and whether to even watch an ad) means a more engaging, interactive, customized experience for both viewers and advertisers -- a true win-win for all.

If you're an advertiser, please visit our InsideAdWords blog for more information on this announcement.

Phil Farhi, Senior Product Manager, recently watched "Danny MacAskill - Way Back Home"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/iIaznAf9JhA/trueview-video-ads-give-viewers-choice.html
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