Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Going green at Google in 2010

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 10:54 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Going green at Google in 2010

(Cross-posted on the Google.org blog)

At Google, we're committed to building a clean energy future because we we want to be good environmental stewards, and because we think it makes business sense. We've had a busy year with our clean energy initiatives. Take look at our redesigned green website and this new video from the Google green team to learn more about the priorities we're pursuing:



As we look back on 2010, we wanted to highlight what we've been working on this year to help build a more sustainable future—for Google, and the world.
  • Greening our operations. We already have the most energy efficient data centers in the world, and use renewable energy whenever possible. This year we created a subsidiary, Google Energy LLC, to enable us to purchase renewable energy on the wholesale power markets and to help spur development in the sector.

    • Flexibility in buying renewable energy. In February, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted Google Energy LLC the authority to buy and sell energy on the wholesale market, giving us the flexibility to procure renewable energy at competitive prices.

    • 20-year green power purchase. Our FERC authority enabled Google Energy LLC to enter a 20-year green Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) in July to buy clean energy from 114 megawatts (MW) of wind generation at NextEra's Story County II facility in Iowa (read more about how the deal is structured). By purchasing so much energy for so long, we're giving the developer financial certainty to build additional clean energy projects.

  • Developing green products and tools. Just a few weeks ago, during the the U.N. Climate Change Conference in sunny Cancun, Mexico, we launched Google Earth Engine, a new Google Labs product. Google Earth Engine is a technology platform that makes an unprecedented catalog of imagery and data available online in one place for the first time. It enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth's environment. We're particularly excited about the initial use of Google Earth Engine to support efforts to stop global deforestation. We've also been busy this year incorporating green features into our products—like Google Maps biking directions and adding Carbon Disclosure Project ratings into Google Finance.

  • Investing in a clean energy future. To date, Google has invested over $100 million in clean energy. Google.org has already invested in several clean technology companies. We've also continued our internal R&D on renewable energy technologies (RE<C), substantially growing our engineering team. And this year, Google began making project investments that offer a solid financial return, and could have a transformational impact on the renewable energy sector.

    • North Dakota wind farms. In May, we invested $38.8 million in two North Dakota wind farms that generate 169.5MW, enough to power 55,000 homes. It was our first project investment, and uses some of the latest wind turbine technology and control systems to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of renewable energy to the local grid.

    • Offshore wind transmission. In October, we made a development stage investment in a project to build a backbone transmission line off the Mid-Atlantic coast. The project will put in place strong, secure transmission, removing a major barrier to scaling up offshore wind. When finished, the 350-mile line will connect up to 6,000MW of offshore wind energy—enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households!
It's been a busy year at Google, and we believe the world needs better options in the future. As we head into the new year, we look forward to continuing our work to find and support innovative clean energy solutions.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/going-green-at-google-in-2010.html

[G] Enhance your productivity with more applications for Google Apps

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 05:04 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Enhance your productivity with more applications for Google Apps



Last month we launched an improvement that makes more than 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. Since the launch, we've featured posts from product teams across Google to showcase how you can benefit from the new services.


Our colleagues working on Google Reader, Google Alerts, Google News, and Google Finance described how their products give you new ways to discover content on the web. The Blogger and YouTube teams shared how their services can be used to connect with your customers and communicate information about your products and brand. We also featured posts from the Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, Google Custom Search, and Google Translator Toolkit teams to highligh tools that help your company build and optimize your web property. Posts from Google AdWords and Google Places showed how you can make it easier for potential customers to discover your business when they are searching online, and a post from Google Checkout described how you can let visitors purchase products from your site once they arrive. And if your business isn't built around an online transaction model, the Google AdSense and DoubleClick for Publishers teams outlined tools that you can use to efficiently monetize traffic to your website. We also featured posts on Picasa Web Albums and Google SketchUp & 3D Warehouse that highlighted use cases for sharing and editing photos and 3D images at your organization. Finally, posts from Google Voice and Google Chrome Sync featured products that leverage the power of the web to allow you to work seamlessly across multiple devices, so you're not tied to your desk phone or desktop PC to be productive.

This series has highlighted a few ways that you can use these additional Google applications, and we're confident that you will discover many new and interesting use cases that fit your business. You can explore even more exciting Google services now available with your Google Apps account at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

All of these new services 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). Your domain administrator can grant different groups of users access to different sets of applications, so your company can get up and running today with more than 60 productivity-boosting applications matched to those users that will benefit from them most.


Posted by Jeremiah Dillon, Google Apps team

Note: Some products may not be available in all areas.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/enhance-your-productivity-with-more.html

[G] Improved migration tools for Microsoft® Exchange and Microsoft Outlook®

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 05:04 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Improved migration tools for Microsoft® Exchange and Microsoft Outlook®

With more than 3 million businesses using Google Apps, it's been an exciting year for 100% web-based computing! To help make it easy for our customers transition to Google Apps, over the years we've launched several tools to migrate email, contacts and calendar data from Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook and other IMAP servers into Google Apps. This year alone, customers have migrated over 3.5 billion emails to Google Apps, along with over 100 million calendar events and 25 million contacts. But we're still working to make it even easier: today we've added new versions of our data migration tools for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook, which are available to Google Apps for Business and Education customers.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange: This tool lets administrators migrate data for batches of users from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. The new version features performance improvements and supports several additional IMAP servers, including Novell® GroupWise, Cyrus®, Dovecot® and Courier®. You can migrate email from @gmail.com accounts as well with this tool. We've also improved support for PST files and Hosted Exchange with this release. Please explore the administrator's guide and visit the download page for more information.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook: This tool allows end-users to migrate email, contacts and calendar data from their Microsoft Outlook profiles or local PST file to Google Apps. The new version features improvements for Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007, and adds support for 2010. It also includes support for 64-bit versions of Microsoft Outlook. Head over to the download page to get the updated migration tool.

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook: If some of your users want to continue using Microsoft Outlook as their email interface, this tool is for them. This tool now also allows seamless migration of existing data from Microsoft Outlook into Google Apps (via Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook), and keeps Outlook email, contacts and calendar data in sync with Google Apps accounts. Get the latest version from the download page.

Google Calendar Connectors for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes: Some customers still choose to operate in a dual-deployment environment, and to that end, we've also been busy updating Google Calendar connectors that allow bi-directional look-ups of calendar free/busy information for users in the organization still on Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes. The new versions of the Calendar Connectors also now support the new Google Apps account infrastructure that brings over 60 additional Google applications to your Google Apps accounts.


Posted by Aditya Kulkarni, Product Manager
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/improved-migration-tools-for-microsoft.html

[G] A look at the best of the Google Apps Marketplace in 2010

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 05:04 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: A look at the best of the Google Apps Marketplace in 2010

Closing out 2010, we are excited to offer over 250 installable applications in the Google Apps Marketplace that work seamlessly with Google Apps. The Apps Marketplace has grown rapidly, now with over 4 million users with at least one Marketplace app installed on their domains.

With Google Apps and the Apps Marketplace, you can finally go 100% web with your business, realizing greater functionality and flexibility at a lower cost. For example, you can manage your entire sales cycle anywhere you have access to a browser – send marketing and lead generation emails through MailChimp, manage and track responses with Zoho CRM and even close the sale with an e-signature from EchoSign.

Every month on App Tuesday, we aim to give you a break from patching your systems by introducing even more apps to help you move to the cloud. To wrap up the year, we wanted to give you a recap of what's been big in the Marketplace, the top categories and apps of the year as well as a preview of 2011.

Top Installed Categories
  1. Project Management - with over 30 project management apps, businesses can find applications that address key project needs including cross-functional collaboration, task list management, and time tracking.
    Top 3 installed: Manymoon, Mavenlink, RapidTASK
  2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - the most popular searched for category in 2010, businesses can find all types of CRM apps, including those related to end-to-end sales cycles, social and project-based.
    Top 3 installed: Insightly, Zoho CRM, Applane
  3. Accounting and Finance - bring simplicity to your accounting and finance needs with Marketplace apps that manage your cash flow, billing and invoicing, and expense tracking.
    Top 3 installed: Outright, myERP.com, Freshbooks
Top Recently Installed Apps of 2010
  1. Manymoon
  2. Insightly
  3. Zoho CRM
  4. Aviary Design Suite
  5. Mavenlink
  6. Outright
  7. MailChimp
  8. RapidTask
  9. Insync
  10. myERP.com
Honorable Mention - #11 for 2011
    11. Grockit, our first ever app focused on education




Best Integration
Gmail contextual gadgets - This integration, offered by many Marketplace apps, allows you to access your most relevant and important data streams right where you need it, inline with your emails. For example, many CRM apps provide gadgets that populate information about contacts in an email thread to add context to your communications.

Looking forward to 2011, we have a number of new ideas in the pipeline. We have plans to help improve your shopping experience, find the exact apps you need, and add additional integration capabilities to make users more efficient.

As you prepare for 2011, consider making a new year's resolution to go 100% web to capture the benefits of reduced costs, greater scalability and flexibility. Whether it's switching your messaging and collaboration tools to Google Apps or augmenting your sales and marketing efforts with web applications from the Apps Marketplace, resolve to make 2011 the year your business moves to the web and boosts productivity.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Product Marketing, Google Apps Marketplace
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/look-at-best-of-google-apps-marketplace.html

[G] The new AdSense interface: Greater efficiency

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 11:27 AM PST

Inside AdSense: The new AdSense interface: Greater efficiency

We've given you a tour and covered the greater insight and control that you get with the new AdSense interface, but we couldn't end the series without a video about the improvements in account management. The new interface lets you find features and make changes to your account more efficiently than ever. You can also get help when and where you need it with relevant help links customized to the content of each page of the interface.



We hope you learned something with our video series and are continuing to enjoy the new AdSense interface!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit - Inside AdSense
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-adsense-interface-greater.html

[G] Free calling in Gmail extended through 2011

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 10:17 AM PST

Google Voice Blog: Free calling in Gmail extended through 2011

(Cross posted from the Gmail blog)

When we launched calling in Gmail back in August, we wanted it to be easy and affordable, so we made calls to the U.S. and Canada free for the rest of 2010. In the spirit of holiday giving and to help people keep in touch in the new year, we're extending free calling for all of 2011.

In case you haven't tried it yet, dialing a phone number works just like a regular phone. Look for "Call phone" at the top of your Gmail chat list and dial a number or enter a contact's name.


To learn more, visit gmail.com/call. Calling in Gmail is currently only available to U.S. based Gmail users.

Happy New Year and happy calling!

Posted by Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-calling-in-gmail-extended-through.html

[G] Oh Ship! Final Shipping Day is here

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 10:13 AM PST

Official Google Blog: Oh Ship! Final Shipping Day is here

'Twas the last week of shopping, and all through the land
All the shoppers were shopping, on foot and by hand;
Their lists were made, as usual, with care,
In hopes that great gift-giving soon would be there.

Oh Ship! To family! To friends and to beaus!
On overnight, two-day, for electronics or clothes!
To the local store, online or the mall!
Now shop away! Ship away! Give gifts to all!

If you're anything like us—and based on research data from a Google/OTX study which notes that the average shopper still has to complete 50% of their holiday purchases, we suspect you are—you may be asking Santa for a bit more time to finish all your holiday shopping before December 25.

But if you're traveling for the holidays or buying gifts for far away friends and family, you may be doing something a bit stronger than wishing for more time; you may be shouting, "oh, ship!" today, the last shipping day on which the USPS recommends sending packages for delivery before Christmas via First Class Mail, and the last day on which many online retailers guarantee delivery by Christmas via Standard Delivery.

As we enter this final and cheerfully panicked sprint toward Christmas, we took a look at some U.S. search trends related to two of the most important shopping days for procrastinators—today, which we fondly refer to as Oh Ship! Day (otherwise known as Last Shipping Day) and last Friday's Free Shipping Day (a day in December on which numerous retailers offer free shipping and guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve).

Planned procrastination is in the air
While some of us can't resist putting off our holiday shopping until the last minute, we seem to have become better at planning for procrastination.

A number of searches related to guaranteed Christmas delivery, along with specifics like [free shipping day], [last shipping day] and [free overnight shipping] have risen rapidly, indicating that we're interested in hunting for deals and making sure our gifts arrive on time.


Some other top shopping-related searches this month include:


Last-minute local
For shoppers determined to shop at the last possible second, local stores will likely be a lifesaver. Fortunately, many of these super-procrastinators seem to be super-shoppers; [store locator] searches peak in late December each year, generally on December 24, and have continued to grow in volume through the years.

Other searches such as [open christmas day], [christmas eve hours] and [holiday hours] further point to the last-minute local shopper phenomenon, while the continued rise in searches for [printable coupons] indicates these in-store shoppers are deal-hungry, whether they're making purchases early or at the final hour.


Whether you're done with your shopping or still sprinting toward the holiday shopping finish line, the Google Retail Industry team would like to wish you a happy holiday season and a wonderful Oh Ship! Day.

Posted by Dan Schock, Google Retail Industry Director (with our thanks to Clement Clark Moore)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/oh-ship-final-shipping-day-is-here.html

[G] Free calling in Gmail extended through 2011

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 10:11 AM PST

Official Gmail Blog: Free calling in Gmail extended through 2011

Posted by Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer

When we launched calling in Gmail back in August, we wanted it to be easy and affordable, so we made calls to the U.S. and Canada free for the rest of 2010. In the spirit of holiday giving and to help people keep in touch in the new year, we're extending free calling for all of 2011.

In case you haven't tried it yet, dialing a phone number works just like a regular phone. Look for "Call phone" at the top of your Gmail chat list and dial a number or enter a contact's name.


To learn more, visit gmail.com/call. Calling in Gmail is currently only available to U.S. based Gmail users.

Happy New Year and happy calling!
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-calling-in-gmail-extended-through.html

[G] Introducing YouTube Trends

Posted: 20 Dec 2010 07:03 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Introducing YouTube Trends

With 35 hours of video now being uploaded to YouTube every minute, keeping up with the latest goings-on around here can be a challenge.

Last week, we officially unveiled YouTube Trends (youtube.com/trends), a new set of tools designed to help you stay on top of the latest popular videos and trends on the world's largest video site.

Here's more of an explanation:



YouTube Trends features new algorithmically-generated feeds that highlight which topics and videos are trending right now. The site also offers a 'top videos' module and a blog with more in-depth explorations of videos, trends, news, and cultural phenomena as seen through the lens of YouTube. We've also created a Trends Dashboard that lets you quickly explore what's popular in different cities in the U.S. and around the world, as well as within specific demographic groups.

Last Monday, we started a 12-day countdown to the holidays exploring the top videos from 2010. So far, we've posted lists of the top videos in:

We've also examined extreme winter weather footage from across North America, looked at how Justin Bieber's "Baby" got so big, tracked "Double Rainbow's" popularity, seen how the same practical joke traveled across seven different countries, and settled the age-old question: dogs or cats?

YouTube Trends is like your water cooler for web video, so check back each day to see the very latest.

For more specific info about YouTube Trends, visit our FAQ or watch a video walk-through.

Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager, recently watched "So Long To Ya, 2010 | The Jib-Jab 2010 Year in Review!"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/Tix8xNduGF4/introducing-youtube-trends.html
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