Thursday, December 23, 2010

Googland

Googland

[G] Appy Holidays from the Chrome Web Store

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:36 AM PST

Google Chrome Blog: Appy Holidays from the Chrome Web Store

The winter holidays are my favorite time of the year: I get to spend quality time with friends and family and eat lots of delicious food. However, between booking airplane tickets, sending greeting cards and looking for the perfect gifts, the pre-holiday season can be busy...and even a bit stressful. This year though, I feel much more in control thanks to the apps I discovered in the Chrome Web Store's Holiday collection.

If you are looking for last minute holiday gifts, try Gilt for Chrome. Within the app, you can find the latest designer fashion items on sale and search for specific items and sizes like "men's shoes size 11."



I also recommend Amazon Windowshop. You can use the app to browse through millions of products in a slick way. For example my cousin really likes cupcakes: a search in the app shows me cupcake related products organized across categories like books, groceries and clothing, helping me find unique gifts.



For those of you still planning your trip home, check out Hipmunk. Hipmunk sorts all available flights to your destination by "agony" -- a mix of price, duration, and number of connections. You can see all the flights that meet your needs in a single view.



Finally, if you are late like I am in sending holiday cards, I suggest checking out Stupeflix Video Maker. In the app you can select a theme (my favorite one is "Celebrate"), insert pictures, text, and music, and create a free 60-second greeting that you can email or post on YouTube and Facebook. Or, you can simply create beautiful photo slideshows with DropMocks and comemories.

There are hundreds more apps to discover at the Chrome Web Store.

Happy Holidays!

Posted by Christos Apartoglou, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/12/appy-holidays-from-chrome-web-store.html

[G] 60 million tabs towards good causes

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:36 AM PST

Google Chrome Blog: 60 million tabs towards good causes

In 2010, the Chrome community has joined us in moments of fun, invention, exploration, and now, giving. Last week, we invited Chrome's users worldwide to "donate" their opened tabs in Chrome to drive a charitable gift of one million dollars. We on the Chrome team were deeply impressed with the support and participation and now we're happy to share the results with you.

The Chrome community responded with staggering enthusiasm and, acting together, raised 60,599,541 tabs for charity.


Each Chrome user chose the causes their tabs would support, which determined how we allocated our one million dollar donation. Accordingly, we're excited to make the following donations on behalf of the Chrome community:
  • $245,278 toward planting trees in the Atlantic Forest, one of the world's endangered tropical forests.
  • $232,791 toward providing clean water, by building freshwater wells for communities in developing nations.
  • $112,078 toward building shelter, to be constructed by volunteers for impoverished families in Latin America.
  • $267,336 toward administering vaccinations against meningitis to combat outbreaks in Africa.
  • $142,518 toward publishing books by local writers and illustrators, which will be created and donated to schools and libraries across Asia and Africa.
We'll be making the donations at year-end, and our partner charities are already looking towards applying the funds from Chrome for a Cause in 2011. Read more about how your donation will be applied specifically by visiting our partners' websites:
We're glad to connect Chrome users with these important causes all around the world -- so much so that we're already thinking of more Chrome for a Cause projects for the future!

Feel free to keep your extension installed if you'd like to hear about future opportunities to work together with the Chrome community for a good cause. We'll post all the details about how to participate on the Chrome blog, so make sure you check in when you hear about new opportunities.

Thanks for joining us in this endeavor. Happy Holidays!

Posted by Sarah Nahm, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/12/60-million-tabs-towards-good-causes.html

[G] It’s all about practice

Posted: 22 Dec 2010 01:08 PM PST

YouTube Blog: It's all about practice

Welcome to the final post in Howcast's Modern 101 for Emerging Digital Filmmakers. On Friday, October 1, we kicked off our series with Embracing exploration: being a filmmaker today and today we're wrapping up with a video co-produced with Tribeca Flashpoint Academy, How has the web changed film school?

Over the course of our series, we shared breakfast with our Howcast Emerging Filmmakers and learned instant gratification is a huge benefit to being a web filmmaker; we offered up a digital roadmap for filmmakers; sat in on Shooting People's Ingrid Kopp's Digital Bootcamp; talked with some producers about how the web is changing film festivals; and outlined one filmmaker's plan of attack for distributing and promoting his short documentary. (Plus, lots more!)

We felt it was fitting to end up at the beginning of a film career -- talking to current film students and professors about how the web complements a formal film education and how web filmmaking will fit into students' careers after graduation.



As the students at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy explain in their video, they watch hundreds of hours of web video each week and they upload regularly. The web is giving them a chance to learn how audiences respond to their ideas and their professors see it as a viable venue for quality work. This is exciting news for filmmakers everywhere. Whether you're in school or not, the web's vast network of videos, collaborators, and viewers is reachable within minutes.

There has always been one thing about film school that can't really be summed up in a course catalogue and a filmmaker can't get working in a vacuum, and that's the chance to fine tune your craft amongst other young creators and veteran professionals. Create, share, get feedback, create again. It's all about practice. This chance to practice was really only previously available to a small few with the resources to access equipment and education. Thanks to technology, today a filmmaker anywhere -- in film school, in high school, or even a hobbyist -- can see an innovative video, be inspired to make their own, upload, and get insight from a worldwide community of filmmakers. To me, that's been the most important lesson we shared in our blog series.

Happy holidays and happy shooting!

Heather Menicucci, Director, Howcast Filmmakers Program, recently watched "I Hope This Gets To You".


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/XS-Xdu1qRc0/its-all-about-practice.html

[G] Investing in New York

Posted: 22 Dec 2010 11:13 AM PST

Official Google Blog: Investing in New York

Google New York started in a Starbucks on 86th Street with one person in 2000—a scrappy, highly-caffeinated sales "team." After moving to a larger office in Times Square, in 2006 we relocated to our current home in Chelsea, at 111 Eighth Avenue—a former Port Authority building. In June of 2008, we took additional space in the Chelsea Market building at 75 Ninth Avenue. Now we have more than 2,000 Googlers working on a variety of projects in both sales and engineering—and we're hiring across the board.

Today, we're pleased to announce that we've closed a deal with the partnership of Taconic Investment Partners, Jamestown Properties and the New York State Common Retirement Fund to purchase 111 Eighth Avenue (also known as 76 Ninth Avenue). As part of the deal, we've retained Taconic Management Company to continue the leasing oversight services and management of the building on our behalf, providing the same level of customer service the building's tenants have come to expect. We believe that this is a great real estate investment in a thriving neighborhood and a fantastic city.

Like the city, our New York office is a melting pot of cultures and ideas—it's home to Googlers from more than 35 countries who speak more than 40 languages. They live in the five boroughs and spread across the tri-state area. We're excited to continue to build our presence there.

Posted by David Radcliffe, VP Real Estate and Workplace Services
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/investing-in-new-york.html

[G] Our favorite Docs things - 2010 Year in Review

Posted: 22 Dec 2010 10:26 AM PST

Official Google Docs Blog: Our favorite Docs things - 2010 Year in Review

We've been keeping busy this year with over 85 new enhancements to Google Docs and Google Sites, making it possible for you to work, communicate and collaborate entirely in the cloud. We wanted to take a moment to share a few of the most exciting enhancements from 2010 that are making it easier for you to go "100% web."

In addition to some of the most requested favorite features like mobile editing, OCR, advanced sorting rules and a more consistent look, here are more of our team's favorite things from this last year:
We look forward to bringing you more improvements next year. Let us know what is at the top of your Google Docs and Sites wish list in the comments.

On behalf of the entire the Google Docs and Google Sites teams, happy holidays! We'll see you in the New Year!

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Director, Product Management
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/12/our-favorite-docs-things-2010-year-in.html

[G] Celebrating our partners’ success

Posted: 22 Dec 2010 09:00 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Celebrating our partners' success

As 2010 draws to a close, it's time to reflect on another incredible year in online video. During the last 12 months you all watched more than 700 billion YouTube videos, and uploaded more than 13 million hours of content to the site. We met a bunch of new faces (and fruits) and celebrated as new YouTube partners hit the big time with millions of views. Indeed, our partner program grew to around 15,000 participants worldwide.



We're privileged to work with the most passionate and talented partners in the world, who produce and upload videos that inspire us, make us laugh and move us -- and, most importantly, change the way we look at the world. In bedrooms, garages and studios across the globe, these talented and entrepreneurial YouTube partners are building the next generation of media companies, and in July this year we announced a new way we'd be supporting this via Partner Grants.



It's clear that we want to see YouTube partners continue to create great video and further push the boundaries of what's possible online. To that end, today we're giving a $1,000 credit at B&H Photo to 500 partners around the world, who primarily create and distribute their content online, to purchase new video production equipment. This group includes well-known YouTube stars like ShayCarl, MysteryGuitarMan and FreddieW (and this past weekend we learned the latter two make quite a guitar-bass duo), and also successful musicians like Kina Grannis and promising new talents like EmilyNoel83, who was the inaugural winner of our "On The Rise" program last month. Collectively, these 500 partners generated billions of video views in 2010, and we chose them to receive a $1,000 credit based on their popularity during 2010, as well as their online focus.



We hope this will provide our most popular partners with the tools they need -- whether it be a new camera, sound & lighting equipment or editing software -- to produce even higher quality videos and ultimately drive bigger audiences to their work. Hundreds of creative people all around the world have launched professional careers after using YouTube as a global platform to demonstrate their talent - we want to see this number continue to grow.



On behalf of the entire YouTube community, we thank these partners for sharing their creativity and talent with us, and we look forward to what's to come in 2011 and beyond.



Tom Pickett, Director of Content Operations & Online Creators, recently watched "P4A: The Annoying Orange Interviewed by Tay Zonday."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/456_KtfYUgE/celebrating-our-partners-success.html

[G] Demo Slam! Epic Docs Animation

Posted: 22 Dec 2010 07:26 AM PST

Official Google Docs Blog: Demo Slam! Epic Docs Animation

If you're reading this post, you've probably seen your fair share of Google Docs videos featured on this blog. Well, we have one more to show you this year, created entirely with Google Docs, demonstrating the power of nothing but the web -- and it just might be our favorite yet.

Google introduced Demo Slam in October 2010 as a way to turn traditionally boring tech demonstrations into out-of-this-world displays of technology. A couple of weeks ago, three animators worked together for three days in three different cities to create a Google Docs demo slam using Google presentations and drawings. Take a look:



If you like what you see, vote for "Epic Docs Animation." Let the Slam begin!

Posted by: Tu Uthaisri, Google Creative Lab
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/12/demo-slam-epic-docs-animation.html
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