Sunday, February 6, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Known Issue: More Socialize delivery problems

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 11:14 AM PST

The FeedBurner Status Blog: Known Issue: More Socialize delivery problems

Issue: Posts being sent by the Socialize service to Twitter are not always being delivered due to authorization errors. We are investigating the issue.

Update (2:42pm PST 28-Jan): The issue has been resolved; posts should now be delivered normally to Twitter. If your posts are still not being delivered, please re-connect your Twitter account to your FeedBurner account by clicking "Add a Twitter account" in the Publicize tab, re-entering your Twitter username and password in the window that is opened, and clicking Save on the Publicize form after the window closes.
URL: http://feedburnerstatus.blogspot.com/2011/01/known-issue-more-socialize-delivery.html

[G] At 100, “The Great Communicator” lives on via YouTube

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:32 AM PST

YouTube Blog: At 100, "The Great Communicator" lives on via YouTube

This Sunday marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, America's 40th President. Although his Presidency ended 20 years ago, his legacy as a transformational politician has lived on, with Democrats and Republicans alike trying to adopt his mantle of change and openness.

President Reagan, widely referred to as "The Great Communicator," is also a particularly interesting study of the President as Orator-in-Chief. It would have been interesting to witness President Reagan, a former actor and spokesman, campaign and govern during the YouTube-era. Many of his iconic speeches, such as his message to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (below), can be found on YouTube today.



To celebrate President Reagan's 100th birthday the Ronald Reagan Foundation has created a host of retrospective videos paying tribute to the former President which will be featured on the YouTube homepage today. The first video, a tribute narrated by former Senator Fred Thompson, shows speech clips that showcase Reagan's wit, storytelling abilities and impeccable timing.



For more information on the series of events surrounding Reagan's 100th birthday celebrations, please visit the Reagan Centennial website.


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/zSnv2qhRn_4/at-100-great-communicator-lives-on-via.html

[G] Longer headlines for select ads on Google

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:26 AM PST

Inside AdWords: Longer headlines for select ads on Google

We're continually testing variations of our search results page to optimize performance for both you and our users. Similarly, you're probably always trying to find ways to maximize each line of your ad to get your message across to users. To help, we'll soon be making a change to certain ads that will allow you to display more information where it's most likely to be noticed--in the headline.

Starting today and over the next few days, we're changing the placement of the first description line for certain ads that appear above the search results on Google. For some ads where each line appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation, description line 1 will be moved to the headline and separated by a hyphen. As a result, some top placement ads will have longer headlines. Here's an example:

Before

After

We've found that the change results in higher clickthrough rates for ads that are shown with the longer headline, as well as other top ads that appear beside them. It also creates a better experience for users by highlighting more information in the ad.

While only some ads will be shown with the longer headline, you can increase your chances by ensuring that each line of your ad appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation (e.g., a period or a question mark). Since this is a global change, punctuation will vary by country.

For more information, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/02/longer-headlines-for-select-ads-on.html

[G] Location extensions: putting your business on the map

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:26 AM PST

Inside AdWords: Location extensions: putting your business on the map

When location extensions launched in AdWords in 2009, they allowed you to dynamically attach relevant business addresses to your ads. We've since experimented with different ways to integrate this information with a map.

Today, we're introducing a way for your location extension-enabled ads to show directly on the map. We'll be integrating information from ads with location extensions into the Place Search map on Google.com. On the map, your location will be marked with a distinctive blue pin.


With the new format, we expect potential customers to be able to find local businesses more easily. Rather than seeing multiple addresses and maps on the page, your customers can see all relevant, nearby locations in one place with quick links to get directions on Google Maps.

Your promoted business will appear in this new integrated format whenever we infer that a potential customer is looking for local information and your ad qualifies to appear above the search results.

For more information about location extensions, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/02/location-extensions-putting-your.html

[G] New regions and cities now available for targeting on AdWords

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:26 AM PST

Inside AdWords: New regions and cities now available for targeting on AdWords

Starting today and over the coming weeks, we'll be rolling out city targeting in 17 additional countries to help you reach more customers in local markets with your AdWords campaigns. With this expansion, city targeting will now be available to AdWords advertisers in 34 countries. In addition, we're also announcing the ability to target regions in Argentina.

The countries with new city and region targeting options in AdWords are (click to see the full list):

Argentina (region targeting only), Austria, Brazil, China (coming soon), Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland (coming soon), Hungary (coming soon), Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, South Korea, Switzerland, Ukraine



Location targeting helps you tailor your ads towards specific markets, analyze your AdWords campaigns by market, and optimize your campaigns for higher return-on-investment. Now, you can go a level deeper and optimize the performance of your AdWords campaign at the city level. For example, let's say you run a clothing company and have stores in several cities in Mexico. You conduct a campaign-level analysis and learn that you're getting more conversions from big cities such as Mexico City than rural areas. Here are a few steps that you can take to optimize your AdWords campaign:
  1. Run an AdWords geographic report or Analytics report to determine where your users are located and where you're getting your most valuable traffic.
  2. Adjust your campaign setup:
    • Run a campaign targeting the best-performing cities such as Mexico City, and increase the bids on the keywords in that campaign to maximize your ad impressions in those cities.
    • Consider setting up a regionally- (or nationally-) targeted campaign with potentially lower bids on the same keywords to capture additional traffic from outside your top-performing cities at a lower cost.
  3. Adjust bids accordingly to optimize for the highest campaign ROI.
We hope that with the expansion of city targeting, advertisers in more countries will be able to reach their local customers more effectively. Visit our Help Center to learn more about getting started with this feature.

Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-regions-and-cities-now-available.html

[G] AdWords Policy updates and auditing plans for third parties

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:26 AM PST

Inside AdWords: AdWords Policy updates and auditing plans for third parties

Accountability is a core principle of AdWords. In order to improve advertisers' experience, we're making changes to AdWords policies so that advertisers working with third-party partners understand how AdWords is performing for them and know what to expect from third parties. We believe that focusing on what's best for the advertiser is ultimately the best long-term course for third parties working with AdWords.

In July and December 2010, we communicated a number of changes to the way third parties should provide reports and information about AdWords to their clients, including a disclosure document that should be shared by all third parties that have 80 percent of their advertisers spending less than $1,000 per month.

Today we want to inform you that we've updated AdWords policies with a third-party policy section that includes above reporting and disclosure requirements. We've also clarified enforcement and non-compliance handling, as well as let advertisers know how to contact us if they have any complaints about third parties. See an overview of Google third-party programs.

We believe that most agencies, resellers and other third parties that sell AdWords already meet these policies and will need to make minimal or no changes to their systems. Proactive audits for selected third parties will start on April 1st 2011, although you are strongly encouraged to start complying with these requirements today. Note that we will continue to investigate any complaints and take appropriate actions.

For advertisers, we have updated the AdWords Help Center to provide information and links to applicable third party policies. Should you encounter a third party partner in violation of our policies, you can notify us via the AdWords Help Center "Contact Us" form here.

We hope this provides third parties and advertisers with clarity on the policies AdWords third party partners must adhere to, and offers sufficient information on Google third party requirements. We believe that these new requirements will ensure that every advertiser that works with a third party partner understands their value and has a great experience.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/02/adwords-policy-updates-and-auditing.html

[G] Learn about advertising on YouTube in a new online course

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:26 AM PST

Inside AdWords: Learn about advertising on YouTube in a new online course

If you're interested in creating a stronger online brand presence or drawing a high volume of traffic to your site, YouTube can help you accomplish both by giving you access to the world's largest online video-streaming and -sharing community. YouTube can further enhance your current online advertising campaigns with millions of ad impressions and video ad streaming opportunities so that you can create the high-profile online presence that your website needs.

There are now a number of ways in which you can raise your profile as an advertiser using YouTube. During a live course on the Adwords Online Classroom (UK), you'll learn about the different methods of targeting YouTube and how to make the most out of any existing presence you may already have on YouTube.

This live course will be presented by a YouTube Specialist and is appropriate for all advertisers interested in growing their profile on YouTube. It will take place on Wednesday, February 2, 2011, from 3 pm to 4 pm GMT (7 am to 8 am PST).

If you're interested, make sure to sign up now!

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/01/learn-about-advertising-on-youtube-in.html

[G] Check out our latest AdWords Home improvements

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:26 AM PST

Inside AdWords: Check out our latest AdWords Home improvements

What do you want to see when you first log into your account? Many advertisers have told us that they want a quick snapshot of account performance and a summary of any important problems to address. However, the details vary quite a bit: Some advertisers want to quickly identify any keywords with bids below their first page bid estimates. Others might want to focus on campaign-level metrics before diving into keyword stats or use a graph to quickly identify any major fluctuations in performance. In short, customization is key!

With this in mind, we've recently introduced a new version of the AdWords Home tab. Just like before, the page features a summary of account alerts and a graph of account performance, but it allows for more extensive customization to help you monitor the parts of your account that matter to you.

The modules on the Home tab are based on saved filters created on your Campaigns tab. This provides you with the flexibility to define exactly which metrics and sections of your account are important to review right when you log in. To get you started, we've added some default filters to populate your Home tab, but you can feel free to remove those and customize as much as you'd like! These same modules will appear on AdWords for Mobile, helping you keep tabs on your account while you're on the go.

Visit our Help Center to learn more about these changes and how to make the most out of your Home tab. You can access it now by clicking "New version" on your existing Account Snapshot page (check back soon if you don't see it right away), and let us know what you think!

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/01/check-out-our-latest-adwords-home.html

[G] Contracts for Java

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 09:04 AM PST

Google Open Source Blog: Contracts for Java

If you've ever spent hours debugging your Java code, today's blog post is for you.

Often bugs that are frustratingly elusive and hard to track down appear simple or even trivial once you have found their cause (the fault). Why are those bugs hard to track down? One possibility is that the fault is in a completely different part of the program than its symptom (the failure).


Contracted code reveals failures much closer to their fault, leaving you with a far simpler problem to solve:

Traditionally, Java programmers enforced preconditions using explicit parameter validation code in public methods, and assertions in non-public methods. Likewise, they enforced invariants and postconditions using assertions. This approach is described in detail here. Since then, new features in Java 5 have enabled a more convenient and expressive implementation of contracts.

Contracts for Java is our new open source tool. Preconditions, postconditions, and invariants are added as Java boolean expressions inside annotations. By default these do nothing, but enabled via a JVM argument, they're checked at runtime.
• @Requires, @Ensures, @ThrowEnsures and @Invariant specify contracts as Java boolean expressions
• Contracts are inherited from both interfaces and classes and can be selectively enabled at runtime


Contracts help you turn interface documentation into code. For example:

/**
* @param left a sorted list of elements
* @param right a sorted list of elements
* @return the contents of the two lists, merged, sorted
*/
List merge(List left, List right);

Could be expressed as:

@Requires({
"Collections.isSorted(left)",
"Collections.isSorted(right)"
})
@Ensures({
"Collections.containsSame(result, Lists.concatenate(left, right))",
"Collections.isSorted(result)"
})
List merge(List left, List right);

The interface is now precise and every class that implements it can be checked at runtime.

Contracts are a powerful language feature and can provide great benefit if used correctly. We recommend that newcomers find an expert to learn from or spend some time reading around the subject to pick up good habits and avoid bad ones.

One point that often surprises people is that contracts must not be used to validate data. Contracts exist to check for programmer error, not for user error or environment failures. Any difference between execution with and without runtime contract checking (apart from performance) is by definition a bug. Contracts must never have side effects.

Another important point is that by convention module interfaces in Java are total, that is, they are defined for all input. In the case of incorrect input, they promise that a particular exception will be thrown. This behavior remains part of each method's implementation and cannot be moved to the contract.

Contracts for Java is based on Modern Jass by Johannes Rieken. Rather than being a full time project it was conceived and developed in the 20% time of two software engineers and then developed further through an internship. The internship report (PDF) goes into detail about the work done and the methodologies used.

Contracts for Java was inspired by Eiffel, a language invented by Bertrand Meyer, which has built in support for contracts.

By David Morgan, Andreas Leitner and Nhat Minh Le, Contracts for Java 20% Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/02/contracts-for-java.html
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