Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Google Code-in Grand Prize Winners

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 11:02 PM PST

Google Open Source Blog: Google Code-in Grand Prize Winners

Today we are pleased to announce the grand prize winners of the Google Code-in contest. We first want to thank all the participants for their work – we had over 2,000 tasks completed by more than 360 pre-university students from 48 countries! Every student who participated in the contest will be receiving a t-shirt and certificate of participation.

We decided that 10 grand prize winners weren't sufficient to acknowledge all the hard work put into the contest, so we've accepted our top 14 finalists instead. For their excellent work with our mentoring organizations these finalists will be invited to Google's headquarters in Mountain View with a parent or legal guardian and have a day to meet with Google's engineers. They'll also get another day to have some fun in the California sun.

So, drumroll please, here are our winners in order by last name:

1. Utku Aydin, Turkey
2. Fernando Brito, Brazil
3. David Czech, Canada
4. Aviral Dasgupta, India
5. Alexandru-Marian Florescu, Romania
6. Gautam Gupta, India
7. Daniel Kang, United States
8. Nolan Lum, United States
9. Daniel Marth, Austria
10. Florentina Musat, Romania
11. Pim Otte, Netherlands
12. Matt Rajca, United States
13. Furkan Üzümcü, Turkey
14. Tony Young, New Zealand

Congratulations to our Grand Prize Winners, and to everyone who participated, including the more than 350 mentors from the 20 open source projects who volunteered their time to help these young people get started in open source.

By Carol Smith, Open Source Team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/02/google-code-in-grand-prize-winners.html

[G] Pin your love on the map

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 10:23 PM PST

Google LatLong: Pin your love on the map

[Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog]

This Valentine's Day, tell your friends, family or significant other that you love them with a fun message from Google Maps.
Location can be a powerful trigger of memories—from the Italian place in San Francisco where you went on your first date to the cabin you rented at Lake Tahoe with your roommates. For that reason, we thought it would be great to create a Valentine's Day card that's tied to a specific location. As long as there's a place that means something special to you and the ones you love, mapping your valentine is a great way to make Valentine's Day a little more special.


One of my favorite memories is from a family trip we took to Eilat in Israel (check out my awesome fashion sense, I'm on the far left...), so I sent my parents this card:

I hope you'll take a moment to remind the people you love of the places you've shared with them. Visit www.mapyourvalentine.com to get started.

Happy Valentine's Day from Google!

Posted with love by Aaron Weissman, Google Maps & Earth Team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/02/pin-your-love-on-map.html

[G] Join us on YouTube for Carnival in Brazil

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 08:49 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Join us on YouTube for Carnival in Brazil

Ever been to Carnival in Brazil? If you haven't, you now have the chance to experience Brazil's iconic celebration on the new YouTube Carnival channel via your computer or your mobile phone, from the streets of Salvador, Bahia, one of the largest cities in Brazil and carnival-rival only to sister-city, Rio de Janeiro.

The YouTube Carnival channel will offer live feeds to Salvador's multi-day street fest from Thursday, March 3 to Thursday, March 8, or Fat Tuesday (literally, Mardi Gras). YouTube visitors worldwide will now be able to experience the music, dance and celebrations of Brazil's Carnival (or Carnaval, as it's referred to in Brazilian Portuguese).

As part of the transmission line-up, you'll be able to:
  • Watch many of the city's most popular carnival bands (called trio elétricos) including Ivete Sangalo and other Carnaval artists performing to the rhythms of African-influenced axé music in the midst of the enormous block parties unique to Salvador's version of the Brazilian carnival;
  • Feel the energy of the celebration through street-site coverage from different parts of the city throughout the six-day festival;
  • Access video-clips of music, greatest hits, practices and performances from the festival uploaded to YouTube in high-definition.
Coming up on February 19, 2011
On Saturday, February 19 at 15:30 ET (18:30 Brasília time), get in the mood for the festivities by tuning in to a live transmission of the Carnival rehearsal of Ivete Sangalo, one of the most popular singers of the Brazilian Salvador festival.



Join YouTube in Salvador
Those who happen to be in the city of Salvador to experience Carnival in-person can do so at the YouTube camarote, one of the several cabins along the city's main avenues offering refreshments, performances of local DJs and an environment designed to help participants enjoy the celebration. Find out how to buy a pass (also known as an abadas) directly at www.youtube.com/carnaval.

Flávia Simón, Marketing Manager Brasil, recently watched "Ivete Sangalo ao vivo no YouTube dia 19/02."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/8IiGM9Kv_UA/join-us-on-youtube-for-carnival-in.html

[G] New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 04:54 PM PST

Google Chrome Blog: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google's web search results

Today the Google web search team launched a new Chrome extension to block low-quality sites from appearing in Google's web search results. Read more in the post below, cross-posted from the Official Google Blog. - Ed

We've been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users. To that end, today we're launching an early, experimental Chrome extension so people can block sites from their web search results. If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results.

You can download the extension and start blocking sites now. It looks like this:



When you block a site with the extension, you won't see results from that domain again in your Google search results. You can always revoke a blocked site at the bottom of the search results, so it's easy to undo blocks:



You can also edit your list of blocked sites by clicking on the extension's icon in the top right of the Chrome window.



This is an early test, but the extension is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. We hope this extension improves your search experience, and thanks in advance for participating in this experiment. If you're a tech-savvy Chrome user, please download and try the Personal Blocklist extension today.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-block-sites-from.html

[G] VP8 for Real-time Video Applications

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 04:42 PM PST

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: VP8 for Real-time Video Applications

With the growing interest in videoconferencing on the web platform, it's a good time to explore the features of VP8 that make it an exceptionally good codec for real-time applications like videoconferencing.

VP8 Design History & Features

Real-time applications were a primary use case when VP8 was designed. The VP8 encoder has features specifically engineered to overcome the challenges inherent in compressing and transmitting real-time video data.
  • Processor-adaptive encoding. 16 encoder complexity levels automatically (or manually) adjust encoder features such as motion search strategy, quantizer optimizations, and loop filtering strength.
  • Encoder can be configured to use a target percentage of the host CPU.
    Ability to measure the time taken to encode each frame and adjust encoder complexity dynamically to keep the encoding time per frame constant
  • Robust error recovery (packet retransmission, forward error correction, recovery frame/new keyframe requests)
  • Temporal scalability (i.e., a single video bitstream that can degrade as needed depending on a participant's available bandwidth)
  • Highly efficient decoding performance on low-power devices. Conventional video technology has grown to a state of complexity where dedicated hardware chips are needed to make it work well. With VP8, software-based solutions have proven to meet customer needs without requiring specialized hardware.
For a more information about real-time video features in VP8, see the slide presentation by WebM Project engineer Paul Wilkins (PDF file).

Commercially Available Products

Millions of people around the world have been using VP7/8 for video chat for years. VP8 is deployed in some of today's most popular consumer videoconferencing applications, including Skype (group video calling), Sightspeed, ooVoo and Logitech Vid. All of these vendors are active WebM project supporters. VP8's predecessor, VP7, has been used in Skype video calling since 2005 and is supported in the new Skype app for iPhone. Other real-time VP8 implementations are coming soon, including ooVoo, and VP8 will play a leading role in Google's plans for real-time applications on the web platform.

Real-time applications will be extremely important as the web platform matures. The WebM community has made significant improvements in VP8 for real-time use cases since our launch and will continue to do so in the future.

John Luther is Product Manager of the WebM Project.
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/02/vp8-for-real-time-video-applications.html

[G] Speed Thrills - Tackling the YouTube video processing challenge

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 03:55 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Speed Thrills - Tackling the YouTube video processing challenge

Few things can be more frustrating than waiting for what feels like years for that amazing video you just shot to finish uploading to the site so you can publish it and share it with your friends. Whether it's the speed a video plays back, or the speed a video uploads, at YouTube speed matters. Why do we care so much about speed? Because we know that speed can mean the difference between you having a good experience, or you leaving YouTube in search of a better, faster one.

Today, as we look at 2011, we'd like to review our progress in improving the processing and publishing speed for videos. By processing and publishing, we mean what happens behind the scenes between the moment you press the YouTube upload button to the moment that video appears on the site for your friends to see.

Here is the challenge: 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Over time, the average file size is going up, the average resolution is going up, as people switch to HD cameras and the average duration of the videos is going up. Moreover, an increase in resolution results in a quadratic increase in the number of pixels to be processed - a 1080p HD video has 2M pixels compared to 300k pixels in a 480p (DVD quality) video.

In the last few years the YouTube infrastructure team has tackled this challenge in a variety of different ways. We highlight two of them:

  • The first is to overlap uploads and video processing without waiting for the upload to finish. This results in a base quality version of your video going live very quickly after the upload completes, making the link to your video active and shareable.
  • The second technique, which we've internally codenamed Hydra (after Greek mythology's nine-headed monster) tackles this problem by leveraging Google's massive cloud computing capabilities. We split a single video into small chunks and process each chunk simultaneously on different machines. Hydra then reassembles all the processed chunks so that you see a seamless video, processed and published in a fraction of the time it would have taken to do it previously.
As you can see from the above chart, we're making big strides when it comes to our battle to get videos processed and live faster. Here are some additional stats:
  • We now process videos seven times faster than we did in 2008.
  • We've gotten four times faster in the last six months
  • 60% of all YouTube videos go live in under a minute as compared to none last year.

We know that there remains a lot for us to do when it comes to improving processing time and reliability and we certainly don't think we have come close to solving the problem entirely. We have made big strides over the years and our speed is accelerating. When we make another big leap, we'll post another blog to let you know. Until then, keep uploading!

Krishna Gadepalli, software engineer, recently watched "Satarii IndieGoGo Campaign," and Wendy Tobagus, software engineer recently watched "Parkour and FreeRunning"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/x-8Iu56tAv0/speed-thrills-tackling-youtube-video.html

[G] New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 12:19 PM PST

Official Google Blog: New Chrome extension: block sites from Google's web search results

(Cross-posted on the Google Chrome Blog)

We've been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users. To that end, today we're launching an early, experimental Chrome extension so people can block sites from their web search results. If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results.

You can download the extension and start blocking sites now. It looks like this:


When you block a site with the extension, you won't see results from that domain again in your Google search results. You can always revoke a blocked site at the bottom of the search results, so it's easy to undo blocks:


You can also edit your list of blocked sites by clicking on the extension's icon in the top right of the Chrome window.


This is an early test, but the extension is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. We hope this extension improves your search experience, and thanks in advance for participating in this experiment. If you're a tech-savvy Chrome user, please download and try the Personal Blocklist extension today.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-chrome-extension-block-sites-from.html

[G] Pin your love on the map

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 12:19 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Pin your love on the map

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

This Valentine's Day, tell your friends, family or significant other that you love them with a fun message from Google Maps.


Location can be a powerful trigger of memories—from the Italian place in San Francisco where you went on your first date to the cabin you rented at Lake Tahoe with your roommates. For that reason, we thought it would be great to create a Valentine's Day card that's tied to a specific location. As long as there's a place that means something special to you and the ones you love, mapping your valentine is a great way to make Valentine's Day a little more special.


One of my favorite memories is from a family trip we took to Eilat in Israel (check out my awesome fashion sense, I'm on the far left...), so I sent my parents this card:


I hope you'll take a moment to remind the people you love of the places you've shared with them. Visit www.mapyourvalentine.com to get started.

Happy Valentine's Day from Google!

Posted with love by Aaron Weissman, Google Maps & Earth Team
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/pin-your-love-on-map.html

[G] Send virtual love this Valentine’s Day

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 11:23 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Send virtual love this Valentine's Day

Scrambling to make last-minute dinner reservations and to order a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses before your local florist is left with only withered strands of baby's breath? You don't even need to leave your computer to send your own personalized message of love this Valentine's Day.

With Unlisted videos, you can send a message to your sweetheart without anyone else knowing you're sometimes referred to as "Honeybear". When you upload your video, mark it as "Unlisted". Then you can share it with only those people who have the URL.

There are also a number of free web applications that can help you create original personal videos from text and images and easily upload them to YouTube, like Xtranormal, Stupeflix, Animoto, and One True Media.

Cool video Valentine got them to agree to an actual date? Whether you're a regular Casanova hoping to keep things exciting this year or an awkward first-timer trying to make a good impression, a search for 'Valentine's Day' on YouTube returns over 250,000 videos dedicated to making every aspect of this day perfect for you and your significant other.

The YouTube community provides a wealth of videos that you can access to help you make the date a success. Learn how to set the right mood with tips on creating your own floral arrangements, candle centerpieces, romantic dinners and Valentine's day chocolate mousse. They can also help you look your best with make-up and wardrobe tips.



We all know that there's more to a great date than ambiance and food, so the most novice dater can spice things things up with tips on dancing, flirting and even kissing. Searches on YouTube for 'how to kiss' are up 61% since 2008.

If things don't go so well, you can also look for ways to make breaking it off slightly less painful. And if you're like millions out there spending Valentine's Day alone, this video will help you make sure the best date you have is then one with yourself.

Rachel Snare, Account Manager, recently watched "Chocolate Mousse for Valentine's Day."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/QXc_A9CdxP8/send-virtual-love-this-valentines-day.html

[G] Start to 'Think Mobile' in a new live online course in the AdWords Online Classroom (UK)

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 08:12 AM PST

Inside AdWords: Start to 'Think Mobile' in a new live online course in the AdWords Online Classroom (UK)

This Wednesday, February 16th, we'll be hosting a live online course in the AdWords Online Classroom (UK), where you can learn how to start using mobile advertising to reach more customers.

With over four billion mobile phone owners globally, half of all new Internet connections now come from mobile devices. This live course discusses the explosive growth in ownership and usage of high-end mobile phones and the implications for businesses and marketers.

We'll highlight the main mobile trends that businesses should be aware of and outline effective mobile strategies and mobile advertising solutions for companies and advertising agencies to adopt.

The hour-long interactive course will be delivered by an Online Media Specialist and will include time for Q&A. It will take place on Wednesday, February 16th from 3 pm to 4 pm GMT (7 am to 8 am PST).

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

And visit our AdWords Online Classroom for additional live and on-demand courses.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/02/start-to-think-mobile-in-new-live.html

[G] Announcing the 2011 Nonprofit Video Awards

Posted: 14 Feb 2011 07:02 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Announcing the 2011 Nonprofit Video Awards

If you're a non-profit organization who has created one or more amazing videos in the past year, we have good news for you. For the second year in a row, YouTube is teaming up with See3 Communications to present the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, a celebration of the best non-profit video on the site.

Whether you created a high-definition documentary about street slums in India or shot a quirky cellphone video of rescue dogs at your animal shelter, we encourage you to submit your video at www.youtube.com/nonprofitvideoawards. 
 
We'll award prizes like $2500 grants from the Case Foundation, Flip Cams, free admission to the Nonprofit Technology Conference, and a spotlight on the YouTube homepage to small, medium and large organizations, plus a special award for the "Best Thrifty Video".

To give you a sense of what works, here are the finalists' videos from last year's competition:







The deadline to enter is March 2, 2010 and you must be a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program at the time of judging, to enter. Good luck!



Ramya Raghavan, News and Politics Manager, recently watched Tahrir Square


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/EWYYn-3NeNE/announcing-2011-nonprofit-video-awards.html
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