Friday, March 4, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Decide what the world sees when it searches for you

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 04:27 AM PST

Social Web Blog: Decide what the world sees when it searches for you

Admit it: You've searched for yourself on Google. We all have. No shame there, in fact you should. If you haven't searched for yourself, then you've probably searched for friends, classmates or co-workers.

Two years ago, we launched Google Profiles to help you manage your online identity. Since then, we've enhanced profiles to help you connect to other public online services and improve your search results. Today, we're starting to give Google Profiles a new look and feel, making it even easier for you to control and enrich your public profile.



We think this new design helps highlight the information that's most important to you, making it easier for people who visit your profile to get to know you. As the new layout gradually rolls out, current users of Google Profiles will notice that their existing profile will automatically update to the new style. To update and add to your profile, simply click on the new "Edit Profile" button.

Because Google Profiles are designed to be public pages on the web, used to help connect and find real people, we'll be asking people to provide the name they are commonly referred to in the real world. We recently outlined how we think about the different modes of online interaction across our products.

While profiles work well for individuals, we'll continue to work on new ways for businesses to engage with their customers, so stay tuned for updates.

Don't have a Google profile yet? Visit profiles.google.com and create a profile that best represents the way you want to be seen by the world.

Posted by Greg Marra, Product Manager
URL: http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2011/03/decide-what-world-sees-when-it-searches.html

[G] Tweet your Hotpot ratings in Google Maps for Android

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 01:06 PM PST

Google LatLong: Tweet your Hotpot ratings in Google Maps for Android


(Cross-posted from the Google Mobile Blog.)

Whether it's Google Places with Hotpot or Google Latitude, we're working on helping you connect the people you care about with places you love. Now, when you're rating your dinner spot using Google Maps for Android, you can share your review with even more people by posting it to Twitter.

Post your ratings and reviews to Twitter
When you rate and review places like restaurants or cafes from Google Places, you can share valuable recommendations with your Hotpot friends and across Google's products – in search results, on google.com/hotpot, and on Place pages. But we wanted you to be able to share your recommendations even more broadly. So today, you can start sharing your ratings and reviews with your followers on Twitter directly from your Android-powered device.



When rating on the go using our rating widget, just choose to Post review to Twitter and connect your Twitter account. You'll get a preview of your tweet and will be able to post your ratings and reviews moving forward.

Post your ratings and reviews to your Twitter followers.

Check-ins: ping friends and search for places
Starting last month, you could share information about the place you were at, in addition to your location, by checking in at places using Google Latitude. Starting today, if you see nearby Latitude friends on the map and want to ask them where they are, you can quickly "ping" them instead of having to text or call. They'll receive an Android notification from you asking them to check in at a place. And when they check in using your request, you'll get a notification right back so you know which place to go to meet up with them.

From a friend's Latitude profile, ping them (left) and they'll receive a notification (right).

You'll also be able to more easily check yourself in at the right place. Sometimes there are a lot of nearby places around you, and the right one is missing from the suggested list of places to check in. You can now quickly search for the right place using the Search more places button.

Search for the right place to check in if it's not among the suggested places.

To start posting Hotpot ratings to Twitter and pinging Latitude friends, just download Google Maps 5.2 from Android Market here (on Android OS 1.6+ devices) everywhere it's already available. Please keep in mind that both Latitude friends need version 5.2 in order to use the new "ping" feature. Learn more in the Help Center.

Posted by Adam Connors, Google Maps for mobile team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/03/tweet-your-hotpot-ratings-in-google.html

[G] Ski the slopes in Google Earth

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 01:06 PM PST

Google LatLong: Ski the slopes in Google Earth

Heading for the slopes this winter? Put on your warm hat, grab your mittens, rent those skis, and bundle up in your warmest jacket … and don't forget your GPS tracking device! When you hit the slopes this winter, track your route down the slopes and share your animated ski tracks in Google Earth.

This past weekend, a couple of Googlers and I headed up to Lake Tahoe, CA with a few GPS devices. We recorded some of our favorite ski runs and animated our tracks in Google Earth. You can check out all of our animated tracks in the video below, or download the KML to play the tracks in Google Earth.



Capturing a GPS track is easy -- just make sure that you have a GPS tracking device on hand before you hit the slopes. A Garmin® or Magellan® device works best, but you can also use a GPS tracking application on most mobile phones. My Tracks on Android works well, or if you have an iPhone, try using MotionX-GPS.

When you get to the top of the mountain, start recording your track. Place your phone or device in an outside pocket, preferably separate from another device. When you get to the end of your run, stop the track. Or, if you prefer to track the entire day, keep the GPS track running. Most of us decided to keep our tracks running the entire day so we could focus entirely at the task at hand - skiing.

After a full day of skiing and snowboarding, we grabbed some hot cocoa from the lodge and headed home, where we imported our tracks into Google Earth. My fellow Googler, David captured his GPS data with My Tracks, and imported the data by dragging and dropping a .gpx file into Google Earth. We then started playing with the new GPS track animation feature launched in Google Earth 5.2, and customized and animated our ski tracks just the way we wanted them. Take a look below at how David customized the line color and label of his track. (He even personalized the tracking icon to make it look like an actual skier!)


We also animated our tracks by creating a tour, which we customized by changing the camera tilt angle, camera range, and tour speed in the preferences dialog. Here's a helpful hint: if you want it to seem like you went faster, create a tour with a high speed setting to view your track in fast-forward.

Next, we used Google Earth's Elevation Profile feature to get a better idea as to the difficulty of the runs we skied that day. With GPS tracks, the feature can show both an elevation profile (shown below in red), and a speed profile (shown below in blue). Looking at the red elevation profile below, as you ski around the mountain, there is quite a bit of elevation change. We then counted the total number of peaks in our track's elevation profile to discover how many runs we skied in one day.



Don't ski or snowboard? Don't worry! You can track other exciting winter activities in Google Earth. I've never been a big skier, but I love to snowshoe and go dog sledding. Check out the dog sledding tour I created below, paired with a photo of my actual dog sledding experience.



We had so much fun tracking our winter adventures in Tahoe that we even tracked our bus ride home to San Francisco. We were sorry to leave, but I knew we'd be back to trace new paths in the mountains next year -- or even next weekend!

Posted by Carolyn Wendell, Content and User Education Specialist, Google Earth
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/03/ski-slopes-in-google-earth.html

[G] Fusion Tables Protected Map Layer Launch: Have your cake and eat it too

Posted: 03 Mar 2011 11:48 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Fusion Tables Protected Map Layer Launch: Have your cake and eat it too

The integration between Google Fusion Tables and Google Maps API Premier makes it extremely easy to visualize thousands of locations on a map. Fusion Tables is a powerful, cloud-based database with geospatial smarts; you can attach a location to any record and then execute geospatial queries to find the relevant records.

Organizations that need to map sensitive or private data will appreciate our new Protected Map Layer. For Maps API Premier customers, simply pop in your client ID into Fusion Tables and voila, you can visualize your data in your Maps API Premier implementation (and ONLY your implementation) and your underlying data tables are kept entirely private.



The marriage of Maps API Premier and Fusion Tables enables a true cloud-based location platform: no servers to stand up, no database applications to install - just upload your data and display it on a map. Dead simple and keeps your data safe - just as it should.


Posted by Daniel Chu, Enterprise Geo Product Manager
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/03/fusion-tables-protected-map-layer.html
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