Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu open for questions on Israeli democracy, Middle East uprisings and peace with the Palestinians

Posted: 15 Mar 2011 02:41 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu open for questions on Israeli democracy, Middle East uprisings and peace with the Palestinians



As the situation in the Middle East continues to unfold, YouTube World View invites you to submit your questions for one of the most influential leaders in the region - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The interview, which is presented in partnership with Channel 2 News, will be 100% comprised of your top-voted questions.




Whether you want to know about the popular upheavals in neighboring Middle East countries, the potential consequences of Iran getting nuclear weapons, peace talks with the Palestinians, or prospects for Israel's hi-tech industry, ask your question at www.youtube.com/worldview, in either English or Hebrew (half of the interview will be conducted in each language). You can also submit your question via Twitter - just make sure to use hashtag #askNetanyahu.








On Wednesday, March 23, Prime Minister Netanyahu will sit down for a live interview and answer a range of the most popular questions submitted and voted on by you. The interview will be the first event in Israel ever to be streamed live on YouTube.The deadline to submit your question is Monday, March 21st at midnight GMT. As well as his interview with the YouTube community, Mr. Netanyahu will also answer the same "Big Three" questions posed to Prime Minister David Cameron and a host of other well-known personalities, so stay tuned to find out which world leader Mr. Netanyahu would most like to pose a question to.




Alon Chen, Israel Product Marketing Manager, recently watched "Eatliz - Lose This Child (HD Version)"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/6WWKRKhbxao/israeli-prime-minister-benjamin.html

[G] What’s New With Blogger

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 07:06 PM PDT

Blogger Buzz: What's New With Blogger

Posted by Chang Kim, Product Manager

2010 was a big year for Blogger. We cemented ourselves as one of the largest blogging platforms and the sixth largest website in the world, according to Alexa. Blogger users published more than half a billion blog posts, which were read by more than 400 million active readers across the globe. We introduced template designer, real-time stats, comments spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts, and more. And to top it all off, we were dubbed the most reliable blogging service around.

2011 promises to be another exciting year.



To start, we're kicking things off at SXSW by giving folks a sneak peek at our next-generation user interface. The new design is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also uses Google Web Toolkit, delivering the latest in web technology.


Current post editor
New post editor
Current dashboard
New dashboard

We'll also be showcasing our new content discovery feature that lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you're currently reading.


These are just a couple of new features we want to share with you. We look forward to unveiling more throughout 2011!

If you're in Austin for SXSW, be sure to visit us at the Google booth—or come by and enjoy a drink with us tonight at our annual Blogger bash. 
URL: http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/03/whats-new-with-blogger.html

[G] Baseline to baseline, we’ve got the basketball games covered

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 06:03 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Baseline to baseline, we've got the basketball games covered

(Cross-posted on the LatLong and Student blogs)

Do you hear the dribble on the court and the chanting of the fans? Following an action-packed week of buzzer beaters, the 2011 NCAA® Championship here in the U.S. promises to be as exciting as ever.

As a college hoops fan, I often wish I could experience the games sitting in the arenas—and I'm sure I'm not alone. This year, our college basketball tournament map lets you get as close as you can to the games without leaving your desk thanks to 3D models of the tournament's 14 arenas. Take a virtual tour of the venues by watching the video below, or download this tour and open it in Google Earth.



Plus, we've created a special page for you to keep track of all the excitement during the next few weeks. You can see an up-to-date tournament schedule, explore the college campuses in Street View and click through to watch the actual games on NCAA® March Madness on Demand®. You can also create a bracket using Google Docs, read Google News articles on the games and download basketball apps from the Chrome Web Store. It's all here (along with a fun surprise) at www.google.com/collegebasketball2011.

And since there's been a long-running debate over whether teams playing closer to their home court have an advantage, we added a "Distance Tool" on the map to make it easier to measure how far schools have to travel from game to game. We'll see how things play out, but the defending champion Duke Blue Devils may have to travel more than 2,000 miles to Anaheim if they win their first two games.


As my friends always say when we can't wait for the tournament to begin, "Send it in, Jerome!" May your favorite school reach the finals and we hope you enjoy all the basketball fun at www.google.com/collegebasketball2011.

Posted by Aaron Weissman, Google Maps Marketing (San Francisco King of the Rock winner)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/baseline-to-baseline-weve-got.html

[G] The YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 arrives in Sydney

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 04:40 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: The YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011 arrives in Sydney

This weekend, 101 musicians from more than 30 countries descended upon Sydney to form the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011. After a process of online auditions, public voting, and decisions by our orchestra partners and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, the 97 orchestral musicians and four winning soloists are now hard at work to ensure their finale performance in Sydney on March 20 is nothing short of extraordinary.

This week marks the final phase of their journey: A seven-day festival of music, creativity and technology in and around one of the world's most iconic symbol of the arts, Sydney Opera House. They've arrived from all over the world, speak multiple languages, and bring with them diverse musical and cultural insights from around the globe. And their days have been filled with experiences they're sure to carry with them beyond Sydney — from the first rehearsal inside Sydney Opera House under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas, to a trip to the zoo to pet the marsupials and feed the giraffes.

Here's a peek at how the week is shaping up:



We'll be following the orchestra all week to find out how the collaborative work of these musicians, who met in person for the first time just days ago, translates into a single finale performance, brought to life through real time projections on the sails of Sydney Opera House. The grand finale on March 20 will be live streamed around the globe on youtube.com/symphony.

A sneak peek of what's to come at the Grand Finale

Want to know what the orchestra is up to this week? Follow us on twitter (@googledownunder, #ytso) and be sure to tune into youtube.com/symphony for daily highlights from around Sydney!

Ernesto Soriano, YouTube Australia product marketing, recently watched "Vloggin Day 1 Sydney."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/lJt_V8CKIv4/youtube-symphony-orchestra-2011-arrives.html

[G] Build applications in Sites using Apps Script

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 04:06 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Build applications in Sites using Apps Script

Google Sites makes it easy for organizations to create and manage their intranets or external web pages. By making content management available to non-technical users, information is managed by more people making it more relevant and up to date.

But sometimes intranets have more complex needs such as:
  • Content varied based on an employee's location
  • Information in another system that needs to be presented in a site
  • A project tracker with a custom workflow
  • An issue tracker
  • A team issue tracker
To support these needs, we are excited to announce further integration between Google Sites and Google Apps Scripts that allows custom applications to be built in your Google Sites. To get started, take a look at our "hello world" tutorial and our Apps Scripts help center. To get a sense for what is possible, we also recommend our tutorial on how to build an entire time-tracking application, right in your site.

Posted by Laurent Tu, Software Engineer
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/03/build-applications-in-sites-using-apps.html

[G] Template updated: 2011 College Basketball Tournament Bracket

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 03:51 PM PDT

Docs Blog: Template updated: 2011 College Basketball Tournament Bracket

For all you serious basketball fans out there or for those that just want to follow along, the 2011 College Basketball Tournament Bracket template is a great way to share your picks with your friends.


Other Google teams are getting into the basketball spirit. From getting Realtime updates to exploring 3D venues on Google Maps, there is something for every basketball fan at google.com/collegebasketball2011.

Posted by: Haluk Tunali, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/03/template-updated-2011-college.html

[G] Introducing "Anthill," the First VP8 Hardware Encoder IP Release

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 02:16 PM PDT

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Introducing "Anthill," the First VP8 Hardware Encoder IP Release

Last week the WebM Finland team finalized our H1 hardware RTL design. The H1 is the world's first VP8 hardware encoder. This initial release, which we're calling "Anthill," is now available through the WebM Project hardware page. Google does not require payment of any license fee or royalty in connection with use of the H1 encoder RTL.

Why "Anthill"? 77% of Finland is covered by forests, and the Finns are very fond of them. The Finnish freedom to roam rights allow anyone to wander in the woods, and pick wild berries, flowers and mushrooms. We thought it would be fitting to alphabetically name each VP8 hardware release with things that can be found amidst our Finnish evergreens.

The H1 encoder offloads the entire VP8 video encoding process from the host CPU to a separate accelerator block on the SOC. It significantly reduces power consumption and enables encoding of 1080p resolution video at full 30 FPS, or 720p at 60 FPS. Without a hardware accelerator like the H1, modern multi-core mobile devices can only encode video at around VGA 25 FPS, and are not able to do much else while doing that.

To provide an idea of our hardware's capabilities we compared it to the WebM Project's VP8 software encoder# (libvpx). The figures below show the required processor cycles for VGA resolution video at 30 frames per second, and are scaled from the FPS speed reached when running the Tegra2 at 1 GHz#.

Note: Power consumption measurements are for the ARM core vs. H1 encoder core in TSMC 65nm technology. ARM power consumption is estimated using the 65nm figure given at http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a9.php. H1 encoder core is measured using RTL netlist and Synopsys Power Compiler.

In terms of quality, hardware implementations of real-time encoders are typically behind those running on software, as adaptive algorithms related to motion search and mode selection (or exact rate-distortion optimizations) are often not feasible options in hardware. The following graph shows PSNR quality metrics for a 720p video conferencing use case, comparing the H1 Anthill release to the libvpx Bali release in different complexity modes (higher PSNR is better).



These graphs show that the H1 hardware encoder can produce good quality with very low power consumption using almost no clock cycles from the CPU. In the next release, we are planning to narrow the quality gap between the libvpx "Best" mode and the hardware implementation, while cutting down the required power even further. The next release is planned to be out in early Q2.

Several top-tier semiconductor partners have already started to integrate the H1 IP into their next chipsets, and we're eager to share the technology with new partners.

For technical and licensing details about the H1, see our hardware page.

Aki Kuusela is Engineering Manager of the WebM Project hardware team in Oulu, Finland.

*libvpx Aylesbury and Bali software encoder releases running NVidia Tegra2 development board with dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processors. In the test, libvpx was using both cores with the slowest and fastest real-time settings (-cpu-used=-5 and -cpu-used=-16).

#For example, if the Tegra2 ran at 1000 MHz to achieve 6 FPS, 30 FPS requires 5000 MHz (30/6=5).
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/03/introducing-anthill-first-vp8-hardware.html

[G] Baseline to baseline, we’ve got the basketball games covered

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 02:06 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Baseline to baseline, we've got the basketball games covered

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Do you hear the dribble on the court and the chanting of the fans? Following an action-packed week of buzzer beaters, the 2011 NCAA® Championship here in the U.S. promises to be as exciting as ever.

As a college hoops fan, I often wish I could experience the games sitting in the arenas—and I'm sure I'm not alone. This year, our college basketball tournament map lets you get as close as you can to the games without leaving your desk thanks to 3D models of the tournament's 14 arenas. Take a virtual tour of the venues by watching the video below, or download this tour and open it in Google Earth.



Plus, we've created a special page for you to keep track of all the excitement during the next few weeks. You can see an up-to-date tournament schedule, explore the college campuses in Street View and click through to watch the actual games on NCAA® March Madness on Demand®. You can also create a bracket using Google Docs, read Google News articles on the games and download basketball apps from the Chrome Web Store. It's all here (along with a fun surprise) at www.google.com/collegebasketball2011.

And since there's been a long-running debate over whether teams playing closer to their home court have an advantage, we added a "Distance Tool" on the map to make it easier to measure how far schools have to travel from game to game. We'll see how things play out, but the defending champion Duke Blue Devils may have to travel more than 2,000 miles to Anaheim if they win their first two games.


As my friends always say when we can't wait for the tournament to begin, "Send it in, Jerome!" May your favorite school reach the finals and we hope you enjoy all the basketball fun at www.google.com/collegebasketball2011.

Posted by Aaron Weissman, Google Maps Marketing (San Francisco King of the Rock winner)
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/03/baseline-to-baseline-weve-got.html

[G] Picnik is better with friends

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 11:32 AM PDT

Google Photos Blog: Picnik is better with friends

Posted by Thomas Kang, Software Engineer

Picasa Web Albums has expanded the collaborative albums feature to support collaborative editing using Picnik. Now you can invite friends and family to contribute to an album either by uploading photos of their own or by editing any existing photos in that album.


Your original always stays safe and sound as your collaborators make edits to add funny speech bubbles, give you pointers on editing techniques, or pitch in to help you touch up your hundreds of vacation photos. If they edit one of your photos in Picnik and save the changes, it will save back to your album as a new image, and their name will show in the sidebar to give them credit for the new version.


To enable collaborative editing, simply share an album with your friends, and be sure to click on the checkbox to let the people you share with contribute to your album. Soon you'll start seeing all the cool new images they create from your photos.


We're sure that there are many fun uses for this new feature, so if you discover something that was helpful to you, we'd love to hear about it. Happy editing!
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2011/03/picnik-is-better-with-friends.html

[G] What’s new with Blogger

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 10:49 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: What's new with Blogger

(Cross-posted from Blogger Buzz)

2010 was a big year for Blogger. We cemented ourselves as one of the largest blogging platforms and the sixth largest website in the world, according to Alexa. Blogger users published more than half a billion blog posts, which were read by more than 400 million active readers across the globe. We introduced template designer, real-time stats, comment spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts and more. And to top it all off, we were dubbed the most reliable blogging service around.

2011 promises to be another exciting year.



To start, we're kicking things off at SXSW by giving folks a sneak peek at our next-generation user interface. The new design is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also uses Google Web Toolkit, delivering the latest in web technology.

Current post editor
↓

New post editor

Current dashboard
↓

New dashboard

We'll also be showcasing our new content discovery feature that lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you're currently reading.


These are just a couple of new features we want to share with you. We look forward to unveiling more throughout 2011!

If you're in Austin for SXSW, be sure to visit us at the Google booth—or come by and enjoy a drink with us tonight at our annual Blogger bash.

Posted by Chang Kim, Product Manager, Blogger
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/whats-new-with-blogger.html

[G] This week's Trends: ballet, Rihanna, and 'winning'

Posted: 14 Mar 2011 08:52 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: This week's Trends: ballet, Rihanna, and 'winning'

Each weekday, we at YouTube Trends take a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube as they develop. We want take a moment to highlight some of what we came across this past week:







Check back every day for the latest about what's trending on YouTube at: www.YouTube.com/Trends



Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager, recently watched "Dog Trainer Saves Dog with CPR."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/e1Q3YSOfe9M/this-weeks-trends-ballet-rihanna-and.html
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