Saturday, April 9, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Hotpot is going Places

Posted: 08 Apr 2011 04:59 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Hotpot is going Places

(Cross-posted from the Google Places Blog)

Last November, we introduced Hotpot, our recommendation engine to help people discover great new places when they search on Google. It's simple: Rate and review the places you know, add friends whose opinions you trust and we serve you up personalized recommendations based on those tastes.

Since then, we've released an iPhone and Android app, integrated Hotpot recommendations into Google.com and Google Maps, expanded to more than 47 languages and enabled people to share their ratings and reviews to Twitter. While busy iterating on the product side, we've also launched marketing and community campaigns in five cities in the U.S.: Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; Las Vegas, Nev.; Madison, Wis.; and Charlotte, N.C.

It's been incredibly exciting to watch Hotpot grow—the community has quickly expanded to millions of users who are rating more than one million times per month and enjoying a truly personalized view of the world. Based on this success, we've decided to graduate Hotpot to be a permanent part of our core local product offering, Google Places. Rolling Hotpot into Google Places helps simplify the connection between the places that are rated and reviewed and the more than 50 million places that already have an online presence through Google Places—places that millions of people search for and find every day on Google.


Many of you first asked us at Hotpot's launch: Why the name? Hotpot, the dish, describes a shared eating experience. To us, the name embodied the communal experience of sharing your ratings and reviews with friends, and getting recommendations in return.

Though the name Hotpot may be going away, you can expect even more "Hotpotness" in Google Places. We have big plans to continue adding more features to Google Places that make it even easier to rate, discover and share the places you love whenever you're using Google. So stay tuned to the new Google Places Blog for product updates, tips, tricks and news from our city campaigns.

Posted by Lior Ron, Google Hotpot (Places!) Product Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/hotpot-is-going-places.html

[G] This week's Trends: debris, the president and miniature cities

Posted: 08 Apr 2011 01:30 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: This week's Trends: debris, the president and miniature cities

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've come across this 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 "Fruit Gushers Review."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/dKpCG339Pds/this-weeks-trends-debris-president-and.html

[G] You asked, we listened

Posted: 08 Apr 2011 12:32 PM PDT

Google Photos Blog: You asked, we listened

Posted by Tammy McLeod, Software Engineer

We recently made some updates to Picasa Web Albums to address some of your top feature requests. In addition to sorting your displayed albums on Picasa Web by upload and album date, you can also now sort by album title. Visit your My Photos tab, then select "Album title" from the drop-down menu.


We've also made it easier to update your album visibility and photo location settings with a new "Edit visibility" link. Quickly see your visibility settings across all your albums, make changes, and when you're all set, click "Done."


Changed your name, or changed your email address? We added an option to transfer your photos, videos, comments, and people you follow to a new or existing Google account. Learn all about the account migration tool in our help center, or check it out from your Settings page.

As always, you can share your feedback about our updates, ask a question, or suggest a new feature in our forum.
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2011/04/you-asked-we-listened.html

[G] ITA Software acquisition cleared for takeoff

Posted: 08 Apr 2011 09:51 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: ITA Software acquisition cleared for takeoff

How cool would it be if you could type "flights to somewhere sunny for under $500 in May" into Google and get not just a set of links but also flight times, fares and a link to sites where you can actually buy tickets quickly and easily? Well that's exactly why we announced our intention to buy ITA Software, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that specializes in organizing airline data last July—and we're excited that the U.S. Department of Justice today approved our acquisition.

It's important to us that ITA continue with business as usual, providing great service to its business partners. We indicated last July that we would honor ITA's existing contracts. Today we've formally committed to let ITA's customers extend their contracts into 2016. We've also agreed to let both current and new customers license ITA's QPX software on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms" into 2016—along with related commitments aimed at making ITA's technology available to other travel sites.

We're moving to close this acquisition as soon as possible, and then we'll start the important work of bringing our teams and products together. We're confident that by combining ITA's expertise with Google's technology we'll be able to develop exciting new flight search tools for all our users. Up, up and away!

Posted by Jeff Huber, Senior Vice President, Commerce and Local
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/ita-software-acquisition-cleared-for.html

[G] YouTube is going LIVE

Posted: 08 Apr 2011 09:01 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: YouTube is going LIVE

With over 2 billion views a day, it's easy to think about YouTube as a place to watch videos recorded in the past. But you've told us you want more - and that includes events taking place right now. In response, we've live streamed a number of popular concerts, sporting events, and interviews, but primarily on a one-off basis.

Today we're announcing the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page (www.youtube.com/live), where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage.

Today, we'll also start gradually rolling out our live streaming beta platform, which will allow certain YouTube partners with accounts in good standing to stream live content on YouTube. The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we'll roll this offering out incrementally over time.

So head over to www.youtube.com/live to check out some of the live streams taking place over the next few days. And don't forget to tune in to the The DigiTour live stream tonight at 7pm PST. Log in to engage with live streamers and the rest of the YouTube community using our live comments feature. As always, let us know what you think of YouTube Live in the comments below.

Joshua Siegel (Product Manager) and Christopher Hamilton (Product Marketing Manager) plan to watch The Digitour live stream tonight at 7pm PST.


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/4AjtLc9sRAI/youtube-is-going-live.html
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