Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Music Tuesday: Record store clerks cut loose in YouTube and Coachella highlights

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 05:26 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Music Tuesday: Record store clerks cut loose in YouTube and Coachella highlights

It's Music Tuesday, and new albums are hitting the shelves from Gorillaz, Eliza Doolittle, Lenka, I'm From Barcelona and many more artists this week. Over here, we're still recovering from the epic cascade of music that was Coachella. Relive the festival -- and check out this week's offerings on youtube.com/music.

Record store clerks cut loose in YouTube
Before there was YouTube, people went to record stores to discover new music. The good news is, they still do -- and record store clerks remain some of the best tastemakers out there. So we're starting a new, occasional series in which we invite influential independent music sellers to share their favorite videos with us. We kick off the series just days after Record Store Day with Amoeba Music, California's premier tune-peddlers. They share their own original content -- who doesn't want to find out what's in ?uestlove's shopping bag? -- as well as other awesome video finds: salsa great Celia Cruz in Africa, Miles Davis in action, and an excellent, weird video from psych pop outfit the Fresh & Onlys.



Coachella Highlights
You're back at work, you're rehydrating, you're massaging your neck after craning to see Kanye float above the crowd...or chances are, if you weren't in the desert in Indio, California this weekend, you might have been checking out the music festival live on youtube.com/coachella. It was an epic event, and with cameras on three stages, there was so much to see it was almost befuddling. But in case you missed it, guess what? We've got highlights.



Vacationer "Trip"
And now, notes from the underground. This video showed up in our inbox last week -- we've got very little information on the band, Vacationer (except that they're from Brooklyn, natch), but when we heard the glitchy-but-catchy, flat-shoed sound of "Trip," we started to get hooked. Then there's the guy moon-walking next a waterfall in the video, plus exotic birds showing off their plumage in slow motion. Trust us; this is entrancing.



Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, recently watched "DaVinci - Blame Game."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/apYQyS3dVWk/music-tuesday-record-store-clerks-cut.html

[G] Submit to the Doodle 4 AdSense showcase

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 02:37 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Submit to the Doodle 4 AdSense showcase

We've heard some amazing stories over the years about how AdSense has changed your businesses and your lives. Whether allowing you to retire early, send your kids to college, or quit your day job to pursue your true passion, success with AdSense looks different to everyone.

We want to celebrate AdSense and you, our amazingly creative publishers, by launching our first ever Doodle 4 AdSense showcase. What's Doodle 4 AdSense? It's the opportunity to create your own AdSense logo to be featured on the Inside AdSense blog, our Facebook page, and Twitter channel so publishers around the world can see what AdSense means to you. Take a look at the two Doodles below from some of our own AdSense team members for inspiration, and submit your own here.



We'll post the first round of submissions that adhere to our Terms and Conditions on May 13th, and close the form on May 20th. Get doodling!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit - Inside AdSense team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2011/04/submit-to-doodle-4-adsense-showcase.html

[G] MMM MMM Good - YouTube Videos Now Served in WebM

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 12:29 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: MMM MMM Good - YouTube Videos Now Served in WebM

If you travel abroad frequently, you know that charging your electronic devices is not always an easy task. Power adapters for cellphones and computers don't always fit into local power outlets, meaning you have to pack converters. Think of video on the web in a similar way. Currently, there are countless devices used to record videos and hundreds of different video file formats. Even more, certain web browsers that you use to view video online only accept certain 'codecs' - or programs used to encode, transmit and playback video files - and others require plug-ins (converters) to integrate the video file with the browser.

Despite these complexities, one of our key aims is to deliver great content to you wherever you are - regardless of device, browser or other technical specification, so you never have to remember that complicated "power adapter converter" to watch a video.

To that end, all new videos uploaded to YouTube are now transcoded into WebM in addition to other supported formats. WebM is an open media file format for video and audio on the web. Its openness allows anyone to improve the format and its integrations, resulting in a better experience for you in the long-term. As we work to transcode more videos into WebM, we hope to reduce the technical incompatibilities that prevent you from accessing video while improving the overall online video landscape.

Transcoding all new video uploads into WebM is an important first step, and we're also working to transcode our entire video catalog to WebM. Given the massive size of our catalog - nearly 6 years of video is uploaded to YouTube every day - this is quite the undertaking. So far we've already transcoded videos that make up 99% of views on the site or nearly 30% of all videos into WebM. We're focusing first on the most viewed videos on the site, and we've made great progress here through our cloud-based video processing infrastructure that maximizes the efficiency of processing and transcoding without stopping. It works like this: at busy upload times, our processing power is dedicated to new uploads, and at less busy times, our cloud will automatically switch some of our processing to encode older videos into WebM. As we continue to transcode the remaining inventory, we'll keep you posted on our progress.

In keeping with our goal of making videos universally accessible, we will continue to support H.264 as an important codec for video on YouTube. We are also committed to continuing to develop our HTML5 video player that we announced last year, and if you'd like to join the opt-in trial, you can do so here.

The world of online video is incredibly complex and dynamic. Yet, our goal is to ensure that nothing stands between you and the great content you've always enjoyed. We'll continue to invest in new video technology that improves the experiences for all users, builds a better infrastructure for online video, leads to greater access of information and spurs continued innovation.

James Zern, Software Engineer, recently watched 'HTML5 Video Accessiblity and the WebVTT File Format'


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/bZidneFUCW4/mmm-mmm-good-youtube-videos-now-served.html

[G] Cinram coordinates across continents, saves over 60% on messaging using Google Apps

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 10:16 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Cinram coordinates across continents, saves over 60% on messaging using Google Apps

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome guest blogger Andrew Murrey, Vice President of IT Infrastructure Cinram North America. Cinram specializes in optical disc manufacturing, packaging, distribution and demand planning solutions for the home entertainment, telecommunications, and retail industries. Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google Cloud Calculator.

For more than 40 years, Cinram has worked with some of the biggest names in home entertainment and retail to produce and distribute movies, music, and video games. We have grown organically and through acquisition to more than 10,000 employees and 20 facilities in North America and Europe; many locations still operate independently – including selecting their own technologies. Everything was very decentralized, and this made it difficult to collaborate and communicate. Even scheduling meetings was a challenge; we'd have to hunt to find contact information, and email back and forth multiple times just to find availability and rooms.

Decentralization meant we also had a combination of email and collaboration solutions, with 80% of our offices on Microsoft® Exchange 5.5 – 15 year old technology with no support or future updates planned – and the others using Exchange 2003 and 2007. With inbox quotas ranging from 50-500MB, many of our users were storing their mail in .PST files on their computers, making backups and restoration of critical data almost impossible, and creating a giant risk in the case of corrupt or stolen machines. Running a mail system from the mid-1990's also meant that we had all kinds of limits on attachments, and a ton of other frustrating issues. Between server failures, incompatibilities and corrupted PSTs, we were running close to $220 per mail user per year just to keep the old system running.

Our goal was to have everyone at Cinram using the same technology for email and daily collaboration, so we explored three different options: (a) upgrading all of our internal systems to Exchange 2007, (b) migrating to hosted Exchange, (c) Google Apps. Staying on-premise and adding quite a bit of storage would require a heavy capital investment, and we would still be paying for backup agents, tapes, vaulting, patching, and still have all of the other headaches of managing a mail system. Hosted Exchange didn't really fit our needs because we wanted to move away from paying for an Outlook client, and Gmail's web interface was just as powerful.

However, when we looked at Google Apps, we calculated that we could be saving 60% on email alone by moving to Google Apps for Business – a clear winner when it came to price per user – but we also knew we'd save serious time on IT management, freeing my team up to do more strategic work. In addition, we would have superior disaster recovery options and best of all, our employees would be more productive. We chose to go Google.

In just four months, Google Apps is 100 percent deployed in North America and Europe – about 3,000 people so far. The positive changes we expected are now being revealed, and we're even uncovering some unexpected benefits as well. For starters, my IT team is happier as we previously had 16 full-time people managing our messaging systems, spending about 8,000 hours per year backing up email, fixing file storage problems, or managing server issues. If one of our servers at our Toronto headquarters went down, the entire company lost email access – it seamed like we had a company-wide email delay or outage every couple of months. Google Apps provides us with disaster recovery capabilities that we could have never dreamed of. In addition, we now need only two folks to look after messaging and the other 14 are now more focused on business-critical projects. They're so happy they wear Google t-shirts about once a week!

Our employees are also adjusting well, and are more productive. We're working closely with our Google Partner, Onix, to provide an end-user support site using Google Video for Business for training videos and webinars. One of the biggest benefits we've seen is that, since all employees have one user interface with easy processes, they can collaborate more efficiently. Scheduling meetings for example is infinitely easier, we just click on Google Talk video chat, and we can easily view employee calendars to facilitate scheduling. That's something we didn't calculate – all the time we spent trying to do these small, day-to-day tasks across all of our employees.

We're also really pleased and excited to see employees adopt tools like Google Docs – we're at a growing rate of about 150 new, shared documents each day. The HR and compliance teams in particular have been using Google Docs to store their different policies and procedures. We can give them exactly what they need in Google Docs or Google Sites, whereas before we had three or four different Microsoft SharePoint sites, and we'd have to spend money on auditors to track everything down. Now that's all moving to a central repository, and we're already seeing significant cost savings and productivity gains there.

We have only begun scratching the surface of capabilities that Google Apps brings to us. We have an open door to bring Google Apps to all 10,000 Cinram employees in the future, from the current user employees in our distribution and manufacturing facilities, to the folks who have never had a Cinram account before, so everyone can see the benefits. With the flexibility of Google Apps, the sky is the limit. We've gone Google, and we'll never go back.

Posted by Andrew Murrey, Vice President of IT Infrastructure - Cinram North America
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/cinram-coordinates-across-continents.html

[G] Live webinar: Google Message Continuity helps Gables Residential realize the benefits of 100% web

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 10:16 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Live webinar: Google Message Continuity helps Gables Residential realize the benefits of 100% web

Gables Residential, an Atlanta-based Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), turned to Google Message Continuity to supplement their Microsoft® Exchange 2007 email environment and minimize email downtime. Gables Residential owns, manages and develops property throughout Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, South Florida, D.C., and Southern California, contributing to a portfolio of over 38,000 apartment homes. With their managed properties distributed across the country and over multiple time zones, it was critically important that their employees always have access to their email. Gables Residential turned to Google Message Continuity, a cloud-based disaster recovery solution, to enhance the reliability of their email environment.

Google Message Continuity works by synchronizing all email stored on Microsoft® Exchange servers into Gmail, using a simple plug-in that ensures all messages are always present in both email inboxes. If Microsoft® Exchange is unavailable, users can simply login to Gmail with their usual credentials and take advantage of Gmail's reliability–available 99.984% of the time in 2010–to send and receive messages. The simplicity of the set-up, the minimal maintenance and deployment costs, and the ability to keep their distributed workforce productive during email outages is what differentiated Google Message Continuity over other continuity alternatives.

What's more, through using Google Message Continuity Gables Residential learned first-hand the benefits of a 100% web environment, and plans to switch from Microsoft® Exchange to Google Apps for Business later this year. With emails constantly being replicated in Gmail, switching to the rest of Google Apps can be a seamless move, both for IT admins and for users. Gables Residential plans on taking advantage of this smooth deployment path in May and looks forward to deploying Google Apps across its entire user base.

Join us during a live webinar as James Hamrick, Director of IT, explains how Gables Residential was able to successfully use Google Message Continuity to improve the reliability of their Microsoft® Exchange environment while paving the way for a 100% web future with Google Apps for Business.

Register for this live webcast on April 20th, 11 a.m. Eastern Time, 2011. We hope to see you there!

Posted by Adrian Soghoian, Google Enterprise Product Marketing
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/live-webinar-google-message-continuity.html

[G] Adding expert local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 10:16 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Adding expert local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker

Today we announced Google Map Maker for the United States, enabling users to add their expert local knowledge to the map directly through this free online tool. Users often have the best and most up-to-date knowledge of the places that matter to them, and with Google Map Maker–now available for 187 countries and regions around the world–we're working to make this information available to you and your customers.

Each edit will be reviewed to confirm accuracy, and once approved, user contributions will appear in Google Maps, and then in Google Maps API Premier and Google Earth Pro. The collective knowledge of these citizen cartographers will contribute to more detailed information for you, helping you make better location-based business decisions.

If you'd like to add your local knowledge directly, you can learn more or start mapping now at mapmaker.google.com.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Product Marketing Manager, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/adding-expert-local-knowledge-to-map.html

[G] Google Earth Pro Announces Free Feature Tour Webinars: Sign Up Today!

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 10:16 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Earth Pro Announces Free Feature Tour Webinars: Sign Up Today!

Google Enterprise is pleased to announce weekly product tour webinars for individuals and companies interested in learning more about Google Earth Pro. Live webinars are typically held every Friday at 10 a.m. PST / 1 p.m. EST (subject to change). Visit our events calendar to browse and register for an upcoming event.

Interested users are also welcome to sign up for a free 7-day trial to test drive the program before the webinar, but this step is not required for attendance.

The one-hour webinar covers the advanced tools and features that make Google Earth Pro a valuable tool for business professionals, such as measuring area (pictured below).



Key topics include:
Spreadsheet import tool (geocoding addresses)
GIS data import
Pro-only data layers: parcels, traffic counts, and demographics
Online advanced learning tutorials
Movie-maker

If you can't make it to a live webinar, we've made past events available online for syndicated viewing.

Posted by
Coleman Rusnock
The Google Earth Pro Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/google-earth-pro-announces-free-feature.html

[G] From the Ocean State to the Show Me State: 2 More States Go Google

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 10:16 AM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: From the Ocean State to the Show Me State: 2 More States Go Google

Nearly one year after Oregon blazed the trail as the first state to bring Google Apps to students and teachers, Rhode Island (the Ocean State) and Missouri (the Show Me State) will begin offering support for Google Apps to K-12 schools and districts across their respective states. Together, they will provide over a million students and over 100,000 teachers with the ability to move to the cloud with Google Apps.

The RISTE organization will help Rhode Island schools who decide to "go Google" with both technical deployment assistance and training opportunities. Paul Barrette, executive board member of RISTE and Director of Technology at the Burrillville School Department, has already moved his district to Google Apps and is excited to offer this service to the other 32 districts in Rhode Island. "Google Apps also integrates very well with a wide variety of handheld and portable devices," Barrette adds, "making it a perfect fit with the ways that teachers and students are now accessing technology."

In Missouri, the Missouri Research and Education Network (MOREnet) – a consortium of schools, public libraries and higher education institutions – will assist K-12 member schools in the adoption and configuration of Google Apps by providing training to administrators, faculty, and staff. MOREnet hopes to help members faced with budget constraints move to Google Apps to reduce IT costs while also improving technology integration in the classroom. As John Gillispie, MOREnet Executive Director explains: "It's more than just a fiscal decision. Google Apps provides communication and collaboration tools that enhance learning across the curriculum not only in reading and writing, but also in areas like math and science."

We're excited to welcome Rhode Island and Missouri to the growing Google Apps family, which also includes Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, New York and Oregon.

Posted by Jaime Casap, Google Apps Education Manager
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/from-ocean-state-to-show-me-state-2.html

[G] Google.com/Weddings Sweepstakes Winner

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 10:01 AM PDT

Docs Blog: Google.com/Weddings Sweepstakes Winner

(Cross posted on the Google Photos Blog)

A little over three months ago, we announced Google.com/Weddings to help couples during the wedding planning process. Since launch, we've been overwhelmed by the positive feedback with over 700,000 visits. As part of that announcement, we partnered with Michelle Rago to not only help us with creative direction but also with hosting a wedding sweepstakes. The prize is $25,000 towards a dream wedding designed by Michelle. The sweepstakes ended on March 29th and today we're pleased to announce that the randomly selected winning couple was Philong Nguyen and Nhu-Y Nguyen of Houston, Texas. Philong and Nhu-Y are currently using Google Docs to organize every facet of their wedding; Google Sites to build their wedding website, Picasa Web Albums to share photos with friends and Picnik to edit their photos. Philong had this to share about their engagement:
"We had already been looking at rings so I decided I wanted the time and place to be a complete surprise. Luckily she was working one weekend and had to go to work very early since she works in a hospital in the lab. I'm usually sleeping at that time, so I knew she wouldn't expect to see me at 5 AM in the morning when she left for work. I woke up very early, brought dozens of roses that I had bought the day before and plucked, and created a trail of rose petals that led her from her door to the backyard where it ended in a heart with me waiting on the grass. Of course, the hardest part was waiting for her to open the door but when she did she followed the trail, found me and said Yes."
The couple will be working with Michelle Rago to design their September wedding. We can't wait to see the pictures. Congratulations to Philong and Nhu-Y!

Posted by: Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/04/googlecomweddings-sweepstakes-winner.html

[G] Google.com/Weddings Sweepstakes Winner

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 09:10 AM PDT

Google Photos Blog: Google.com/Weddings Sweepstakes Winner

Posted by Peter Harbison, Product Marketing Manager Team

A little over three months ago, we announced Google.com/Weddings to help couples during the wedding planning process. Since launch, we've been overwhelmed by the positive feedback with over 700,000 visits.

As part of that announcement, we partnered with Michelle Rago to not only help us with creative direction but also with hosting a wedding sweepstakes. The prize is $25,000 towards a dream wedding designed by Michelle.

The sweepstakes ended on March 29th and today we're pleased to announce that the randomly selected winning couple was Philong Nguyen and Nhu-Y Nguyen of Houston, Texas.


Philong and Nhu-Y are currently using Google Docs to organize every facet of their wedding; Google Sites to build their wedding website, Picasa Web Albums to share photos with friends and Picnik to edit their photos. Philong had this to share about their engagement:
"We had already been looking at rings so I decided I wanted the time and place to be a complete surprise. Luckily she was working one weekend and had to go to work very early since she works in a hospital in the lab. I'm usually sleeping at that time, so I knew she wouldn't expect to see me at 5 AM in the morning when she left for work. I woke up very early, brought dozens of roses that I had bought the day before and plucked, and created a trail of rose petals that led her from her door to the backyard where it ended in a heart with me waiting on the grass. Of course, the hardest part was waiting for her to open the door but when she did she followed the trail, found me and said Yes."
The couple will be working with Michelle Rago to design their September wedding. We can't wait to see the pictures. Congratulations to Philong and Nhu-Y!

Cross-posted on Blogger Buzz
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2011/04/googlecomweddings-sweepstakes-winner.html

[G] The royal wedding live on YouTube

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 08:19 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: The royal wedding live on YouTube

Cross-posted on the YouTube Blog.

As the historic day approaches, the much-anticipated wedding of Britain's Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton has people around the world buzzing with excitement.

While millions will be in London for the big day, it's clear that people around the world have wedding fever. Google search trends show that in addition to the UK and the US, the top ten countries searching for "royal wedding" include places like Singapore and the Philippines. In response, we've been working to make as much of the big day as possible accessible to everyone. We previously announced the expansion of our Google Earth 3D imagery to offer a "Royals'-eye" view of the entire wedding procession, complete with 3D images of iconic landmarks and five species of digital trees that can be seen along the route.

Today, we're thrilled that the Royal Household has just announced that footage of the entire ceremony will be live-streamed on their official YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel.

The live stream will begin at 10:00a BST (9:00a GMT, 2:00a PT, 5:00a ET) on Friday, April 29, and will follow the wedding procession, marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey and balcony kiss. Alongside the live stream, The Royal Channel will also feature live blog commentary of the event to give timely updates and insights as the day unfolds. For those of you in different time zones, the footage will be reshown in its entirety directly following the event and will be available in full on the site to view afterwards.

You don't have to wait until the big day to "attend" the wedding, though. A video guest book has just been opened on The Royal Channel for anyone in the YouTube community to upload messages of congratulations, inspiration or well wishes to the happy couple.

More than 50 years ago, the marriage of The Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, and Antony Armstrong-Jones was the first royal wedding to be broadcast on television and had over 20 million viewers. This one is already heralded as the first of the Internet age, where for the first time in thousands of years of royal history, the moment will be captured online and preserved forever.

Posted by Rachel Ball, Partner Development Associate
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/royal-wedding-live-on-youtube.html

[G] The Royal Wedding live on YouTube

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 06:01 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: The Royal Wedding live on YouTube

As the historic day approaches, the much-anticipated wedding of Britain's Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton has people around the world buzzing with excitement.

While millions will be in London for the big day, it's clear that people around the world have wedding fever. Google search trends show that in addition to the UK and the US, the top ten countries searching for "Royal Wedding" include places like Singapore and the Philippines. In response, we've been working to make as much of the big day as possible accessible to everyone. We previously announced the expansion of our Google Earth 3D imagery to offer a "Royals'-eye" view of the entire wedding procession, complete with 3D images of iconic landmarks and five species of digital trees that can be seen along the route.

Today, we're thrilled that the Royal Household has just announced that footage of the entire ceremony will be live streamed on their official YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/theroyalchannel.

The live stream will begin at 10:00am BST (9:00am GMT, 2:00am PT, 5:00am ET) on Friday, April 29, and will follow the wedding procession, marriage ceremony at Westminster Abbey and balcony kiss. Alongside the live stream, The Royal Channel will also feature live blog commentary of the event to give timely updates and insights as the day unfolds. For those of you in different time zones, the footage will be reshown in its entirety directly following the event and will be available in full on the site to view at any time.



You don't have to wait until the big day to "attend" the wedding, though. A video guest book has just been opened on The Royal Channel for anyone in the YouTube community to upload messages of congratulations, inspiration or well wishes to the happy couple.

More than 50 years ago, the marriage of The Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, and Antony Armstrong-Jones was the first royal wedding to be broadcast on television and had over 20 million viewers. This one is already heralded as the first of the Internet age, where for the first time in thousands of years of royal history, the moment will be captured online and preserved forever.

Rachel Ball, Partner Development Associate, recently watched "The Chapel Royal Choir prepares for the Royal Wedding."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/I0EtUmBgYjI/royal-wedding-live-on-youtube.html
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)