Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] New in Labs: Background Send

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 03:44 PM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Background Send

Posted by Patrick Doyle, Software Engineer

We're always looking for ways to make Gmail faster. One of the most common delays happens after you hit that "Send" button, when you're waiting patiently for a couple seconds for Gmail to send your message. If you send a lot of email, that can add up to a lot of lost time.

To help give you that time back, there's a new feature in Gmail Labs called Background Send. Once you turn it on from the Labs tab in Settings, you can get on with what you're doing while Gmail quietly sends off your mail in the background. You can keep reading your inbox, compose new messages, chat with people — all the things you'd usually do. You can even send more than one message in the background at the same time.



If anything goes wrong (maybe you got that email address wrong, or maybe your connection had a hiccup), you'll see a warning message that prompts you to go back and fix the issue or try again later.



The "Send errror" message will stay around until you decide to fix things, so you don't have to stop whatever you're doing right away. The only catch is that you should wait for your mail to finish sending before you close Gmail or shut down your computer. If messages are still being sent in the background when you shut down, your messages are probably going to be lost. You'll know you're good to go when you see a message like this:



We've been trying out Background Send for a while here at Google, and we like it a lot. We hope you like it too, and we hope it gives you back a little bit of your day!
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-in-labs-background-send.html

[G] Live webinar: ‘Measuring Your Success with AdWords Conversion Tracking’

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 11:21 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: Live webinar: 'Measuring Your Success with AdWords Conversion Tracking'

On Wednesday, April 27th, we'll be holding a live and interactive webinar to help you learn about Conversion Tracking in your AdWords account. As you may already know, Converison Tracking is a tool in AdWords that helps you measure how effective your ads and keywords are for driving sales. It does this by showing you what happens after a user clicks on your ad, allowing you to see which keywords are helping you meet your specific goals

First decide what's valuable on your site, such as a purchase or sign-up. Then track which of your keywords lead users to these important actions, known as conversions. In this live webinar, we'll take you through the basic setup and help you analyse your reports so you can identify which keywords and ads are resulting in the most leads or conversions on your website. We'll also look at some more advanced features like Conversion Optimizer and Search Funnels that will help you to get the most from your AdWords account.

Our webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, April 27th from 3pm to 4pm (BST/GMT+1), so if you want to make your website work for you, make sure to sign up now!

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/04/live-webinar-measuring-your-success.html

[G] Introducing the WebM Community Cross-License Initiative

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 10:00 AM PDT

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Introducing the WebM Community Cross-License Initiative

It's been almost a year since Mozilla, Opera, Xiph.Org, Matroska, Google and over 40 other partners launched the WebM Project with the goal of developing a world-class, open source media format for the web. The open development model has led to rapid quality improvements in WebM, and the format is now supported in HTML5-capable browsers including Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Internet Explorer. Leading silicon vendors are adding WebM support to their chipsets,and some hardware implementations are already on the market.

A key measure of success for WebM is a diverse range of contributors. For example, we are already seeing a growing number of code contributions from independent developers as well as independent implementations.

We are pleased to now offer another way to contribute, through a licensing initiative that allows the community to help further support the WebM Project. Google, Matroska and the Xiph.Org Foundation make the components of WebM openly available on royalty-free terms. Today we're announcing the formation of the WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) initiative with 17 founding members. Organizations that join the CCL agree to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL.

CCL members are joining this effort because they realize that the entire web ecosystem--users, developers, publishers, and device makers--benefits from a high-quality, community developed, open-source media format. We look forward to working with CCL members and the web standards community to advance WebM's role in HTML5 video.

The founding members of the CCL initiative are:
To get more information about the WebM CCL, visit www.webm-ccl.org.

Matt Frost is Senior Business Product Manager for the WebM Project.
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/04/introducing-webm-community-cross.html

[G] Simpler file upload in Google Docs

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 08:31 AM PDT

Docs Blog: Simpler file upload in Google Docs

Last November, we added the ability to drag and drop files from your desktop to the upload page, improving the ability to upload any file. Over the next few weeks, we're releasing three additional features to make it easy to upload files to Docs: folder upload, documents list integration, and drag-and-drop upload.

To start, we've added folder upload via the new Upload menu in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari.


You'll need to install a small applet to use folder upload in Firefox and Safari. The existing folder structure is preserved on upload which means that folders within folders will also upload and become collections within collections.

Second, we've merged the upload page's functionality into the documents list. When you upload files via the new drop-down menu, a window will pop up in the bottom right of your documents list and show upload progress.


Once files are uploaded, they will appear in your documents list within seconds. You can also share them from the pop-up. Uploaded files go into the currently selected collection and have visibility set to private unless the collection is shared.

Upload settings have also moved. The first time you use the new upload method, you'll see a pop-up asking you whether you want to convert files to the Google Docs format and if you want to convert images via Optical Character Recognition (OCR). You can always return to these settings via the drop down in the upload menu or the pop-up.


Lastly, if you are using Chrome, Safari and Firefox on your Mac or PC, you'll also be able to drag-and-drop one or more files directly into your documents list to initiate an upload. You can even drop files directly into a collection on the left. Note due to browser limitations it isn't possible to drag-and-drop folders directly into the documents list.


If you hit your storage limit, the upload will return an error and you'll need to delete files or purchase additional storage for Google Docs for $0.02 per GB per month ($0.25 per GB per year). Please note that the new upload capabilities don't support the ability to select a language when converting a document via OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or select visibility settings before upload. If you'd like to use these features, you can still use the older version of the upload page by choosing Basic... from the Upload menu.

We'll be rolling this out to everyone with personal Google Accounts over the next month in all Google Docs languages. You'll know when the features are available to you when you see a promo at the top of your documents list.

If you have any additional questions about the upcoming changes to uploading files, check out our FAQ.

Posted by: Mike Procopio, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/04/simpler-file-upload-in-google-docs.html

[G] The DOs and DON’Ts of Google Summer of Code: Mentor Edition

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 07:02 AM PDT

Google Open Source Blog: The DOs and DON'Ts of Google Summer of Code: Mentor Edition


This is the final post in a series of three posts on the DOs and DON'Ts for Google Summer of Code students, mentors, and organization administrators. This post deals with mentors; the first post dealt with students and the second post with organization administrators.

The role of a mentor is to monitor the progress of each accepted student and to mentor them as the project progresses. Based on our experience with Google Summer of Code, we'd like to share these tips and antipatterns with you to raise awareness and help mentors avoid the same mistakes that have been made by many others. For even more advice, check out the mentor/admin guide.

DODON'T
Be an active member of the community you are mentoring for. One of your goals should be to integrate your student in the project community. You can do this best if you are a part of it yourself. Introduce the student to the people in your community and your communication media. Also familiarize the student with the rules and norms that your community abides by and that they might not be aware of yet. Apply as a mentor only after interacting with the community.Apply as a mentor to organizations where you don't contribute. Every year, a surprising number of people request to become mentors for nearly every organization in Google Summer of Code simultaneously. In general, this is treated as spam and you will be blacklisted for doing it. One of the goals of Google Summer of Code is to introduce the student to the community. You may be an expert in the code, but the goal is to integrate code and transform students into long-term contributors; if you don't know the community, both of these are much harder.
Focus on one student. New mentors should concentrate on doing an amazing job mentoring one student instead of spreading themselves too thinly. Even experienced mentors should take caution when thinking about mentoring two projects—it's not unusual for both projects to be mentoring-intensive. If that happens, you may not have the time to do your students justice, and it's unfair to fail students because of your own difficulties. This is one reason backup mentors are critical.Take on too many students. Mentoring more than one student in your first year is a recipe for failure. Even if it's your second year, this advice still stands, as the amount of time needed to mentor a student varies wildly between students, projects, ideas, etc. People mentor multiple students successfully each year, but many people fail at it every year too. If you have experience and still want to mentor two or more students, plan to set aside time during your full-time job because your free time probably won't be sufficient.
Communicate frequently with your student and org admin(s). You'll need to answer to both your org admin and student— make their lives easier by being available when they need you. Most admins will periodically check in to make sure all your organization's projects are on track; if you don't respond in a timely manner, they may think your project is failing. Your student often has a regular stream of questions, some of which can't be answered by Google, so be available to avoid wasting your student's time and delaying the project.Disappear. Some students will need constant access to their mentors. If you intend on being out of touch for even a relatively short period of time, even just a few days, let your student know ahead of time. Arrange it so that your student is able to reach a backup mentor during this time and having the student know about this backup mentor from the beginning of the project is also good advice. Although disappearing mentors are less common than disappearing students, they do happen. This can really put a strain on your org admin who has to replace you on short notice, maybe near a deadline.
Set aside at least 5 hours a week for mentoring. The student has to do the actual work over the summer but you've committed to help them along the way. Depending on how much help your student needs, this can be a significant task. Set aside at least 5 hours per week for mentoring unless you are certain the student is well integrated and supported by the whole community. And even then, plan for road-blocks along the way that you need to help with.Underestimate mentoring effort. Mentoring takes time. No, really, it does. You might be lucky and have a student who needs little mentoring, but you probably won't. If you don't have at least a few hours per week over the course of the program, you have two options. You can either choose not to mentor or you can team up with another member of your team as a back-up mentor. Be aware that 'a few hours' can grow quite significantly if you or the student overestimated their abilities, underestimated the project, or they need more significant help than you planned.
Give your student frequent feedback on performance. Let the student know whether you are happy or unhappy with his performance. Chances are he can't properly judge his own performance and abilities yet. Make sure your student sees failure coming a mile away; it should never be a surprise. You also want to ensure your student knows his work is high-quality, if it is. Give feedback regularly. This goes both ways—ask your student if he is happy with your mentoring and where you might be able to improve.Provide zero feedback, then abruptly fail the student. The student depends on feedback from the mentor. This includes situations where things don't go as planned. If it is the student's fault, he should learn about it as soon as possible to be able to correct it, and more importantly, avoid repeating it. Failing your student by surprise is almost guaranteed to end up with bad feelings on both sides and can result in appeals to Google. It's equally bad for a student to spend the summer frightened that they're doing a terrible job because you haven't told them that they are actually doing fine (or better). Communicate.
Ensure your student's code is ready to integrate. Seeing code shipped in a release and then used by thousands of people is the ultimate motivation to continue being an active part of your community for many people. You should help and motivate your student to go those few extra steps and get their summer's work into a release. You can jump-start this with small tasks and bug fixes before application time, or in the community bonding period. This way you can ensure your student has some code committed before even starting the project. Encourage students to keep code in a state where you can still integrate it if they leave the project immediately after, or even during, Google Summer of Code.Fail to ship your student's code. Your student might not have gotten the code into a state that's ready to release or integrate by the end of Google Summer of Code. Do not wait too long with this—if the goal isn't the next release, it may never happen. Committing the result is an expectation worth setting, so ensure your student understands this from the beginning of the project. If your student forks or branches early and doesn't track any changes to trunk it can be hard to integrate. If your student develops in a non-agile style where the code doesn't work at all unless the whole project works perfectly, the same problem can arise.
Prevent your student from going down dead ends with code. Your student will make mistakes and wrong decisions. It is your job as his mentor to intervene when he is stuck or heading in the wrong direction. Do this early. Google Summer of Code is too short for anything else. This requires you to keep a close eye on what he is doing. Some teams prefer short daily meetings to make sure everyone is on top of things and know what everyone else is working on. It's also important to reinforce good practices so the student can continue to use them.Review your student's code for the first time at the end of the summer. Your student might be a genius and a mind reader but chances are that he isn't. He probably won't create an excellent design, write perfect code and deliver stunning documentation independently. He's probably never done a project of this size before. If you don't find problems early, they pile up and lead to a failed project with nobody to blame for it but yourself.
Promote your student's independence. When your student encounters a problem and comes to you or the community for help, ask her to suggest a potential solution as well. This encourages your student to learn how to do research and to fully understand problems and how to get into the mindset of solving them. It also makes it much more likely that her questions are well-informed, giving the community a much better impression of your student. When possible, direct your student to participate directly in the community rather than acting as a conduit, because close ties to the community make it more likely that she will want to stay involved with the community after the summer.Get between your student and the community or the code. It's easy to fall into the trap of writing tricky code or solving every difficult problem for your student. This prevents students from gaining skill and confidence by solving their own problems, or at least making progress toward a solution. One of the best ways to ensure your student disappears at the end of the summer is to never invite her into the broader community of your organization. Without social ties, students are much more likely to move on to other things and leave your organization behind.

Making Google Summer of Code the best possible program requires preparation and a commitment to excellence from all participants. Now that we've provided suggestions for mentors, org admins, and students, you should know how to avoid the most common problems at every level. Whatever role you would like to play in Google Summer of Code or a similar program, read everything you can so you are fully prepared for the experience. Good luck, and have fun in your endeavors.

By Donnie Berkholz, Lydia Pintscher, and Kevin Smith, Google Summer of Code Administrators for Gentoo & X.Org, KDE, and XMPP Standards Foundation, respectively

URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/04/dos-and-donts-of-google-summer-of-code_21.html

[G] Partnering with Tsinghua University to support education in Western China

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 06:04 AM PDT

Official Google Research Blog: Partnering with Tsinghua University to support education in Western China

Posted by Aimin Zhu, China University Relations

We're excited to announce that we've teamed up with Tsinghua University to provide educational support to five major universities in Western China: Qinghai, Xinjiang, Guizhou, Ningxia, and Yunnan. Together, we aim to:
  • Support faculty development by recognizing outstanding teachers, sponsoring published papers, and funding academic exchange and cooperation with other universities
  • Establish specialized curricula by creating new courses focused on advanced industrial and web technologies
  • Cultivate student talent by inspiring scientific and technological innovation through local activities and programs.
A ceremony held at Tsinghua today kicked off what we expect to be a long and beneficial partnership to advance educational opportunities in the region.
URL: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/04/partnering-with-tsinghua-university-to.html
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