Friday, April 29, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Everybody’s talking (and translating) with Chrome

Posted: 29 Apr 2011 01:59 AM PDT

Google Chrome Blog: Everybody's talking (and translating) with Chrome

Today, we're excited to make a nifty feature widely available in today's new Chrome stable release: speech input through HTML.

Curious about how speech input can be used in real life? Here's one example: Using Chrome, you can now translate what you say into other languages with Google Translate. If you're translating from English, just click on the microphone on the bottom right of the input box, speak your text, and choose the language you want to translate to. In fact, you can even click on the "Listen" feature to hear the translated words spoken back to you!



Speech input through HTML is one of many new web technologies in the browser that help make innovative and useful web applications like Google Translate's speech feature possible. If you'd like to check out more examples of applications built using the latest and greatest web technologies in the browser, you can check out more than 200 submissions by web developers on chromeexperiments.com. If you're not already using Chrome, don't forget to first download Chrome at google.com/chrome.

Posted by Josh Estelle, Software Engineer
URL: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2011/04/everybodys-talking-and-translating-with.html

[G] Video Chat on Your Android Phone

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 09:54 PM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Video Chat on Your Android Phone

Sometimes, the expressions on a person's face can mean much more than what they say. To help you stay in touch with your friends and family, we're launching Google Talk with video and voice chat for Android phones.

You can now video or voice chat with your friends, family and colleagues right from your Android phone, whether they're on their compatible Android tablet or phone, or using Gmail with Google Talk on their computer. You can make calls over a 3G or 4G data network (if your carrier supports it) or over Wi-Fi.


  

























In your Google Talk friends list, a video or voice chat button will appear next to your contacts and you can simply touch the button to connect with them. Any text chats from the person you're talking with will be overlaid on your phone's screen so you can read them without having to leave the video. And, if you need to check something else, the video pauses automatically so you can go back to your phone's home screen or another app. The audio will keep going even though the video has paused. Check out how this works:




Google Talk with video and voice chat will gradually roll out to Nexus S devices in the next few weeks as part of the Android 2.3.4 over-the-air update and will launch on other Android 2.3+ devices in the future. To learn more about using video and voice chat, check out our Help Center.


Post content Posted by Colin Gibbs, Product Manager and Wei Huang, Tech Lead
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/04/video-chat-on-your-android-phone.html

[G] Now available with Google Apps: Google Groups

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 08:16 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Now available with Google Apps: Google Groups



Editor's note: Last year we launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what's new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Groups
Google Apps for Business and Education customers have traditionally had access to Google Groups for Business, which has allowed the creation of groups and mailing lists within the organization. Today we're expanding the discussion by making the general Google Groups service, which allows users to participate in public discussions with others outside the organization, available with Google Apps.

Google Groups allows the creation of groups and mailing lists with any group of people from all across the web and includes Usenet archives and archives of public groups. For example, if you're writing a new mobile app and want to follow the Android Developers forum or are interested in the latest news about Chrome OS in the Chrome notebook pilot forum you can use Google Groups to get involved in the discussion. There are millions of public groups available, so no matter your field or focus, you're likely to find relevant discussions that you can follow and join using Google Groups. You can also set up your own public discussion community using Google Groups

Google Apps for Business and Education customers will continue to have access to Google Groups for Business, which is part of the core Google Apps suite. Google Groups is a separate service, and will be available to users of the free version of Google Apps as well as Google Apps for Business and Education. Administrators can turn on both services, or only the one that makes most sense for their use case, giving more control over how users participate in groups inside and outside of the organization.

Learn more and get started
Google Groups can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn't using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information please take a look at our Help Center.


Posted by Chandrashekar Raghavan, Product Manager, Google Groups

Note: Google Groups may not be available in all areas.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/now-available-with-google-apps-google.html

[G] Simpler file upload in Google Docs

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 08:16 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Simpler file upload in Google Docs

(Extended post on the Google Docs Blog.)

Starting today, Rapid Release users now have access to these handy new features in Google Docs: folder upload, documents list integration, and drag-and-drop upload.


Folder upload is now accessible via the new Upload menu in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari. We've also merged the upload page's functionality into the documents list to create a much better upload experience. 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. 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.

For more details about today's changes to uploading files, check out our extended post on the Google Docs Blog or take a look at our FAQs.

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

[G] I’m lost without you: Google celebrates Admin Professionals’ Week

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 08:16 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: I'm lost without you: Google celebrates Admin Professionals' Week

Lost. Late. Out-of-luck. That's where we'd be without our administrative assistants at Google. Using Google Apps and the flexibility of our 100% web tools, these gurus coordinate schedules, manage inboxes, and keep our organization humming.

In light of Administrative Professionals' Week, we're celebrating with some of our Google Apps customers and their dedicated executive assistants and administrative teams. At Google, we are fond of saying that we "eat our own dogfood," so when a group of Google admins came forward to offer assistance to our customers' admin teams to help them learn the ins and outs of Google Apps, the "Admin Assistant Guru" program was born.

The Admin Assistant Guru program officially launched earlier this year and includes a network of 70 volunteer admin assistants from Google who meet with and coach their peers in our customer organizations. The goals of the program are to help our customers' admin teams increase productivity and foster collaboration in the admin community by sharing best practices.

Since launching the Admin Assistant Gurus program, we have seen great joint-success with more than 20 customers. For example:

SNL Financial, a large global company with more than 1,500 employees, spent time with our Google Admin Assistant Gurus team on their Google Apps go live day in April. Galen Warren, CTO at SNL Financial said, "Our executive assistants were very pleased with how much attention they got from Google and how much time and effort was put into ensuring that they were happy, and that all of their questions were answered. The Admin Assistant Gurus program made a big difference to the success of our launch of Google Apps across SNL Financial."

Brady Corporation, an international manufacturer with more than 7,000 employees, understands that successful collaboration starts with their exec admin team. Prior to and during their Google Apps deployment, Brady employees and the Google Gurus gave personal attention to the admin team, who "loved having 'Googlers' help them work through issues quickly" said Matt Vandenbush, IT Director of Strategy and Architecture at Brady Corporation. After a year using Google Apps, Lynda Carpenter, Executive Assistant says, "e-mail and calendar are critical to doing my job well. Thanks to the resources Google provides, I know how to get the right answers to my management team quickly."

Making Google Apps easier to adopt and manage continues to be a priority for our team, and we look forward to supporting our customers through innovative support programs such as the Admin Assistant Gurus.

Happy Admin Week!


Posted by Jocelyn Ding, Director of Enterprise Operations
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/im-lost-without-you-google-celebrates.html

[G] Upload images in Google spreadsheets

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 08:16 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Upload images in Google spreadsheets

(Cross-posted from the Google Docs Blog.)

We're excited to announce that you can now upload images to Google spreadsheets. From the Insert menu, select Image... Then, choose an image file to upload into your spreadsheet.


With this feature, you can upload an image already stored on your computer, search for an image online, or add personal photos directly from one of your Picasa Web Albums.


Let us know what you think in the Google spreadsheets forum!

Posted by: Nick Santo, Staff Software Engineer
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/upload-images-in-google-spreadsheets.html

[G] Build your foundation of commerce knowledge at Google I/O

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 07:58 PM PDT

Official Google Checkout Blog: Build your foundation of commerce knowledge at Google I/O

This year marks the first ever Commerce track at Google I/O. E-commerce continues to grow at an incredible rate and we want to empower developers to tap into that growth and monetize their products with powerful, easy to use APIs.

We're kicking off the track with a session on Google Checkout. Google Checkout usage has grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years. It's now the payment platform for almost all Google products. For example, if you've ever purchased an Android app, you have a Google Checkout account. Come learn more about new Checkout APIs, new tools, new developments in e-commerce at Google, and how Google commerce APIs can help your business make money.

For a complete session list, please visit the Google I/O site and filter by the Commerce track.

Posted by Peng Ying, Commerce Developer Relations
URL: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2011/04/build-your-foundation-of-commerce.html

[G] NYLON Young Hollywood Comes to YouTube

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 05:05 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: NYLON Young Hollywood Comes to YouTube

This May, NYLON's Young Hollywood issue comes to YouTube for the second year in a row. Visit the NYLON channel for coverage of the hottest young stars including Emma Roberts, Rory Culkin, Chloe Moretz, Lucy Hale, and not one, but two Harry Potter witches. Check out exclusive interviews only seen on YouTube and behind the scenes footage from the NYLON photoshoot, and here's a video to get you started:


For their Young Hollywood issue, NYLON magazine visits film sets all over the world and shoots the newest screen stars just as they're beginning to blaze. With NYLON + YouTube's Young Hollywood videos, you can:
  • Learn about Scream with Emma Roberts
  • Get a boxing lesson with Rory Culkin
  • Go behind the scenes at a fashion shoot with Chloe Moretz
  • Howl with the cast of MTV's new show Teen Wolf
  • Go backstage at The View with Hayden Panettiere
  • Watch Lucy Hale try out some of Spring's biggest beauty trends

From Harry Potter's Nataia Tena to Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka and The Vampire Diaries Kat Graham, you'll see the next generation of stars like never before - up close, personal, and with a killer rock 'n roll soundtrack. The Young Hollywood issue is also on stands now!

Lee Hadlow, Ad Programs Associate, recently watched "YOUNG HOLLYWOOD 2011 - HAYDEN PANETTIERE."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/BBmutDBnzfs/nylon-young-hollywood-comes-to-youtube.html

[G] Businesses say “I do” to the royal wedding

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 05:05 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Businesses say "I do" to the royal wedding

As excitement gears up worldwide for the royal wedding this Friday, we thought we'd take a look at how wedding frenzy for everything from flowers to fruitcake is manifesting itself online. Not only have searchers caught the matrimony bug, but savvy businesses around the world are capitalizing on the increased interest in the day with clever online ad campaigns.

We often tell marketers that "searchers are very engaged;" it now appears that the engaged are very searched. Searches for [royal wedding] have been steadily rising since the engagement announcement and have risen an additional 90% worldwide since the beginning of April as more details of Kate and William's big day are revealed. Search volumes have boomed—from the [royal wedding carriage] (up 70 percent since it was announced in March), to Kate's choice of coat at official appearances and the [royal wedding flowers]. Smart merchants have had plenty of opportunity to grow their wedding-related businesses online.

For example, a centerpiece of royal wedding coverage has been Kate's sapphire engagement ring. Searches for [sapphire rings] are up almost 25 percent in 2011 compared to 2010, and jewelers have taken notice. U.S. retailer HSN saw huge sales of its various sapphire rings and other royal wedding memorabilia, including commemorative royal wedding coins. In fact, HSN had more than 350,000 impressions and over 20,000 clicks since its royal wedding online campaigns began in December 2010. Across the pond, Martine Wester Jewellers in Fulham, London, has seen sales of its £29 replica sapphire engagement ring skyrocket as much as 250 percent.

While many Londoners are leaving town and renting out their houses, scores of people outside the city are trying to get a front-row seat at the festivities: searches for [london vacation] are up more than 10 percent since the beginning of April. Virgin Atlantic Airways used online campaigns to promote its onboard street parties for passengers flying on the day of the royal wedding.

One of the oddest searches that turns out to be royal wedding-related is [fruitcake], which is up about 15 percent in the last 90 days in the U.S. and up 8 percent year over year worldwide. Turns out, fruitcake will be the official royal wedding cake flavor. If you weren't lucky enough to score an invitation, you can still eat like a wedding guest thanks to clued-in bakeries around the country whose well-timed ads led to soaring fruitcake orders.

So settle in with your sapphire ring and fruitcake and tune in to the Royal Household's YouTube channel to watch the whole event. And if anybody knows where you can actually buy one of those royal carriages, let us know.

Posted by Dan Schock, Google Retail Industry Director
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/businesses-say-i-do-to-royal-wedding.html

[G] Bringing Brazil’s Carnival to the world

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 01:01 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: Bringing Brazil's Carnival to the world

Our consumer marketing team here in Brazil has a slogan: Go where the passion is. And in Brazil, there are few things people are more passionate about than Carnival—an annual spring festival that incorporates parades, music and dance in an enormous, nation-wide celebration. This year, our team of five decided to tackle a huge challenge: take the party global by launching a Carnival channel on YouTube and live stream a full six days of coverage to the entire world.

When we began the project in October 2010, we knew we had to work quickly and efficiently if we were going to have this ready five months later—especially since we were such a small team with big goals for a brand new project. One of our biggest obstacles was figuring out how to bring the true Carnival music experience to YouTube—not just a few shows here and there, but really capturing all of the celebrity performances, parades and spontaneous street dances that occur all over the state of Bahia during the six days of celebration. We quickly realized we were going to need a lot of support on the ground in order to coordinate all of the logistics, such as camera placement, so we enlisted the help of more than 100 freelance professionals. Another challenge was orchestrating video translations so people in other regions could share in the excitement in their native language, which we did by asking Googlers to put their 20 percent time toward the endeavor.

On more than one occasion, I thought we were in way over our heads, but when I saw the famous Brazilian singer, Ivete Sangalo, streaming live on YouTube in a performance broadcasted to more than 15,000 cities in 200 countries worldwide, I knew we'd connected the world with the passion of the Carnival.



Despite the chaos involved in organizing the live stream, the results of the project were well beyond our expectations. During the six days of Carnival, people from 200+ countries watched more than 11 million views of the live stream and 21,000+ subscribed to the YouTube channel. As a small team with big goals—and the resources and freedom to achieve them—we aim to remain as nimble and efficient as we were during Carnival, with people's passions as our guide to projects that will have the biggest impact.

Posted by Lauren Pachaly, Consumer Marketing Manager, Brazil, recently watched "Harmonia do Samba's Carnival performance of Uma Chance."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/zhvQKn8y-8I/bringing-brazils-carnival-to-world.html

[G] New Interface Wednesdays: Search in Ad Review Center

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 12:52 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: New Interface Wednesdays: Search in Ad Review Center

We've heard that there are times when an ad appears on your site that you want to block from appearing again. How can you easily block a specific ad you've seen? If the ad is placement-targeted, you can now use the new AdSense interface to quickly search for and block that specific ad and future ad groups from a given advertiser.

To search for ads in the ad review center, first navigate to the Allow & block ads tab and click into one of the pages of the ad review center -- for example 'Allowed' -- for which you want to view ads. Look for the find ads box in the navigation sidebar. Here, you can search for ads based on text/url, ad type, and ad networks. For ads that are awaiting review, you can also search based on when the ads will be automatically allowed.


With recent updates we've made, you may also notice that when doing a keyword-based search, image ads in addition to text ads will be returned if the images contain text matching your search criteria.

Try it now! Navigate to the Allow & block ads tab and click into the Ad Review Center.

Posted by Pedro Diaz & Edouard Rosseel - AdSense Engineers
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-interface-wednesdays-search-in-ad.html

[G] Got 2 minutes? Watch our new AdSense demo videos

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 12:52 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Got 2 minutes? Watch our new AdSense demo videos

Change is good, but change can also be hard. This is true for everything from getting used to a new job or apartment to starting with the new AdSense interface. If you've been following our New Interface Wednesdays blog series, you know that there are a lot of new features and benefits to making the switch. To help ease the transition, we want to make sure that you not only know about all of these great benefits, but that you're also able to navigate through the new tabs and are comfortable with the standard tools you've been using in the old interface.

To help you become more familiar with the new interface (and start using it if you haven't already!) we've created a series of six videos -- each under two minutes -- to quickly demonstrate how to complete some basic actions in your account.

Today, we're excited to present the first two videos in this series: one walking you through how to create an ad unit, and the other on setting up custom channels.





We hope these help you get comfortable with the new AdSense interface! Stay tuned for the next set of videos, which will walk you through the Performance reports tab.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit - Inside AdSense team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2011/04/got-2-minutes-watch-our-new-adsense.html

[G] Faces of Gmail: Petra Cross

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 10:05 AM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: Faces of Gmail: Petra Cross

Posted by Kathleen Chen, Consumer Operations

Last month we kicked off "Faces of Gmail," a series where we'll introduce you to some of the members of the Gmail team. For our first post, we spoke with Manu Cornet, an engineer in Paris who made some of our favorite themes. This month we're back in Mountain View with Petra Cross, a globe-trotting gal who builds tools to help make the Gmail engineering team more efficient.


What do you do on the Gmail team and how long have you been at Google?
I have been a software engineer at Google for over six years. I spent my first three and a half years with the search team developing a framework for evaluating the relevance of search results. Since then, I've been focusing on internal Gmail infrastructure and building tools that help make other Gmail engineers more productive.

What did you do before joining Google?
After I got my computer science degree from Santa Clara University, I worked for a year at a small Silicon Valley semiconductor start-up. Before I came to California, I studied CS in Slovakia. I'm always doing many things at the same time. While I was in school, I created and sold little black and white drawings, taught English classes at a local elementary school, worked as a talk-show host at a local TV station, modeled, and also sang competitively in a choir. I miss singing the most. Today, besides working on Gmail, I'm focusing on photography and my husband Bradford.

What are the three Gmail features you wouldn't be able to live without?
Ah, there are so many features I would miss if they went away:
  1. Priority Inbox helps me point my attention to emails I might want to respond to first.
  2. I use chat a lot to communicate with my co-workers and friends. I also love Gmail's ability to call phones.
  3. I like how Gmail organizes emails into conversation view, instead of putting each email into a separate line in the inbox. It makes it a lot easier to see the entire context of the discussion.


What do you do when you're not working on Gmail?
I visit my parents in Europe few times a year. To trick my husband into joining me on every trip to visit his in-laws, I try to wrap the trip into a fun package that includes more countries. And so, in the last three years, we've visited Belgium, Netherlands, U.K., Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Austria, Jordan (we visited Petra!), Lebanon, Egypt, and we also got married in a 13th century castle in Slovakia.

Besides traveling, I'm quite domesticated and I'm constantly decorating our San Francisco home. To my mom's disappointment, I almost stopped cooking since I joined Google (blame the free Google food!) and started spending most of my days on a computer. I've been blogging a lot lately and also spending a lot of time photographing people. I can't imagine what my life would look like without technology. I can't even sit still on a beach for five minutes. Seriously.

How do you procrastinate?
I don't procrastinate. I make conscious decisions to not do certain things at this very moment. Like right now, I am responding to your questions instead of coding. :)

What would your last meal be?
Crepes with Nutella and chestnut puree, and a lot of whipped cream. The whipped cream has to be hand-whipped, not from a can. Crepes need to be perfectly browned on both sides. I'm up for a crepe-off any time!

Photos by Cody Bratt, Google Talk team
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/faces-of-gmail-petra-cross.html

[G] Upload images in Google Spreadsheets

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 09:30 AM PDT

Docs Blog: Upload images in Google Spreadsheets

(Cross-posted to the Google Enterprise Blog)

We're excited to announce that you can now upload images to Google spreadsheets. From the Insert menu, select Image... Then, choose an image file to upload into your spreadsheet.


With this feature, you can upload an image already stored on your computer, search for an image online, or add personal photos directly from one of your Picasa Web Albums.


Let us know what you think in the Google spreadsheets forum!

Posted by: Nick Santo, Staff Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/04/upload-images-in-google-spreadsheets.html
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