Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Imagery Update - Week of May 2nd

Posted: 02 May 2011 09:49 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Imagery Update - Week of May 2nd

The Google Earth and Google Maps Imagery Team will be publishing the latest batch of imagery in our next update, and as always, there are numerous fascinating and notable areas around the world.

One of the areas that was already slated for this regular update is Abbottabad, Pakistan, which is of particular interest given yesterday's news. The imagery of this area that is currently available in Google Earth and Maps is from 2005. Higher resolution imagery taken in May 2010 has been prepared for our next imagery update release. However, given the number of inquiries we have received about this area, and to help users better understand recent events, we've published an advanced preview KML of the new imagery for viewing in Google Earth. This imagery will be pushed live in Google Earth and Maps as part of our next periodic imagery update.

In addition, as part of our continued effort to provide up-to-date imagery, we've worked with our provider again to obtain even fresher satellite imagery of Abbottabad, Pakistan from this morning local time. We have provided this imagery, which is of lower resolution than the scheduled update, to the media. This imagery will be accessible in the near future through the Historical Imagery feature of Google Earth.



This round of imagery also includes many other interesting sites, a few of which are shown below.

Here's an image of the Harris County Court House of 1910, located in downtown Houston, Texas. Here you can see the ongoing restoration of the building, returning to glory its halls of justice. It is one of the most important historical buildings in Houston, and is often considered one of the best examples of historic courthouses in Texas.



Below is an image of part of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In it you can see two industries that are part of the might of Milwaukee: the Harley Davidson factory (right hand side of image) and the Miller Brewing Company (left hand side of image).



Now here's a colorful sight: the Clipsal 500 Adelaide race, a four-day event consisting of two 250 km races of V8 Supercars. The race is often attended by well over a quarter million people. This photo shows the race in March 2010.



These updates will be made available soon in both Google Maps and Google Earth.

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Brookshire, TX; Brownsville, TX; Dallas, TX; Ft Stockton, TX; Hebbronville, TX; Houston, TX; Laredo, TX; McAllen, TX; Milwaukee, WI; Padre Island, TX; Wharton, TX; Zapata, TX;
Australia: Central Coast, New Castle, and Salamander Bay
Norway: Buskerud, Fredrikstad, and Oslo

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Algeria, Angola, Antarctica, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Svalbard, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, The Gambia, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, West Bank, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Posted by the Imagery Team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/05/imagery-update-week-of-may-2nd.html

[G] Post-tornado mapping in Google Maps and Earth

Posted: 02 May 2011 09:49 PM PDT

Google LatLong: Post-tornado mapping in Google Maps and Earth


This past week, several devastating tornadoes struck across a wide swathe of the southern United States. Our Crisis Response team is activating to provide data and imagery we hope will be useful to first responders and the general public.

In cooperation with our satellite partner GeoEye, we have imagery of the aftermath of several tornadoes, including in Tuscaloosa, Alabama as shown below. We have created several before-and-after comparisons in a Picasa album.



Left: Google imagery from late 2010. Right: GeoEye imagery from Thursday, April 28.
Top: Charleston Square Apartments, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Bottom: Towns of Pleasant Grove, Concord, and Hueytown, Jefferson County, Alabama. Click to see enlarged.

This imagery, as well as data sets such as Red Cross shelter locations and tornado touchdown reports, are available in this collection on Google Maps. We will continue to add imagery and data as it comes available.

Our heart goes out to everyone affected by this tragic event.

Update: You can now access the satellite imagery directly in Google Earth. Make sure the Places layer is enabled, then go to Alabama. Click the image of a tornado to find links to load the images.

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Google Crisis Response team
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/04/post-tornado-mapping-in-google-maps-and.html

[G] Sharing stories of the Holocaust for future generations

Posted: 02 May 2011 04:20 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Sharing stories of the Holocaust for future generations

Today is Yom Hashoah, Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day, when people around the world pause to remember the victims who perished in the Holocaust. This year, the historical record of the Holocaust is more rich, accurate and interactive thanks to Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem-based center for remembering the Holocaust's victims and survivors, which has brought its collections online and asked the public to input comments and personal stories. We've been able to support Yad Vashem with our technology by building the collection site, making it more accessible through search and continuing to update it with new content and technical features.

Since the collection launched in January, visitors from around the world have searched the enhanced archive and hundreds of people have contributed more than 5,000 comments, including many pieces of information that were unrecorded prior to the archive going online. The contributions range from personal stories to additions and corrections to discussions about the images. It's remarkable how a short personal comment can bring a photograph to life in a whole new way. For example, one person added the following information to a photograph labeled "The bridge that connected the large and small ghetto":
 
This picture was taken on Chlodna street. the building in the background still stands to this day (2011); the shot was probably taken from the door of the building at Chlodna 26 or Chlodna 24, where my great grandparents, Hena Skowronek and Józef Blat lived in 1939. They died in the ghetto.
Another person added a story about a man who otherwise may have gone unnoticed in this photograph of "An orchestra escorting prisoners destined for execution."

The man who stays on the trolley is Hans Bonarewitz, camp number 3138. In June 1942 he successfully escaped from the camp, hidden in a crate and loaded by a fellow prisoner onto a truck which leaves the camp. Sadly he was captured ~18 days later and brought back to the KL. There he was exposed to others 7 days in his crate on the place for roll call and hanged on July 30th, 1942.
We've added a new comments page on the Yad Vashem site with a selection of stories like these alongside their respective photographs. We've also been updating the site with new features and content. For example, to provide better geographical context to pictures in the collection, you'll now see a small map to the right of the image whenever geographic data is available, such as in this photo of a man in Warsaw, Poland. We also added new footage of the Eichmann trial—a central event in our understanding of the Holocaust during which searing personal testimony from many Holocaust survivors was broadcast on television for the first time, reaching far more people than ever before and enabling people to begin to grapple with the Holocaust's truths and its memory. You can view this trial now on two YouTube channels, one with the original soundtrack and the other dubbed in English. The channels consist of 474 videos, 400+ hours of video and 875 gigabytes of data. You can learn more about the significance of these trials from short video lectures and a film entitled "A Living Record" on a special microsite.

We encourage you to explore the Yad Vashem collection site to learn more about the Holocaust and to contribute your personal stories, knowledge and thoughts to this expanding historical record.

Posted by Yossi Matias, Head of Israel R&D Center
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/sharing-stories-of-holocaust-for-future.html

[G] Custom Reports in the new Google Analytics

Posted: 02 May 2011 03:24 PM PDT

Google Analytics Blog: Custom Reports in the new Google Analytics

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week we'll be discussing how to use updated custom reports.

Every website is different, yet we focus much of our time on the standard reports in our web analytics tools. Custom reports have been an integral part of Google Analytics since 2008. With the new platform, we took a close look at how we could improve the custom reports to make them more usable and powerful.

The Custom Reports tab
For starters, custom reports now live under their own tab, which you can find next to My Site in the main menu bar.


The overview shows a list of all the custom reports available for your profile. You can also view, edit, or share a custom report, and, of course, you can also build a new custom report.

Building a custom report
As with the previous version of Google Analytics, you build a custom report by picking the metrics and dimensions you want. For the new platform, we've made some enhancements. Let's walk through the creation of a custom report for measuring the effectiveness of content on this blog (borrowing from one of Avinash's awesome custom reports).

Getting the right data
We saw that custom reports were most useful when focused on subset of data. For my blog report, I've decided that I want to only focus on referral traffic. In the old version, I'd have to combine an advanced segment with my custom report to do this analysis. With the new platform, we've made it possible to make the filter part of your custom report.


You can add multiple filters to the same report, and filter on dimensions other than those you've chosen to use in the report. Best of all, these filters are saved as part of your custom report. As soon as you (or your boss) opens the report, you're looking at the data you need.

Organizing your report
Like the current version, you can build multiple report tabs into your custom report. This is helpful to organize your report, or build different views for people across your organization. In the new Google Analytics, you're no longer restricted to using the same dimensions for each report tab, which allows you to truly get all of the data you care about in one custom report. There are two types of report tabs available: Flat Table and Explorer tabs.

Explorer report tabs are similar to the report view that is used across Analytics. They allow you to drill down into data, as well as add a secondary dimension. When creating an Explorer tab, you can also create Metric Groups, which help further organize your report for easier analysis. For our example, I've built out an Explorer tab focused on content quality metrics with a drill down into where the traffic came from.

Flat Table report tabs allow you to look at two dimensions side by side, meaning you don't have to click to drill down into your data. We've created this report view to make it easier to export the information you care about, email it to a colleague, or simply print it out. For the example report, I have a Flat Table tab focused on where the traffic came from and the quality of that traffic.

And here's the finished report:

Sharing your custom reports
Once you've finished creating your report, you might want to share it with your team. One of the most widely used features of Custom Reports has been sharing, which allows you to share a link to your custom report configuration with others.

Like the current version, sharing a custom report in the new Google Analytics only shares the structure of the report, not the data from your account. There is one difference to keep in mind, when you share a custom report in the new version, the link will always reflect the state of the report when you first created the link. So, if you create report, share it with your colleagues, and then make further changes, the link you shared will still point to the first version of the report. You can share your reports from the Custom Reports overview. Just click the share link:


And here's a link to the custom report example we've referenced throughout this post: http://goo.gl/McSBl.

Finding a home for your old custom reports
Did you spend a lot of time creating the perfect custom report in the old version? Not to fear: we've created a migration tool to help you migrate your reports from the old version to the new Google Analytics. From the Custom Reports Overview, you'll see a section called Migrate Custom Reports. It will let you know if you have reports to be migrated. Keep in mind that migration only works one way. Once you move your reports over the new version, you won't be able to use them in old version.

Using standard reports to analyze your website can only take you so far, which is why we've put so much effort in making custom reports more powerful and easier for Google Analytics v5. Please continue to give us your feedback on the new Google Analytics. Happy analyzing!

Posted by Kate Cushing, Google Analytics team
URL: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/04/custom-reports-in-new-google-analytics.html

[G] Got 2 minutes? Watch our Performance reports videos

Posted: 02 May 2011 01:36 PM PDT

Inside AdSense: Got 2 minutes? Watch our Performance reports videos

We know the Performance reports tab of the new AdSense interface can seem a little overwhelming. With all that data at your fingertips, it's hard to know where to start! To help you learn more about the reports you can run and how to customize the graphs, we've created two new videos that walk you through navigating our reporting features:





Check out some of our previous posts on the new AdSense interface to learn more about the different reports you can run to gain even more insight into your performance. If you missed last week's videos on creating an ad unit and custom channels, be sure to check them out. We'll see you next week for our last two videos on the Allow & block ads tab!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit - Inside AdSense team
URL: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2011/05/got-2-minutes-watch-our-performance.html

[G] Live webinar: Google Maps API Premier and Protected Map Layers

Posted: 02 May 2011 01:15 PM PDT

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Live webinar: Google Maps API Premier and Protected Map Layers

Two months ago, the Google Maps team launched Fusion Tables Protected Map Layers for Google Maps API Premier customers. With the Fusion Tables Protected Map Layers, developers and businesses can upload tabular data to Fusion Tables and display this data on a Google Maps API implementation.

Join us for a live webinar to learn about Google Fusion Tables and how you can add Protected Map Layers into your Google Maps API Premier implementations.

When: May 3rd, 2011 10AM PT
Who: Google Developer Programs Engineer Kathryn Hurley and Google Product Marketing Manager Natasha Wyatt
Register now

Over 600,000 developers worldwide have adopted the Google Maps API for its developer and viewer usability. Google Maps API Premier is the business-ready version of Google Maps that allows your business to acquire more customers and make intelligent location-based business decisions.

We hope you'll join us and check out some of the other Google Earth and Maps events we are holding.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Product Marketing Manager, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise Team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/05/live-webinar-google-maps-api-premier.html

[G] How to set up Gmail to power through hundreds of messages each day

Posted: 02 May 2011 09:44 AM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: How to set up Gmail to power through hundreds of messages each day

Posted by Paul McDonald, Product Manager

Gmail offers a ton of customization, and when you get hundreds of emails every day it's crucial that you have it set up to process mail quickly and efficiently. Working on Gmail, I get asked all the time what settings and features I use to help me power through my mail. Rather than answer my friends and co-workers one by one, I thought I'd put it all into a blog post. So here goes.
  • Turn on Priority Inbox. I couldn't live without Priority Inbox. I keep the default set-up with important and unread mail at the top of my inbox and the section for everything else at the bottom.
  • Show more than 25 conversations in your inbox. I like to see as many emails as possible per page so I can quickly scan through my mail, so I have this set to 100 (the max possible). Go to Gmail Settings and look for "Maximum page size" which you can change to 25, 50, or 100.
  • Enable keyboard shortcuts. Press the "?" key when looking at your inbox to see the list of keyword shortcuts. Make sure they are turned on, then pick one or two to start with and try to learn more as you become comfortable. I probably use 'e' to archive my messages and 'j' and 'k' to move through messages the most.
Many of the features I love can be found in Gmail Labs (click on the "Labs" tab from Gmail Settings). I have a ton of them on, but the combo of these four work really well for me:
  • Inbox preview: Shows a simple, static preview of your inbox while Gmail is loading. While you can't take action on the messages until your inbox fully loads, it's great to get a sneak peek and form a plan of attack.
  • Send and archive: Adds a button that lets you send a reply to a message and archive the conversation in a single click (keyboard shortcuts work well with this one, too).
  • Background send: Lets Gmail send your mail in the background while you move on to more important things.
  • Auto advance: Automatically shows the next conversation instead of going back to your inbox after you delete, archive, or mute a conversation. When combined with the "Send and archive" button and background send, this feature makes reading and replying to messages lightning fast.
Try out this set up and let us know what your favorite features are.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-set-up-gmail-to-power-through.html
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