Googland |
- [G] Google Transit goes to Washington
- [G] Graduate with Google Apps
- [G] Our Senate testimony on protecting Android users’ privacy
- [G] Making money with Google In-App Payments for the Web
- [G] Technical Details of the Blueberry Release
- [G] “Blueberry” VP8 Hardware Encoder IP Released
- [G] The YouTube 100 music chart is live
| [G] Google Transit goes to Washington Posted: 12 May 2011 12:58 PM PDT Official Google Blog: Google Transit goes to WashingtonCross-posted on the LatLong Blog.Every day, many thousands of commuters, locals, and tourists ride public transit in Washington, D.C. To help all of these transit riders find their way around the metro area, today we're making comprehensive information about D.C.'s public transportation available on Google Transit. In partnership with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), we're adding all of D.C.'s Metro and bus stations, stops and routes, as well as connections to other transit systems in nearby cities. You can find this information on Google Maps as well as Google Maps for mobile—no matter where you are, you can get to where you're going. With Google Transit, D.C. metro-area commuters—including those in Baltimore, Montgomery and Jefferson counties—may discover a quicker route to work, while visitors can easily make their way from Reagan National Airport straight to the Smithsonian.  Public transportation is a vital part of city infrastructure and can help alleviate congestion and reduce emissions. But planning your trip on public transit can be challenging, especially when there are multiple transit agencies and you need to use information from multiple sources to figure out the best route. With mapping tools like the transit feature, we're working to make that easier. Directions are also available on Google Maps for mobile—so if you're graduating from GWU and want to meet some friends in Adams Morgan to celebrate, it's as easy as pulling out your phone. If you're using an Android device, for example, search for [Adams Morgan] in Google Maps, click on the Places result and select "Directions." Switch to Transit in the upper-left corner and find out which bus gets you there fastest.  Wherever your journey takes you, whether using public transit, driving, biking or walking, we hope Google Transit directions in D.C. make finding your way a little easier. Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Product Manager, Google Maps  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-transit-goes-to-washington.html       | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 12 May 2011 12:58 PM PDT Official Google Blog: Graduate with Google AppsMillions of students will leave college this year with more than just a diploma. There's a good chance that the graduating class of 2011 will also be experts in another field: Google Apps for Education.If you attended a university that's "gone Google" or sought out Google products on your own, you've learned how to use Apps to collaborate and communicate with your professors and peers. Perhaps you've used Gmail to power through email efficiently, Docs to revise group projects without the hassle of attachments, Calendar to keep up with extracurriculars, forms to quickly collect and analyze data or Sites to organize resources around your projects. Using these tools has equipped you with valuable expertise for life after college—just like the finance skills you learned in your major or the Spanish language abilities you picked up while studying abroad. With this in mind, we've created the Google Guides program to help you take your Google Apps expertise to your future job. When you become a Google Guide, we'll equip you with resources to introduce and implement Apps in your workplace. You'll make an immediate impact by saving your company money and facilitating collaboration among coworkers. Once your company is up and running with Google Apps, you'll get to continue using all the Apps tools you learned and loved in college—not to mention be known as your company's in-house Google expert. If you're not sure where you'll be picking up your paycheck yet, don't fret. The Google Guides program also provides tips and tools for your job search, including resume templates. You can sign up as a Google Guide at google.com/apps/graduate and read our FAQ for more details. And for those of you not graduating this year, you can always get information specifically for students on the Official Student Blog. Posted by Lauren Kolodny, Google Apps Marketing Manager  URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/graduate-with-google-apps.html   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| [G] Our Senate testimony on protecting Android users’ privacy Posted: 12 May 2011 11:14 AM PDT Google Public Policy Blog: Our Senate testimony on protecting Android users' privacyPosted by Alan Davidson, Director of Public Policy, AmericasThis morning I'll be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the important issue of mobile privacy. You can read my full testimony here or watch a webcast of the hearing here starting at 10 a.m. EDT. Mobile devices and location services are now used routinely by tens of millions of Americans and create enormous benefits for our society. Those services will not be used – and they cannot succeed – without consumer trust, built on a sustained effort by our industry to protect user privacy and security. With this in mind, at Google we have made our mobile location services opt-in only – treating this information with the highest degree of care possible. Google focuses on privacy protection throughout the life cycle of product development, starting with the initial design. We are particularly sensitive when it comes to location information. We provide transparent information for users about what is collected; opt-in choice before location information is collected; and high security standards to anonymize and protect information. Our hope is that this becomes a standard for the broader industry.  URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/05/our-senate-testimony-on-protecting.html   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| [G] Making money with Google In-App Payments for the Web Posted: 12 May 2011 09:17 AM PDT Official Google Checkout Blog: Making money with Google In-App Payments for the WebToday at Google I/O, we launched the developer API of Google In-App Payments for the web. In-App Payments enables any web application to receive payments from users and keep them engaged in your application. It is available to all US developers in sandbox today and will be followed by a consumer launch and an international rollout over the summer. The team started building Google In-App Payments soon after Jambool was acquired by Google in August 2010. This project brought Social Gold technology and expertise and combined it with Google scale. For the payments platform that we're announcing today, the theme is simplicity: The simple API makes integration fast so you can start getting paid sooner. Implementing In-App Payments requires only two API calls: one to initiate the payment, and one to accept the notification when a payment is made. The simple user experience will let your users pay without leaving the app or entering billing details. Users who have previously completed a purchase on Google Checkout, Android Market, Google eBookstore, YouTube Movies and more can use that same account to pay for items in your app in minimal steps. Fast payments that keep users in your game or site can boost customer conversion rates, increasing your revenue. The simple pricing model is a flat payment processing fee of 5%. It's 5% whether you distribute your app yourself or via the Chrome Web Store. There are no fixed purchase fees, setup costs, or monthly minimums. The JavaScript version of the In-App Payments API is available to developers today. A Flash version of the API will be available in the coming weeks. We invite you to sign up, start integrating your apps and send us feedback. Let's work together to delight consumers this summer with amazing web apps, monetized effectively, all in the app. Posted by Amit Fulay, Product Manager and Mikhail Seregine, Software Engineer  URL: http://googlecheckout.blogspot.com/2011/05/making-money-with-google-in-app.html   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| [G] Technical Details of the Blueberry Release Posted: 12 May 2011 07:21 AM PDT The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Technical Details of the Blueberry ReleaseThe following text assumes the reader has prior knowledge about video codecs and hardware designs.We reached the aforementioned +0.82 dB PSNR gains by adding the following features to the encoder:
In terms of silicon usage, Blueberry costs 13% more logic gates than Anthill, while the internal memory requirement remains unchanged. We optimized the maximum attainable clock frequency from Anthill's 376 MHz to 392 MHz (TSMC 65nm, LP), which allows the chip manufacturer to get some more fps, which can be useful if you are doing multiple simultaneous encodes or running in a slow-motion mode (i.e. VGA 200 fps). Comparing the quality difference between Anthill and Blueberry, we measured their average PSNR and SSIM quality over 46 test sequences and at a wide quantizer range. A few example results are shown below (positive numbers mean Blueberry was better):
As our focus in the improvement work has been on the video conferencing use case, let's dig a bit deeper there. The following graph shows PSNR quality metrics for a 720p video call, comparing the H1 Blueberry release to Anthill and libvpx Bali release in different complexity modes (higher is better).  From the graph it can be seen that the Blueberry release encodes the video conference content at the same quality using up to 30% less bits than Anthill. It also beats libvpx's simplest real-time setting at a much lower bitrate than before. While more improvements are on the way for the third release of the H1 encoder, the current performance is already very competitive - and the hardware now comes with hooks for further software-based optimizations. Aki Kuusela is Engineering Manager of the WebM Project hardware team in Oulu, Finland.  URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/05/technical-details-of-blueberry-release.html   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| [G] “Blueberry” VP8 Hardware Encoder IP Released Posted: 12 May 2011 07:20 AM PDT The WebM Open Media Project Blog: "Blueberry" VP8 Hardware Encoder IP Released"Blueberry," the second release of the H1 VP8 hardware encoder, is now available through the WebM Project hardware page. Due to the short growing season and abundant light during the summer, Nordic blueberries are exceptionally sweet and rich with vitamins. The Blueberry encoder is not too bad either!In Blueberry we focused primarily on improving the encoder for video calling use, as many of the semiconductor companies that have licensed the H1 encoder plan to use it in these use cases. Compared to Anthill, the average measured PSNR improvement was 0.82 dB, while SSIM figures were improved by 0.011. This is also shown in the following chart for 720p video call content, where Blueberry achieves the same quality as Anthill with 25% less bits!  In the next release, we plan to further improve the compression rate at the low bitrate range, as well as focus on new features such as two-pass encoding and visual optimization using segmentation maps. The third release is planned to be available at the end of Q2 2011. The H1 IP has been licensed already to over twenty semiconductor companies, and we are looking forward to sharing the technology with new partners. For licensing details about the H1, see our hardware page. For those interested in technical details, please keep reading here. Aki Kuusela is Engineering Manager of the WebM Project hardware team in Oulu, Finland.  URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/05/blueberry-vp8-hardware-encoder-ip.html   | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| [G] The YouTube 100 music chart is live Posted: 12 May 2011 07:05 AM PDT YouTube Blog: The YouTube 100 music chart is liveToday we're introducing the first YouTube chart to track song popularity in user-generated and professional music videos. The YouTube 100 measures song traffic across official music videos, user-uploaded videos and viral debuts, and uses this data to provide a holistic view of song popularity. The new chart is published weekly, and shines a new light on the YouTube community's engagement and creativity.This week Katy Perry's E.T. lands on the Top 10 thanks to her own gravity-defying video and views on popular user videos that lay down rocking guitar solos, extra beats, sepia-tone allegory and other-worldly visuals (in this case from Brooklyn, not Mars). Not only does the YouTube 100 give props when fans make original videos for popular songs, it also captures YouTube's one-of-a-kind musical diversity: Nice Peter ranks on the chart alongside global radio stars, and Rebecca Black hits the Top 10. You can find our new weekly chart at youtube.com/music. In the weeks to come, we will archive our charts for future exploration of original recordings, music memes, and pop hits. YouTube users get into music as fans and original musicians, and our new chart gives the community a better way to find the most engaging music on YouTube. Chris LaRosa, Music Product Manager, recently watched "Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California."     URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/IewlUw-ZE6Y/youtube-100-music-chart-is-live.html   |
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