Saturday, May 21, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Comparison Ads now a part of the new Google Advisor

Posted: 20 May 2011 06:33 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Comparison Ads now a part of the new Google Advisor

Back in late 2009, we launched our initial test of AdWords Comparison Ads for Mortgages. With Comparison Ads, we provided a way for you, our advertisers, to create more relevant and targeted offers for users searching on Google.com. For example, using Comparison Ads, a lender can enter offers for users with specific credit ratings, loan amounts, ZIP codes, and more.

Since our initial mortgages launch, we've expanded into a number of additional financial areas, including credit cards, checking and savings accounts, and certificates of deposit. We've also seen some great recognition of the value that Comparison Ads provides. For example, according to a study done by Leads360, an industry leader in lead management software, mortgage leads from AdWords Comparison Ads converted at a higher rate than from any other source.

Today, we're excited to announce the launch of Google Advisor, our new user-friendly interface for comparison offers, including AdWords Comparison Ads. Google Advisor is a consumer destination site that helps to guide users through various financial decisions by making it even easier to find and compare relevant offers from qualified financial institutions.

Google Advisor contains offers that come from our Comparison Ads advertisers as well as other sources across the web. By aggregating the most relevant offers and making it easy for users to filter and compare them side-by-side, Google Advisor aims to make financial research faster and easier.

To learn more about Google Advisor, you can read the Official Google Blog post or watch the video below.

At this time, AdWords Comparison Ads remains available only to a limited number of advertisers. Over time, we hope to increase the availability of Comparison Ads to additional advertisers. You can find more information about AdWords Comparison Ads in our Help Center.



Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/05/comparison-ads-now-part-of-new-google.html

[G] Promoted Video pricing change: Focusing on the value of views

Posted: 20 May 2011 06:33 PM PDT

Inside AdWords: Promoted Video pricing change: Focusing on the value of views

Promoted Videos have proven to be an effective and popular way for advertisers to drive traffic to video content on YouTube. This format allows you to promote videos on YouTube when users are searching for or watching videos. Until now, Promoted Videos have been priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis; similar to AdWords search ads, you were charged every time a user clicked on a Promoted Video ad.

Beginning on May 25th, we're changing the pricing structure of this format to a cost-per-view (CPV) model, shifting the focus to actual viewership. This change means you'll be charged only when a user clicks on a Promoted Video ad and starts to watch your video content. This pricing model ensures that your advertising costs are more closely connected to your goal of driving trackable video viewership.

How Bids Work
When you create your Promoted Video ad, you'll be asked to set a maximum CPV, which is the maximum amount you're willing to pay for a video view. Promoted Videos use the AdWords discounter to automatically reduce your costs. As always, we'll only charge you one cent more than the next advertiser on the page competing for the same or similar keywords/placements, ensuring auction-driven efficiencies.

What You'll See
As before, Promoted Video campaigns can be set up and managed right in AdWords or via ads.youtube.com. As of May 25th, billing terms from all Promoted Videos campaigns will officially convert from CPC to CPV and will be reflected in your advertising dashboards in both systems. If you're using AdWords to purchase Promoted Videos on YouTube, you may continue to see mentions of CPCs in your campaign dashboard as we introduce additional CPV formats and adjust verbiage in the system.

Please visit the Help Center for more details and FAQs. Our hope is that this change in the pricing model aligns Promoted Videos more closely with your goals, driving the right results for your business.

Posted by Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manager, YouTube
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/05/promoted-video-pricing-change-focusing.html

[G] Google Apps highlights – 5/20/2011

Posted: 20 May 2011 04:20 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Google Apps highlights – 5/20/2011

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last few weeks, we made improvements to instant messaging, increased capacity for saved contacts, added powerful data analysis with pivot tables in spreadsheets and introduced more flexible management tools for Google Apps customers.

Better AIM interoperability in Gmail and beyond
Google Talk is built on open protocols for instant messaging, making it possible for other IM networks to connect seamlessly with Google Talk. Yesterday we rolled out improvements to make chatting with your AIM buddies even easier in Gmail, iGoogle, Orkut and Google Talk on Android devices. Now you can invite your AIM buddies to chat from any of these places just by entering their AOL screennames, even if you don't have or use an AIM account.


Room for 15,000 more contacts in Gmail
We've heard from a surprising number of super-connected people who wanted to save more contacts in Gmail than its 10,000-contact limit allowed, so a couple weeks ago we made Gmail better by supporting up to 25,000 contacts. You can also save even more information with each contact, so if you were previously bumping up against the limits, you should have a whole lot more extra space for your contacts now.


Pivot tables in Google spreadsheets
Google spreadsheets now has another tool to help serious dataheads make sense from large data sets: pivot tables. With pivot tables, you can easily summarize rows and columns of information, helping you quickly spot patterns in the information that you might not have noticed otherwise. If you're new to pivot tables, we made a short video to show what you can do.



Customizable administration options for Google Apps customers
IT staff members in large organizations don't all need the same level of control in their Google Apps environment. For example, a university IT help desk should be able to reset lost passwords for students, but probably doesn't need to modify school-wide email settings. On Monday, we made Google Apps much more flexible by introducing delegated administration, which lets full administrators assign partial administration privileges to other individuals.


Who's gone Google?
In the last three weeks, we've seen more than 60,000 organizations choose our cloud products for their communication and collaboration needs, and this week a couple international customers stood out from the crowd. Oxygen Design Agency based in Toronto, Canada chose Google Apps and avoided a big investment in traditional email servers when their previous email solution started to break down. With Google Apps, their downtime woes have disappeared, designers can stay in contact when they're meeting clients and the system is much simpler and more affordable to manage.

EAT. has more than 100 restaurant locations and 1,700 employees in the U.K. They serve fresh, healthy food—as well as kilobytes to customers through technology programs like an iPhone ordering app, free in-store Wi-Fi, a Twitter feed and a tap-to-pay system. EAT. selected Google Apps to replace their old system to get away from complex, costly upgrades, achieve hassle-free scalability as their business expands and securely support a wider array of mobile devices.



I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-apps-highlights-5202011.html

[G] Japan Prize honors Googler Ken Thompson for early work on UNIX

Posted: 20 May 2011 04:20 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Japan Prize honors Googler Ken Thompson for early work on UNIX

This week, our own Distinguished Engineer Ken Thompson was awarded the Japan Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in science, in the category of Information and Communications. Established in 1985, the Japan Prize is awarded annually to esteemed scientists around the world for outstanding achievement in the field of science and technology that also aids in the advancement of peace and prosperity.

Ken shares the prize along with his former collaborator, Dennis Ritchie, for their development of the operating system UNIX. They both worked at Bell Labs in 1969, when they began developing an open source operating system that emphasized portability, small modules and superior design. UNIX served as a core infrastructure element in the information field, including the Internet, and operating systems carrying on the UNIX philosophy are now being used everywhere from mobile phones to supercomputers. As Foundation Chair Hiroyuki Yoshikawa noted, UNIX has been "a major driving force behind the development of the information age" with clear overarching benefits to society.

Traditionally, the Japan Prize is awarded during a week-long celebration in Tokyo—even their Majesties, the Emperor and Empress of Japan, participate. Given the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan two months ago, the Foundation understandably concluded that the ceremonies should not be held this year. However, the Emperor insisted that the Foundation should travel to the U.S. to present the award to Ken and Dennis.

At the May 17 ceremony at the Googleplex, Ken received his recognition in front of a packed room of appreciative Googlers. The Foundation also recognized our crisis response team for their Person Finder project among other contributions, which helped Japanese citizens trying to locate lost friends and family after the March devastation.

From left to right: Vint Cerf, Ken Thompson, Hiroyuki Yoshikawa

In a short video about Ken and Dennis shown during the ceremony, Ken made this observation: "Research and development are two different things. Development has clear goals, but research is goal-less because it is the act of discovering something new. My advice to researchers is to continue enjoying the research at hand....UNIX resulted from research into new things we were merely interested in. We were very lucky it turned out to be very fruitful."

In his acceptance remarks, Ken told one of the funniest stories I have ever heard about a pet alligator that he brought to Bell Labs and that later got loose. It is on the recording of the ceremonies—check back for the video. Congratulations again to Ken and all the other Japan Prize winners and here's to continued innovation in science and technology that fosters peace and prosperity around the world.

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/japan-prize-honors-googler-ken-thompson.html

[G] A world for the making

Posted: 20 May 2011 02:06 PM PDT

YouTube Blog: A world for the making

In advance of the Maker Faire in the SF Bay Area, we've asked Make Magazine, one of our YouTube Partners, to help celebrate the makers among us.

Video sharing is a major catalyst for do-it-yourself enthusiasts of all stripes. Many of those inspired by the Faires and the general and growing DIY movement, so vibrantly alive online, turn to online videos for learning the skills they need to undertake projects, to see other's finished projects, and to continue to be inspired by what's possible when their own creative juices start running a quart low. It would almost be unheard of to think about or start to undertake a DIY project these days without doing a YouTube search to see what videos are available on the subject.

This weekend, the Bay Area will once again play host to this DIY community at Maker Faire, celebrating its tenth show (which have so far pitched its tent in the Bay Area, Austin, Detroit, and New York). To give you an idea of what's out there for the budding maker, here are a few examples of tutorial videos, project demos, and jaw-dropping inspirationals.



Tubalcain is a favorite among metal shop geeks. He's a retired machine shop teacher, now passing on a career's worth of skill and work-a-day wisdom to a new generation. Imagine what treasures would be lost if folks like Tubalcain didn't have the opportunity to easily record and share their amazing knowledge with others.



Joseph DeRose is a 13 year old kid who decided to go all-out with a fully-functional Halloween costume from the sci-fi adventure video game Metroid. He shared progress videos on YouTube (and MAKE). His father told us that the accolades and "fame" he got helped inspire him to keep going to finish this very ambitious project. We hear this all of the time, how the notoriety and high-fives that come with posting videos of in-progress or finished projects greatly fuels the process (not to mention ones ego).

For this year's Maker Faire, we produced a series of short profiles from across the spectrum of makers who'll be showing at the Faire, from instrument builders to food preservationists to custom motorcycle makers. As wonderful and diverse as this series is, it's only a taste of the many flavors offered by he Faire. Keep an eye on the MAKE YouTube channel and the MAKE site for lots of video coverage and more maker and project profiles, which will all likely inspire a new round of makers, new future Faire exhibitors, and new slew of YouTube videos.



Some 80,000 people attended last year's Bay Area event and more are expected this year, with nearly a thousand "makers" showing off everything from battling robotic warship models to wacky art cars and all manner of arts and crafts to more robots and clever computer-controlled widgets than you can shake a soldering iron at. The show is an almost mind-altering display of endless creativity, inventiveness, and technical prowess, presented in an accessible "you can too" spirit and an enthusiastic geeky state fair atmosphere. It's almost impossible to go to a Faire and not come away inspired to do something. As one maker told us after one Bay Area Faire: "I became a maker the day I left the show." He came back the next year as an exhibitor.

Gareth Branwyn, Editor-in-Chief of the MAKE website, recently watched "Utsushi - in search of Katsuhira's tiger. Part 1."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/wFIaSzNbJb0/world-for-making.html

[G] Next Wave of WebP Improvements Announced

Posted: 20 May 2011 01:07 PM PDT

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Next Wave of WebP Improvements Announced

Congratulations to the WebP developers! Announced today on the Chromium Blog: WebP improvements in compression, playback, tools, quality, application support and more. Read the post.
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/05/next-wave-of-webp-improvements.html

[G] This week's Trends: trophies, games, and a cappella

Posted: 20 May 2011 11:13 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: This week's Trends: trophies, games, and a cappella

Each weekday, we at YouTube Trends take a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube as they develop. We want take a moment to highlight some of what we've come across this week:







Check back every day for the latest about what's trending on YouTube at: www.YouTube.com/Trends



Kevin Allocca, YouTube Trends Manager, recently watched "Darth Vader Salsa Trombone Playing and Dancing."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/IANrJBVOkz8/this-weeks-trends-trophies-games-and.html

[G] Google Maps on your mobile browser

Posted: 20 May 2011 10:13 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Google Maps on your mobile browser

(Cross-posted from the Google Lat Long Blog)

With 40% of Google Maps usage on mobile devices, we want you to have a consistent Google Maps experience wherever you use it. So, today we're announcing our updated Google Maps experience for mobile browsers on Android and iOS.

Now, when you visit maps.google.com on your phone or tablet's browser and opt-in to share your location, you can use many of the same Google Maps features you're used to from the desktop . This will allow you to:
  • See your current location
  • Search for what's nearby with suggest and auto complete
  • Have clickable icons of popular businesses and transit stations
  • Get driving, transit, biking, and walking directions
  • Turn on satellite, transit, traffic, biking, and other layers
  • View Place pages with photos, ratings, hours, and more
  • When signed into your Google account, access your starred locations and My Maps
This past weekend, I was at a team off-site at a ropes course, and was to find a good deli spot to grab lunch. I opened Google Maps on my mobile browser and searched to locate a popular deli nearby. A few finger taps later, I had viewed photos and reviews on the deli's Place page and found the quickest way to get there using driving directions- all from my mobile browser.

Google Maps for mobile browsers is platform independent - you will always get a consistent experience and the latest features without needing to install any updates, no matter what phone you use.

To get started exploring Google Maps in your mobile browser, go to http://maps.google.com or any domain where Google Maps is available. Learn more in our help center.

Posted by Ali Alireza, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-maps-on-your-mobile-browser.html

[G] Launch a mobile business with The Guide to the App Galaxy

Posted: 20 May 2011 10:13 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Launch a mobile business with The Guide to the App Galaxy

The Guide to the App Galaxy, which we showed off last week at Google I/O, is designed to help mobile app developers—regardless of platform—navigate the complexities of launching an app and building a business on mobile. As you maneuver through the "galaxy" using the arrow keys on your keyboard, you'll get the basics about app promotion, monetization and measurement—with tips from Google as well as successful developers. Read more on the Official Google Blog.

Post content by Lauren Usui, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/05/launch-mobile-business-with-guide-to.html

[G] Google Search app for iOS, now even faster and easier to use

Posted: 20 May 2011 10:13 AM PDT

Official Google Mobile Blog: Google Search app for iOS, now even faster and easier to use

Two months ago, we launched a redesign of the Google Search app for iOS. We were happy that many of you liked the new look and interactivity of the app. However, we also heard your feedback about the app's speed. Today we're introducing changes that make the app more responsive as well as other visual changes that make search results even easier to read.

Faster app performance

This version of Google Search app is up to 20% more responsive as you type search queries and interact with it. As part of the speed improvements, a feature called "Just Talk" will now be off by default. Just Talk allowed you to search via voice just by bringing the phone to your ear and speaking rather than tapping the microphone icon. Turning off this feature may improve app performance, though you can easily re-enable it under the Settings > Voice Search menu.

Turn Just Talk on or off


Improved look & feel for search results

When searching on a phone, the small screen sometimes makes it difficult to read small fonts or to tap precisely on a link. To help you read and tap with ease, we've made the font of our search results bigger and the entire search result is now a tap target rather than just the link.

See the difference between previous (left) and new interface (right) with results now easier to read and select


Thank you for your feedback. Please continue to let us know how we can improve your experience by going to Settings > Help and Feedback > Feedback.

Google Search app is available for devices running iOS 3.0 and above. Download it from the App Store or by scanning the QR code below:


Posted by Nirav Savjani, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-search-app-for-ios-now-even.html

[G] Join us at Maker Faire

Posted: 20 May 2011 09:58 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Join us at Maker Faire

(Cross-posted on the SketchUp Blog)

Creativity at Google isn't just limited to the time we spend in front of our keyboards—many of us are also enthusiastic about making things with our hands. At our Google Workshops, for example, employees have the chance to use sophisticated tools and machines to physically prototype their ideas. The Street View trike and several components of our self-driving cars were built in these workshops. It's also not unheard of for Googlers to build their own zip-lines, perform crazy experiments with giant lenses and just get plain silly.

This weekend, we hope to bring this spirit of creativity and experimentation to attendees of Maker Faire Bay Area, whose mission is to "celebrate arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset."

Our own Maker Faire theme is simple: "Dream, design, build. Repeat." At the event, we'll demonstrate how Google technologies, like SketchUp and the Android Accessory Development Kit (ADK), can help you take your project from idea to object.

Design of our booth made in SketchUp

In keeping with the DIY vibe, our booth was constructed three full-size recycled shipping containers and outfitted with big screen TVs, 3D printers, CNC cutters and, most importantly—robots! Folks from the Google SketchUp team and the newly-formed Cloud Robotics team will be on hand to walk you through the steps of of designing, fabricating, building and programming your own robot.
SKPR Bot

Our booth will also have demos, games, giveaways, hands-on activities for both kids and adults and talks from folks like MAKE Editor-in-Chief Mark Frauenfelder. And to top it off, we'll open Maker Faire each morning with an Android-powered weather balloon launch at 10:00 am PDT (weather permitting).

See our Google at Maker Faire site for a full schedule of Google events, and make sure to follow @sketchup on Twitter for updates throughout the weekend.

Fellow Makers—we hope to see you there!

Posted by John Bacus, SketchUp Product Manager
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/join-us-at-maker-faire.html
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