Friday, August 5, 2011

Googland

Googland


[G] New look for Google Affiliate Network's website

Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:45 PM PDT

Google Affiliate Network: New look for Google Affiliate Network's website

This week, we launched a new look for Google Affiliate Network's website. In addition to a refreshed design, we've added new features to provide you with fresh product updates, educational resources, success stories, and more.



New features:
Throughout the website, you'll find diverse stories of advertisers, publishers and partners who have succeeded with Google Affiliate Network. We hope they inspire you and that you'll share your story with us, too.

Check out the new website and tell us what you think!

Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://googleaffiliatenetwork-blog.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-look-for-google-affiliate-networks.html

[G] Try out a new look and keyboard shortcuts for your documents list

Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:45 PM PDT

The Google Apps Blog: Try out a new look and keyboard shortcuts for your documents list

As part of our effort to provide an improved and consistent web experience across Google products, we'd like to invite you to try out a new look for the documents list that's rolling out to users over the next few days. If it's available to you, you'll be able to preview the new look by clicking on Try the new look under the gear icon in the upper right. You'll be able to return to the classic look using the same menu.

Classic look

New look

While using the new interface, you may want to see more of the items in your documents list on the screen at one time. To do this, click on the gear icon in the upper right and go to Documents settings. Under Row height, you'll be able to select the option to use a denser view.

As part of this new look, we've also added keyboard shortcuts to help you easily navigate your documents list without a mouse. For example, when selecting a document, use the (down arrow) to move down the list and the (up arrow) to move back up. Once you find the item you're looking for, type a to open the Actions menu. Then, use the and arrow keys to navigate the Actions menu, and hit to select an action.

The Create new shortcuts are also convenient for creating new docs while you're working. Simply hit Shift + T to create a new text document, Shift + S to create a spreadsheet, or Shift + C to create a new collection.

Can't remember all those shortcuts? Just remember the question mark. Type ? when you're not in the search bar, and a window will appear showing all available shortcuts.


These shortcuts will only be available if you're using the new interface. Keep an eye out for more changes to the new interface as it evolves, and make sure to tell us what you think about the new design in this brief feedback form so we can continue to improve your experience.

Posted by: Ted Chen, Software Engineer
URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleAppsBlog/~3/Ay3_2baLsNI/try-out-new-look-and-keyboard-shortcuts.html

[G] New in Labs: Preview Pane

Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:45 PM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Preview Pane

Posted by Maciek Nowakowski, Associate Product Manager

When I check my email, I often rely on the message snippets to figure out which messages to open first. Sometimes, though, I want to see more than snippets, which is why I'm happy to announce that you can now preview messages in your inbox using a new feature in Gmail Labs called Preview Pane. It's probably a very familiar layout to those of you who have used Gmail on a tablet device. We also think it's going to work especially well if you have a larger resolution screen.


Click the image above to see a larger version.

After you enable Preview Pane from the Labs tab in Gmail Settings you'll see a toggle button in the top right corner of your message list, which lets you switch between preview and list views.


For those of you who have more vertical space you can also move the preview pane below your message list. You can enable this using the dropdown arrow next to the toggle button:


By default there is a 3-second delay in marking a conversation as read after previewing it. If that doesn't feel natural to you, you can change the timing in the General tab of settings:


If you'd like to remove the new layout, simply return to Gmail Settings and disable the lab. Finally, don't forget to let us know what you think about the latest addition to Gmail Labs.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-in-labs-preview-pane.html

[G] VP8 Codec SDK "Cayuga" Released

Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:45 PM PDT

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: VP8 Codec SDK "Cayuga" Released

Today we're making available "Cayuga," the third named release of the VP8 Codec SDK (libvpx). Note that the VP8 format definition has not changed, only the SDK. You can download the Cayuga libvpx snapshot (version 0.9.7) from the WebM Project Downloads page or clone it from our Git repository.

As promised, for Cayuga we targeted more areas for encoder speed improvements. Using our previous release ("Bali") as a benchmark, we've seen the following VP8 encoder improvements on x86 processors.
  • +11.5% "Best" mode (at speed 0)
  • +21.5% "Good" mode (at speed 0) 
  • +22.5% "Real-time" mode (at speed 6, a typical speed for videoconferencing applications)
We also compared the encoder performance of "Cayuga" to our first named release ("Aylesbury") release and got the following results:
  • +35% "Best" mode (at speed 0)
  • +75% "Good" mode (at speed 0) 
  • +52% "Real-time" mode (at speed 6)
These improvements are summarized in the following chart:

We saw the following improvements on ARM processors:
  • On ARM Cortex A9 with Neon extensions, real-time encoding of video telephony content is 35% faster than Bali on single core and 48% faster on multi-core.
  • On the NVIDIA Tegra2 platform, real time encoding is 40% faster than Bali.
For more technical readers, here are some detailed improvements we made in the libvpx Cayuga encoder:
  • Improved the datarate control in one-pass realtime compression. 
  • Improved one-pass variable bitrate (VBR) visual quality by average ~7% across a large collection of videos.
  • Improved video conferencing user experience through error concealment, a feature that produces high visual quality frames even under conditions of substantial packet loss. 
  • Improved the ARM v6 and v7 encoders and decoders through greater use of SIMD features and strong use of cache prefetching.
Thanks to everyone who worked on Cayuga, and welcome to our eleven new contributors:
  • Alok Ahuja
  • Alexis Ballier 
  • Ronald Bultje
  • Rafael Ávila de Espíndola
  • Ralph Giles
  • Stefan Holmer
  • Mike Hommey
  • Taekhyun Kim
  • Aron Rosenberg
  • Joshua Bleecher Snyder
  • Thijs Vermeir
John Luther is Product Manager of the WebM Project.
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/08/vp8-codec-sdk-cayuga-released.html

[G] Try out a new look and keyboard shortcuts for your documents list

Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:45 PM PDT

Docs Blog: Try out a new look and keyboard shortcuts for your documents list

As part of our effort to provide an improved and consistent web experience across Google products, we'd like to invite you to try out a new look for the documents list that's rolling out to users over the next few days. If it's available to you, you'll be able to preview the new look by clicking on Try the new look under the gear icon in the upper right. You'll be able to return to the classic look using the same menu.

Classic look

New look

While using the new interface, you may want to see more of the items in your documents list on the screen at one time. To do this, click on the gear icon in the upper right and go to Documents settings. Under Row height, you'll be able to select the option to use a denser view.

As part of this new look, we've also added keyboard shortcuts to help you easily navigate your documents list without a mouse. For example, when selecting a document, use the (down arrow) to move down the list and the (up arrow) to move back up. Once you find the item you're looking for, type a to open the Actions menu. Then, use the and arrow keys to navigate the Actions menu, and hit to select an action.

The Create new shortcuts are also convenient for creating new docs while you're working. Simply hit Shift + T to create a new text document, Shift + S to create a spreadsheet, or Shift + C to create a new collection.

Can't remember all those shortcuts? Just remember the question mark. Type ? when you're not in the search bar, and a window will appear showing all available shortcuts.


These shortcuts will only be available if you're using the new interface. Keep an eye out for more changes to the new interface as it evolves, and make sure to tell us what you think about the new design in this brief feedback form so we can continue to improve your experience.

Posted by: Ted Chen, Software Engineer
URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/08/try-out-new-look-and-keyboard-shortcuts.html

[G] Highlights from this week's Google CPG Industry Newsletter

Posted: 04 Aug 2011 06:45 PM PDT

Official Google CPG Blog: Highlights from this week's Google CPG Industry Newsletter

Here are the top highlights from this week's Google CPG industry newsletter. Happy Reading!

WHAT'S HOT

1. Think Quarterly: At Google, we aim to help people and organizations navigate a world gone digital. That's why we created Think Quarterly. We don't want to review what's happened; we want to prepare you for what happens next. For each issue, we tap our homegrown visionaries, plus heads of industry, innovators and experts, to lend their insights and outlooks on the digital future. We hope it gives a view into what drives us as a company and inspires those of you who lead the way. We hope you find the content engaging and insightful. Included are insights from Dennis Woodside on his vision for our industry, as well as SVP of Advertising, Susan Wojcicki's Eight Principles for Innovation. Think Quarterly is very much an experiment, and like any other Google product we aim to iterate, so please let me know what you think. And if you like it, +1 it!

2. What Do You Love? Would you like to find out everything you can about the things you love in one place? Now you can. Check out What Do You Love? Type in something you love: monkeys, photography, or Merlot, whatever comes to mind. Enjoy.

3. New Tablet Targeting Options Now Available: You can find the new "Tablets with full browsers" targeting option under the Networks and devices section of the Settings tab within your AdWords account. Read more on the Inside AdWords blog here.

4. Google+ Project Update - Sparks: Remember when your Grandpa used to cut articles out of the paper and send them to you? That was nice. That's kind of what Sparks does: looks for videos and articles it thinks you'll like, so when you're free, there's always something to watch, read, and share.

GOOGLE NEWS

How brands can get started on Google+
Marketers shouldn't wait around to get started with Google+, writes Heidi Cohen. Even if Google won't let your brand carve out a page of its own, it's important for individual marketers to climb aboard, so they can start figuring out the site's features and check out how the potential audience is using the network. "As a marketer, it's critical to get onto Google+ and start kicking the social media tires," Cohen writes.

"Android is Top Mobile Operating System in the U.S., Says Nielsen" (ReadWriteWeb, July 28):

"Today Nielsen is reporting that Google's mobile operating system Android now has the largest smart phone operating system (OS) market share here in the U.S. The top three mobile OS's, according to this new data, are Android (39%), Apple's iOS (28%) and RIM (20%)."

MOBILE UPDATE

Brand marketers see a future in mobile
About half of brand marketers have mobile strategies but their spending remains minimal, with a majority planning to lay out less than $50,000 this year and only 7% budgeting more than $300,000, according to an IAB-sponsored survey of 300 top brand marketing executives. But 72% of those surveyed said they planned to boost mobile spending over the next two years, with branded mobile sites and display ads cited as two of the leading strategic components.

URL: http://google-cpg.blogspot.com/2011/08/highlights-from-this-weeks-google-cpg.html

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