Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Magic moments in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, thanks to the web

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Magic moments in Egypt's parliamentary elections, thanks to the web

Today more than 50 million Egyptians started heading to the polls to cast their votes for an independent Parliament, many for the first time in their lives. The revolution in Egypt, which captured the attention of the world beginning in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011, made this possible by opening the floodgates of political participation.


With the free flow of information online, people can connect and engage in a open dialogue about the future of Egypt. The web is enabling many new voters to become better informed on their choice of candidates, and letting politicians reach electors in new and exciting ways.

Getting information about the new rules and the new players is no small feat for Egyptians: there are nearly 11,000 candidates vying for 498 seats across 27 governorates nationwide during a multi-stage election that started today and lasts until March 2012. We're doing our best to organize information to make it easier for voters to find everything they need in one place. For example, millions of Egyptians have learned where they can vote through our landing page, www.google.com.eg/elections.


We've also worked to give a voice to thousands of candidates to reach voters through interactive video. The YouTube Townhall includes nearly 400 videos posted by candidates and political parties explaining where they stand on issues from education and the economy to health care and political reform, sparking vibrant conversations in cafés from Alexandria to Aswan.

We're helping voters and politicians connect not just in Egypt, but throughout the entire Middle East and the world. For Tunisia's recent parliamentary elections, we partnered with startup news portal Tunisia Live to offer a training workshop in Tunis on Google tools and social media for politicians. In France, we set up a special YouTube site for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

The Internet is playing an increasingly significant role in Egypt. It's bolstering civic engagement and becoming a powerful mechanism for information sharing—crucial to helping the nation make the tough transition to democracy.

Posted by Samir ElBahaie, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs for Google Middle East North Africa
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/magic-moments-in-egypts-parliamentary.html

[G] Five tips for stress-free holiday shopping

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Five tips for stress-free holiday shopping

Today, on Cyber Monday—the biggest online shopping day of the year—digi-savvy shoppers will take to the web to get ahead on their holiday shopping. You've managed to avoid the Black Friday crowds, but are your online shopping skills up to snuff? Just in the nick of time, here are five tips on how to use Google tools to save time and money this holiday shopping season.

Tip #1. Avoid the lines and parking nightmares—shop from your couch with Google Catalogs
Today we're announcing a version of Google Catalogs for Android tablets, available for free in Android Market. Now shoppers can browse Google Catalogs on both iOS and Android tablets. With over 125 of your favorite brands and 400 issues across a myriad of categories, Google Catalogs puts all your favorite print catalogs right at your fingertips. You'll find pages of gift and decorating ideas and get a head start on your holiday shopping list.

Browse Pottery Barn's Christmas 2011 catalog on Google Catalogs - now available for Android tablets.

Tip #2. Let Google Product Search do your research for you
With so many brands, models and features to choose from, sometimes finding the perfect gift—especially when it comes to electronics and gadgets—can be overwhelming. Google Product Search gives you detailed product information, reviews and price comparisons for all the gifts on your list.

We recently launched a new comparison feature for electronics that lets you quickly see how a particular product stacks up against other similar models and brands. For example, on the Nikon D3100 product page, you can now see—at a glance—feature comparisons between the D3100 and other Nikon models as well as cameras from other brands. Read more about other recent Product Search updates on the Google Commerce blog.

A quick comparison shows the differences in resolution and other camera features.

Tip #3. Bring Google Shopper along as your mobile shopping assistant
Have you ever found yourself standing in a store, trying to decide between, say, two blenders, and wishing you could consult an expert? Google Shopper can help. Wherever you are, this free mobile app for Android and iPhone lets you scan a barcode or search by voice or text to get detailed product information, read reviews and compare prices online and at local stores. You can also use Google Shopper to see if a product is in stock nearby.

Research, share and find products near you with Google Shopper.

Tip #4. Take advantage of holiday savings with Google Offers
Before you hit main street for a shopping extravaganza, check out Google Offers for great deals and save 50% or more on local places to eat, shop and play. Google Offers has teamed up with a number of great retailers this holiday season, making it easy to save while you shop. You can also find and buy great deals from Google Offers with the free Android app.

Tip #5. Simplify your online and offline shopping experience with Google Wallet
Save time and money by shopping with Google Wallet — a smart, virtual wallet that stores your payment cards, offers and more on your phone and online. When you shop with merchants that accept Google Wallet online just use your Google Wallet username and password to complete your purchase—there's no need to pull out your credit card or enter your shipping address with every transaction. If you're at the register at stores like American Eagle, Macy's, Gap, Inc or any of our other merchant partners, take a minute to try the Google Wallet app, available on Nexus S 4G for Sprint, to tap, pay and save.

I hope these tips and Google tools help to make your shopping experience a little easier (and fun!) this Cyber Monday, and throughout the holiday season.

Posted by Stephanie Tilenius, Vice President of Commerce

(Cross-posted on the Commerce blog)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/five-tips-for-stress-free-holiday.html

[G] Celebrating innovation in digital journalism

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Celebrating innovation in digital journalism

Journalism is changing fast as media businesses adapt and experiment with ways of gathering and reporting the news in the digital age. Here's news of two contests we're sponsoring to help stimulate innovation in digital reporting.

IPI News Innovation Contest
We're pleased to congratulate the first three winners selected by the Vienna-based International Press Institute in its News Innovation Contest. The prizes are part of a $5 million global contest launched by Google last year.

Today's winners, who will receive grants totalling $600,000, are:
  • World Wide Web Foundation for its Voice-based Citizen Journalism project in France, the Netherlands and Mali. The project will enable voice-based citizen journalists to gather and deliver news in rural areas through community radio and mobile phones.
  • Internews Europe for its crowd-sourced journalism project in five African countries. The project aims to promote expertise in crowd-sourced journalism techniques to contribute to press freedom.
  • Journalism Leaders Programme at the University of Central Lancashire, for its digital media training programme for the U.K. and Turkey. The project will focus on training in data journalism skills and the fundamentals of digital business aimed at disseminating learning to the wider news industry.
This is just the first round of the contest. In 2012, the IPI will consider a new set of proposals and award the remainder of the grant. More details are available at www.ipinewscontest.org.

GEN Data Journalism Awards
In Hong Kong, at the News World Summit hosted by the Global Editors Network, we're announcing a partnership on a new data journalism contest. GEN's Data Journalism Awards will celebrate the best examples of this new form of journalism from established news organisations and newcomers.


The winners will be chosen by an international jury and prizes awarded at the next GEN conference in Paris next year. Details on how to take part are at http://www.globaleditorsnetwork.org/djawards/.

We look forward to seeing the impact these initiatives will have on digital journalism and hope they will encourage continued experimentation at every level of the media.

Posted by Peter Barron, Director, External Relations, Europe, Middle East and Africa

(Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/celebrating-innovation-in-digital.html

[G] The evolution of search in six minutes

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

Official Google Blog: The evolution of search in six minutes

This summer we posted a video that takes a peek under the hood of search, sharing the methodology behind search ranking and evaluation. Through this methodology, we make roughly 500 improvements to search in a typical year. As we often discuss, that's a lot of change, and it can be hard to make sense of it all.

Following up on our last video, we wanted to share with you a short history of the evolution of search, highlighting some of the most important milestones from the past decade—and a taste of what's coming next.


Our goal is to get you to the answer you're looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek. That means you don't generally need to know about the latest search feature in order to take advantage of it— simply type into the box as usual and find the answers you're looking for.

However, for those of you looking to deepen your understanding of how search has evolved, the video highlights some important trends:
  • Universal Results: With Universal Search—which returns results like images, videos, and news, in addition to webpages—we're helping you find all different kinds of information in the same place. We've continued to make search more comprehensive, enabling you to find products, places, patents, books, maps and more.
  • Quick Answers: Today on Google you'll find more than just a list of links to websites. You'll find Quick Answers at the top of the page for a wide variety of topics, including flight times, sports scores, weather and dozens more. As our technology gets better, we're beginning to answer harder questions for you, right on the search results page.
  • The Future of Search: We've also been focused on developing faster ways to search and save time, whether we're shaving seconds off searches with Google Instant or helping you search from your phone with Voice Search. Searching should be as easy as thinking, and the future looks bright!
As part of making the video we also created a timeline of search features. It's not the first timeline we've done, but I think this one does a nice job of categorizing the different kinds of Universal Results and Quick Answers we've added over the years:

The timeline depicts the approximate dates when we launched particular search feature enhancements. You can also download a larger image by following this link.
It's been exciting to be part of the evolution of search over the past decade, and we're thrilled about what's in store next. If the past is any indication, we don't know what search will look like in 2020, but we wouldn't be surprised if it looks nothing like it does today.

Posted by Ben Gomes, Google Fellow

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search blog)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/evolution-of-search-in-six-minutes.html

[G] Calling all budding scientists: Deadline extended to enter YouTube Space Lab

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Calling all budding scientists: Deadline extended to enter YouTube Space Lab

Last month we challenged you to come up with an idea for an experiment that an astronaut can carry out in space, for the chance to watch NASA astronauts conduct it aboard the International Space Station live on YouTube next year. We know the many registered teams out there are busy preparing their experiments for YouTube Space Lab, so we're extending the deadline by a week to December 14, 2011 to help get your entry just right.



Here's YouTube Space Lab Judge, Professor Stephen Hawking, to inspire you to join if you haven't registered already:







Be sure to read the How to Enter guide on our YouTube channel to learn what you need to do to submit your entry. You can also read about the amazing prizes for the regional and global winners, ranging from ZERO-G flights to an authentic astronaut training experience in Russia.



And if you just want to watch cool space videos? We're regularly adding playlists on the channel from What is space?, to Early Pioneers, and the US vs USSR. There's more to come so make sure you subscribe to the channel to keep up with the latest.



Be sure to read the updated official rules and blast off to YouTube Space Lab today!



Zahaan Bharmal, YouTube Space Lab lead, recently watched "Mars Science Laboratory Lifts Off for Red Planet."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/ajOAW66PW80/calling-all-budding-scientists-deadline.html

[G] New ways to take action on top of page bid estimates

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

Inside AdWords: New ways to take action on top of page bid estimates


A few months ago, we launched top of page bid estimates to provide additional assistance in optimizing your ads to show above the search results. Today, we wanted to let you know about ways to more easily and scalably take action on these bid estimates, now that they're supported by Automated Rules and AdWords Editor 9.7.1.

Setting up top of page bid rules with Automated Rules

You can use automated rules with top of page bid estimates to raise the bids of your keywords to the recommended top of page bid, and run this rule on a daily basis.

To create this rule:
  1. Click All online campaigns in the left panel of your AdWords account.
  2. Click the Keywords tab.
  3. Click the Automate button, and select "Raise bids to top of page CPC when..." from the drop-down. 
  4. Fill out the form as desired.


Note: Be sure to specify a maximum bid, In addition, you might want to only raise bids for keywords that have a good quality score (for example, Quality score >= 6), so as not to bid up keywords that need to be optimized.

What you can do in AdWords Editor 9.7.1

AdWords Editor 9.7.1 launched last week with support for managing bids based on top of page bid estimates.  New functionality was added to allow:
  • Viewing "Top of page bid estimates" on the Keywords tab
  • Raising bids to "Top of page bid estimates" using Advanced bid changes
  • Filtering keywords based on "Top of page bid estimates" within Advanced Search and "Find duplicates"
For more details on AdWords Editor 9.7.1, please see the release notes and the download center.





Posted by Andrew Truong, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-ways-to-take-action-on-top-of-page.html

[G] Holiday insights and tips from Think with Google!

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

Inside AdWords: Holiday insights and tips from Think with Google!

Think it's too late for holiday marketing initiatives? Think again!

Today the Think with Google team launches December Adventure, where every weekday between now and December 23, they'll share useful, surprising and delightful insights and opportunities for sparking your online holiday sales via search ads, mobile and more. It's prime time for online shopping, so follow Think with Google on Google+ for daily tips! You can also add this helpful holiday calendar to automatically see these tips on your Google Calendar.

Our December Adventure is just beginning - so bundle up, log on, and get ready to grow your holiday business day by day. Click here to visit Think with Google on Google+. To share the glow of these holiday insights, use #decemberadventure.



Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords Crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/11/holiday-insights-and-tips-from-think.html

[G] Google Catalogs is now available for Android tablets

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

Official Google Mobile Blog: Google Catalogs is now available for Android tablets

For many of us, the arrival of piles of catalogs marks the start of the holiday shopping season. But what if you could have all your favorite catalogs in one place, with the latest issues always available at your fingertips?

Starting today, Google Catalogs is available for Android tablets, as well as the iPad, giving you a new way to shop from the comfort of your couch. With rich product images, videos, and the ability to curate your own personal collages to share with friends, Google Catalogs makes browsing your favorite mail order catalogs easy, fun and interactive.

Google Catalogs features more than 125 brands you know and love like Nordstrom, Williams-Sonoma, Nike and Sephora. The app currently has over 400 digital catalog issues to browse across categories such as mens & women's apparel, jewelry, gifts, gourmet, toys, kids, gadgets, sports & athletics and outdoor adventure.

Download the free Google Catalogs app for Android available in the US from Android Market or the iPad from the App Store today. To learn more, visit www.google.com/catalogs.



Posted by Abigail Holtz, Business Product Manager, Google Catalogs team


URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-catalogs-is-now-available-for.html

[G] Hide morning and night hours in Calendar

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 10:46 PM PST

Official Gmail Blog: Hide morning and night hours in Calendar

Posted by Oleksandr Kyreiev, Software Engineer

How often do you have something scheduled at 3am? What about 10pm? If the answer is almost never, you might want to try out the Hide morning and night lab in Google Calendar.


With a simple drag of a slider you can fold all those empty hours into a single row to set the time range you want to hide. The folded rows still show all your events, just in more compact form.


We're launching this in Calendar Labs (Settings > Labs) to gather feedback on how people end up using this feature. So don't forget to tell us what you think about this latest addition.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/hide-morning-and-night-hours-in.html
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