Friday, December 9, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Picking the Right Driver

Posted: 09 Dec 2011 01:27 AM PST

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Picking the Right Driver

We are very excited to announce the availability of the fourth generation G-Series 1 VP8 hardware decoder, internally codenamed "Driver".

In this release, our focus has been on optimizing the VP8 bitstream decoder. The new architecture helps the IP run at 13% higher operating frequency allowing the decoder chips to reach higher frame rates or do multi-channel decoding more easily. At the same time, the new implementation has reduced the decoder's logic gate count by 6% which directly cuts the production cost of each chip incorporating a WebM hardware decoder. Furthermore, the revamped design allows us to do even more optimizations for the next release. With future video requirements in mind, we designed Driver to decode up to 4k by 4k video resolutions.

To make the IP evaluation easier for a chip company, the deliverables now include a bit-exact decoder C-model. This allows partners to create their own test cases for thorough performance analysis.

Modern multi-core CPUs are getting powerful enough to decode HD video, so why is having hardware accelerators still useful? One good reason is battery life. We got our hands on one of the first commercial Android tablets based on the Rockchip RK2918 chip which uses our very own WebM hardware decoder and ran some tests. We charged the battery and looped a 480p video until the battery died. For the purpose of the experiment, we had to limit the resolution because the single-core CPU of the device could not run 720p @ 30fps in pure software. The battery test was done with the VP8 hardware acceleration enabled and disabled, and at two display brightness settings. The result: with the hardware offload the battery lasted up to 36% longer which gets us one extra movie to watch on that long flight! You can see the battery discharge vs. elapsed time plots below. Needless to say, using two or four CPU cores for HD video decoding in software uses even more power and widens the gap to hardware's benefit.



The G1 v4 VP8 decoder is now available for licensing at no cost at the WebM Project hardware page. The multiformat version of the IP and support services can be accessed through our partner Verisilicon.

Aki Kuusela is Engineering Manager of the WebM Project hardware team.
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/12/picking-right-driver.html

[G] Migrating Conversion Optimizer and Enhanced CPC campaigns to “Optimize for conversions”

Posted: 09 Dec 2011 01:27 AM PST

Inside AdWords: Migrating Conversion Optimizer and Enhanced CPC campaigns to "Optimize for conversions"

If you're focused on conversions and CPA (cost-per-acquisition), you may already be using Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC to optimize your campaigns to get you more conversions at a lower cost. To ensure that your campaign settings are also in line with your conversion goals, we plan to migrate existing campaigns using Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC with "Optimize for clicks" ad rotation to "Optimize for conversions" ad rotation. Our studies have shown that campaigns moving from "Optimize for clicks" to "Optimize for conversions" see a 5% increase in conversions on average. This migration is scheduled for February 2012.

If you would prefer not to have your campaigns migrated to "Optimize for conversions" ad rotation, please fill out this form by January 31, 2012.

Not currently using Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC?

Please watch the videos below to learn more about the Conversion Optimizer and Enhanced CPC. You also can visit the AdWords Help Center to learn more about ad rotation options.



Conversion Optimizer


 
Enhanced CPC 

Posted by Andrew Truong, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/12/migrating-conversion-optimizer-and.html

[G] ACM Fellows for 2011

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 10:14 PM PST

Google Research Blog: ACM Fellows for 2011

Posted by Alfred Spector, Google Research



Cross-posted with the Official Google Blog



Congratulations to three Googlers elected ACM Fellows



It gives me great pleasure to share that the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has announced that three Googlers have been elected ACM Fellows in 2011. The ACM is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, and the Fellows Program celebrates the exceptional contributions of leaders in the computing field. This year the society has selected Amit Singhal, Peter S. Magnusson and Amin Vahdat for their outstanding work, which has provided fundamental knowledge to the field.



The recently-named Fellows join 14 prior Googler ACM Fellows and other professional society honorees in exemplifying our extraordinarily talented people. On behalf of Google, I congratulate our colleagues. They embody Google's commitment to innovation with impact, and I hope that they'll serve as inspiration to students as well as the broader community of computer scientists.



You can read more detailed summaries of their achievements below, including the official citations from the ACM.



Dr. Amit Singhal, Google Fellow



For contributions to search and information retrieval



Since 2000, Dr. Amit Singhal has been pioneering search as the technical lead for Google's core search algorithms. He is credited with most of the information retrieval design decisions in Google Search – a massive system that has responded to hundreds of billions of queries. More than anyone, Amit has a deep understanding of Google's entire algorithmic system. He is responsible for prioritization and has overseen the development of numerous algorithmic signals and their progression over time. He is the clear thought and managerial leader who has led critically important initiatives at the company. Among many other things, Amit catalyzed Universal Search, which returns multi-modal results from all available corpora; he was the force behind Realtime Search, which returns results from dynamic corpora with low latency; and he championed Google Instant, which returns search results as the user types.



Prior to joining Google, Amit boasted a prolific publication record averaging 5 publications/year from 1996-9 while at AT&T Labs. Since that time, you could say Google Search has been one long, sustained publication demonstrating a constant advancement in the state of the art of information retrieval.





Peter S. Magnusson, Engineering Director



For contributions to full-system simulation



Peter has made a tremendous impact by driving full-system simulation. His approach was so advanced, it can be used in real world production of commercial CPUs and prototyping of system software. Starting in 1991, Peter began to challenge the notion that simulators could not be made fast enough to run large workloads, nor accurate enough to run commercial operating systems. His innovations in simulator design culminated in Simics, the first academic simulator that could boot and run commercial multiprocessor workloads. Simics saw huge academic success and has been used to run simulations for research presented in several hundred subsequent publications.



Peter founded Virtutech in 1998 to commercially develop Simics, and he ultimately forged and became the leader in a new market segment for software tools. With Peter at the helm, Virtutech pushed Simics beyond several performance barriers to make it the first simulator to exceed 1 billion instructions per second and the first simulator to model over 1,000 processors. Peter joined Google in 2010 to work with cloud computing.





Dr. Amin Vahdat, Principal Engineer



For contributions to data center scalability and management



Amin's work made an impact at Google long before he arrived here. Amin is known for conducting research through bold, visionary projects that combine creativity with careful consideration of the engineering constraints needed to make them applicable in real world applications. Amin's infrastructure ideas have underpinned the shift in the computing field from the pure client-server paradigm to a landscape in which major web services are hosted "in the cloud" across multiple data centers. In addition to pioneering "third-party cloud computing" through his work on WebOS and Rent-A-Server in the mid-90s, Amin has made important advancements in managing wide-area consistency between data centers, scalable modeling of data center applications, and building scalable data center networks.



Amin's innovations have penetrated and broadly influenced the networking community within academia and industry, including Google, and his research has been recapitulated and expanded upon in a number of publications. Conferences that formerly did not even cover data centers now have multiple sessions covering variants of what Amin and his team have proposed. At Google, Amin continues to drive next-generation data center infrastructure focusing on Software Defined Networking and new opportunities from optical technologies. This is emblematic of Amin's ability to build real systems, and perhaps more significantly, convince people of their value.


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/gJZg/~3/KasnsGdFrA0/acm-fellows-for-2011.html

[G] Gmail and Contacts get better with Google+

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 10:14 PM PST

The Google Apps Blog: Gmail and Contacts get better with Google+

Posted by Mark Striebeck, Engineering Director

We want to bring you a great experience across all Google products which, for Gmail and Contacts, means understanding what you care about and delivering it instantly. With that in mind, we're introducing some new integrations with Google+ that we think will make Gmail and Contacts even better. If you use Google+, you can now grow your circles, filter emails and contacts by circles, keep all your contact information up-to-date automatically and share photos to Google+, all right from Gmail and Contacts.

Grow your circles from your email
Now when you open an email from someone on Google+, you can see the most recent post they've shared with you on the right-hand side of the conversation. If they're not in your circles yet, it's easy to add them straight from Gmail.


Find information from the people you care about most
Looking for the info on an upcoming family holiday gathering but can't remember who sent it? If you've spent time building your Google+ circles, you can now quickly use them to filter your mail, saving yourself from having to sift through that pile of daily deal emails and newsletters. You can see messages from all of your circles at once or from each individual circle. And if you want, you can show circle names on emails in your inbox. Contacts can also be filtered by circles, making it easier to view your social connections.


Keep your contact information up-to-date automatically
Manually entering contact information can be a huge time drain—so let your circles do it for you. If your contacts have a Google profile, their contact entry in Gmail will be updated with the profile information they've shared with you, including phone numbers, email addresses and more. If they change it in the future, you'll get those updates automatically. You can also make sure the people you care about have your most up-to-date contact information by updating your own Google profile and sharing it.


Share effortlessly without leaving your inbox
Lots of great images are sent through email, but sharing those photos with friends on Google+ used to require downloading the image from Gmail and re-uploading to your profile. Not anymore: Now you can share photo attachments with one quick click. The image(s) will be uploaded to your Google+ photos and be viewable only to the circles that you choose to share with.


We'll be rolling out all of these changes out over the next few days to Gmail, Gmail Contacts and the "standalone" version of Google Contacts at contacts.google.com. Please note that Google Apps users won't see the Contacts updates quite yet, but we're actively working to make them available.

All of these features (and the more to come) are the result of the great discussion that we had on Google+ with users in July. If you want to join in discussions like these, add the Gmail Google+ page to your circles. And if you haven't signed up for Google+ and would like to try these new features, visit this page to get started.
URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleAppsBlog/~3/xjxXkk7qxY4/gmail-and-contacts-get-better-with.html

[G] Testing Gmail’s new look

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 10:14 PM PST

The Google Apps Blog: Testing Gmail's new look

Posted by Mark Striebeck, Engineering Director

Editor's note: This post, like yesterday's, is more technical than most posts here, but we thought some of you might find it interesting to look inside how Gmail works.

Yesterday, we talked about how we make changes like the new look to Gmail. The new look is not just visual, but involves completely different code in the interface. Testing a large user interface (UI) change like we launched for Gmail is foremost a permutation problem. Because all the Gmail features we wrote while we developed the new UI had to work both there and in the old existing UI, we basically needed to double our testing. Plus, the new UI has to work in many browsers, in all languages Gmail is available in, which means even more testing -- and by testing, we mean functional testing, latency testing, usability testing... you get the idea! The only way to handle all of these moving parts is through a) test automation, and b) using the new look.

We use automated tests as much as possible: we test if code changes lead to functional regressions, how they affect speed and our servers, if the UI breaks in many browsers and more. The scalable build and test infrastructure at Google allows us to run these tests automatically after every single(!) code change. However, a major UI change like this requires that our automated tests are very stable. If a test relies too much on the structure of the UI, then the test starts failing - not because the functionality is broken, but because it fails to work with the new UI. Luckily, we learned this lesson many years back and most of our tests did not have this problem.

But even the best automated tests can't guarantee that everything is working well and that the visuals are pleasing. The only way to find out is to actually use the new look. For Gmail, we have special environment that gets updated every night with the latest stable code. Almost all Gmail engineers and a handful of other Googlers are using this environment for their real Gmail usage. But it turned out even daily updates were too slow for the rate of code change with the new look. So, we created an environment that updates every hour with the latest stable code. This version of Gmail was used by all engineers who worked on the redesign. It allowed us to test code changes very quickly on the real system. We were able to find many functional and usability issues here. And because we used this system and no engineer likes their email to be broken, issues were fixed very quickly. We can only do this because we have a very good coverage by our automated tests. When all these tests pass, we can be sure that most of the Gmail functionality is working. However, there could still be usability, color, layout or other challenges that tests can't catch.

Gmail's new look also put a lot of additional load on our testing team. They had to keep up with a high rate of change, test critical functionality quickly and triage a lot of reported issues. Plus, they had to test new features in both the old publicly-available UI as well as the new unlaunched UI. The dedication of our testing team helped us catch bugs early so we could fix them in preparation for launch.

Once we felt that the new look was good enough to be used by others, we turned it on for all Googlers. At Google, we "eat our own dogfood," meaning we use new products and features ourselves before releasing them to the public. Often, this is a very humbling experience. The shiny, new features, that we just developed and are so proud of are now used by people, including sales teams, managers and other non-engineers, who just want to get their job done. And believe me, Googlers are not shy when it comes to feedback! But for a project like this one, this step is absolutely critical. Our different teams at Google tested Gmail in all kinds of use cases and the feedback that we received from this phase was invaluable. It helped us to put the final touches on the new look and get ready for usability tests that were previously discussed.

We hope you've enjoyed a look into the Gmail's design, development and testing of the new look.
URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleAppsBlog/~3/BgGq0xTTAg0/testing-gmails-new-look.html

[G] GitTogether 2011

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 10:14 PM PST

Google Open Source Blog: GitTogether 2011

It has become an autumn tradition to host GitTogether, two days of unconference where Git developers, enthusiasts, and users gather at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California to share ideas on future directions of Git and to discuss the tools that support the larger ecosystem. This year was no exception. More than 55 people showed up for GitTogether 2011, and one thing that is notable is that at many of the attendees' $DAY_JOB, the combination of Git on the desktop with Gerrit Code Review on the server side has become the standard set-up to run development work.

Photo by Brandon Casey

Google's Dave Borowitz gave a talk about the recent addition of Git support to Google Code Project Hosting. Google also recently moved the Git server that hosts the Android open source community from kernel.org to an in-house Git server, which was the topic of Shawn Pearce's talk. Junio C Hamano briefly described additional workflow elements being designed to help the kernel developers ensure the authenticity of the patch-flow after the recent break-in incident at kernel.org.

Since last year's GitTogether, submodule support has been heavily enhanced. Jens Lehmann and Heiko Voigt, two Git developers who have been primarily working on the submodule support, gave an overview of where we are and what the future entails. The general direction is to make it easier to run various operations from the top-level superproject and have it go into submodules recursively when the project and the user choose to. There has been interest in using the native submodule support to update the implementation of "repo" wrapper used in Android and other projects. It seems that we are getting closer.

Support for large blobs that would not fit in the memory has been always lacking in Git. There recently has been a lot of work in the native support (e.g. storing them straight to the object store without having to read and hold the whole thing in core, checking out from the object store to the working tree without having to hold the whole thing in core, etc.). There are a few third-party tools and approaches with their own pros-and-cons, but it was generally agreed that adding a split-object encoding like Avery Pennarun's "bup" tools uses would be the right way to help support object transfer between repositories to advance the native support of large objects in Git further.

The animated diff in Roberto Tyley's Agit (git running on Android) demo was cool and received warm applause.

In addition to the technical discussions, we had a chance to get to know each other socially, enjoying lunches in the conference room (unlike the previous years, the group has grown too large to visit Google cafes without disturbing other Googlers) and dinners at some local restaurants. True to the tradition, there was a "patch of questionable value" to add different hash algorithm to Git in case SHA-1 hash collisions are found.

By Junio C Hamano, Open Source Programs


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleOpenSourceBlog/~3/TQ_9St6XF-4/gittogether-2011.html

[G] A Big Tent for free expression in The Hague

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 06:30 PM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: A Big Tent for free expression in The Hague

Posted by Rogier Klimbie, Policy Manager, Amsterdam

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the European Public Policy blog)

Google has long worked hard to raise the issue of Internet freedom in Europe. So when the Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal took the initiative to host a meeting bringing together foreign ministers from more than 16 countries in the Netherlands, we wondered what could we do to support it.



Our answer was to hook up with the Dutch NGO Free Press Unlimited and host one of our Big Tent events, which aim to bring together corporations, civil society and politicians. We were delighted when both U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Minister Rosenthal agreed to take part. Our Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt welcomed them to the Fokker Terminal in The Hague. "We are joined in a spirit to fight people who want to shut down free speech," he said. "It makes easy sense for a government to say: 'We don't like that...we're going to censor it'." The conference, he said, was organized "to make the point that this is not right."

Secretary of State Clinton called on companies to protect Internet freedoms and stop selling technology that allows repressive governments to censor the net or spy on Internet users. She urged corporations to join Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others in the Global Network Initiative to resist government efforts to impose filtering or censoring requirements. She also called on governments to fight attempts to impose national controls on the net. Any such attempt would contain people in a "series of digital bubbles rather than connecting them," she said. "It is most urgent, of course, for those around the world whose words are now censored, who are imprisoned because of what they or others have written online, who are blocked from accessing entire categories of Internet content or who are being tracked by governments seeking to keep them from connecting with one another."

Minister Uri Rosenthal called for legislation against exports of Internet surveillance material and promised 6 million euros to help Internet activists in repressive regimes. High-powered contributions came from the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes, the Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and European parliamentarian Marietje Schaake.

A panel brought together business leaders and prominent human rights activists, including the Thai webmaster Chiranuch Premchaiporn, better known as Jiew, who faces trial over comments posted on her site that were deemed insulting to the monarchy.

The Hague is our third Big Tent (see highlights here), a place where we bring together various viewpoints to discuss essential topics to the future of the Internet. The format seems to be a hit, and we plan to hold more around the world in the coming months.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-tent-for-free-expression-in-hague.html

[G] A Big Tent for free expression in The Hague

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 06:30 PM PST

Official Google Blog: A Big Tent for free expression in The Hague

Google has long worked hard to raise the issue of Internet freedom in Europe. So when the Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal took the initiative to host a meeting bringing together foreign ministers from more than 16 countries in the Netherlands, we wondered what could we do to support it.



Our answer was to hook up with the Dutch NGO Free Press Unlimited and host one of our Big Tent events, which aim to bring together corporations, civil society and politicians. We were delighted when both U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Minister Rosenthal agreed to take part. Our Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt welcomed them to the Fokker Terminal in The Hague. "We are joined in a spirit to fight people who want to shut down free speech," he said. "It makes easy sense for a government to say: 'We don't like that...we're going to censor it'." The conference, he said, was organized "to make the point that this is not right."

Secretary of State Clinton called on companies to protect Internet freedoms and stop selling technology that allows repressive governments to censor the net or spy on Internet users. She urged corporations to join Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others in the Global Network Initiative to resist government efforts to impose filtering or censoring requirements. She also called on governments to fight attempts to impose national controls on the net. Any such attempt would contain people in a "series of digital bubbles rather than connecting them," she said. "It is most urgent, of course, for those around the world whose words are now censored, who are imprisoned because of what they or others have written online, who are blocked from accessing entire categories of Internet content or who are being tracked by governments seeking to keep them from connecting with one another."

Minister Uri Rosenthal called for legislation against exports of Internet surveillance material and promised 6 million euros to help Internet activists in repressive regimes. High-powered contributions came from the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes, the Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and European parliamentarian Marietje Schaake.

A panel brought together business leaders and prominent human rights activists, including the Thai webmaster Chiranuch Premchaiporn, better known as Jiew, who faces trial over comments posted on her site that were deemed insulting to the monarchy.

The Hague is our third Big Tent (see highlights here), a place where we bring together various viewpoints to discuss essential topics to the future of the Internet. The format seems to be a hit, and we plan to hold more around the world in the coming months.

Posted by Rogier Klimbie, Policy Manager, Amsterdam

(Cross-posted on the European Public Policy blog)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-tent-for-free-expression-in-hague.html

[G] Gmail and Contacts get better with Google+

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 06:30 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Gmail and Contacts get better with Google+

We want to bring you a great experience across all Google products which, for Gmail and Contacts, means understanding what you care about and delivering it instantly. With that in mind, we're introducing some new integrations with Google+ that we think will make Gmail and Contacts even better. If you use Google+, you can now grow your circles, filter emails and contacts by circles, keep all your contact information up-to-date automatically and share photos to Google+, all right from Gmail and Contacts.

Grow your circles from your email
Now when you open an email from someone on Google+, you can see the most recent post they've shared with you on the right-hand side of the conversation. If they're not in your circles yet, it's easy to add them straight from Gmail.


Find information from the people you care about most
Looking for the info on an upcoming family holiday gathering but can't remember who sent it? If you've spent time building your Google+ circles, you can now quickly use them to filter your mail, saving yourself from having to sift through that pile of daily deal emails and newsletters. You can see messages from all of your circles at once or from each individual circle. And if you want, you can show circle names on emails in your inbox. Contacts can also be filtered by circles, making it easier to view your social connections.


Keep your contact information up-to-date automatically
Manually entering contact information can be a huge time drain—so let your circles do it for you. If your contacts have a Google profile, their contact entry in Gmail will be updated with the profile information they've shared with you, including phone numbers, email addresses and more. If they change it in the future, you'll get those updates automatically. You can also make sure the people you care about have your most up-to-date contact information by updating your own Google profile and sharing it.


Share effortlessly without leaving your inbox
Lots of great images are sent through email, but sharing those photos with friends on Google+ used to require downloading the image from Gmail and re-uploading to your profile. Not anymore: Now you can share photo attachments with one quick click. The image(s) will be uploaded to your Google+ photos and be viewable only to the circles that you choose to share with.


We'll be rolling out all of these changes out over the next few days to Gmail, Gmail Contacts and the "standalone" version of Google Contacts at contacts.google.com. Please note that Google Apps users won't see the Contacts updates quite yet, but we're actively working to make them available.

All of these features (and the more to come) are the result of the great discussion that we had on Google+ with users in July. If you want to join in discussions like these, add the Gmail Google+ page to your circles. And if you haven't signed up for Google+ and would like to try these new features, visit this page to get started.

Posted by Mark Striebeck, Engineering Director
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/gmail-and-contacts-get-better-with.html

[G] Picasa 3.9: Now with Google+ sharing and tagging

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 06:30 PM PST

Google Photos Blog: Picasa 3.9: Now with Google+ sharing and tagging

Posted by Chandrashekar Raghavan, Product Manager

Picasa 3.9, the latest update to the Picasa client, is ready for you to try out! This update includes Google+ sharing and tagging, new photo editing effects and lots more. To download Picasa 3.9, click here.

Sharing on Google+
Photos are a great way to capture that special moment, and now with Picasa 3.9, you can share those memories on Google+. When you log in with a Google+ account (sign up at google.com/+), you'll see several new features:

  • Share with people in your Google+ circles: Picasa 3.9 makes it easy to share the right photos with the right people with just a few clicks. To share an album, just click on the green "Share on Google+" button and add the specific circles you want to share your photos with. Find out more here.


And of course, you can always share by adding someone's email address or emailing them a link to the album.
  • Tag people in your circles:  When you click a photo to tag a friend, the dropdown menu now includes people in your Google+ circles in addition to your Gmail contacts. If you tag friends from Google+, Picasa will automatically suggest that you share your pictures with them when you upload your album. Learn more about tagging.


  • Upload all your pictures for free:  Picasa 3.9 offers two simple upload options for Google+ users, original size and best for web sharing. When you select the "Best for web sharing"  option, you can upload any number of pictures for free! What's more, these pictures are uploaded at high resolutions of up to 2048 px.
That's not all...
In addition to these Google+ features, all users can enjoy the following improvements (listed on our What's new page).

  • 24 new photo editing effects 
  • Side by side photo comparison
  • Simplified tray interface: Less commonly used tray icons (such as BlogThis!, Collage, Movie, Shop)  are hidden by default (you can always add them back).
Give this new version of Picasa a try, and as always, we'd love to hear your feedback.  If you'd prefer to keep using Picasa 3.8, you can download it from our archives here (Mac - Windows).
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2011/12/picasa-39-now-with-google-sharing-and.html

[G] Introducing the Google Analytics Core Reporting API

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 02:16 PM PST

Google Analytics Blog: Introducing the Google Analytics Core Reporting API

Today we are announcing the new Google Analytics Core Reporting API as a replacement for the Data Export API. This is the second phase in a larger project we started a couple months back to upgrade our APIs to new infrastructure.



The Core Reporting API has two versions.



Version 3.0 is a brand new API, with a 10x reduction in output size and support for many new client libraries, like PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript and Java. All new features will only be added to this version.



Version 2.4 is backward compatible with the legacy Data Export Version 2.3.



If you are building a new application or maintaining an existing one, we highly recommend migrating to version 3.0.



One of the biggest changes in switching to the Core Reporting API is that you now need to register your applications via the Google APIs Console and use a project ID to access the API.



With this change, we are also announcing the deprecation of the Data Export API version 2.3. This API will continue to work for 6 months, after which all v2.3 XML requests will return a v2.4 response. Also, we plan to terminate the Data Export API Account Feed. All configuration data should be retrieved through the Google Analytics Management API.



See our Data Export API changelog for all the details of the change and read our developer documentation for more details about each API.



If you have any questions feel free to reach out in our Data Export API Google group.



Thanks,

Jeetendra Soneja and Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tRaA/~3/EceisQkVJWQ/introducing-google-analytics-core.html

[G] 'Tis the season to decorate: Make your YouTube Channel a home for the holidays and beyond!

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 02:16 PM PST

YouTube Blog: 'Tis the season to decorate: Make your YouTube Channel a home for the holidays and beyond!

With the holidays upon us, many of you are busy decorating your homes to get into the spirit of the season. What better time to bring this decorative mood to your home on YouTube — your Channel — and help your audience to get more into your videos?



As part of the announcement last week of our new look, we unveiled Channel layouts to help you better showcase your videos. Since this announcement, we've been encouraged by data showing logged in usage and subscriptions on the rise. So, we're moving forward to bring the new YouTube to more of you. Starting this week, all newly created and existing basic Channels will be transitioned to the new design. YouTube Partners can opt into the new design at any point, but their Channels will not be automatically transitioned at this point. When you visit "My Channel" on YouTube, you'll see your Channel in the new design, and the "Edit Channel" button that's your gateway to exploring the various layouts. Here are some pointers to help you get started:



1. Fill your feed with great videos: Are you sharing your likes, favorites and subscriptions? Publishing these activities to your feed will keep your Channel fresh with new entertaining videos, even when you're not uploading videos.



2. Feature your very best content: Have videos or playlists you want to showcase? Add the featured tab to your Channel and choose a template that works best for you. You can do this in just a few clicks -- get started by clicking "Edit Channel."







3. Write a unique description: Create a description that tells your visitors what to expect from your Channel. Click the "Edit" button in the top right corner of your Channel. You can also add links to Facebook, Twitter and other websites.







4. Share the love: Our viewers look to you for great videos on YouTube. Give the gift of your suggestions by adding the "Other Channels" feature, and encourage other Channel owners to do the same.







Many YouTube Channels have already made the switch, and we're hoping you'll join them. You'll receive the new Channels design over the next few days. Play with the templates and design options to make your channel the most inviting home for your audience. Remember, you can always switch back to the old design by clicking the "Switch back" button in the Appearance tab should you need more time to get your Channel ready for primetime.











Looking for even more inspiration? Visit a gallery of examples, or watch a few YouTube creators tour their new Channels.



We can't wait to see what you do with your place!





The YouTube team


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/RbCAT73TYFs/tis-season-to-decorate-make-your.html

[G] Reaching Your Goals with Analytics: Webinar follow-up

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 02:15 PM PST

Google Analytics Blog: Reaching Your Goals with Analytics: Webinar follow-up

At last Thursday's webinar on Goals, we we explored one of the most fundamental analytics topics: how to translate your business objectives into measurable actions on your website. You sent in your questions, and we heard from many users that you want more guidance on turning all that data into insights.



Please read on for answers to your top questions, and watch the recording of the webinar here:









How do I do data analysis?
Performing data analysis requires understanding what your company defines as success before you can even start to figure out which reports and metrics to use. The best place to begin is to think about why you have a website, what you're trying to achieve (lead generation, site engagement, sales, et cetera), and how those objectives map to specific metrics in Google Analytics. For example, if you  have an ecommerce website, you might want to track which types of users purchased and which types of users didn't purchase. If you have a site with lots of content, you might want to understand where users came from before watching a video (e.g., were they referred by a blog post, or did they click on a paid search ad?), or you might be interested in how users moved through your site before getting to a certain page.



Once you've figured out your business objectives and defined your questions it's all about finding those metrics in the reports. We have a lot of great 60-second YouTube videos that walk through different reporting and analysis techniques.



Why should I use Goals if I don't have a product to sell?

You created your website with the hope that users would come and visit. Even if you aren't selling anything, you can use Goals to help you dive deeper into your site performance and learn where your users might be having trouble. For example, you might want to ensure that visitors to your site are able to find directions to your physical location, or you might want to be sure that they view a particular piece of content on your site. You could set up a Goal for that page, and then use Goal Flow in the Flow Visualization tool to see how users get there. You might then determine that it's too hard for users to find the information that they need. The specific metrics that you should use will depend on the purpose and goals for your site.



Which types of Goals should I use?

There are four different Goal types to choose from in Google Analytics: URL destination, Time on Site, Pages per Visit, and Event. URL destination goals are best for goals based on a visit to a key page of your site, such as a "thank you" page after a purchase. Time-on-Site or Pages-per-Visit goals are best if you're more interested in determining site engagement. Event goals should be used if you want to track specific actions such as watching a video, listening to an audio clip, or downloading a PDF. Note that the first three types of goals can be set up with no changes to your tracking code, but if you want to use Event goals, you'll need to set up Event tracking. And don't forget that if you're an online retailer, or if your conversion process pulls in dynamic monetary values, Ecommerce in Google Analytics allows you to track transactions and the order value of every purchase made on your site.



What are good trends to measure for websites without a shopping cart?

A "conversion" isn't just a sale -- it's about all of the reasons why your site exists; it's any action you want your visitors to take based on your business objectives. Analytics users often want to compare themselves to industry trends or best practices -- but the truth is that in many cases the best benchmark is your own website performance. You should define your own business goals, then develop some key performance indicators, or KPIs, and track them from month to month or quarter to quarter. It may also be helpful to set up simple surveys that ask your visitors if they've succeeded in finding the information that they were looking for on your site.



How do I set up Google Analytics for my site?

For some websites, all you need to do is copy and paste the standard JavaScript code to every page of your site -- Google Analytics will automatically generate this standard code for you, so it's very easy to implement. Read more about this in our Help Center. Other sites, such as those that span multiple domains or subdomains, require additional lines of code. If you have this type of site, you should check out our documentation on all the different implementation scenarios. Use these guidelines with your webmaster to get the code implemented properly. If you need additional help, you should consider contacting one of our certified partners for advice and assistance with all aspects of Google Analytics.



What are Goal match types/settings?

There are three match types for URL destination goals: head match, exact match, and regular expression match. Exact match is used when you have a static URL (a page that does not change based on user actions) -- you can just enter the URL as it appears on your site and Google Analytics will track the goal. Head match is used if you have a URL that has dynamic values at the end, such as session IDs. Head match will record goals for whatever URL you enter into the interface -- plus anything that comes after that. Finally, regular expression match is used for completely dynamic URLs or to capture multiple URLs in one goal. Check out our Help Center article on setting up Goals to get more information about which match type is right for you.



How do we determine what goal value to set?

Goal value is what each action is worth to you. Ask yourself how much it's worth to have someone sign up for your email newsletters, knowing they'll now get consistent messaging from your business. You may want to start with a larger objective that has a monetary value, like landing a big client, then map out the smaller steps leading up to that sale. For example, it may take an average of 25 lead forms filled out on your site to drive one sale. The value of a filled-out lead form would then be equal to an average sale divided by 25.  It may take some time to determine these attribution amounts, and you shouldn't be afraid to adjust your Goals and Goal values periodically!



How do we test alternate landing pages?

Once you've set up Goals, you may discover that certain pieces of your funnel are losing lots of visitors. Small improvements to those pages could have a dramatic impact on your conversion rates. Fortunately, we have a great tool called Google Website Optimizer that allows you to test different variations of the same page so you can improve the effectiveness of your website and your return on investment.



What are the top 5 metrics to share with the CEO?

There aren't really 5 golden metrics that will work for every single company and every single CEO. You'll need to do some brainstorming and discovery to understand which metrics in Google Analytics map to your business objectives. Think about your business strategy -- for example, are you looking to reach customers who are on-the-go? Then it's probably helpful to track the percentage of visits and conversions coming from mobile, so you can tell the CEO about the success of your mobile strategy. Do you want to make sure that you're getting a good return on your marketing investments? Then you should consider tracking the percentage of conversions coming from advertising vs. other sources (this is a good place to use Multi-Channel Funnels!).



Although it may take some work to determine the relevant metrics, it's worth the effort to ensure that you are presenting information that tells the right story about your business. Once you've defined your metrics, you can use Google Analytics dashboards to pull everything together in an easy-to-read format. So dive into the Google Analytics reports and find your story!



Please also check our help center for further details on all of your questions.





Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/tRaA/~3/EIrWDZp0hYA/reaching-your-goals-with-analytics.html

[G] Gmail and Contacts get better with Google+

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 02:15 PM PST

Official Gmail Blog: Gmail and Contacts get better with Google+

Posted by Mark Striebeck, Engineering Director

We want to bring you a great experience across all Google products which, for Gmail and Contacts, means understanding what you care about and delivering it instantly. With that in mind, we're introducing some new integrations with Google+ that we think will make Gmail and Contacts even better. If you use Google+, you can now grow your circles, filter emails and contacts by circles, keep all your contact information up-to-date automatically and share photos to Google+, all right from Gmail and Contacts.

Grow your circles from your email
Now when you open an email from someone on Google+, you can see the most recent post they've shared with you on the right-hand side of the conversation. If they're not in your circles yet, it's easy to add them straight from Gmail.


Find information from the people you care about most
Looking for the info on an upcoming family holiday gathering but can't remember who sent it? If you've spent time building your Google+ circles, you can now quickly use them to filter your mail, saving yourself from having to sift through that pile of daily deal emails and newsletters. You can see messages from all of your circles at once or from each individual circle. And if you want, you can show circle names on emails in your inbox. Contacts can also be filtered by circles, making it easier to view your social connections.


Keep your contact information up-to-date automatically
Manually entering contact information can be a huge time drain—so let your circles do it for you. If your contacts have a Google profile, their contact entry in Gmail will be updated with the profile information they've shared with you, including phone numbers, email addresses and more. If they change it in the future, you'll get those updates automatically. You can also make sure the people you care about have your most up-to-date contact information by updating your own Google profile and sharing it.


Share effortlessly without leaving your inbox
Lots of great images are sent through email, but sharing those photos with friends on Google+ used to require downloading the image from Gmail and re-uploading to your profile. Not anymore: Now you can share photo attachments with one quick click. The image(s) will be uploaded to your Google+ photos and be viewable only to the circles that you choose to share with.


We'll be rolling out all of these changes out over the next few days to Gmail, Gmail Contacts and the "standalone" version of Google Contacts at contacts.google.com. Please note that Google Apps users won't see the Contacts updates quite yet, but we're actively working to make them available.

All of these features (and the more to come) are the result of the great discussion that we had on Google+ with users in July. If you want to join in discussions like these, add the Gmail Google+ page to your circles. And if you haven't signed up for Google+ and would like to try these new features, visit this page to get started.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/gmail-and-contacts-get-better-with.html

[G] Project for Awesome: 5 years of doing good

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 02:15 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Project for Awesome: 5 years of doing good

Today's guest post comes from Hank and John Green, aka the VlogBrothers, with a special message about how you can dramatically increase the level of awesome that exists around the world this year.



In 2007, we asked everyone on YouTube to upload videos for their favorite causes and charities on December 17. We wanted to help raise awareness and donations for awesome causes that we all care about—big and small, from near and far. This YouTube community-driven movement became known as Project for Awesome.



This year is now the 5th anniversary of Project for Awesome, and we want you to help make it more awesome than ever. Here's how:



Make an innovative video promoting your favorite charity and upload it on December 17 starting at Noon ET. Make it original, and most importantly, make it awesome. Use this thumbnail as your thumbnail for the video, and tag it with "p4a2011" (here's info about using thumbnails). It's our hope that if we all upload on the same day, all of YouTube and the Internet will be taken over by a flurry of awesomeness.



Awesome waits for no one, so here are some ideas to get started:


  • Organize a campaign with your community and film it. This can be anything from a bake sale to rebuilding a village. There are many non-profits that allow you to build teams such as Charity:Water, Kiva, and Causes.com.

  • Check out some of our favorite Project for Awesome videos below.

  • Take one of your existing videos and spend some time using the YouTube Video Editor to make it even better.


On December 17, we hope all of you around the Internet and around the world upload videos for your favorite causes. Then, share your favorites and donate to the causes you think are awesome. Here are some past videos to get you started:







Thanks for reading, and don't forget to be awesome.



Hank and John Green of the VlogBrothers recently watched "Pas De Deux - Sean Malone (Remix)."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/SMIQ_Rhtglw/project-for-awesome-5-years-of-doing.html

[G] Congratulations to three Googlers elected ACM Fellows

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 02:15 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Congratulations to three Googlers elected ACM Fellows

It gives me great pleasure to share that the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has announced that three Googlers have been elected ACM Fellows in 2011. The ACM is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, and the Fellows Program celebrates the exceptional contributions of leaders in the computing field. This year the society has selected Amit Singhal, Peter S. Magnusson and Amin Vahdat for their outstanding work, which has provided fundamental knowledge to the field.

The recently-named Fellows join 14 prior Googler ACM Fellows and other professional society honorees in exemplifying our extraordinarily talented people. On behalf of Google, I congratulate our colleagues. They embody Google's commitment to innovation with impact, and I hope that they'll serve as inspiration to students as well as the broader community of computer scientists.

You can read more detailed summaries of their achievements below, including the official citations from the ACM.

Dr. Amit Singhal, Google Fellow
For contributions to search and information retrieval

Since 2000, Dr. Amit Singhal has been pioneering search as the technical lead for Google's core search algorithms. He is credited with most of the information retrieval design decisions in Google Search – a massive system that has responded to hundreds of billions of queries. More than anyone, Amit has a deep understanding of Google's entire algorithmic system. He is responsible for prioritization and has overseen the development of numerous algorithmic signals and their progression over time. He is the clear thought and managerial leader who has led critically important initiatives at the company. Among many other things, Amit catalyzed Universal Search, which returns multi-modal results from all available corpora; he was the force behind Realtime Search, which returns results from dynamic corpora with low latency; and he championed Google Instant, which returns search results as the user types.

Prior to joining Google, Amit boasted a prolific publication record averaging 5 publications/year from 1996-9 while at AT&T Labs. Since that time, you could say Google Search has been one long, sustained publication demonstrating a constant advancement in the state of the art of information retrieval.

Peter S. Magnusson, Engineering Director
For contributions to full-system simulation

Peter has made a tremendous impact by driving full-system simulation. His approach was so advanced, it can be used in real world production of commercial CPUs and prototyping of system software. Starting in 1991, Peter began to challenge the notion that simulators could not be made fast enough to run large workloads, nor accurate enough to run commercial operating systems. His innovations in simulator design culminated in Simics, the first academic simulator that could boot and run commercial multiprocessor workloads. Simics saw huge academic success and has been used to run simulations for research presented in several hundred subsequent publications.

Peter founded Virtutech in 1998 to commercially develop Simics, and he ultimately forged and became the leader in a new market segment for software tools. With Peter at the helm, Virtutech pushed Simics beyond several performance barriers to make it the first simulator to exceed 1 billion instructions per second and the first simulator to model over 1,000 processors. Peter joined Google in 2010 to work with cloud computing.

Dr. Amin Vahdat, Principal Engineer
For contributions to data center scalability and management

Amin's work made an impact at Google long before he arrived here. Amin is known for conducting research through bold, visionary projects that combine creativity with careful consideration of the engineering constraints needed to make them applicable in real world applications. Amin's infrastructure ideas have underpinned the shift in the computing field from the pure client-server paradigm to a landscape in which major web services are hosted "in the cloud" across multiple data centers. In addition to pioneering "third-party cloud computing" through his work on WebOS and Rent-A-Server in the mid-90s, Amin has made important advancements in managing wide-area consistency between data centers, scalable modeling of data center applications, and building scalable data center networks.

Amin's innovations have penetrated and broadly influenced the networking community within academia and industry, including Google, and his research has been recapitulated and expanded upon in a number of publications. Conferences that formerly did not even cover data centers now have multiple sessions covering variants of what Amin and his team have proposed. At Google, Amin continues to drive next-generation data center infrastructure focusing on Software Defined Networking and new opportunities from optical technologies. This is emblematic of Amin's ability to build real systems, and perhaps more significantly, convince people of their value.

Posted by Alfred Spector, Google Research
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/congratulations-to-three-googlers.html

[G] Atmosphere 2011: A view from the cloud

Posted: 08 Dec 2011 07:34 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Atmosphere 2011: A view from the cloud

Posted by Chris Farinacci, Global Marketing Director, Google Enterprise

(Cross posted from the Official Google Blog.)

Last month 350 CIOs and thousands of live stream viewers joined us for Atmosphere 2011, our annual cloud event. Leading companies from around the world came to explore how businesses are using the web to drive collaboration, innovation and growth in their organizations. In case you missed them, the keynotes are now available on our YouTube channel. You can watch the entire conference in order on the Atmosphere playlist.

This year's speakers included a best-selling author, award-winning computer scientists, Google executives and product managers, and several Google Apps customers including Flint Waters, CIO of the state of Wyoming, Bryson Koehler, SVP of Global Revenue and Guest Technology at IHG, Michael O'Brien, CIO of Journal Communications and Christine Atkins, VP of Group IT at Ahold.

One of the highlights was listening to Christine Atkins talk about Ahold's experience moving 55,000 users to Google Apps and how, in her words, "Google Apps is helping us deliver on the promise that we've all been seeking: that of strong collaboration platforms that help our company come together and work together." You can watch Christine's presentation here:

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/12/atmosphere-2011-view-from-cloud.html
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