Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Googland

Googland

[G] Data and code open sourced from Google's Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal project

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 12:25 AM PST

Google Open Source Blog: Data and code open sourced from Google's Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal project


Google's RE<C renewable energy research project has recently open sourced a new tool and a significant amount of data to support future CSP (concentrating solar power) heliostat development.



HOpS Open Source Site

HOpS, heliostat optical simulation, is an open source software tool for accurately and efficiently performing optical simulations of fields of heliostats, the actuated mirror assemblies that direct sunlight onto a target in CSP applications.

Google used this tool to help evaluate heliostat field layouts and calculate heat input into a CSP receiver for power production. HOpS works by passing "packets" of light between optical elements (the sun, heliostats, and elements of the target surface), tracking shadowing and blocking masks along the way. For our analysis goals, this approach gave our researchers more flexibility and accuracy than analytic tools (such as DELSOL or HFLCAL), and it was easier to set up for thousands of runs than using ray tracers. Output from the simulation includes heliostat efficiency, target irradiance, and more, while an included shell script facilitates plotting heat maps of the output data using gnuplot.


REC-CSP Open Source Site
The REC_CSP open source project contains data sets and software useful for designing cheaper heliostats.

Available on the project site are:
1. Thirty days of three-dimensional wind measurement data taken with ultrasonic anemometers (sampled at ~7 Hz), recorded at several near surface elevations.  The data is presented in the RE<C wind data collection document and is available for download on the open source site here.


2. A collection of heliostat aerodynamic load data obtained in a NASA wind tunnel and graphically represented in the appendix.  This data is available for download on the open source site here.


3. Matlab software for high-precision, on-target heliostat control with built-in simulation for testing. This is essentially the same software used in the RE<C heliostat control demonstrations and described in the accelerometer sensing and control system design documents.  The source code is available for download here.


Video: Demonstrating single and multiple heliostat control


By Ross Koningstein, Engineer, Google RE<C team
URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2012/01/data-and-code-open-sourced-from-googles.html

[G] Data and code open sourced from Google's Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal project

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 12:50 PM PST

Google Research Blog: Data and code open sourced from Google's Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal project

Posted by Ross Koningstein, Engineer, Google RE<C team



Cross-posted with the Open Source at Google Blog



Google's RE<C renewable energy research project has recently open sourced a new tool and a significant amount of data to support future CSP (concentrating solar power) heliostat development.











HOpS Open Source Site



HOpS, heliostat optical simulation, is an open source software tool for accurately and efficiently performing optical simulations of fields of heliostats, the actuated mirror assemblies that direct sunlight onto a target in CSP applications.









Google used this tool to help evaluate heliostat field layouts and calculate heat input into a CSP receiver for power production. HOpS works by passing "packets" of light between optical elements (the sun, heliostats, and elements of the target surface), tracking shadowing and blocking masks along the way. For our analysis goals, this approach gave our researchers more flexibility and accuracy than analytic tools (such as DELSOL or HFLCAL), and it was easier to set up for thousands of runs than using ray tracers. Output from the simulation includes heliostat efficiency, target irradiance, and more, while an included shell script facilitates plotting heat maps of the output data using gnuplot.





REC-CSP Open Source Site



The REC_CSP open source project contains data sets and software useful for designing cheaper heliostats.





Available on the project site are:



1. Thirty days of three-dimensional wind measurement data taken with ultrasonic anemometers (sampled at ~7 Hz), recorded at several near surface elevations.  The data is presented in the RE<C wind data collection document and is available for download on the open source site here.













2. A collection of heliostat aerodynamic load data obtained in a NASA wind tunnel and graphically represented in the appendix.  This data is available for download on the open source site here.









3. Matlab software for high-precision, on-target heliostat control with built-in simulation for testing. This is essentially the same software used in the RE<C heliostat control demonstrations and described in the accelerometer sensing and control system design documents.  The source code is available for download here.




















Video: Demonstrating single and multiple heliostat control


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/gJZg/~3/MBNAxsFAeSg/data-and-code-open-sourced-from-googles.html

[G] 2012 global award winners RISE to the top

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 12:50 PM PST

Official Google Blog: 2012 global award winners RISE to the top

Our business at Google is rooted in STEM and CS, so we're passionate about supporting organizations that are expanding access to these fields, especially for students who might not have the opportunity otherwise. The annual Google Roots in Science and Engineering (RISE) program supports organizations running innovative STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and CS (computer science) enrichment programs for K-12 and university students around the world.


This year, the Google in Education group received a record number of inspiring applications for RISE. We expanded the awards to include Sub-Saharan Africa, and in total, we're awarding more than $340,000 in funding to 13 U.S., eight European and five African organizations.

Our recipients are diverse, ranging from girls robotics teams building high-tech machinery in Nairobi to after-school programs that have students configuring cluster computers in Salt Lake City. Below are just a few of the outstanding organizations receiving RISE awards this year for their efforts in advancing CS and STEM education:

United States
  • Santa Clara Valley Society of Women Engineers, San Jose, California. GetSET is a program created for underrepresented ethnic minority girls in the San Francisco Bay Area to expose them to engineering while building self confidence through leadership workshops, tours of technology companies and participation in team-building exercises.
  • Saturday Academy, Portland, Oregon. Saturday Academy serves 2nd-12th grade students from Oregon and SW Washington with high quality and creative learning opportunities taught by STEM experts, including hands-on, real world activities that create meaningful connections between academic content and practical application.
Europe
  • Frauennetzwerk Informatik at Universität Passau, Passau, Germany. University students from Passau act as ambassadors for computer science, engineering and math by reaching out to juniors and seniors at their former high schools and running workshops on topics like robotics and mobile app development. Ambassadors go on to serve as mentors to the students throughout their high school and college careers.
  • The Centre for Academic Achievement, Dublin, Ireland. This center runs free after school educational classes in a university setting for bright primary school students from disadvantaged areas. Each term, students from 32 local primary schools have the opportunity to study science, math and engineering subjects and are encouraged to pursue college degrees in the future.
Sub Saharan Africa
  • Savana Signatures, Tamale, Ghana. Savana Signatures educates youth and women, building their capacity to access information for the benefit of Ghana's social and economic development.
  • Fundi Bots, Kampala, Uganda. Fundi Bots is a technology outreach program for students in high school and university that uses robotics to introduce young children to the endless possibilities of technology in both their day-to-day lives and potential careers.

Organizations interested in applying for 2013 funding can sign up for more information here. We look forward to hearing about all the great work being done in CS and STEM education.

Posted by Roxana Shirkhoda, K-12 Education Outreach
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-global-award-winners-rise-to-top.html

[G] Landing another blow against email phishing

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 12:50 PM PST

Google Online Security Blog: Landing another blow against email phishing

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

Posted by Adam Dawes, Product Manager

Email phishing, in which someone tries to trick you into revealing personal information by sending fake emails that look legitimate, remains one of the biggest online threats. One of the most popular methods that scammers employ is something called domain spoofing. With this technique, someone sends a message that seems legitimate when you look at the "From" line even though it's actually a fake. Email phishing is costing regular people and companies millions of dollars each year, if not more, and in response, Google and other companies have been talking about how we can move beyond the solutions we've developed individually over the years to make a real difference for the whole email industry.

Industry groups come and go, and it's not always easy to tell at the beginning which ones are actually going to generate good solutions. When the right contributors come together to solve real problems, though, real things happen. That's why we're particularly optimistic about today's announcement of DMARC.org, a passionate collection of companies focused on significantly cutting down on email phishing and other malicious mail.

Building upon the work of previous mail authentication standards like SPF and DKIM, DMARC is responding to domain spoofing and other phishing methods by creating a standard protocol by which we'll be able to measure and enforce the authenticity of emails. With DMARC, large email senders can ensure that the email they send is being recognized by mail providers like Gmail as legitimate, as well as set policies so that mail providers can reject messages that try to spoof the senders' addresses.

We've been active in the leadership of the DMARC group for almost two years, and now that Gmail and several other large mail senders and providers — namely Facebook, LinkedIn, and PayPal — are actively using the DMARC specification, the road is paved for more members of the email ecosystem to start getting a handle on phishing. Our recent data indicates that roughly 15% of non-spam messages in Gmail are already coming from domains protected by DMARC, which means Gmail users like you don't need to worry about spoofed messages from these senders. The phishing potential plummets when the system just works, and that's what DMARC provides.

If you're a large email sender and you want to try out the DMARC specification, you can learn more at the DMARC website. Even if you're not ready to take on the challenge of authenticating all your outbound mail just yet, there's no reason to not sign up to start receiving reports of mail that fraudulently claims to originate from your address. With further adoption of DMARC, we can all look forward to a more trustworthy overall experience with email.
URL: http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2012/01/landing-another-blow-against-email.html

[G] Impression Share Updates Rolling out Globally

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 12:50 PM PST

Inside AdWords: Impression Share Updates Rolling out Globally


Starting today, we will begin rolling out updates to your Impression Share metrics, which include new ad group-level impression share metrics as well as revised campaign-level impression share metrics.  We've also changed the frequency with which we update this data to once a day. These updates will be in effect in all accounts globally over the next few days.

For more information on Impression Share, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords Crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2012/01/impression-share-updates-rolling-out.html

[G] Perspective on Dynamic Search Ads - Guest Q & A with RKG

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 12:50 PM PST

Inside AdWords: Perspective on Dynamic Search Ads - Guest Q & A with RKG

Since introducing Dynamic Search Ads in beta in October, we've seen questions from around the web asking about real-world performance and recommendations for implementation. Today we're grateful to share the perspectives of Matt Mierzewski and Jen Syverud at RKG, an online marketing services firm with B2B and B2C clients ranging from startups to the Fortune 500 (details about RKG below).

Here's a short video followed by Q&A. RKG has further offered to answer any other questions you might have about their experience with Dynamic Search Ads over on their blog.


Q. What's your strategy for using Dynamic Search Ads with your clients today?

We think of Dynamic Search Ads as an advertiser-specific broad match type. Here, instead of allowing Google to match searches related to your keywords, you're allowing them to match searches related to your website.

For advertisers without automated pay-per-click inventory-based management solutions, Dynamic Search Ads can help identify products that are new or re-emerging. The system is tremendous in keeping up with changes to inventory in real time. For example, a product line may have been suspended for years, but quietly (without the search marketing team's knowledge) appears back on the website. In this case, keywords for the product line would still be paused until the marketing team is made aware, but Dynamic Search Ads are able to catch the change immediately, create ads, and generate orders. As another example, for advertisers frequently offering clearance products, Dynamic Search Ads are similarly able to offer ads while these limited quantity items are in-stock. In both examples, Dynamic Search Ads act as a safety net for advertisers wishing to advertise on dynamic products and/or inventories.

Q. What were your main concerns with Dynamic Search Ads and how have you addressed them?

One initial concern was that Dynamic Search Ads would cannibalize existing traffic, siphoning it away from active keyword campaigns. What we found was that the vast majority of Dynamic Search Ads traffic was complementary to our campaigns. Another concern was that we would have little to no control over what keywords Google was able to match on. However, Google has provided a great deal of controls within the Dynamic Search Ads product to ensure that the matching queries are relevant to the advertiser.

Q. What does your typical implementation of Dynamic Search Ads look like?

Implementation strategies will vary. In general, however, it is wise to consider pages that the advertiser wishes to exclude, as well as any known keyword negatives within the accounts, and add those from day one. From there, segmenting pages into campaigns or ad groups based on product margin, conversion rates, and so forth will allow for custom max CPC bids and maximum ROI.

Q. What best practices would you suggest for using Dynamic Search Ads?

Through restrictive targeting, exclusions and negatives, tight budgets and close monitoring, Dynamic Search Ads can be made very low risk and the results you see should be encouraging. For conservative advertisers, start by targeting only product level pages in your best converting categories.

A higher-level strategy is to add a site-wide target at a conservative bid with appropriate exclusions, and then layer on additional, more finely targeted ad groups and copy with bids corresponding to their expected performance. This approach is similar to the best practices for running Product Listing Ads and ensures wide coverage, but with a preference towards better quality traffic.

Use the power-tools that Google has made available in both targeting specific pages, while excluding other pages and search queries.

Q. How is Dynamic Search Ads doing with respect to matching relevant queries and landing pages?

With Dynamic Search Ads we can see every search that triggers a dynamic ad, the headline generated, the landing page selected, and, of course, performance stats. The searches that we've seen targeted are absolutely relevant to the website content -- it's the only place Google is able to generate its targeting information from. If the system is matching to any query that the advertiser does not care to be matched on to meet their performance goals, it is very easy to restrict that traffic by URL or Keyword level negatives.

Q. What kind of results are you seeing with Dynamic Search Ads across your clients? Which is it working best for?

We've seen Dynamic Search Ads incremental sales impact range from 0.5% to 12%, so it's important to note that individual account results may vary. The product is compatible with our tracking and reporting systems which makes it easy to measure performance and do head-to-head comparisons with our existing keyword-based campaigns.

Dynamic Search Ads work best for advertisers that have an extensive product offering and well developed web pages for Google to index and match relevant content to.

Q. What do you focus on when optimizing Dynamic Search Ads?

Like other AdWords campaigns, proper campaign management and optimizations are a necessity. Just like broad match, the Dynamic Search Ads product is most successful with carefully selected negative keywords, pages and categories of the website that do not perform optimally, and/or are not goal-oriented. Also similar to broad match, advertisers should monitor queries that produce conversions, and add them back as keywords to other AdWords campaigns.

Q. To what degree do you think Dynamic Search Ads are cannibalizing organic search traffic?

We haven't seen evidence of cannibalization. But we'll continue to evaluate performance and, if needed, make adjustments.

Q. Would you recommend Dynamic Search Ads for novice-to-intermediate or intermediate-to-advanced advertisers?

RKG would recommend Dynamic Search Ads for intermediate-to-advanced advertisers. Because it necessitates ongoing management, and is best utilized as a complement to robust keyword campaigns, it's not likely to be a good fit for novice advertisers. Additionally, as previously mentioned, the richer the site content, number of pages, and breadth of product offering, the more fruitful Dynamic Search Ads will be. Naturally, these characteristics lend themselves to more established and sophisticated campaigns and advertisers.

About RKG

Founded in 2003, RKG is a data-driven digital agency that combines savvy marketers with sophisticated technology to deliver unrivaled results for over 180 clients in paid search marketing, search engine optimization, multichannel attribution management, display advertising and comparison shopping management. Long recognized as the thought leader in search marketing, RKG clients range from start-ups to the Fortune-500, and include both B2C and B2B direct marketers in retail, travel, finance and education. RKG is an independent, privately held agency with offices in Charlottesville, VA, Bend, OR and Boston, MA.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew
URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2012/01/since-introducing-dynamic-search-ads-in.html

[G] From the West Wing: Hanging out with President Obama on YouTube

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 12:49 PM PST

YouTube Blog: From the West Wing: Hanging out with President Obama on YouTube

You asked, and today President Obama will answer. This afternoon at 2:30 p.m. PT (5:30 pm ET), President Obama will head to the Roosevelt Room of the White House to connect face-to-face with people across America over a live Google+ Hangout. This first-ever virtual interview will be streamed live on the White House YouTube Channel so you'll have a front row seat.



In the past week, over 225,000 of you have asked a question or cast a vote on the White House YouTube channel, voicing your interest in everything from military benefits to online poker, outsourcing to the Occupy movement. During today's post-State of the Union interview, a selection of the top-voted YouTube questions will be asked, and several participants will actually join the President in the live Google+ Hangout to pose their questions directly.



Tune in today to watch Your Interview with President Obama live at 2:30 p.m. PT on youtube.com/whitehouse and see how President Obama addresses the issues that you care about.



Ramya Raghavan, YouTube News and Politics Manager, recently watched "Ask Obama: Why Tuesday"


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/jW0icH86mlM/from-west-wing-hanging-out-with.html
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