Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Googland

Googland

[G] Music Tuesday: Busta Rhymes, Fresh Faces and more

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 02:37 AM PST

YouTube Blog: Music Tuesday: Busta Rhymes, Fresh Faces and more


The good ship Wilco sailed into YouTube Music this week, with the premiere of their new video "Dawned on Me", which believe it or not, is the first hand-drawn Popeye cartoon in 30 years. We also featured a curation from Black Bananas, a video from Cymbals Eat Guitars, and more...




Busta Rhymes with YouTube and Google Music

Back in November, Busta Rhymes offered you all a chance to appear in the music video for "Why Stop Now," his latest single. Hundreds of you took up his challenge, downloaded the song, learned the verse, and filmed yourselves spitting it. Busta watched the entries, selected his favorites, and had director Hype Williams splice them into the final cut. We're happy to debut the results. Take a look, and see which fans did the verse nice enough to earn Busta's seal of approval.









Chemical Brothers

For the first time in 20 years, electronica pioneers the Chemical Brothers have captured their audio-visual live show on film. The movie, titled "Don't Think", is directed by Adam Smith, and will be hitting theater screens around the world later this year. To celebrate, Adam and the Chemical Brothers collected some of their favorite YouTube music videos in a playlist:

 

January Fresh Faces

Every month, we feature a handful of newly-signed music partners on YouTube's homepage. Amongst January's picks, Jitta55 shows us his "Drink Face," and Shonsta performs an intense guitar solo:



 


Tim Partridge, YouTube Music Manager, recently watched Busta Rhymes "Why Stop Now ft. Chris Brown"




URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/Ze35mPZSTbk/music-tuesday-busta-rhymes-fresh-faces.html

[G] Sahana and Students: Saving the world one task at a time

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 02:37 AM PST

Google Open Source Blog: Sahana and Students: Saving the world one task at a time







For the second year, the Sahana Software Foundation participated in Google Code-in (GCI), a program which gives pre-university students the chance to get involved in open source projects. I was Sahana's Administrator for this program and am incredibly happy with how well the program went for us. Out of the 208 tasks that we posted for students, 193 were completed – which is an amazing effort!



After last year, we knew that Google Code-in wasn't for the faint of heart as it would require responding to students, answering their questions and reviewing work around the clock, so we reached out to our volunteer community and gathered a team of 11 mentors together. We put together a roster with 3-4 mentors covering each week to ensure that there was always someone on duty, while also ensuring that mentors would be able to have some time off. A big thank you goes out to all our mentors: Dominc König, Fran Boon, Graeme Foster, Nuwan Waidyanatha, Pat Tressel, four former Google Summer of Code students: Praneeth Bodduluri ('09), Pratyush Nigam ('11), Robert O'Connor ('10), Shikhar Kohli ('10) and Tony Young (a Google Code-in student last year). Sahana's participation in Google Code-in couldn't have happened without all of you!



But the biggest thank you goes out to all the students who have completed tasks – unfortunately/fortunately there are too many of you to name! We had many students review chapters in the Sahana Eden Essential Guide to make sure that the instructions were clear enough for them to follow. I was really pleased to see that the book was easy for students to use plus we also got some great feedback on how to improve it. Once again the translation tasks were very popular and we have complete translations of Sahana Eden in Romanian, Bulgarian and Hindi. Abhishek Arora and Leizel Puzon completed one of the more interesting tasks; taking minutes during our community calls – which gave them insight into how our community works. For me the highlight was the task completed by Daniel Klischies (Nostraa) to design a theme for the Sahana Eden wiki to align with the Sahana Software Foundation's branding. Daniel's work transformed our wiki into a very professional looking site which I get  great pleasure using and sharing with others. I'm also glad to see that for some students, their involvement with Sahana doesn't end with the end of this year's Google Code-in, such as Sriram Raghu who is giving a talk on Sahana Eden to other students at his school.



I would like to pass on a big thanks to everyone behind the scenes who made this happen: Sverre Rabbelier, Daniel Hans, Madhusudan. C.S and the rest of the Melange team who were under extreme pressure from students and mentors alike to ensure that Melange was running smoothly throughout Google Code-in. And, of course, the Google Open Source team whose continued support of open source projects is what makes great programs like this possible!



By Michael Howden, Sahana Software Foundation Google Code-in Organization Administrator


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleOpenSourceBlog/~3/GfTdK44q2O0/sahana-and-students-saving-world-one.html

[G] Landing another blow against email phishing

Posted: 01 Feb 2012 02:37 AM PST

The Google Apps Blog: Landing another blow against email phishing

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://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleAppsBlog/~3/x3PEF8nai_s/landing-another-blow-against-email.html

[G] How to shape up your video marketing strategy in 2012

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 01:18 PM PST

YouTube Blog: How to shape up your video marketing strategy in 2012

Did you vow to get in shape in 2012? Maybe you committed take your business to the next level this year, too. Keeping either resolution can be a challenge, so we wanted to call out a few YouTube fitness Channels doing great work both with their videos and their advertising—without breaking a sweat.



Mike Chang has a growing following on YouTube thanks to his easy-to-do workout videos, steady stream of new content and special seasonal discounts offers on his Six Pack Shortcuts program. This January he gave YouTube subscribers 70 percent off from his new Insane Home Fat Loss program. He also uses YouTube TrueView video ads to reach new viewers, and now has more than 370,000 Channel subscribers interested in rock solid abs.







The Flex Belt and TRX Channels use their YouTube Channels to host tons of video content for beginners and experts alike, many featuring celebrities like Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry for Flex Belt or NFL superstar Drew Brees on the TRX Channel. Talk about motivation. Through the power of video, Flex Belt and TRX can capture an audience's attention, show how their products work, and then tell viewers how to buy the product with banner ads on their brand Channels or call-to-action overlays over their videos. TRX's YouTube Channel banner ended up being responsible for 7 percent of all holiday sales through paid search Channels in December 2011.











If you're a business owner, musician, filmmaker, fitness expert or all of the above, you can build an audience with YouTube video advertising tools by getting started with Google AdWords for video today.



Baljeet Singh, group product manager, recently watched "S*&t Silicon Valley Says."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/iJyYMLUN4Kg/how-to-shape-up-your-video-marketing.html

[G] Now playing: Flixster on Upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers platform

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 01:18 PM PST

DoubleClick Publisher Blog: Now playing: Flixster on Upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers platform


'PubTalk' is a new program highlighting publishers' perspectives on display products and industry trends. In our first installment, we spoke with Billy Shipp of Flixster on managing ad operations in the face of rapidly changing technology.



If you love movies, you've probably visited Flixster or RottenTomatoes on your desktop or mobile device. Every month, over 30 million people visit Flixster communities to post comments, read reviews and watch movie trailers. Managing ad operations across these sites for different devices and formats is complex. Billy Shipp, Director of Ad Operations at Flixster, is always on the lookout for solutions that increase his team's operational efficiency. Accordingly, Flixster recently upgraded to the next generation of the DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) ad serving platform.



For Flixster, many aspects of DFP increased productivity, including improved user interfaces that are familiar to users of other Google products, faster reporting and better forecasting. "A lot of this business is built around emerging platforms and emerging ad formats", says Billy. Having to use multiple ad serving platforms to manage ads across devices created a lot of inefficiency. DFP helped Billy solve this problem by seamlessly integrating with DFP Video and DFP Mobile.



"Not having to go to a separate interface to manage inventory, to set up campaigns, to pull reports, to optimize campaigns - having all of that in a single workflow makes it so much easier for ad operations folks to be effective," remarks Billy. "It gives them that global view of how a campaign is performing, without having to manually download reports and aggregate them."



40% in time savings with DFP Video

The Flixster team reduced the time spent managing video campaigns by 40% after switching to DFP Video. "We can just take a video file, upload it to DFP and throw in any third-party tracking. You guys encode it in all the various formats and have it just work across different browsers and plugins and we don't even have to think about the connectivity of the user - you guys will handle all that. With other video ad serving solutions I've used in the past, there's usually a lot more effort that goes into setting up video ad campaigns," says Billy. "When we're reporting on campaigns that have video line items as part of the IO, you can see the whole IO - display and video - in one set of reporting."



Operations scale easily with DFP Mobile

Although Flixster is currently in the process of migrating more of its mobile inventory to DFP, Billy isn't too worried about the move. "Because we're using a single trafficking interface for mobile in the overall DFP workflow, that enables us to train new folks on a single process and have them intuitively know what to do," says Billy.



As advertising continues to expand to new formats and devices, ad ops teams need a solution that can evolve with their needs. For Billy Shipp, that solution is DFP. "The upgrade platform allows, from my experience, for a faster cycle of iteration and development, and really will be the platform for the future of ad delivery."



Read more about Flixster's experience with DoubleClick for Publishers here.



About Flixster:

Flixster is the leading online destination for movie enthusiasts with over 30M unique visitors per month and 2 billion movie ratings. In addition to Flixster.com and RottenTomatoes.com, Flixster also operates the leading movie applications on iPhone, Google TV, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry.




Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Manager
URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DoubleclickPublisherBlog/~3/2mFAoFPE4y8/now-playing-flixster-on-upgraded.html

[G] Changing our privacy policies, not our privacy controls

Posted: 31 Jan 2012 01:18 PM PST

Google Public Policy Blog: Changing our privacy policies, not our privacy controls

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director, Public Policy

Last week we heard from members of Congress about Google's plans to update our privacy policies by consolidating them into a single document on March 1. Protecting people's privacy is something we think about all day across the company, and we welcome discussions about our approach.

We hope this letter, in which we respond to the members' questions, clears up the confusion about these changes. We're updating our privacy policies for two reasons:

First, we're trying to make them simpler and more understandable, which is something that lawmakers and regulators have asked technology companies to do. By folding more than 60 product-specific privacy policies into our main Google one, we're explaining our privacy commitments to users of those products in 85% fewer words.

Second, we want to make our users' experience seamless and easy by allowing more sharing of information among products when users are signed into their Google Accounts. In other words, we want to make more of your information available to you when you're signed into Google services.

Some important things aren't changing:
  • We're still keeping your private information private -- we're not changing the visibility of any information you have stored with Google.
  • We're still allowing you to do searches, watch videos on YouTube, get driving directions on Google Maps, and perform other tasks without signing into a Google Account.
  • We're still offering you choice and control through privacy tools like Google Dashboard and Ads Preferences Manager that help you understand and manage your data.
  • We still won't sell your personal information to advertisers.
  • We're still offering data liberation if you'd prefer to close your Google Account and take your data elsewhere.
While our privacy policies will change on March 1, our commitment to our privacy principles is as strong as ever.
URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2012/01/changing-our-privacy-policies-not-our.html
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