Friday, February 24, 2012

Googland

Googland

[G] Faster, better order management

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

Google Affiliate Network: Faster, better order management

Since migrating to the Google stack last September, we've been working to improve the Google Affiliate Network interface by both adding new features and enhancing some existing ones.

As a part of that effort, we've just pushed out a brand new release of the Orders tab for both advertisers and publishers.

First, we've made the Orders tab fast. Very fast. Whether you're looking up 10 orders or 10,000 orders, you'll see query results load in about the same amount of time.

Advertiser-facing changes:
We want to make it easier for you to handle bulk operations. So, we enabled inline order editing right from the Orders tab. No need to click through to another page -- you can simply edit the order inline. Once an order is updated, publisher and network fees are updated, too.

Also, it's now easier to cancel orders in bulk. When you search for multiple orders, just select the orders you want to cancel and cancel them all at once.
Publisher-facing changes:
The key publisher feature we've added is the ability to directly edit the Member ID field for an order inline. If you're a publisher whose workflow involves verifying or editing the Member ID field, this process will now be much easier.

Finally, based on your feedback, we now display locked orders (e.g. those that have been paid out) in the tab, rather than just open orders. Keep in mind though that those locked orders can't be edited.

As always, we look forward to your feedback. Please use our forum for feedback and comments. Thanks!

Posted by:
Ali Pasha, Product Manager
URL: http://googleaffiliatenetwork-blog.blogspot.com/2012/02/faster-better-order-management.html

[G] Imagery Update: Week of February 20th

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

Google Lat Long: Imagery Update: Week of February 20th


The Google Earth and Maps Imagery team recently published another batch of satellite imagery. In this post, we'll explore a few well-known locations from across the globe.

Our first example is the Bristol Motor Speedway, located outside of Bristol, Tennessee. This NASCAR short track speedway is the 8th largest sports venue in the world, and hosts up to 165,000 people.

Bristol Motor Speedway, Bristol, Tennessee

If you think the typical NASCAR race is too crowded, how about visiting a location with a few million others on a single day? That's the estimated crowd size expected each year to the Kaba (shown below), in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on the day of the annual Islamic pilgrimage Hajj.

The Kaaba, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Another great place to visit - either virtually or in person - is the Grand Mediation Amphitheatre located in the World Dhammakaya Centre in Pathum Thani Province, Thailand. As shown below, the Centre provides a place where anyone is welcome to meditate.

The World Dhammakaya Centre, Pathum Thani Province, Thailand

If you prefer to spend your leisure time contemplating classic literature, you'll enjoy this final example from Spain's central La Mancha region. This perspective view highlights the vineyards and arid plateaus that form the backdrop of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.

Perspective view of Castile–La Mancha, Spain

If you'd like to receive an email notification when the Google Earth and Maps Imagery team updates your favorite areas(s), we've got just the tool: The Follow Your World application!

These are only a few examples of the sites that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring!

Countries/regions receiving high resolution satellite updates:
Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antarctica, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, People's Republic of the Congo, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Svalbard, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, The Bahamas, The Gambia, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

These updates are now available in both Google Maps and Google Earth. For a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Posted by Eric Kolb, Geo Data Strategist
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/02/imagery-update-week-of-february-20th.html

[G] Enhanced search in Google Earth 6.2

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

Google Lat Long: Enhanced search in Google Earth 6.2


Lao-tzu once said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." In Google Earth, that single step is often searching for the name of the place you want to go. The search field is the gateway to all of the amazing places you might visit, and for the recent release of Google Earth 6.2, we worked hard to make it even more powerful and easy to use.

As a result, searching for a location in Google Earth 6.2 is a bit different: we've streamlined the look and feel of the search interface, removing tabs and consolidating all the search fields together into one (just like Google Search). We've also added features that Google Earth previously didn't have, like transit directions and search layers. And we've made sure that underneath these shiny new features, you still have access to the power and flexibility of KML.

If you live in one of the many metropolitan areas supported by Google Transit, you've probably used the transit directions search on Google Maps to plan a trip. Now you can do the same thing in 3D with Google Earth. Select "Get Directions" and enter your endpoints, then choose the train icon at the top of the search results for public route instructions. You can also click on any of the transit stations or stops to fly there. Be sure to turn on 3D buildings - some train stations are really quite pretty! You'll also notice icons for walking and biking directions, so if you've ever wanted to go on a virtual tour of your next cycling excursion, or find out just how steep that hill is before you commit to the journey, now you can.

New transit directions in Google Earth 6.2

Search layers were first introduced in Google Maps a few years ago, and at last, they've recently made their way to Google Earth. Search layers enable you to see all the results of your search on the map at once, not just the top ten, making it easy to find clusters of certain types of businesses like fast food restaurants or coffee shops. One of the more entertaining uses of search layers that I've found has to do with a road that will be familiar to anyone who's visited California: El Camino Real. Stretching from Sonoma Valley to San Diego, El Camino is a great place to find shops and restaurants of all kinds - and lots of them! Here's a search layer for all the pizza places in the San Francisco Bay area; can you spot El Camino?

Search in Google Earth is much more than a pretty face, though. Just beneath the surface lies the powerful KML language, which you can use to take full control of your searches. Right-click on any search listing to save it to My Places or copy it as KML text, or click one of the icons below the search results to save or copy everything all at once. Save your walking directions to My Places and start a tour of the route to get turn-by-turn directions from the comfort of your chair. You can also click on "History" below the search field to see all of your recent searches at once, and selectively hide and show results to get, say, a picture of the top ten hotels and crêpe restaurants in Paris, for optimal crêpe-eating efficiency.

We'll continue to improve the search experience in Google Earth, so stay tuned, and keep those searches coming!

Posted by Brian Ellis, Software Engineer, Google Earth
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/02/enhanced-search-in-google-earth-62.html

[G] Helping you find what’s in the mind’s eye with improved related searches

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Helping you find what's in the mind's eye with improved related searches

Today we're making it easier for you to hone in on that perfect image or explore your topic visually with an update to related search links. Related search links have been around for awhile—they're the row of blue links running across the top of your image search results—but today we're making them more visual to help you find exactly what you're looking for or just have fun exploring.

For example, when planning a trip to Greece, I may not know what places are worth a visit, so I search for [greece] on Image Search. Now, with more visual search links, I can hover over the links on the top of the results, like [santorini greece], and see a panel pop up with images of Santorini. Without having to type more words into the search box or clicking through, I can quickly glance at the pictures of Santorini. If I decide to click through, I find new links for further refined or related searches, such as [oia santorini greece] or [santorini greece sunset]. Now I'm sold, I want to see more Santorini images.

You'll start to see these links whenever you search for images as we roll this change out globally over the next few weeks.


Posted by Peter Linsley, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Inside Search blog)
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/helping-you-find-whats-in-minds-eye.html

[G] Four new Indian languages on YouTube: Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Four new Indian languages on YouTube: Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu

YouTube opened its doors in India in May 2008, and since then we've been working to make YouTube accessible for the entire Indian population — and its 30 regional languages. Beyond Hindi and English, we've added Urdu, Marathi, Bengali, and Tamil over the years, and today we're welcoming four more to YouTube.



Now you can navigate the site in Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu, which are spoken by almost 200 million Indians. This also brings the total of available languages on YouTube to 58.



For Telugu, we have more than 100 films of Tollywood cinema, as well as partners like vegetarian cooking channel Gayatrivantillu who make videos for the web and have a growing global audience. For Kannada, Shemaroo Kannada and Anand Audio bring you music, drama, comedy and more to your homepage guide. Fans of Malayalam cinema should check out channels like Metro Matinee Videos and Hungama Malayalam. When it comes to news, YouTube's partners like TV 9 provide news in both Kannada and Gujarati, and TheTimesKerala offers clips in Malayalam.








GujaratiKannada
MalayalamTelugu



We hope this helps even more of you enjoy channels on YouTube in your native language, as we work to make the site accessible around the world.



Aditi Rajwanshi, YouTube India partner manager, recently watched "Chutney for Idli, Dosa, Upma, Vada etc."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/cdJ7WcWwznc/four-new-indian-languages-on-youtube.html

[G] Collaborate and edit anywhere with the updated Google Docs for Android

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Collaborate and edit anywhere with the updated Google Docs for Android

Posted by Vadim Gerasimov, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog, the Google Docs Blog, and the Google Mobile Blog.)

As I was sitting on the ferry commuting to Google's Sydney office this morning, two thoughts occurred to me. First, Australia is beautiful. If you've never been here, you really should visit. And second, it's amazing how productive I can be with just my Android phone and an Internet connection. I was responding to email, reading news articles, and editing documents—just like I do at the office. Only the view was better!

We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we're releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android. We've brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You'll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in.

We also updated the interface to make it easier to work with your documents on the go. For example, you can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph or see the whole document at a glance. We also added rich text formatting so you can do things like create a quick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold something important. Watch the new Google Docs app in action:




If you want to hear about the latest Docs news or send us feedback on the new app, visit Google Docs on Google+.

Gotta run—I've got another ferry to catch!
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/02/collaborate-and-edit-anywhere-with.html

[G] Great presentations start with great discussions

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Great presentations start with great discussions

Posted by Michael Thomas, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted from the Google Docs Blog.)

Back in October, we released a preview of a brand new version of Google presentations, designed to make it easier to share ideas with others. We've been busy polishing the app based on your feedback and today we're excited to enable the new editor for all new presentations.

We're also introducing a number of performance improvements and making it easier for you to collaborate by bringing the discussion feature you've used in documents to presentations.



With discussions in presentations, you'll be able to:
Comment on a shape or an entire slide to give context to your discussion.
Send an email notification by adding someone to a comment.

Resolve comments to let collaborators know that they've been addressed, and to reduce clutter in your presentation.

Plus, to make it easy to get feedback without giving up control of who can make changes, you can now give others the ability to comment on (but not edit) your presentation.

If you'd like to convert existing presentations to the new version of the editor, create a new presentation and import your slides by selecting Import slides from the File menu. To learn more about how to import your old presentations, check out these instructions.

With discussions and real time collaboration, we hope you'll love working together in Google presentations. We're rolling out these changes slowly over the next several hours. If you'd like to give us your feedback live, we'll be hosting a Hangout tomorrow at 2:30 EST to talk about the latest updates to presentations. Stop by our Google+ page to find out how to participate.
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/02/great-presentations-start-with-great.html

[G] Your Circles, now in Google Voice

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

Google Voice Blog: Your Circles, now in Google Voice

To help make it even easier for you to organize your contacts, today we're adding Google+ Circles to Google Voice. Circles give you more control over how you manage your callers; for example, calls from your "Creepers" circle can be sent straight to Voicemail, only your "College Buddies" circle will hear you rap your voicemail greeting, or you can set your "Family" circle to only ring your mobile phone.

You can customize your Circles settings by visiting the Groups & Circles tab in your Google Voice settings.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Posted by Tom Ford, Software Engineer
URL: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/your-circles-now-in-google-voice.html

[G] Game on: YouTube Creator Playbook Version 2 now available

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:15 PM PST

YouTube Blog: Game on: YouTube Creator Playbook Version 2 now available

When we first released the YouTube Creator Playbook with tips for succeeding on YouTube, things were a little different. You didn't have all the new channel features, the homepage didn't yet have a guide to help you find and follow to channels you like, and you were uploading 48 hours a minute.



As we work on the site, we want to make sure you're the first to know every tip and trick to succeed on YouTube, so today we're launching version two of the YouTube Creator Playbook. In addition to these updates, almost every page includes your feedback (thank you!). Here's a few of the key things to look for in the new version:



New channel & homepage section

With the launch of our new channel pages and updated homepage, we've created a new section on how to organize your videos for different audiences, and how to program your channel to help you make the most of the feed on the YouTube homepage.



Go global

Your channel reaches a global audience, so we've added a new section to help creators create, program, and optimize for audiences around the world.



Updates to annotations, playlists, publishing and more

Your feedback and new features helped us update much of the playbook on topics like annotations, playlists & video responses and call to actions.



Glossary

If you're new to YouTube or the Creator Playbook, we've included a glossary to help you quickly learn all the site's features, and the strategies, terms, and topics used in the playbook.







We hope this update to the YouTube Creator Playbook is a helpful tool if you're just coming to YouTube for the first time, as well as help YouTube pros quickly learn new features to keep expanding your audience. We'll be talking more about the new playbook during our Partner Meet-Up Livestream on YouTube.com/youtube at 5pm PT today.



Ryan Nugent, audience development strategist, recently watched "Rodrigo y Gabriela and C.U.B.A. - Area 52 Album Trailer."


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/ucXblDhUyh4/game-on-youtube-creator-playbook.html

[G] Announcing Google-hosted workshop videos from NIPS 2011

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:27 AM PST

Google Research Blog: Announcing Google-hosted workshop videos from NIPS 2011

Posted by John Blitzer and Douglas Eck, Google Research



At the 25th Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference in Granada, Spain last December, we engaged in dialogue with a diverse population of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, statistical learning theorists, and machine learning researchers. More than twenty Googlers participated in an intensive single-track program of talks, nightly poster sessions and a workshop weekend in the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountains. Check out the NIPS 2011 blog post for full information on Google at NIPS.



In conjunction with our technical involvement and gold sponsorship of NIPS, we recorded the five workshops that Googlers helped to organize on various topics from big learning to music. We're now pleased to provide access to these rich workshop experiences to the wider technical community.



Watch videos of Googler-led workshops on the YouTube Tech Talks Channel:





To highlight a few workshops: The Domain Adaptation workshop organized by Google, which fused theoretical and practical domain adaptation, featured invited talks from Shai Ben-David and Googler Mehryar Mohri from the theory side and Dan Roth from the applications side. This was just next door to Googlers Doug Eck and Ryan Rifkin's workshop on Machine Learning and Music, with musical demonstrations loud enough for the next-door neighbors to ask them to "turn it down a bit, please." In addition to the Googler-run workshops, the Integrating Language and Vision workshop showcased invited talks by Google postdoctoral fellow Percy Liang on the pragmatics of visual scene description and Josh Tenenbaum on physical models as a cognitive plausible mechanism for bridging language and vision. Finally, Google consultant Andrew Ng was one of the organizers of the Deep Learning and Unsupervised Feature Learning, which offered an extended tutorial, several inspiring talks, and two panel discussions (one with Googler Samy Bengio as panelist) exploring the question of "How deep is deep?"



As the workshop weekend drew to a close, an airline strike in Spain left NIPS attendees scrambling to get home for the holidays. We hope the skies look clear for 2012 when NIPS lands in Google's neck of the woods, Lake Tahoe!


URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/gJZg/~3/wv5r0VOMKPY/announcing-google-hosted-workshop.html

[G] Fifth Generation VP8 Hardware Encoder Released

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 08:27 AM PST

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Fifth Generation VP8 Hardware Encoder Released

The fifth generation of the widely adopted H1 hardware encoder for VP8, internally known as "Evergreen", has become available for licensing today. In the Evergreen release, we focused on improving the real-time communication features and on optimizing the encoding speed and visual quality. In particular, we have now enabled temporal and spatial scalability for VP8 video coding, a valuable feature for live streaming, multi-way video conferencing and security applications. To our knowledge, there are no companies offering H.264/SVC (scalable video coding) hardware encoders for chipset manufacturers at the moment. With this release, VP8 now offers scalable coding at the hardware level.

The Evergreen release includes the following new features:
  • Up to four layers of temporal scalability (e.g. 60, 30, 15, 7.5 fps)
  • Integrated image downscaler for spatial scalability in VP8 simulcasting
  • Support for up to four DCT partitions for faster multicore CPU decoding
  • Adaptive golden frame period and quantization
  • Improved chrominance intra prediction
  • Improved mode selection with multiple QP segments
  • Rate-distortion optimization for both PSNR and SSIM
  • Real-time frame PSNR feedback
These new features enable us reach the following performance improvements:
  • 30% faster encoding, requiring only 220 MHz clock rate for 1080p at 30fps
  • 40% improved external memory latency tolerance, making the IP suitable for Network-on-Chip architectures
  • On average 6% smaller bitrate at similar SSIM, or up to 0.7 dB higher PSNR over the previous H1 v4 "Dragonfly" encoder
Furthermore, by just updating the firmware, all v4 "Dragonfly" chipsets also get a nice boost of 4% smaller bitrate at similar SSIM quality.

More technical details are available at the WebM Project's hardware page.

As shown in the rate-distortion curve for "ice" CIF sequence below, the hardware's quality is comparable to the real-time mode (-rt -cpu-used=-5) of the recently launched libvpx "Duclair" encoder.


H-Series 1 VP8 encoder and the silicon-proven G-Series 1 VP8 decoder are available at no cost to chip manufacturers at the WebM Project's hardware page. Our reseller partner Verisilicon licenses both IP cores as multi-format versions, and offers support and maintenance service for the free VP8 cores.

WebM Project releases a new generation video IP every quarter to allow the semiconductor licensees to always get advantage of the latest technology. In our next release, we have our eyes on making significant improvements to the subjective video quality at low to midrange bitrates.

Aki Kuusela is Engineering Manager of the WebM Project hardware team.
URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2012/02/fifth-generation-vp8-hardware-encoder.html
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