New Contacts interface and business-specific features for Google Apps

This release of Contacts brings all of the improvements that were previously available to consumer users.

The following business-specific features have also been added to help you and your colleagues get in touch with contacts more easily. You can now:
- Add new contact information that will default to “Work” instead of “Home” field types.
- View domain directory contact details interwoven inline with any contact details you’ve added yourself.
- Add contacts from the domain directory to your “My Contacts” list in a single click.
- Manage groups more easily by quickly adding email addresses to groups, and picking from a contact’s multiple email addresses to use on a group-by-group basis.
- Revert changes to your Contacts for up to 30 days in case you need to restore deleted or merged contacts, or undo an import.

Note: These improvements do not affect the standalone version of Contacts outside of Gmail but we hope to make them available soon.

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
Administrator Control Panel: US English Only (Next Generation)
Gmail: All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
- To see the new Contacts interface, admins must opt-in in the administrator control panel to enable the new Contacts features.
- In the administrator control panel, go to ‘Services’, then ‘Contacts' and select the checkbox ‘Preview the new contact manager in Gmail’.

Note: In order to see the opt-in checkbox, the control panel must be set to the ‘next generation’ version which is US English only.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/02/get-in-touch-faster-with-new-gmail.html


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Many Gmail Users Can't Find Their Messages

Imagine loading Gmail and noticing that all your messages have been deleted. This is a real problem for many Gmail users who thought that they lost all of their messages. Here's one of the many reports from Gmail's forum:

Yes, whatever the error is on Google's end (and it clearly is that, not a hack, unless it's some kind of inside hack) it's basically reset my account so it's like a brand-new Gmail account. My contacts are intact, but nothing else--the folders have reset to default, my signature line is blank, the "theme" is changed back to the default and--of course--every single email from the last 7 years has vanished completely.

The Google Apps Status page mentions that "this issue affects less than 0.08% of the Google Mail userbase" and "Google engineers are working to restore full access". The users that are affected "will be temporarily unable to sign in".


This is a really important problem for Google and one of the biggest Gmail issues ever since Google's email service was released, back in 2004.

Update: A Google engineer says that the "accounts that are affected are currently fully disabled. We're in the process of changing this to be a Gmail only disable so you should regain access to other Google services soon. This will also mean email to these accounts stops bouncing and gets queued up for later delivery instead."

Update 2: Google says that only 0.02% of the Gmail users were affected. "In some rare instances software bugs can affect several copies of the data. That's what happened here. Some copies of mail were deleted, and we've been hard at work over the last 30 hours getting it back for the people affected by this issue. To protect your information from these unusual bugs, we also back it up to tape. Since the tapes are offline, they're protected from such software bugs. But restoring data from them also takes longer than transferring your requests to another data center, which is why it's taken us hours to get the email back instead of milliseconds."

{ via Engadget }

Google and the Value of Social Networking (Part 3)

Paul Buchheit, the ex-Googler behind Gmail and a former Facebook employee, answered a question about the rivalry between Google and Facebook.

There is an interesting competitive element there because Facebook is growing very fast, and obviously, Google would like to compete in the social-networking space. They have finally realized its importance, and they are finding themselves, maybe for the first time, with the realization that there is someone who is way, way ahead of them.

There was a moment with Microsoft that they assumed that Google was like, "Well, yeah, search isn't that important. And if it does become important, we'll just hire some people and we'll take over." They kind of thought it was something they could win really easily, and they underestimated the difficulty of it. I kind of feel like Google may have reached that same moment with social networking, where they realized, A, it's important, and B, it's really hard to win.

Paul is not the first ex-Googler who thinks that Google didn't understand the importance of social networking. Another former Googler said that "there is some belief at Google that their DNA is not perfectly suited to build social products", while Aaron Iba, who worked on the Orkut team, noticed that "social networking [was viewed] as a frivolous form of entertainment rather than a real utility".

{ via Avinash }

Videos From the Old Googleplex

In February 1999, Google moved from Susan Wojcicki's garage to "new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just eight employees" and in August 1999, Google relocated to Mountain View: 2400 E. Bayshore. Five years later, Google moved to "the new Googleplex at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment."

Former Google employee Doug Edwards posted some videos from November 1999 of the old Googleplex. At that time, Google's search engine was only available in English, it didn't include ads or image search results and it was the only Google service.

New Google Profile Search

Google has a new specialized search engine for searching Google Profiles. It has a better interface than the regular Google Profiles search feature, it's integrated with Google Search and it shows additional links from people's profiles.

This feature is not yet enabled in the interface, but you can search Google Profiles by adding &tbs=prfl:1 to a Google Search URL. Here's an example.

Google could use the data from user profiles to provide advanced search features like restricting profiles to people who lived in Chicago, attended Long Island University and are interested in sports.


{ spotted by François Beaufort }

Store More Photos and Videos in Picasa Web Albums

You've probably noticed that Picasa Web's storage counter shows that you have more free space than a couple of days ago. It turns out that this is not a bug.

"We recently made a change whereby any pictures 800 pixels and under don't count towards used PWA storage. The new GB numbers you're seeing are the result of quota recalculations that were made," informs a Google employee.

The new feature encourages users to upload smaller images. If you use Picasa to upload your photos, there's a setting that lets you pick the dimensions of the photos that are uploaded. The "small" option is recommended "for publishing images on blogs and webpages". Blogger users who resize their photos before uploading them will no longer have to buy extra storage if they're prolific.

Another important change is that "all videos under 15 minutes also don't count towards used PWA storage". That means you can now upload short videos to Picasa Web Albums without worrying about the file size.

Update: "Photos less than 800 pixels x 800 pixels and video less than 15 minutes long that are uploaded to Picasa Web Album, Blogger, or Buzz don't count towards your storage quota." (Picasa Web's help center)

Hidden gridlines in Google Spreadsheets

The following feature is now available for domains with 'enable pre-release features' checkbox enabled in the Administrator Control Panel:

The highly requested feature to hide gridlines in spreadsheets is now available

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
All languages supported by Spreadsheets

How to access what's new:
When editing a spreadsheet, under the ‘View’ menu, click on ‘Hide gridlines’ for each sheet, leaving only the borders that have been put there.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-week-in-docs-now-you-see-them-now.html

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More control on how labels are shown in your Gmail inbox

The following features are now available for domains with 'enable pre-release features' checkbox enabled in the Administrator Control Panel:

The “Hide read labels” and “Hide Labels from Subjects” labs to help people manage their ever-growing lists of labels have graduated from Gmail Labs.
Some improvements to how they work have also been made. Instead of simply hiding all labels from subject lines, you can now choose which labels to show or hide. We also revamped the Labels tab in Settings as well as the dropdown menus for each label in the label list.

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
- Modify label visibility in the Labels tab in ‘Settings’ or by clicking on the dropdown arrow menu on each label.

For more information:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/dealing-with-label-overload.html

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New version of Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server

Version 3.1 of the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server is now available with the following improvements:

- Automatic PST Compaction
- Reduced disk load
- New admin utilities and various improvements

Editions included:
Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
English Only

How to access what's new:
Download Page

For more information:
Release Notes
Help Center Overview

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New top navigation bar rolling out for some Google Apps domains

A new top navigation bar is currently rolling out for all Google users, including Google Apps domains that have already transitioned to the new account infrastructure for Google Apps accounts. This change does not affect any domains that have not yet transitioned to that infrastructure.

The new visual update helps provide a more consistent way for your users to navigate to Google services. For users with multi-login enabled, the new interface makes it clearer which account users are currently signed into, and makes it easier for them to switch to a different account, such as a personal account.

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business and Education

Languages included:
English only

How to access what's new:
- The gradual roll-out is happening automatically across all services so there is no action for you to take.
- For administrator accounts only: Please note that the ‘manage this domain’ link which appears in Gmail for administrator accounts only, is no longer on the same line as your username and has moved to a lower position on the right side below the navigation bar.

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Google Video's Strange Disclaimer

Google Video's homepage shows a strange message below the list of query suggestions: "In accordance with local laws and regulations, some results were removed from this list." The message is displayed for every query you enter, so it's unlikely that some of the suggestions are removed.


Update: Google says that "the appearance of the message on every search was in fact a bug and has since been corrected."

Visualizing Android Activations

This video from Google lets you visualize the evolution of Android activations from October 2008 to January 2011. HTC Dream/G1, the first Android device, was launched in the US and the UK in October 2008 and it became available in other countries in 2009, but it wasn't until the launch of Motorola Droid in November 2009 that Android became popular.


Android Central says that this is "a staggering reminder of just how far Android has come in a relatively short amount of time". Eric Schmidt has recently mentioned that the average number of daily Android activations is now 350,000, up from 300,000 in December, 200,000 in August and 60,000 in April 2010.

Google Docs, Image Search and Copyright

Google Docs lets you pick Image Search results and add them to your documents. That's a good thing, but this feature could have been better thought out.

Google restricts the results to images licensed as Creative Commons that can be used commercially and that can also be modified. These restrictions aren't always necessary, since not all documents are used for business purposes. Google also recommends to "only select images that you have confirmed that you have the license to use", but it doesn't link to the pages that included the images. Google doesn't even include a small caption next to the image with links to the Creative Commons license and the original web page.


While this feature makes it easy to add image search results to your documents, it doesn't encourage users to visit the web pages that embedded the images or to give credit to the image creators because it's quite difficult to find these pages. You need to visit Google Image Search, type your query, restrict the results to images "labeled for commercial reuse with modification" and find the image you've previously picked. That's a lot of unnecessary work.

Finding more high-quality sites in search

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

It’s worth noting that this update does not rely on the feedback we’ve received from the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, which we launched last week. However, we did compare the Blocklist data we gathered with the sites identified by our algorithm, and we were very pleased that the preferences our users expressed by using the extension are well represented. If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them, which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits.

So, we’re very excited about this new ranking improvement because we believe it’s a big step in the right direction of helping people find ever higher quality in our results. We’ve been tackling these issues for more than a year, and working on this specific change for the past few months. And we’re working on many more updates that we believe will substantially improve the quality of the pages in our results.

To start with, we’re launching this change in the U.S. only; we plan to roll it out elsewhere over time. We’ll keep you posted as we roll this and other changes out, and as always please keep giving us feedback about the quality of our results because it really helps us to improve Google Search.

Update April 11: We’ve rolled out this algorithmic change globally to all English-language Google users and incorporated new signals as we iterate and improve. We’ll continue testing and refining the change before expanding to additional languages. You can learn more on our Webmaster Central Blog.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, and Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer

Picasa Web's Multiple File Uploader

Picasa Web Albums has finally improved the uploading feature. You can now select multiple images from a folder and upload all of them. After uploading images, you can add captions and delete the images you don't like. It's a long overdue improvement that's especially important if you don't use Picasa.

Another change is that you can now upload videos without installing Picasa.


Picasa Web's new uploader uses HTML5 APIs, so it's not available in Internet Explorer, where you still have to install an ActiveX control.

{ Thanks, Přemysl Brýl. }

Finding the right place when you need it

Over the past few months, we have launched several new mobile search features for iPhone and Android-powered devices that make it easier to find local businesses. In the US, we launched an “open now” feature which lets you filter local search results to show only businesses that are open right now, based on their listed hours. When you’re hankering for pizza at 1 o’clock in the morning, this can be really handy:

Other local search options available globally include filtering by star ratings (find a highly-rated restaurant for your first date) and by distance (especially handy when you’re on foot).

You may have noticed other improvements as well, like the addition of images, reviews from around the web and bigger buttons for viewing a map or calling a business directly. Each business’s open hours are also shown in the result snippets.

If you haven’t used local search recently, now is a great time to try it out. Just go to www.google.com in your browser, tap on the “Places” link at the top of the page, and do a search. You can also access these features when searching for businesses on Google Maps for mobile on Android devices.

Posted by Yoshi Matsumoto and Keiji Maekawa, Software Engineers

Teach your old docs new tricks with Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is now available to download for all Google Apps domains. With this plugin, you can now share, backup and simultaneously edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint®, and Excel® documents with co-workers without the need for sending attachments back and forth.

Features:
- Simultaneous editing for Word, PowerPoint and Excel files when using Microsoft Office.
- Google Docs sharing URLs for each Microsoft Office file.
- Revision history for Microsoft Office files, stored in Google Docs.
- Offline editing with smart synchronization of offline changes.
- No Microsoft Office upgrade or SharePoint® deployment required.

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
English only but the plugin will work with whatever language is installed on the user’s system

How to access what's new:
- Make sure your system meets the system requirements for the plugin. Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office supports Microsoft Office 2003, Office 2007, or Office 2010.
- Ensure that Google Docs is an activated service in your Google Apps control panel.
- Allow users to install the plugin themselves or distribute it on your network using an .msi file.
Download page
Deploy Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

Note: Google Cloud Connect is not available for Macs. Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time. We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/02/teach-your-old-docs-new-tricks-with.html
Admin Help Center and supported features.
End User Help Center

Join us for a live webinar on March 3rd, 2011 at 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm GMT to learn more about Google Cloud Connect. Register to attend the live event.


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HTTPS YouTube

After Google enabled by default encrypted connections to Picasa Web Albums, it started to become obvious that all Google services will soon switch to HTTPS. Probably the most unlikely candidate for this change is YouTube, Google's biggest bandwidth hog, but the unexpected happened: go to a random video and you'll notice that all the resources use HTTPS.


YouTube API's blog has recently announced HTTPS support for embedded videos. "We're planning a gradual expansion of HTTPS across other aspects of the site. The first place you may see HTTPS YouTube URLs is in our various embed codes, all of which currently support HTTPS in addition to the standard HTTP. Anyone can try HTTPS with YouTube embeds today—simply change the protocol portion of the URL from http to https." You can also enable "use HTTPS" when you generate the embedding code.


The performance doesn't seem to be affected and, if everything goes well, YouTube will probably switch to HTTPS in the coming months.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office

After three months of beta testing, Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is available for everyone. The rebranded version of DocVerse, a software developed by the homonymous company acquired by Google last year, integrates with Google Docs and provides a bridge for Microsoft Office users who want to use online collaboration features without upgrading to Office 2010.

"Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office brings collaborative multi-person editing to the familiar Microsoft Office experience. You can share, backup, and simultaneously edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents with coworkers," explains Google. The software works with Microsoft Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010.




By default, the plugin automatically saves online and syncs all the files you edit in Microsoft Office, but you can change this setting.


I created a new document in Word 2010, but Google saved it as a read-only Word file in Google Docs. Apparently, the document can only be edited using Microsoft Office and not using Google's online word processor. Since you can't even open existing files from Google Docs, this software seems to be too limited. It's useful if you and all your collaborators only use Microsoft Office and Google's plugin.

Google Recipe Search

Google Japan started to offer a recipe search feature last year. Now this feature is available in the US and for everyone who uses Google without country redirects.

"Recipe View lets you narrow your search results to show only recipes, and helps you choose the right recipe amongst the search results by showing clearly marked ratings, ingredients and pictures. To get to Recipe View, click on the Recipes link in the left-hand panel when searching for a recipe. You can search for specific recipes like [chocolate chip cookies], or more open-ended topics—like [strawberry] to find recipes that feature strawberries, or even a holiday or event, like [cinco de mayo]," explains Google.

Google finds recipes by detecting the pages that use markup like microdata, RDFa, and microformats for recipes. You've probably noticed that Google shows rich snippets for some recipe pages and sometimes includes thumbnails, total cooking time, the number of calories and user ratings.


The same structured data can now be used for filtering search results. For example, you can select certain ingredients, add restrictions for cooking time and the number of calories.


Recipe Search is one of the most obscure specialized search engines offered by Google and it's quite surprising to see it in the vertical navigation menu next to Book Search, Blog Search or Image Search. Google could create similar search engines for event search, people search and reviews search.

Google's landing page offers more information about this feature and suggests to "select Recipes in the left-hand panel on the search results page". Unfortunately, the option is not yet available for everyone.

Join us on the bridge for International Women’s Day 2011

(Cross-posted on the LatLong Blog)

I lead a global team at Google and travel extensively. When I speak about my work, the questions I get are often about the efforts we make to bring more women into engineering and how I maintain my work/life balance with two young children. These are very important questions, but I’m acutely aware that they reflect a certain amount of privilege when it comes to issues of women’s equality. Despite the incredible advances women have made in the last century, many around the world are still struggling to provide for their families and keep them safe amidst violence and instability.

For the past several years I’ve been part of a sponsorship program administered by Women for Women International, an organization dedicated to helping women survivors of war rebuild their lives. Every time I receive a letter from a woman I sponsor, each of whom is determined to improve her life despite the terrible odds she faces, I’m reminded of why it’s so important that we all—women and men alike—recognize the challenges women continue to face around the world.

That’s why I’m so excited to celebrate the centenary of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2011. This year Google is collaborating with Women for Women International on their “Join me on the Bridge” campaign. Originally conceived of by women from Rwanda and Congo as a sign of solidarity between women in two conflict-ridden countries, last year’s campaign brought together thousands of women and men at more than 100 bridge events on four continents.



This year we’re making it simple for you, your friends, your classmates and your colleagues to participate in bridge events on International Women’s Day by offering new online resources.

To attend a bridge event, check our map to see all the events that have already been planned. Or you can use our event toolkit to plan your own event on the bridge of your choice. You’ll see that there are two kinds of events—physical and online; if you’re not able to attend a bridge event in person on March 8, you can lend your support online by virtually attending an event via Street View in Google Maps.

Finally, on our International Women’s Day 2011 site, you can to donate to Women for Women International and more than 40 other incredible organizations working in the fields of women’s economic security, education, empowerment, equality, health and safety.

See you on the bridge on March 8!

Update 4:33PM: Added YouTube video.

Posted by Claire Hughes Johnson, VP, Global Online Sales and Chair, Google Women’s Professional Community

Slice and dice your recipe search results

As a second-generation Indian who has grown up in the United States, I’ve developed a taste for great home-cooked Indian food, but not a knack for how to make it. Somehow my cooking efforts result in foods that taste over-spiced yet bland at the same time. My parents follow the art of cooking by intuition, where the right amount of each spice is measured out by gut feel, but that’s never worked very well for me. As a math geek and computer engineer, I prefer to work with concrete numbers and instructions, including when cooking, so today I’m very happy about a new feature that helps me find recipes online: Recipe View.

Recipe View lets you narrow your search results to show only recipes, and helps you choose the right recipe amongst the search results by showing clearly marked ratings, ingredients and pictures. To get to Recipe View, click on the “Recipes” link in the left-hand panel when searching for a recipe. You can search for specific recipes like [chocolate chip cookies], or more open-ended topics—like [strawberry] to find recipes that feature strawberries, or even a holiday or event, like [cinco de mayo]. In fact, you can try searching for all kinds of things and still find interesting results: a favorite chef like [ina garten], something very specific like [spicy vegetarian curry with coconut and tofu] or even something obscure like [strange salad].

In the past, you only had one way to specify your recipe searches—with the text you type into the Google search box. Now you can also filter search results based on your ideal ingredients, cooking time and calorie count using the recipe tools on the left hand side of the page. For example, I can now find vegetable biryani recipes (an Indian rice dish) that include cauliflower and take less than an hour to make:

We like to “eat our own dogfood” at Google—meaning we like to test our own products and features ourselves before releasing them for public consumption. With Recipe View, we’ve taken this more literally than usual. Here’s Google Chef Scott Giambastiani to demonstrate how he uses Recipe View to find great recipes for Googlers:



Recipe View is based on data from rich snippets markup, which we first introduced at Searchology in 2009. If you’re a recipe publisher, you can add markup to your webpages so that your content can appear with this improved presentation in regular Google results as well as in Recipe View. Recipe View is part of our ongoing efforts to enrich the search experience using structured data, and this release is an exciting technical milestone for our team since it’s first time we’ve built a brand new set of search tools based off of rich snippets data.

Recipe View is rolling out now in the U.S. and Japan, and we’ll be adding more countries in the future. We look forward to making further improvements and building more views so you can “slice and dice” your results for other types of searches as well. Bon appetit!

Posted by Kavi Goel, Product Manager

New ways to experience better collaboration with Google Apps

The Google Apps collaboration tools have steadily and swiftly improved over the last couple years, and many companies have found that Google Docs and Google Sites are faster, simpler and more powerful than traditional software for the majority of common tasks, especially tasks where people need to work efficiently together. Today, we’re launching two new initiatives to help more people experience the productivity benefits of web-powered collaboration.

First, Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is now available worldwide. This plugin for Microsoft Office is available to anyone with a Google Account, and brings multi-person collaboration to the Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications that you may still need from time to time. The plugin syncs your work through Google’s cloud, so everyone can contribute to the same version of a file at the same time. Learning the benefits of web-powered collaboration will help more people make a faster transition to 100% web collaboration tools.



We’re also introducing the 90-Day Appsperience program, a way for companies that currently use cumbersome legacy systems to see how web-powered tools help their teams work together more effectively. A nominal fee covers 90-day access to Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Cloud Connect and more, as well as assistance from Google experts to help coworkers quickly become more productive together. And companies trying Google Apps can use the new collaboration dashboard in the Google Apps control panel to assess the value of our tools. The dashboard provides data on how people are using Apps to collaborate more efficiently without the hassles of document versions, check-in/check-out or attachments.

If you’re curious how your company could become more agile, efficient and innovative with better tools for teams to work together, read more about these updates on the Google Enterprise Blog.

Posted by Shan Sinha, Google Apps Product Manager

The three laws of display advertising physics

It’s not just the Android team that is exploring the outer reaches of our galaxy. In recent years, advertising technology has had its own “Big Bang": a rapid onset of incredible growth and expansion in the display advertising universe.

Display advertising is one of our big focus areas. Better display advertising helps to fund the websites and content we all use and read, provides useful and engaging commercial information, and helps large and small advertisers to reach new customers, increase sales and grow their businesses.

Just as the laws of physics have helped us make sense of our own expanding universe, we think that there are three “laws of display advertising physics” to help advertisers and agencies thrive. We’ve laid out these laws and what they mean for advertisers and agencies on our Agency Ad Solutions Blog:

1. The Theory of Relativity: The distinction between different advertising technologies (like ad networks and demand side platforms) is blurring. Each of these technologies provides similar ways to achieve your marketing goals, depending on how you want to manage your campaign.
   
   
2. Fusion Theory: There’s a few different ways to deliver ads to people. Each on their own is powerful, but combining these different ways unlocks the best results.
   
   
3. The Law of Perpetual Motion: New technology is driving rapid change in display advertising—which is constantly improving marketers’ creative palettes and the way that ads are bought and sold. Embracing new media and technology provides a key way for marketers to differentiate and grow their businesses in a new universe.

The expansion in the advertising industry is leading towards a future with a better advertising universe for everyone—where people see more relevant, useful ads, publishers get better returns to fund their content and marketers can run more effective campaigns.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management

Investing in news innovation in Europe

(Cross-posted from the European Public Policy Blog)

Journalism is changing fast. And as news businesses experiment with new ways of creating and delivering journalism in the digital age, Google is keen to play its part on the technology side. Over the last year, we’ve been partnering with publishers around the world to develop technological solutions—including, most recently, One Pass—to find new and engaging ways of presenting stories online and to generate greater revenues.

As well as our focus on technological experimentation, we’re also investing at the grassroots level. Last October we announced that we would be giving $5 million in grants to non-profit organisations working on developing new approaches to journalism. At that time, we allocated around 40% of the total fund to the Knight Foundation in the U.S.

Today, we awarded a $2.7 million grant to the International Press Institute, based in Vienna, which will be used to sponsor the IPI News Innovation Contest. The contest seeks to find and fund breakthrough ideas that will have a lasting impact on the future of digital news in communities across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Grants will be awarded to both non-profit and for-profit organisations working on digital journalism initiatives, including open-source and mobile technology projects created by or for journalists and distributed in the public interest. From today until June 1, the IPI will invite proposals from around the region for projects devoted to online innovation in journalism, new economic models for news and training in digital reporting.

The IPI has a long tradition of working on innovation in journalism, freedom of expression and other important issues. We’re sure they’ll be able to find and advance some great digital journalism projects over the next couple of years—and we encourage anyone with innovative ideas, large or small, to apply for a grant from the IPI. In the meantime, we’ll continue to work with the news industry to help develop new projects, products and experiments that make it possible for journalism to thrive online.

Posted by Peter Barron, Director of External Relations, Google EMEA

Android Gingerbread for Nexus One

Two months after Android Gingerbread was released, Nexus One users can finally update their phones to the latest Android version. "Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) update now rolling out to Nexus S and Nexus One. Be patient, may take a few weeks for OTA to complete," informs Google. Ry Guy explains that Google "sends out OTA updates (...) incrementally to ensure that everything is going smoothly".

The good news is that Nexus One is the second Android phone updated to Gingerbread and it's likely that the feedback from Nexus S users helped Google fix the most important bugs. Unfortunately, Google is caught between releasing the Android version for tablets, continuing to improve Gingerbread, developing new Android apps and services, improving the Android Market, so the delays are inevitable.


{ via Android Spin }

Speech technology at Google: teaching machines to talk and listen

This is the latest post in our series profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. Here, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how one Googler built an entire R&D team around voice technology that has gone on to power products like YouTube transcriptions and Voice Search. - Ed.

When I first interviewed at Google during the summer of 2004, mobile was just making its way onto the company’s radar. My passion was speech technology, the field in which I’d already worked for 20 years. After 10 years of speech research at SRI, followed by 10 years helping build Nuance Communications, the company I co-founded in 1994, I was ready for a new challenge. I felt that mobile was an area ripe for innovation, with a need for speech technology, and destined to be a key platform for delivery of services.

During my interview, I shared my desire to pursue the mobile space and mentioned that if Google didn’t have any big plans for mobile, then I probably wouldn’t be a good fit for the company. Well, I got the job, and I started soon after, without a team or even a defined role. In classic Google fashion, I was encouraged to explore the company, learn about what various teams were working on and figure out what was needed.

After a few months, I presented an idea to senior management to build a telephone-based spoken interface to local search. Although there was a diversity of opinion at the meeting about what applications made the most sense for Google, all agreed that I should start to build a team focused on speech technology. With help from a couple of Google colleagues who also had speech backgrounds, I began recruiting, and within a few months people were busily building our own speech recognition system.

Six years later, I’m excited by how far we’ve come and, in turn, how our long-term goals have expanded. When I started, I had to sell other teams on the value of speech technology to Google's mission. Now, I’m constantly approached by other teams with ideas and needs for speech. The biggest challenge is scaling our effort to meet the opportunities. We've advanced from GOOG-411, our first speech-driven service, to Voice Search, Voice Input, Voice Actions, a Voice API for Android developers, automatic captioning of YouTube videos, automatic transcription of voicemail for Google Voice and speech-to-speech translation, amongst others. In the past year alone, we’ve ported our technology to more than 20 languages.



Speech technology requires an enormous amount of data to feed our statistical models and lots of computing power to train our systems—and Google is the ideal place to pursue such technical approaches. With large amounts of data, computing power and an infrastructure focused on supporting large-scale services, we’re encouraged to launch quickly and iterate based on real-time feedback.

I’ve been exploring speech technology for nearly three decades, yet I see huge potential for further innovation. We envision a comprehensive interface for voice and text communication that defies all barriers of modality and language and makes information truly universally accessible. And it’s here at Google that I think we have the best chance to make this future a reality.

Update 9:39 PM: Changed title of post to clarify that speech technology is not only used on mobile phones but also for transcription tasks like YouTube captioning and voicemail transcription. -Ed.

Posted by Mike Cohen, Manager, Speech Technology

The Data Viz Challenge: can you make tax data exciting?

(Cross-posted on the Code Blog)

This time of year, everyone in the United States is starting to fill out—with varying levels of enthusiasm—our federal income tax forms. Yet, after we write our checks to the IRS, most of us don’t really know exactly where our money is going.

Fortunately, there’s a new online tool to help us find out. Last year, Andrew Johnson and Louis Garcia, two developers from Minneapolis, Minn., created a website called whatwepayfor.com that uses public data to estimate how our tax money is spent. You enter your income and filing status on the site, and it creates a formatted table of numbers showing your contributions to the federal budget—down to the penny:


We’re impressed by what the website uncovers. In 2010, for example, a married couple making $40,000 a year contributed approximately $14.07 to space operations, $6.83 to aviation security and $0.91 to the Peace Corps…and those are just a few of the hundreds of expenditures revealed on the site. As we spent time exploring all of these details, it got us thinking: how we could make the information even more accessible? So we created a simple interactive data visualization:


Click the image above to try the interactive version—it lets you drag the bubbles around, change the income level and so on. You can now look at the data in a new way, and it’s a little more fun to explore. Of course, there are lots of ways to visualize the data, and we’re very sure there are many talented designers and developers around the country who can do it even better than we have.

To make that happen, we’ve teamed up with Eyebeam, a not-for-profit art and technology center, to host what we’re calling the Data Viz Challenge. Andrew and Louis have built an API to let anyone access the data, so now you can choose how to display it. Could you create a better animated chart? Something in 3D? An interactive website? A physical display somewhere in the real world? We want you to show everyone how data visualization can be a powerful tool for turning information into understanding.

You can enter the challenge at datavizchallenge.org, where you’ll also find more information about challenge and the data. The challenge starts today and ends March 27, 2011, and is open to the U.S. only. The top visualization, as chosen by a jury, will receive a $5,000 award and a shout-out on the site and this blog. We’ll announce the shortlist on the week of April 11, and the winners on April 18, a.k.a. Tax Day.

If you’re a data viz enthusiast, we hope you’ll take a look at the data and build your own creative visualization. But even if you’re not, hopefully the results will help you appreciate what data visualization can do, and its usefulness in turning raw information—like federal income tax numbers—into something you can explore and understand.

Posted by Valdean Klump, Creative Lab

Open Gmail's PDF Attachments in Google Docs Viewer

A recent Gmail update changed the "View" links for PDF attachments, but only if you use Google Chrome. Instead of opening PDF files using Google Docs Viewer, Gmail now uses the PDF plugin included in Google Chrome. Unfortunately, this makes it more difficult to save PDF files to Google Docs.

Here's a simple trick that lets you open a PDF attachment in Google Docs Viewer. Click "View" next to the attachment and edit the URL: replace "view=att" with "view=gvatt" in the address bar. Another option is to right-click "View", copy the URL, paste in the address bar and replace "view=att" with "view=gvatt".


Obviously, you can also disable the built-in PDF plugin. Just type about:plugins in the address bar and click "Disable" next to "Chrome PDF Viewer".

7 Chrome Annoyances and How to Fix Them

Guest post by Shankar Ganesh

Google Chrome was released more than two years ago and it's the browser of choice for many people. Despite having won hearts for its speed and elegance, Google Chrome does have some minor flaws that you might want to fix. Here are some of them:

1. No confirmation when closing multiple tabs

Google Chrome does't show a warning when you close a window with multiple tabs. If you accidentally close Chrome windows, you can install Chrome Toolbox. The next time you close many tabs, you'll at least get a warning.


2. Basic history page

Google Chrome's history page is pretty basic and you can't restrict the list to a certain time interval.

The History 2 extension comes to the rescue by allowing you to sort web pages based on the day/week you visited them. History 2 allows you to delete multiple items from your history page at the click of a button – something that's not possible by default.


3. Missing image properties

There's no way to quickly examine an image when you're in Chrome. Fortunately, you can install Image Properties Context Menu, an extension that lets you right-click on an image and find information about the image size, location, dimensions and more.


4. No support for feeds

Chrome simply doesn't recognize RSS feeds and all you get is a page with gibberish text. If you install the RSS Subscription extension developed by Google, you can quickly subscribe to any feed using Google Reader, iGoogle, Bloglines or My Yahoo.


5. You can't send a web page by email

While other popular browsers allow you to quickly send any web page you're viewing by email, such an option is nowhere to be found in Google Chrome.

Worry not, because you can create a simple Javascript bookmarklet to open your default email program with the current URL. If Gmail is what you use, you can alternatively install the Send from Gmail extension to send the web page to Gmail.

6. No session manger

Closing Google Chrome and reopening it does not restore previously opened tabs. In order to do that, go to the Options dialog and enable Reopen tabs that were open last.

If you want advanced session saving options like the ability to create multiple sessions, try the Session Buddy addon for Google Chrome.

7. You can't switch to a tab from the Omnibox

Firefox 4 lets you switch to any open tab by typing relevant words into the address bar. If you'd like to see a similar feature in Chrome, install the Switch To Tab extension.

The next time you have too many open tabs, just type sw <TAB> followed by some words from the page. Hitting Enter switches to the tab that's listed as the first match.



Have you ever wanted to switch from Chrome to another browser because of a missing feature? Did you mange to find a workaround or an extension that adds the missing feature?

---

Shankar is a blogger and an engineering student from India who writes tech tips at KillerTechTips.com. His latest articles helped users block Facebook and improve productivity in Google Chrome. This post was inspired by an article written by Amit Agarwal.

12 new file types supported in Google Docs Viewer

Google Docs Viewer allows users to quickly view PDFs, Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint presentations online by viewing them in the browser without downloading them locally.

New files supported:
Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
Apple Pages (.PAGES)
Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
TrueType (.TTF)
XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

How to access what's new:
In Gmail, these types of attachments will now show a ‘View’ link, and clicking on this link will bring up the Google Docs Viewer.

For more information:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/12-new-file-formats-in-google-docs.html

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More File Formats in Google Docs Viewer

Google Docs Viewer added support for a lot of new file formats. You can now use it to open Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations from Office 2007 and Office 2010, Apple Pages files, PostScript documents, Microsoft XPS documents, TrueType fonts, graphics from Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk AutoCad and SVG files.

"Not only does this round out support for the major Microsoft Office file types (we now support DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS and XLSX), but it also adds quick viewing capabilities for many of the most popular and highly-requested document and image types," informs Google.

Google Docs Viewer is integrated with Gmail and Google Docs, so you can now open many Gmail attachments and Google Docs files without installing additional software.

Google Apps highlights – 2/18/11

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

This Friday update includes improvements to the Gmail mobile web app and Google Docs interfaces, a feature long-sought-after by many Google Voice fans, a powerful account security improvement and stories from several of the companies and government agencies that have recently moved to Google Apps.

Priority Inbox for Gmail mobile web app
Keeping what’s most important front and center is especially helpful on the smaller screen of your mobile device, so we were happy to release Priority Inbox in the Gmail mobile web app. If your phone’s browser supports HTML5, you’ll see the familiar Priority Inbox sections and message importance markers when you visit gmail.com.

Doc list refresh
The documents list in Google Docs got a visual makeover and tune-up on Monday. We added a helpful set of filters to quickly narrow down search results, a right-side preview panel to show details about a selected file and the ability to view uploaded media like photos and videos. What we previously called “Folders” are now called “Collections,” and we’re making the whole interface snappier to save you time.


Port numbers to Google Voice
Last month, we updated Google Voice in response to one of our top user requests: the ability to port existing phone numbers to Google Voice. If you have a beloved phone number that you want to keep as your primary digits, but want Google Voice to ring multiple phones when someone calls, Number Porting might be for you. There’s a $20 charge for Number Porting, and your wireless carrier may charge an early termination fee, so we recommend that you check with your carrier before porting. For more details, check the Google Voice Help Center.



2-Step Verification available to all
Now everyone can help keep their account safer with 2-Step Verification, which we released to Google Apps business customers last year. This advanced security feature works by requiring you to sign in with something you know (your password) plus something you have (a code from your mobile phone). 2-Step Verification helps ensure that the person trying to access your account is the real you.


New setup wizard for Google Apps administrators
Organizations using Google Apps often get up and running in under an hour, but we wanted the setup experience to be even faster and easier. Last week we added a new Google Apps setup wizard to the administrative control panel, which gives guided help for creating user accounts, migrating existing mail to Gmail, routing user email to Gmail and more.


Who’s gone Google?
Recently we’ve seen a surge in new public sector customers—including the Administrative Conference of the United States, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and the City of Rochester Hills. These organizations are not only saving taxpayer dollars with Google Apps, but also boosting the productivity of their ranks.

More than 50,000 businesses have also started using Google Apps in the last three weeks. Pithy Little Wine Co., DeyFischer Consulting, Manna on Main Street and Hunter Douglas are just a few of the businesses we’ve profiled recently who are are going 100% web.

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Explore our U.S. Presidents on a map

(Cross-posted from the Students Blog and Lat Long Blog)

When I was in elementary school, I got two days off every February; one for George Washington and another for Abraham Lincoln. I remember classrooms were usually wallpapered with a potpourri of decorations left over from Valentine’s Day and token silhouettes of these two Presidents thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. My teachers would talk about the significance of the holiday during class but with lack of visuals to pique my interest, it was always hard to retain (and fully enjoy!) the information. With that in mind, we’re pleased to celebrate the President’s Day holiday in the U.S. by letting you go back in time to learn more about our past presidents in a visually fun and interactive way.

We’ve created a U.S. Presidents Showcase to map the birthplaces of all 44 presidents, and provide details about their presidential terms, using the Google Earth plug-in. You can also see the states that voted during each president’s election by clicking on the tours in the left column of the showcase.


Whether you’re a history buff or simply curious to learn more about U.S. presidents, we hope you enjoy exploring a little further using Google Earth. In addition to the U.S. Presidents map, educators can use some of our other resources in their classroom to explore more aspects of history. Here are a few ideas:

• Explore the White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and other historical monuments in 3D and have students explain how architecture is used to honor people, concepts and establishments
• View a 3D model of Valley Forge National Park in Google Earth
• View a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln and map the areas where slavery ended, as well as the areas that were not initially covered by this executive order
• Discuss the famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by German American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze and use the ruler tool in Google Earth to measure the width of the Delaware River
  

We hope you have fun exploring and learning a little more of the history behind the President’s Day holiday. And when you’re done, go out and enjoy your day off!

Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Program Manager

YouTube Highlights 2/17/2011

This is the latest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you regular updates on new product features, interesting programs to watch and tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube. Just look for the label “YouTube Highlights” and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

A lot has happened since our last update, including protests in Egypt, a major U.S. sporting event, the launch of the Google Art project and the Grammy Music Awards—all portrayed in different ways by YouTube and our global community.

Footage of protests in the Middle East on YouTube
Thousands of videos of the protests in Egypt earlier this month were uploaded to YouTube, giving people access to raw footage shot by Egyptians on the ground. People around the world could access these videos by visiting CitizenTube, YouTube’s news and politics channel, or watching live coverage on Al Jazeera’s Arabic and English YouTube channels, as well as Fox News' and Arabic broadcaster Al-Arabiya’s YouTube channels. We’ve also been working with news curation group Storyful to curate videos from the protest movements in Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Algeria and Libya—you can check out highlights on CitizenTube.

This week’s trends on YouTube
Each weekday, YouTube Trends takes a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube. Here’s a sampling from the past two weeks:

• The most popular videos in Wisconsin the day after Green Bay won its trophy
• Gospel music: it’s popular in both expected and unexpected places
• Powerful footage from the protests in Egypt
• University of Connecticut quarterback Johnny McEntee's football skills

2011 Nonprofit Video Awards
For the second year in a row, we’re working to help nonprofits succeed through the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, a celebration of the best nonprofit video on the site. Submit your nonprofit’s video at www.youtube.com/nonprofitvideoawards. Prizes include $2,500 grants from the Case Foundation, Flip cams, free admission to the Nonprofit Technology Conference and a spotlight on the YouTube homepage.

Showtime’s “SHORT stories” recruits short filmmakers
Showtime wants to feature cutting-edge web filmmakers through its “SHORT stories” series. If you’re a filmmaker interested in the project, find out more from Showtime's Trevor Noren.

The big game: find out which ads garnered the most views
The halftime ads during the U.S.’s biggest sporting event, the Super Bowl, are notoriously popular—and this past game was no exception. YouTube Trends analyzed which ads were the most-searched commercials in the hours following the big game and compiled the top 10 most-viewed ads the day after.
 We also discovered some fun facts about the big game: Did you know that an estimated 69.6 million pounds of avocados were consumed on that Sunday? Or that this time was the first Super Bowl with no cheerleaders? Check out YouTube AdBlitz to watch any ads you may have missed.

Events worth watching
In case you missed them live, you can still catch up on some of the big happenings of the past few weeks on YouTube:

• The Grammys: Catch behind-the-scenes footage from the Sunday, February 13 awards ceremony on YouTube or visit youtube.com/thegrammys
• Fashion Week: During Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (February 10-17), we've been bringing viewers the hottest designers’ shows, from Carolina Herrera to Herve Leger to Alice & Olivia; visit www.youtube.com/liverunway for more
• Birthday tribute for the “The Great Communicator”: Sunday, February 6 would have been the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. Find many of his iconic speeches, such as this message to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as tributes and historical videos on YouTube

We’ll update you again in a few weeks. In the meantime, visit the YouTube Blog for more on ongoing programs such as On the Rise and YouTube Trends.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, The YouTube Team

Designing award-winning video games with SketchUp

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was the biggest video game of 2009. It sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide, was identified by Metacritic as the most critically acclaimed game of the year, racked up more than 50 Game of the Year awards and set a new bar for artistry and storytelling in a video game. I spent more Saturday nights than I care to admit playing this game, so I was pretty excited when I found out that Robh Ruppel, Art Director at Naughty Dog Studios, used Google SketchUp to help design the game’s look and feel.

We sat down with Robh to hear how he used SketchUp to visualize Uncharted 2’s environments.



To hear more of our conversation with Robh and see some of his work, check out the Google SketchUp blog.

Posted by Gopal Shah, SketchUp Marketing team