fidzu : Google

When the first ball of this year's Indian Premier League cricket season is bowled, fans across the planet will have a front row seat in the world's biggest online sports stadium. Tonight the Deccan Chargers and Kolkata Knight Riders will face off in Mumbai at 8pm IST, and the YouTube global community will be able to tune in to the IPL's YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/ipl) for streaming and on-demand access to witness the start of what promises to be one of the most widely-distributed sporting events in history. Fans can watch matches, highlight videos, player interviews and much more all on the IPL's YouTube channel.


Named by Forbes as the "hottest sports league in the world" with revenues comparable to the world's most popular leagues, the IPL season is a 60-match, 43-day tournament that features some of the best talent in cricket today. You can come to YouTube and keep up with the action any time, anywhere and connect with fans across the globe. Watch as the match happens, or if you missed a match, tune in later to see what happened. The entire season will be streamed around the world on YouTube, except in the US, where matches will be time-delayed and made available 15 minutes after the match ends.

On the IPL Channel, you'll see three tabs:

• Today's Matches: This is where you can watch streamed matches as they happen. (Note that the stream will be delayed by a few minutes.) Click through at any time to see the match scorecard.
• Recent Matches: Catch up any time on the full action of matches that have already happened. Watch Sachin cream the ball through the covers, Warney taking his latest wicket and more.
• Highlights: If you're short on time, check in here for short videos of player interviews, match highlights, greatest plays and more.

And for all of you who want to cheer or commiserate with others, check out our Twitter gadget on the channel page to be part of the conversation. You can keep up with the discussion on Twitter with the YouTube IPL hashtag (#youtube_ipl). Share, rate and comment on videos throughout the channel, or upload your own video responses to the action. There's also a link so you can join the Official DLF IPL community on Orkut (www.orkut.com/ipl).

We'll be watching the donkey drops, the five-fers, the flippers and floaters, the half-yorkers and slow sweeps - and cheering alongside you!

* A googly is a kind of pitch similar to a baseball pitch or a bowling throw in the game cricket; a wicked googly would be a really good pitch.

12 Mar 2010 7:06am GMT

More than ever, governments around the world are threatening online free expression. Forty countries have taken measures to limit this freedom, up from only a handful a few years ago. Google and YouTube services are or have been blocked in 25 of those nations.

On Thursday night in Paris, we took an important step to highlight this crucial issue by sponsoring the first Netizen Prize (or more elegantly, "Le Prix de Net Citoyen") awarded by the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. And on Friday, March 12, we'll be helping highlight the fight for Internet freedom by marking the group's World Day Against Cyber Censorship on YouTube.

Fittingly, Reporters Without Borders chose to give the first Netizen Prize to the Iranian creators of the website Change for Equality, first established in 2006 to fight for changes in laws in Tehran that discriminate against women. That site has since become a well-known source of information on women's rights in Iran, documenting arrests of women activists and becoming a rallying point for opponents of the regime.

Over the past year those leaders in Tehran have distinguished themselves - and earned the opprobrium of people all over the world - for their brutal crackdown on the rights of its critics to question their rule. Last year's killing of unarmed Neda Agha-Soltan during post-election protests in Tehran, seen around the world on amateur video, has become a symbol of the regime's ferocity - and the power of the Internet to reveal what governments do not want the world to see.

At the award ceremony in our Paris office, our Senior Vice President David Drummond said that we are at a critical point in the future of the Internet: "All of us have a choice. We can allow repressive policies to take flight and spread across the globe, or we can work together against such challenges and uphold the fundamental human right to free expression."

David went on to praise the role of NGOs like Reporters Without Borders, the Obama Administration's commitment to the promotion of Internet freedom and the efforts of all groups that have joined the Global Network Initiative. Under the initiative, major U.S. Internet companies, human rights group, socially responsive investors and academic institutions agreed to guidelines promoting free expression and protecting the privacy of their users around the world. "In the spirit of the undiplomatic American come to European shores," he said, "let me make a plea for European governments, companies and groups to rise to the occasion. Any effort that is limited to the United States is bound to fall far short of its global potential."

Posted by Robert Boorstin, Director, Public Policy

11 Mar 2010 8:02pm GMT

Like many of you out there, we're gearing up for the SXSW Interactive Festival, which starts tomorrow, March 12 in Austin, TX. In just a few short hours, dozens of Googlers and YouTubers will be descending on Austin for a packed weekend of panels, demos and parties. Of course, we've also got a few fun things up our sleeve:

• Representatives from Google and YouTube will be speaking on more than 20 panels on a variety of subjects, including open source, mobile, real-time communication and user experience design.
• At the Google booth, we'll be doing demos on a wide range of products, including Google Maps, Blogger, Wave, Reader and YouTube, and sessions on building apps for App Engine, extensions on Chrome and accessibility APIs and hacks for Android.
• On Sunday, our all-day Hackathon will give you the chance to get your hands dirty and build applications using a variety of Google technologies. At the end of the day, we'll award prizes, including Android phones, for the best apps.
• We're sponsoring the festival's first Mothers' Room, where nursing moms can go for comfort and privacy.

Finally, we'll be seeing you at as many parties as we can go to at one time, including Bikehugger's Mobile Social, where representatives from the Google Maps team will be handing out schwag and dishing dirt on how they built bike directions, the Blogger/Reader party, where you'll have a chance to chat with members of those teams about new features, and (last but not least) the SXSW Film Closing/Music Opening, co-sponsored by YouTube and VH1.

You can read more about all of the Google happenings on our SXSW website, and follow @googlesxsw on Twitter for last-minute updates and news from Austin. We can't wait to hit the ground running (or biking), and we look forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Emily Wood, Editor, Google Blog and Twitter team

11 Mar 2010 7:02pm GMT

Google has recently discontinued Quick Search Box for Windows, which was included in Google Toolbar. If you liked the application, there's a way to use it, even if it's no longer available in Google Toolbar.


1. Install an older version of Google Toolbar for IE. If you already have Google Toolbar for IE, it's likely that the toolbar has been updated to the latest version and you need to first uninstall it.

2. After installing Google Toolbar, go to "c:\program files\google\" and copy the folder Quick Search Box to "c:\program files\". The folder "c:\program files\quick search box\" won't be deleted by Google Toolbar.

3. Now you can uninstall Google Toolbar or install the latest version from toolbar.google.com.

4. Open Quick Search Box's folder, go to "bin\1.2.1150.158\" and copy the file qsb.dll to "c:\program files\quick search box\". You can delete all the files from the folder except GoogleQuickSearchBox.exe and qsb.dll.


5. You can add a shortcut to GoogleQuickSearchBox.exe on your desktop, but it's probably a good idea to launch the application at startup. Go to the Start Menu, click on Run and copy this command:

reg.exe add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run /v "Quick Search Box" /t REG_SZ /d "C:\Program Files\Quick Search Box\GoogleQuickSearchBox.exe /autorun"

When you want to remove the application, just delete Quick Search Box's folder and disable the startup entry using msconfig.

11 Mar 2010 6:21pm GMT

In Blogger's more than 10 years, we've learned that blogging is a powerful way for people to express themselves. More than 350,000 words are written on Blogger every minute of every day and over the years we've added a bunch of features to ensure that writing those words is as easy, fun and rewarding as possible. Today, we're happy to announce the launch of the Blogger Template Designer on Blogger in Draft, our experimental playground where you can try out the latest features Blogger has to offer. Instead of creating a lot of new templates that will grow stale over time, we decided to go beyond static templates and reinvent the whole process of designing your blog, making it even easier to express yourself online.

The Blogger Template Designer is our big first step in improving not just our template designs, but all the ways that you can customize the look and layout of your blog. If you try out the Blogger Template Designer, you'll find:

• Fifteen new professional templates to start from (and more on their way)
• Custom blog layouts with one, two and three columns
• Hundreds of free professional background images from iStockphoto, the leading microstock image marketplace
• Customizable colors, fonts and more

Check out this video for a peek at what you can do with the Blogger Template Designer:



For more info, check out our post on the Blogger in draft blog. Give the Blogger Template Designer a test drive, and then let us know what you think!

Posted by Pete Hopkins, Tech Lead, Blogger

11 Mar 2010 6:00pm GMT

Quick Search Box, a small Google application bundled with Google Toolbar, is no longer available for Windows. The software was both a program launcher and a Google search box instantly available even if your browser is closed.

"At Google, we like to launch early and often, and iterate on our products. We often experiment with new features in Toolbar and sometimes we have to decide how best to focus our efforts on features we expect will yield the most benefit to users in the long run. Along these lines, the Quick Search Box feature will no longer be available in Google Toolbar. At this time we have no plans to release it separately, but I'll keep the community informed if these plans change. Thanks to all the users who helped us test and improve the feature," says Brian Rose, from Google.


Quick Search Box is still available for Mac, iPhone and Android, but each flavor of the application has different features. I think it would be a good idea to add all the features from QSB for Mac to the Windows version and release it as a standalone application. It could be a lightweight alternative to Google Desktop, an extensible open source application that lets you search the files from your computer and your online data from services like Gmail or Google Docs.

{ Thanks, Marcus. }

11 Mar 2010 4:16pm GMT

If you wanted to use macros in Google Spreadsheets, there's a good news: Google Apps Script is now available for all Google Docs users. That means you can write scripts for performing repetitive actions, creating custom functions or even adding advanced features to Google Spreadsheets.

You can try one of the featured scripts by opening a spreadsheet, clicking on the "Insert" menu and selecting "Script". Unfortunately, Google's sample scripts aren't very useful: you can play Hangman, draw a fractal, convert a named range to a CSV file or translate the text from a cell into 10 other languages.


After installing a script, you need to reload the spreadsheet to be able to use it. Then you have to find the UI element that triggers the script: usually it's a new menu. Clicking on the menu entry doesn't run the script: you first need to authorize the script and then you have to click on the menu entry one more time. It's not user friendly.


To write your own scripts, read these tutorials. You'll have to type some JavaScript code, so you should be familiar with this scripting language.

10 Mar 2010 11:55pm GMT

Google Maps added a new type of directions for the US: bicycling directions. Google's blog explains that "biking directions keep you on bike-friendly roads and avoid some of the city's busiest intersections".


Adding bicycling directions wasn't an easy task because Google had to gather information about bike trails, bike lanes, uphill or downhill slopes. Google's algorithms try to find the best route and they take into account a lot of interesting factors.

"Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you're biking on. Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you'll require and the speed you'll achieve while going uphill. We take this speed into account when determining the time estimate for your journey, and we also try hard to avoid routes that will require an unreasonable degree of exertion."

10 Mar 2010 11:34pm GMT

Google Reader Play is a new way to read popular articles and an interesting interface for browsing web pages.

"In Google Reader Play, items are presented one at a time, and each item is big and full-screen. After you've read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one, or click any item on the filmstrip below to fast-forward. Of course, you can click the title or image of any item to go to the original version. And since so much of the good stuff online is visual, we automatically enlarge images and auto-play videos full-screen," explains Google.



The interface is optimized for posts that include images and for short blog posts. You can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate to the next post or you can start the slideshow view to only look at the images and headlines.

I was disappointed to see that Google Reader Play doesn't show your subscriptions. It only shows a list of recommended pages and Google uses your actions (starring, liking or sharing items) to improve the recommendations. If you want to read your subscriptions in Google Reader Play, use this URL:

http://www.google.com/reader/play/#stream

10 Mar 2010 10:59pm GMT

The Google Apps team here in New York City is a hotbed of movie fanatics. But while planning a recent movie night, we realized we spend too much time organizing our events and not enough time discussing, debating and watching movies.

To take the hard work out of planning, we turned to Google Apps Script, which lets you write short programs that automatically perform simple actions within a spreadsheet. For example, our Movie Night script figures out which movies are playing close by and invites everyone to vote on what they'd most like to see.


Google Apps Script has been available to Google Apps customers since January, and today we're excited to bring it to everyone who uses Google spreadsheets. Apps Script can be helpful for all kinds of things, from customized party invites to sending out holiday letters - in fact Apps Script can be especially helpful for those repetitive, time consuming tasks.

To help you find useful scripts, we've also launched a public gallery where you can check out our Movie Night script and browse other available scripts. If you're feeling adventurous, try your hand at writing your own script and submit it to the gallery for others to use. To see the gallery or install a script in your spreadsheet, click on "Insert" and select "Script."

Check out the Google Docs blog for more information about Apps Script, and to learn about writing your own scripts, visit the Google Apps Developer Blog.

Posted by Evin Levey, Product Manager, Google Apps

10 Mar 2010 10:20pm GMT

I use Google Reader a lot - not only to stay on top of the news, but also to find interesting blog posts and articles. I'm always telling my friends about Google Reader, and while some of them love it, others don't want to take the time to set it up. For those of you who fall into this second category, we're announcing Google Reader Play, a new product that makes the best stuff in Reader more accessible for everyone. Reader Play is a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web, customized to the topics you're interested in, with no setup required.


Items in Reader Play are presented one at a time, and images and videos are automatically enlarged to maximize the viewing experience. We use the technology behind Recommended Items in Reader to populate Reader Play with the most interesting content on the web. While you don't need a Google account to use Reader Play, your experience will be personalized if you sign in. As you browse, you can let us know which items you enjoy by clicking the "like" button, and we'll use that info to show you other content we think you'll enjoy.

We think Reader Play is a fun way to browse interesting items online that you wouldn't find otherwise. We designed it especially for people who don't want to spend time curating their own set of feeds - but folks who already use Reader can easily use it to read their feeds as well. Just click the feed settings menu on any feed in Reader and select "View in Reader Play." We're launching Reader Play as an experiment in Google Labs so that we can test it out, get feedback from you and then improve it as quickly as possible. Visit google.com/reader/play to give it a try, and let us know what you think!

Posted by Garrett Wu, Software Engineer

10 Mar 2010 9:17pm GMT

If you're reading this, then you're probably on the Internet - via your laptop, your mobile phone or other handheld device, or maybe even through your television. But in 2010, millions of Americans still do not have access to the wealth of information made available on the Web. Even though the Internet was invented in the U.S. over 20 years ago, many Americans lag behind in both access to the Internet and speed of connections, which is why the Federal Communications Commission (or the FCC, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. communications industry) is launching its much-anticipated National Broadband Plan next Tuesday, to lay out its strategy for connecting all Americans to fast, affordable high-speed Internet.

After this plan is announced, you have the opportunity to interview FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in the second of a series of in-person YouTube interviews with government leaders. (Our first, with U.S. President Barack Obama, took place last month.) Go to CitizenTube today to submit your video or text question via Google Moderator, and vote on your favorites; we'll bring a selection of the top-voted questions to Chairman Genachowski in our interview next Tuesday, March 16. The deadline for submission is Sunday night, March 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT.

To help structure our conversation with the Chairman, we've broken the interview down into seven topics. To learn more about what the FCC is doing in each area, click on the links for each topic below. Then submit your question on CitizenTube under one of the topic headings.

• Access and Affordability
• Mobile and Wireless
• Security and Privacy
• Digital Economy
• Internet in Schools
• Open Internet/Network Neutrality
• Others (learn more at Broadband.gov)

Access to the Internet has transformed almost every aspect of our economy and society. This is your chance to press the FCC on how the National Broadband Plan will work, and ask your questions about improving the Internet in America. We're looking forward to seeing your questions and hearing what the Chairman has to say.

Posted by Steve Grove, Head of News and Politics, YouTube

10 Mar 2010 4:16pm GMT

(Cross-posted with the YouTube Biz Blog)

Mobile phones are rapidly becoming essential tools for surfing the web, connecting with friends, and sharing and watching video online, and we're seeing these effects at YouTube. The YouTube mobile site is more popular than ever: site traffic grew by over 160% in 2009, and now millions of people all over the world are streaming tens of millions of videos every day on their mobile phones. The mobile space moves fast, so we've been working hard to roll out new features and functionality quickly, especially as more and more people adopt YouTube-capable phones.

The increased usage of high-end devices like the iPhone and Android is also making mobile advertising easier and more effective for advertisers. So today, we're launching ads on the home, search and browse pages of the American and Japanese YouTube mobile websites (m.youtube.com from your mobile browser). This is a great way for advertisers to reach YouTube viewers across multiple platforms. In fact, at launch YouTube will immediately provide one of the largest audiences for a mobile ad campaign anywhere on the mobile web. And because YouTube mobile attracts early adopters, the site can deliver to advertisers a coveted demographic of tech savvy trendsetters. We've already seen some early campaigns run on YouTube's mobile site by advertisers like Sony (for the DVD release of "District 9") and Kia, both of whom were able to easily reach their target audience, no matter where they were looking for video.



Our first tests of YouTube mobile ads - with brands ranging from L'Oreal to Land Rover - showed strong results related to click-throughs, user experience and brand awareness, and we've learned a lot in the months since then. As a result, ads on the YouTube mobile website will be banner ads sold on a full-day basis (like with the YouTube homepage on the web), making a mobile buy an easy and valuable addition to any YouTube campaign. For example, today Mazda is running a homepage ad on YouTube.com, and extended their campaign to run ads on our mobile site as well.

If you're interested in learning more, reach out to your YouTube or Google sales rep, or visit youtube.com/advertise.

Posted by Taylor Cascino, Strategic Partner Development Manager

10 Mar 2010 3:01pm GMT

Whenever I meet someone who finds out that I work on the directions team for Google Maps, the first question I'm asked is often "So when's Google Maps going to add biking directions?" We're big biking fans too, so we've been itching to give you a concrete answer. I don't want to keep the good news a secret any longer, so the answer is: right now!

Today we've added biking directions and extensive bike trail data to Google Maps for the U.S. My team has been keeping close tabs on all the public support for biking directions that's been steadily coming in, but we knew that when we added the feature, we wanted to do it right: we wanted to include as much bike trail data as possible, provide efficient routes, allow riders to customize their trip, make use of bike lanes, calculate rider-friendly routes that avoid big hills and customize the look of the map for cycling to encourage folks to hop on their bikes. So that's exactly what we've done.

Let's say you want to bike to work, or maybe you want to drive less and spend more time outdoors. Biking directions can help you find a convenient and efficient route that makes use of dedicated bike trails or lanes and avoids hills whenever possible. To find biking directions, select "Bicycling" from the drop-down menu when you do a directions search:


So, how does it work? Well, I'm based in Seattle, along with the rest of the biking directions team. The city is notoriously hilly, but also has some great trails and a strong cycling community. Let's say I'm trying to get from Golden Gardens to a friend's house in Montlake:


This route avoids hills (phew!) and puts me on the Burke-Gilman trail for most of the journey. When I need to get off the trail to cross town, biking directions makes sure to keep me on bike-friendly roads and avoid some of the city's busiest intersections. The time estimate for the route is based on a complex set of variables accounting for the type of road, terrain and turns over the course of my ride. If I decide that I want to stop at Woodland Park Zoo along the way, I can click on the blue path and drag it to my desired route - just like with driving directions - and we'll still customize the journey for cycling suitability. Over on the Lat Long Blog, you can read more about all the unique tweaks and calculations factored into our routing algorithm.

We've also added information about bike trails, lanes and recommended roads directly onto the map. This can help you get a better sense of your route, or let you find trails nearby for a recreational ride. When you're zoomed into a city, click on the "More" button at the top of the map to turn on the "Bicycling" layer. You'll see three types of lines appear on the map:

• Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
• Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
• Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes

Thanks primarily to our partnership with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, we now have more than 12,000 miles of trails included in biking directions and outlined directly on the map. We also have data on bike lanes and recommended streets for 150 cities across the country. We'll continue to add new trail information and encourage riders to send feedback (biking directions is in beta, after all) and route information for inclusion via the "Report a Problem" tool. When Map Maker is available in the U.S., all riders will be able to directly contribute their local knowledge about trails, bike lanes and suggested routes.

We know that many of you have been anxiously awaiting this feature, so head over to http://maps.google.com/biking to try it for yourself and then hop on your bike!

Posted by Shannon Guymon, Product Manager

10 Mar 2010 1:00pm GMT

The Renaissance, Europe's period of cultural, political and scientific rebirth, began in Florence around 600 years ago. At Google we're interested in a (small "r") renaissance of a different kind - a digital one. Since the launch of Google Books, we've been working with libraries and publishers around the globe to bring more of the world's books to more readers around the globe. Any school child should be able to access the works of Petrarch, Dante or Vico (or, if they're so inclined, Machiavelli). In the case of these more famous authors, this is already largely possible, but what about the work of Guglielmo il Giuggiola or Coluccio Salutati? We want all of the great literature and writings of Italy to be accessible to the general public.

Today we're announcing an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage that will push this vision forward. Working with the National Libraries of Florence and Rome, we'll digitize up to a million out-of-copyright works. The libraries will select the works to be digitized from their collections, which include a wealth of rare historical books, including scientific works, literature from the period of the founding of Italy and the works of Italy's most famous poets and writers. It marks the first time we've ever joined forces with Italian libraries, and the first time we've worked with a ministry of culture.

Around Europe and the rest of the world, we are effectively witnessing a digital renaissance, with an increasing number of organizations running ambitious and promising book digitization projects. We're not the only ones who have seen the need to bring the world's books into digital form. Digitization of books is a tremendous undertaking, requiring the joint effort of a great number of public and private stakeholders. For this reason, we're supportive of many other efforts at digitization, such as the European Commission's Europeana. We want to see these books have the broadest reach possible - the books we scan are available for inclusion in Europeana, of which the Florence Library is a contributing member, and other digital libraries. The more of the world's historical, cultural treasures we can bring online, the more we can unlock our shared heritage.

We believe today's announcement is an important step, and we look forward to working with more libraries and other partners. We envision a future in which people will be able to search and access the world's books anywhere, anytime. After all, Antonio Beccadelli and Anastasius Germonius - like Shakespeare and Cervantes - are part of our human cultural history.

Posted by Gino Mattiuzzo, Strategic Partner Development Manager, Italy

10 Mar 2010 12:00pm GMT

Every day, thousands of businesses choose the cloud. More than 2 million businesses have adopted Google Apps over the last three years, eliminating the hassles associated with purchasing, installing and maintaining hardware and software themselves.

We've found that when businesses begin to experience the benefits of cloud computing, they want more. We're often asked when we'll offer a wider variety of business applications - from accounting and project management to travel planning and human resources management. But we certainly can't and won't do it all, and there are hundreds of business applications for which we have no particular expertise.

In recent years, many talented software providers have embraced the cloud and delivered a diverse set of features capable of powering almost any business. But too often, customers who adopt applications from multiple vendors end up with a fractured experience, where each particular application exists in its own silo. Users are often forced to create and remember multiple passwords, cut and paste data between applications, and jump between multiple interfaces just to complete a simple task.

Today, we're making it easier for these users and software providers to do business in the cloud with a new online store for integrated business applications. The Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps. More than 50 companies are now selling applications across a range of businesses, including:

10 Mar 2010 3:09am GMT

[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Allison Schwam, Senior Search Analyst at Backcountry, join us here. -Ed.]

When you don't have to sacrifice your love of the outdoors for your career or vice versa, it's something special. In fact, my love of both skiing and marketing has grown dramatically since I took my job at Backcountry. Getting to work with Google, specifically managing our AdWords account, is an online marketing geek's dream come true. Combine that with every skier's dream of Utah powder, and life is good.

Day traders wake up every morning to check their portfolio - I get up and check my AdWords accounts. Backcountry sells gear and equipment for the outdoor enthusiast from ski boots to tents, and we sell all of it online. My job is to drive valuable, qualified traffic 365 days a year to Backcountry using AdWords. The AdWords platform lets me manage hundreds of campaigns and hundreds of thousands of keywords with relative ease. I have access to huge amounts of data that are revealed as daily ebbs and flows in impressions, clicks and bids. If you do a Google search for [telemark ski gear], you'll see our ad:


Backcountry was founded in 1996 by two self-proclaimed ski bums, John Bresee and Jim Holland. Since then, the company has grown to hundreds of employees. I've been working here for over two years. Ultimately, our goal is to "crush it," as some ski town folk say: work hard, play hard.

A typical powder day for me is like this one last Friday when Park City got 12 inches of new snow overnight. Here's how AdWords helps me manage both work and fun.

7 - 7:45am
Roll out of bed.
Get the coffee going.
Fry eggs and bacon.
Check snow totals.

If it looks like a good ski morning, I first check my email and glance over our AdWords campaigns. All I need to do is my daily reporting to see that I'm on target for my revenue and cost goals. As long as things are okay, I email my boss to say I'll be out slaying the white dragon.

Just as I have the ideal tools to maximize our online campaign performance, I have the tools avid skiers covet for deep days: fat, rockered skis, stiff ski boots, Gore-Tex jacket and pants, helmet, goggles, merino wool layers, etc. After I grab my gear, I'm off.

7:45am - 12noon

My commute to The Canyons Ski Resort takes 10 minutes. My friends and I know how to get the most out of our time on the mountain, balancing chair lift time, snow quality and vertical. Does that sound a bit like cost-per-click, conversion rate and top-line revenue? Take this lift to that lift, ski the trees while we wait for that chair to open, get after our favorite steep lines. Next thing you know:

Face shots are invigorating. Hard to explain, best to experience! After a few glances at the time and collecting my thoughts, I make my way off the mountain.

12pm - 5pm

I head a few miles down the road to the office. As the afternoon goes by, co-workers will emerge from their cubicles; sometimes because legs are cramping up but also to share stories about how the morning was. Where did you ski? How was the snow? Smiles all around.

I settle into work knowing what I need to succeed at my job is at my fingertips. AdWords gives me visibility into my programs to prioritize and understand trends. It also makes it easy to add and edit my account without getting bogged down in manual work. I regularly use Keyword Performance Reports to monitor both head terms and tail terms to stay on top of revenue opportunities. I'll take into account the average order value and also the percentage of clicks that turn into sales (rate of conversion) in order to manage our keyword bids. As I do bid updates, I also check the AdWords Preview Tool to see how our ads are ranked and what is going on with our competition. We don't really focus on "cost-per-click" but instead on "cost as percentage of revenue," which means the more people purchase, the more ads we can run. So the higher the return on advertising spend, the more room we have to grow our paid search presence.

5 pm - 8 pm

I like this afternoon time in particular because it's quiet and I can really focus on data-crunching. Uninterrupted time and a strong cup of coffee are essential for doing long-term analysis.

Campaign Performance Reports are great for identifying long- and short-term trends as seasons shift or for changes in demand by brand. We just wrapped up our winter sale, so this is a great time for me to run an Ad Performance Report to analyze which versions of ad copy had the strongest clickthrough rates for future reference. Finally, Google Insights for Search is a fun tool. It's a great way to connect with our buyers by discussing big-picture trends with the brands we carry. We can look at AdWords Campaign performance and try to tie it back to general search volume in the marketplace and identify product searches on the rise. In short, given our metrics focus, AdWords gives me the information I need to make decisions about specific keywords, bids, and our overall spend.

There are typically the same few folks hanging out at the office this late. We'll exchange some pleasantries, and as the lights get turned off I'll shut down my computer.

When I earned an undergraduate degree in marketing and cultural anthropology, I had only a vague idea how I was going to create a career with behavioral and analytical activities. It turns out online marketing is an exciting mix of real-time data and customer service. AdWords lets me manage campaigns very efficiently, so I have time to dig deeper and do the strategic analysis that makes this job about much more than just meeting revenue goals.

Finally, I picked Park City because it's more than a ski town. Here fanatical skiers, trail runners, bikers, snowboarders and climbers can live year round and still have a meaningful career. I'll always be grateful to companies like Backcountry and Google for making this possible: Backcountry for fostering the passions of the outdoor enthusiast, and Google for innovation in creating the forums and tools that really work for us.

Posted by Allison Schwam, Senior Search Analyst at Backcountry

09 Mar 2010 5:37pm GMT

If you use Gmail's POP3 fetching feature to read messages from other email accounts, you've noticed that Gmail checks for new messages less frequently than desktop mail clients. Usually, Gmail tries to find new messages every hour, but some accounts are updated more frequently, especially if you get many messages.

"Once you've set up Mail Fetcher, Google will check your other accounts on a regular basis, and new mail will appear automatically in Gmail. Gmail checks individual accounts for new messages at different rates, depending on previous mail fetch attempts. At this time you can't customize the frequency of automatic mail fetches," explains Google.

While the most obvious improvement would be to manually set the frequency, Google decided that's inefficient, but added a Gmail Labs feature that lets you manually refresh your accounts. Go to Gmail Labs, enable "Refresh POP accounts" and click "Save Changes". When you want to check for new messages, click on the "Refresh" link at the top of the page. You should see a message informing you that Gmail is "fetching mail".


Until now, you had to go to the Settings page, select the Accounts tab and click on "Check mail now" next to each POP3 account. Gmail solved this problem by adding a new feature to the existing "Refresh" link. "The refresh link at the top of your inbox will not only update your inbox with your new Gmail messages, it will also fetch messages from any other accounts which you have set up," mentions Emmanuel Pellereau.

Yahoo Mail has a better mail checking interface: you can refresh individual POP3 accounts with just two clicks and there's a keyboard shortcut for refreshing all accounts. Unfortunately, Yahoo Mail checks your POP mail accounts for new messages only when you request it.

09 Mar 2010 10:05am GMT

The Oscars®: glitz, glamor, gossip, gold statuettes, much fanfare - and for many fans, Google search is increasingly a part of watching this live TV experience. Before and during the Academy Awards® broadcast in the U.S., we saw related queries on Google dominating the hot searches list on Google Trends. People searched for the TV schedule, printable ballots for voting on favorites, streaming video sites, nominee and film information, celebrity chatter and whatever else caught your attention. Here's a snapshot:

Fashion
Everyone knows the red carpet is all about the gowns. So which actresses made the best (or worst!) dressed list in search? Zoe Saldana's purple Givenchy haute couture gown won the day in searches, with just a few more queries than runner up Miley Cyrus, who walked down the carpet in one of Jenny Packham's finest. Both beat searches for Sandra Bullock's dress (Marchesa) by large margins. Sarah Jessica Parker, always the fashionista, ranked a distant fourth in Chanel. Certain designers were also popular in search, thanks to the stars who wore (and name-dropped) them. Elie Saab (worn by Anna Kendrick), Armani Prive (Amanda Seyfried, Jennifer Lopez) and Marchesa (Sandra Bullock, Vera Farmiga) were all rising trends.

Winners
Throughout the night Oscar®-related searches rose and fell as nominations were introduced and winners announced. Avatar had the most searches before the ceremony, but as The Hurt Locker received more awards, searches for that film exceeded all others and peaked when it won Best Picture. Precious also had a good run throughout the night. Its peak matched that of "Avatar" during the ceremony:


The awards for best actor, best actress and best director are some of the most-anticipated in the program. There was a considerable amount of buzz about Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock and Kathryn Bigelow before last night, and considerable spikes in search volume when they each won. Here's a look at a few of the star searches last night:


Finally, the evening wasn't all about big wins. The awards help expose more obscure films - shorts, documentaries and foreign-language - to a much larger audience. Searches for these titles typically went up tenfold during the evening, and if they took home a gold statue, search volume spiked as much as 100 times higher. Music by Prudence, Logorama, Food, Inc., The Cove and The Secrets in their Eyes all experienced an exponential explosion of queries.

Gossip and memorable moments
People are always eager for more information about the Hollywood stars - personal stats like age, height, family and dating status. During this year's Oscar® ceremonies, Kathryn Bigelow's height and Miley Cyrus's mother's tattoos were hot topics. Whose girlfriend was most searched for? Easy. George Clooney's (Elisabetta Canalis).

So what were the most memorable moments of the broadcast? When George Clooney wandered off the red carpet to greet the crowd, queries on [clooney] shot through the roof. Ben Stiller's appearance as a Na'vi was another draw, and queries on him were high during his spoof. Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick's John Hughes tribute triggered a flood of nostalgia; Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Home Alone all saw huge query spikes as well. During the memorial portion of the show, queries surged for those in the industry who passed away in the last year, including Ron Silver, Natasha Richardson, Patrick Swayze and Brittany Murphy. On a lighter note, Sandra Bullock set off a frenetic amount of searches when she mentioned a Meryl Streep kiss in her acceptance speech.

As we've seen in presidential debates, unusual words also generate great interest. The Oscars led to spikes in searches for [catharsis] (from Robert Downey Jr.'s presentation with Tina Fey) and [spooning] (Colin Farrell talking about Jeremy Renner).

We hope you enjoyed the evening, and want to thank everyone for turning to Google search to see the latest. And our parents deserve huge thanks, and our agent... oh, they're telling me to wrap it up...!

Posted by Qing Wu, Senior Economics Analyst

08 Mar 2010 9:41pm GMT

What do tracking flu, helping consumers monitor their home electricity use, slowing deforestation and perhaps most importantly in 2010, helping the people of Haiti have in common?

While they are all part of the wide-ranging work of Google.org over the last year, they also show what our technical teams can accomplish in critical areas that don't always get the attention they need and deserve.

A year ago we outlined our goals for the next chapter for Google.org. We talked about our vision to use strengths of Google in information and technology to build products and advocate for critical policies that address global challenges. Ideas for projects continue to pour in from Googlers and partners around the globe, and we're incubating several new projects in the areas of economic development, clean energy and access to technology.

This past year, we:

• Ramped up Google PowerMeter to help consumers reduce their electricity use and save money, secured utility and device partners, and launched the API on code.google.com to help expand partner access globally.
• Introduced Earth Engine, a new computational platform we have begun building for global-scale analysis of satellite imagery to monitor changes in key environmental indicators like forest coverage, at COP15 in December.
• Quickly expanded Google Flu Trends to 20 countries and 38 languages as the H1N1 flu virus spread around the world. We also added city-level flu estimates to 121 U.S. cities and developed the Flu Shot Finder to help people find vaccine locations.
• Responded to earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, with maps, updated earth imagery, and networking projects, and built Person Finder to help people find information about their loved ones after a disaster.
• Advocated for policies to spur innovation of renewable energy technologies that are cheaper than coal (RE<C), and our engineers worked on ways to reduce the cost of solar thermal and other RE<C technologies.

We will continue to greenlight large scale engineering projects that build on Google's strengths in technology, our computing infrastructure and global teams.

Overall, our philanthropic mission at Google includes our Google.org projects and a range of other initiatives - from grants, scholarships and other charitable giving programs to in-kind product support for non-profits. Our founders have set a goal of devoting approximately 1% of Google's equity and yearly profits to philanthropy. In 2009, we devoted around $100 million plus in-kind giving to a broad range of philanthropic efforts. Here are some highlights:

• Academic scholarships and awards: We provide scholarships to encourage students of various backgrounds, ethnicities and gender to excel in their studies in hopes that these and other programs will help dismantle barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields.
• Academic grants: We support the next generation of engineers and maintain strong ties with academic institutions worldwide that are pursuing research in core areas relevant to our mission. We fund projects across a variety of subjects, host visiting faculty members at Google, and have launched the Google Fellowship Program to fund graduate students doing innovative research in several fields.
• Holiday charitable gift: We made $22 million in donations in 2009 to a couple of dozen deserving charities around the world to help organizations that have been stretched thin by more requests for help in a year of fewer donations.
• Employee gift matching: Google matches up to $6,000 for each employee's annual charitable contributions and contributes $50 for every five hours an employee volunteers through our "Dollars for Doers" program to encourage employee participation in charitable causes.
• Charitable Giving Council: We support grants for Googler-led partnerships on causes such as K-12 educational initiatives in science, math and technology.
• Community affairs: We invest in communities where Google has a presence around the world, creating opportunities for Googlers to invest time and expertise, engage in local grant making and build partnerships with local stakeholders.


08 Mar 2010 6:56pm GMT

Last year, we released a public data search feature that enables people to quickly find useful statistics in search. More recently, we expanded this service to include information from the World Bank, such as population data for every region in the world. More and more public agencies, non-profits and other organizations are looking for ways to open up their data and expand global access to this kind of information. We want to help keep that momentum going, so today we're sharing a snapshot of some of the most popular public data search topics on Google. We're also launching the Google Public Data Explorer, an experimental visualization tool in Google Labs.

Popular public data topics on Google
We know people want to be able to find reliable data and statistics on a variety of subjects. But what kind of statistics are they looking for most? To help us better prioritize which data sets to include in our public data search feature, we've analyzed anonymous search logs to find patterns in the kinds of searches people are doing, similar to the patterns you can find on Google Trends and Insights for Search. Some public data providers have asked us to share what we've learned, so we decided to put together an approximate list of the 80 most popular data and statistics search topics.

You can read the complete list at this link (PDF), but here's the top 20 to get you started:

08 Mar 2010 4:25pm GMT

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs weekly. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

This week's enhancements include:

Stars in search
Every day, we work to improve the four key components of search: comprehensiveness, latency, user experience and relevance. Of these, relevance is dramatically enhanced by more personalized results. This week, we announced a new feature that makes it much easier to mark and rediscover your favorite content. Stars in search are just like the stars you see in Google Toolbar or in Maps - they act like bookmarks. When you star a search result, and it happens to appear again in future results, you'll see that you already found that particular result. Starred items will appear at the top of your results. Stars in search has been rolling out this week, and will be available globally for all users who are signed in to their Google account.

Auto-spell for images
This week, we unveiled automatic spell correction for images. In cases where we're highly confident you had intended to type something else, we'll replace results from the typo query with those from the spell-corrected version - just like when you misspell a query in Google search. Ultimately, this change will reduce the time it takes to get you the result you're looking for (and that's a good thing).

Example searches: [butterflys], [roman architecture] and [apollo ohno]

Sidewiki page owner entry
In September, we launched Sidewiki, which lets you contribute helpful information to any webpage using a sidebar in Google Toolbar or a Chrome extension. Afterward, webmasters asked, "How can I quickly put Sidewiki on all pages of my site?" Now webmasters can create a special entry, called a page owner entry, that appears above all entries written by users. Webmaster tool improvements ultimately create a better web experience for us all, so we're pleased about this. Let us know what you think about our webmaster enhancements.



Stay tuned for next week's news on more search launches.

08 Mar 2010 3:32am GMT

Hungry Beast, a news program that airs on ABC1 Australia, had a segment about Google a few days ago. The TV show defines Google as an advertising giant whose main goal is to track users and deliver targeted ads.



Many of the numbers that are supposed to show Google's power are outdated. For example, the number of Google servers was estimated to 450,000 in 2006. comScore estimated that Google attracted more than 2 billion searches a day in July 2009.

Hungry Beast claims that Google "wants to own your phone, your email, your computer and your entire digital life". Using the verb "own" is inappropriate, since Google simply hosts your email and offers software for your phone and your computer. Projects like Data Liberation show that Google's doesn't want to trap your data.

Another claim is that "Google wants to own the cables that deliver the Internet and the electricity to power them", when Google's goal is to "help make Internet access better and faster for everyone" by showing that it's possible to "deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access". Like Gmail, which offered for the first time 1 GB of storage for free, or Google's bid in the FCC spectrum auction, which helped consumers because Google convinced FCC to add some new rules: the winner of the auction has to "give its customers the right to download any application they want on their mobile device, and the right to use any device they want on the network".

The video concludes that Google's ultimate goal is to gather data about everyone in the world and to show great targeted ads. Actually, Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Google's disrupting business model pushes the boundaries of technology by democratizing knowledge. Ads are only the fuel that helps Google accomplish its mission.

"We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place. (...) With our products, Google connects people and information all around the world for free. (...) By releasing services, such as Gmail, for free, we hope to help bridge the digital divide. AdWords connects users and advertisers efficiently, helping both. AdSense helps fund a huge variety of online web sites and enables authors who could not otherwise publish." (Google's IPO Letter, 2004)

{ via Harvey Sanchez }

07 Mar 2010 10:14am GMT

What Do You Suggest? is a site that lets you visually explore how Google Suggest autocompletes a query. "What Do You Suggest takes a seed from you, then guides you on a journey through language and the collective lives of Google users."



Simon Elvery, who created the site, found a lot of interesting patterns:

There are some recurring themes which have emerged as I've been playing with the site during its creation. Among other things, it seems people do rather a lot of searching on the topics of music, religion and relationships.

Sometimes the results are sad, like the people searching for free ebooks on relationships for dummies, and sometimes hopeful like looking for love.

Health is also a recurring theme with the names of medicines, diseases and symptoms appearing over and over again.

{ via Information Aesthetics }

07 Mar 2010 9:53am GMT

Another

day, another Google acquisition. This time, Google bought DocVerse, a company founded by two former Microsoft employees which built a plug-in for Microsoft Office that lets you collaborate with other people in real-time.

"DocVerse combines the benefits of web-based collaboration tools like Google Docs and Zoho with the power and familiarity of the world's most popular productivity application, Microsoft Office. DocVerse offers the first ever product to truly enable real-time sharing and editing of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files. Its key advantage is that it does not require you to learn a new way to work by seamlessly plugging into Microsoft Office."

DocVerse doesn't use Google Docs as a back-end for real-time collaboration, but Google will probably integrate with Google Docs.


Google says that many people "are still accustomed to desktop software", so the acquisition will help these users to try cloud computing services while still using their favorite software.

DocVerse's blog offers an interesting perspective of a two former Microsoft employees: "We fundamentally believe that Google is one of the best positioned companies to truly disrupt the world of productivity software. We're looking forward to the opportunity to scale our vision at Google. Our first step will be to combine DocVerse with Google Apps to create a bridge between Microsoft Office and Google Apps."

Google says that you can no longer create a new DocVerse account, but there's a simple way to try the Microsoft Office plug-in. Download the setup and create a new account when DocVerse asks you to log in.

05 Mar 2010 7:50pm GMT

Google has released a lot of new services that live inside other Google applications, without having a standalone interface. It's an interesting approach that facilitates the adoption of a new service, but makes it difficult to find a new service.

Google Tasks is available inside Gmail, Google Calendar, as an iGoogle gadget and as a mobile app, but there's no standalone desktop interface. Google Buzz integrates with Gmail, Google Maps, but you won't find a separate desktop interface.


Google Social Search and Google Real-time Search are two filters in the "search options" sidebar, but they don't have homepages like Google Blog Search or even Google Patent Search.

Maybe Google decided that it's a better idea to offer new features for the existing Google services, instead of releasing disparate services.

04 Mar 2010 8:45pm GMT

There's a new Android app in Google Labs: Gesture Search. Google's applications offers an alternative input method: drawing letters.

"Gesture Search from Google Labs lets you search your Android-powered device by drawing alphabet gestures on the touch screen. It allows you to quickly find a contact, a bookmark, an application, or a music track from hundreds or thousands of items, all in one place. It is fast and fun to use."

In the screenshot below, you can see Gesture Search in action: after drawing letter "a" in the Contacts app, the user draws the letter "n" to quickly find Andy.


Gesture Search shows two important things about Google's mobile operating system. If you use an Android phone, you'll be able to try a lot of great apps developed by Google. Another important thing is that Android apps can integrate with built-in applications, so you're able to find applications, contacts, songs and bookmarks using a third-party app.

Unfortunately, Gesture Search is only available for Android 2.0 and not many people can upgrade to this version without buying a Droid or a Nexus One. At least for now.

04 Mar 2010 8:20pm GMT

Google removed SearchWiki, the feature that allowed you to customize search results by promoting them, removing them or adding comments below search snippets. SearchWiki cluttered search results and the aggregated results from public SearchWiki pages were rarely useful.

SearchWiki has been replaced with a simple feature that lets you star search results. Click on a star next to a search results and you'll see it in a "starred items" OneBox at the top of the page. Another side effect is that the starred search results are added to Google Bookmarks, so you can quickly find them later. The "starred items" OneBox shows the most relevant bookmarks that match your query and it's the easiest way to search Google Bookmarks.


Those who used SearchWiki to remove search results or to add comments won't lose their changes. "If you previously removed a result, it will remain hidden whenever you do the same search in the future. These hidden results will be listed in a "removed results" section at the bottom of the page," explains Google. There's also a SearchWiki page that lists all your notes.

Even if I didn't like SearchWiki at the beginning, I ended up using this feature a lot. Adding web pages to search results pages and improving the snippets with custom annotations were a great way to refind web pages.

03 Mar 2010 10:23pm GMT

In a previous post I covered how to link to a specific timestamp in a YouTube video. The short version looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s The "#t=31m08s" takes you to 31 minutes and 8 seconds in a video. I just found out that you can also start embedded videos at a certain timestamp. To do it on an embedded [...]

03 Mar 2010 7:31pm GMT

Google has been working on some new algorithms and tools to tackle linkspam and we'd like to ask for linkspam reports from you. If you'd like to tell us about web sites that appear to be using spammy links (e.g. paid links that pass PageRank, blog spammers, guestbook spammers, etc.), here's how to send us [...]

03 Mar 2010 7:12pm GMT

Google Chrome 4.1 Beta for Windows added a new option for managing cookies, images, scripts and how they interact with your browser. To find the new dialog, click on the wrench menu, select "Options", go to "Under the hood" and click on "Content settings".


Here are some frequently requested features that are now available if you use the content settings dialog:

1. Disable images - go to the "Images" tab and select "do not show any images". It's a good idea to use this option if you have a slow Internet connection.


2. Disable JavaScript - go to the "JavaScript" tab and select "do not allow any site to run JavaScript". You won't be able to use most web applications, but at least you'll be safer and you won't download unnecessary JavaScript files.

3. Block images from a domain. Make sure that the option "show all images" is enabled, click on "Exceptions" and add a list of domains that aren't allowed to serve images. You might use this option to block ads to or to block images from adult sites.

4. Block scripts from a domain. Make sure that the option "allow all sites to run JavaScript" is enabled, click on "Exceptions" and add a list of domains that aren't allowed to serve scripts. You might use this option to block ads to or to block tracking scripts.

5. Pop-up whitelisting. The default option for pop-ups is to block them, but you can define a list of safe domains that are allowed to show pop-ups. Go to the "Pop-up" tab, click on "Exceptions" and add domains.

6. Block third-party cookies. Now you can block all third-party cookies by enabling the option "Block all third-party cookies without exception" from the "Cookies" tab.

7. Clear cookies when you close the browser. This is a great way to remove tracking cookies, but Chrome's implementation doesn't let you define a list of exceptions. Select "clear cookies and other site data when I close my browser" from the "Cookies" tab to automatically remove cookies and local storage data. Unfortunately, combining cookies and local storage is not a great idea because they're used in different ways.

8. Disable plug-ins. You can disable all plug-ins, including Flash, Java, Windows Media Player or QuickTime if they slow down or crash your browser. Go to the "Plug-ins" tab and select "do not allow any site to use plug-ins". Please note that this feature doesn't disable Chrome extensions.

9. JavaScript whitelisting. It's not as easy to use as the NoScript extension for Firefox, but you can disable JavaScript and only allow a list of trusted domains to use cookies. Go to the "JavaScript" tab, disable JavaScript and a list of exceptions: google.com, yahoo.com and other domains that require cookies to authenticate.

10. Detect blocked content. If you disable images or scripts, Chrome shows some icons inside the address bar which inform you that Chrome blocked content from a page. In most cases, you can add the current site to the list of exceptions and show content from the site. After adding the exception, you need to reload the page to see the changes.




Some missing features that would be useful: defining exceptions for removing cookies when closing the browser, disabling certain plug-ins and disabling animated images.

You can download Chrome 4.1 Beta for Windows from this page. "Content settings" is also available for Linux in the dev channel version of Chrome, but this version is buggier and less polished.

02 Mar 2010 10:16am GMT

Many Android users complained that Google products like the mobile version of Google Buzz or Google Earth require Android 2.0 or Android 2.1, even if most people can't upgrade to the latest Android version without buying a new phone.

Robin, a Google employee that answers questions in the Google Mobile Forum, posted an interesting response:

"Keep in mind that part of the impetus for the Android foray in the first place was to get mobile OS development moving more rapidly. So here we are, with rapid iterations (multiple OS upgrades in under a year!) and yes, some growing pains. As devices gain more and more capability, I'd imagine we'll continue to develop features that take advantage of the latest and greatest. As much as we can, we'll adapt for older OS versions as well - which is why we're also pushing web apps that can cross platforms (and yes, I agree that it's awkward that this web app [Google Buzz for mobile] doesn't work seamlessly across all Android-powered devices, but we're working on it asap! I swear!)."

While it's a good idea to take advantage of the "latest and greatest" features, users that bought a phone six months ago should be able to use an application released last month, even if not all the features are available. Everyone should be able to update to the latest version of the operating system, especially if Android releases multiple major upgrades in a few months.

Mkibrick posted a wise comment when Google announced that Google Earth is available for Android: "Don't say something is available for "Android" when it is only available for a single phone. You'll just confuse and anger your customers." Google Earth is available for Android, but it requires Android 2.1, which is limited to Nexus One, at least for now.

While carriers and hardware manufactures could be blamed for the slow migration to the latest Android versions, Google could update important software components like the browser independently from the operating system.

01 Mar 2010 11:53pm GMT

It's difficult to understand why Google didn't develop an online photo editor: it would've integrated with Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs and other Google services. Right now, Picasa Web Albums is just an online extension of Picasa, a popular software that lets you manage your photos. Unlike Picasa Web Albums, most Google services work online and don't require additional applications.

Instead of migrating Picasa online, Google acquired Picnik, an online photo editor that already integrates with Picasa Web Albums and many other photo services.

"Today, we're excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser," mentions Google's blog.


Picnik will not be discontinued and Google promises that the service will continue to support all the existing partners, but I suspect that Flickr will no longer use it as the default photo editor.

"When Bitnik, Inc was created, our founders envisioned making great software for real people and giving users the power to edit digital photos in their browser, without having to purchase or download complicated software. While our first office in 2005 only had two desks, today we've grown to 20 employees and have become the world's most fun online photo editor, with millions of visitors every month," says Virginia from Picnik.

Google will have to rethink its strategy and no longer build online extensions for software, even if they own a popular application like Picasa. Google Photos should be a standalone service that doesn't require Picasa to upload more than 5 photos, to download photo albums or to quickly retouch a photo.

01 Mar 2010 10:44pm GMT

Google's crowded "search options" sidebar has a new feature: restricting the results to sites related to nearby businesses. Google already determines your location and it shows results appropriated for your location, but now you can see only local search results.

There are 3 filters that help you restrict the results to a city, a region or a state. If Google can't find your location or you want to find results for a different location, click on "custom location" and enter a city.





Google Blog says that this feature is useful because the search engine no longer has to match your keywords to find a location.

Location has become an important part of the way we search. If you're a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer's market, location can be vital to helping you find the right information. Starting today, we've added the ability to refine your searches with the "Nearby" tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically - not just with keywords - so you don't have to worry about adding "Minneapolis" to your query and missing webpages that only say "St. Paul" or "Twin Cities."

The local search filter for web pages is not new: it used to available in Google Maps and as a Google Search experiment.

26 Feb 2010 7:36pm GMT

I'm three weeks into a new 30 day challenge: no iPhone. When I got a Nexus One in December, I spent a few weeks carrying both phones around in the pockets of my jeans. It took a little while to adapt to Android, but I'm very happy with my Nexus One and I don't plan [...]

22 Feb 2010 5:42pm GMT

Last year I tried to limit my travel but still ended up making about ten (!) trips in 2009. This year I've resolved to travel less for work. Right now, here's my current speaking/travel plans for 2010: March 2-4, 2010: SMX West, Santa Clara, CA. I'm doing a "Ask the Search Engines" panel. May 19-20, 2010: Google [...]

17 Feb 2010 5:25pm GMT

Okay, someone tell me if this device exists (or build it!). I want a device where I can pay $10-15 to get a gadget in the mail. The gadget would sit in my pocket for a week wherever I go. The device would record cell phone signal strength for each of the four major U.S. [...]

16 Feb 2010 3:20pm GMT

I recently went looking for some software to make a blog into a book. Here's what I found: - Lulu will take PDF files for a book. Blogbooker.com will try to create a PDF from a blog. Unfortunately, my blog made BlogBooker choke (I have 991 posts from my blog) - even when I excluded comments. - [...]

15 Feb 2010 11:23pm GMT

Back in December, I happened to click on a Greasemonkey script in Chrome and was shocked that it just worked. At the time, I wrote a note within Google that said Whoa. I just clicked on a Greasemonkey script in the latest dev version of Chrome (4.0.266.0 on Linux). Chrome offered to install the GM script, [...]

09 Feb 2010 5:30am GMT

Moustafa Hammad and Mohamed Elhawary, a couple engineers in our search quality group, just did a nice post about improving Arabic language searches: Our algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar along with signals from historical search data to decide when to leave out spaces between words or when to remove unnecessarily repeated letters. Now, [...]

02 Feb 2010 8:55pm GMT

I wanted to play with writing Android apps on my home Linux computer, which is currently running Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). These are mostly notes for myself, so don't feel guilty if you skip this post. - Make sure your system is up-to-date: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade - Install Java sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk - [...]

31 Jan 2010 2:18am GMT

Google just launched a nice feature on Google Reader: the ability to keep an eye on pages for changes. This works even if the page doesn't have its own RSS feed. This sort of thing is very handy. You could use it to spot new things on a privacy policy page or watch for changes [...]

26 Jan 2010 2:58am GMT

Sterling Udell is a freelance web developer who started programming with Google Maps since before the API was released. He's the author of the book Beginning Google Maps Mashups. In the last couple of days I've been actively exploring the creation of gadgets for GMail, and wanted to share some of my findings, both for GMail users and other gadget developers. First, a bit of background... Google announced support for gadgets on GMail about a month ago, at which time they released their own Calendar and Docs gadgets. Since I have quite a few gadgets these days, I thought I'd try my hand at it myself. ...

27 Nov 2008 2:34pm GMT

The Google Maps navigation interface has received an update. The zoom bar is slightly redesigned, and Street View can now be accessed by clicking the person icon above the zoom slider. Street View is a bit more immersive now as it's not wrapped in a box layer on top of the map anymore, but fills the whole width instead (with a small map appearing in the bottom right). Rotating a panorama photo is possible by moving the "N" symbol of the top compass. For comparison, here's an older Maps design: [Thanks Trent Olson!]

25 Nov 2008 10:52pm GMT

Google says that recent reports on a Gmail vulnerability aren't true (Google might mean this one at GeekCondition.com, as blogged here earlier; my emphasis in the quote): We've seen some speculation recently about a purported security vulnerability in Gmail and the theft of several website owners' domains by unauthorized third parties. At Google we're committed to providing secure products, and we mounted an immediate investigation. Our results indicate no evidence of a Gmail vulnerability. With help from affected ...

25 Nov 2008 10:33pm GMT

Feedback Army is an incredibly useful little website where you pay $7 for feedback to a given website of yours, and then get back 10 comments. Feedback Army uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk in the background. You enter the domain in question, say "example.com", and then ask a bunch of question. Questions could be, "What do you find confusing about the site? What did you stumble over at first? What did you like about the site?" Then very quickly, feedback -- which you can RSS-subscribe to -- comes in. (Note the feedback is public for others to see, if they know the URL you are requesting feedback for.) If you want to see examples of what kind of feedback may be given, you can enter http://captionx.com, http://watchtolear ...

25 Nov 2008 2:46pm GMT

The YouTube.com player has become a bit wider. Ionut says, "YouTube's Google Video-ization continues by using more space for the player and less space for the sidebar. YouTube changed the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9, generally used for high-definition TV." Videos using the older proportions show black pillars to the left and right. [Hat tip to Haochi and Ionut!]

25 Nov 2008 12:59pm GMT

Reto Meier is a software engineer in London. He blogs about technology, programming & Google, and is author of the book Professional Android Application Development. The next generation of games promises to take gaming out of the lounge room and back into the open. Consoles and gaming devices won't just be a combination of key strokes and button presses, they'll be tool used in the real-world as part of the game. It's the difference between playing baseball on the PSP or with a bat and ball. The difference between Counter Strike and Laser Tag. While the iPhone looks like a solid portable gaming console, technologies like Androi ...

24 Nov 2008 12:00pm GMT

Brandon at GeekCondition reports of a Gmail security vulnerability which lets an attacker set up automated filters in your Gmail account, provided the attacker manages to lure you onto a page of theirs first. Brandon does not post the full exploit (obtaining a certain variable for this exploit "is tricky but possible", Brandon says, adding that he's "not going to tell you how to do it, if you search hard enough online you'll find out how"), and I'm not sure if this works on just any browser. As automated filters can trigger mail addressed to you to be forwarded to someone else (and trashed in your account), some already had their domain name kidnapped due to this issue. To Gmail users, Brandon sugges ...

23 Nov 2008 1:20pm GMT

Mogulus reports that YouTube had roughly 700,000 concurrent viewers during yesterday's first YouTube live stream event, which featured people like Will.I.Am and Katy Perry (the San Francisco-based event featured music performances, comedy, and memes and popular people of YouTube). These stats aren't precise, but based on public Akamai before/ after numbers during the time. Mogulus also reports that Google partnered with content delivery network Akamai to support all the users. (Note Mogulus is a competitor in the space of content delivery/ streaming help.) Michael Arrington at

23 Nov 2008 11:39am GMT

Google added a new opt-in experiment for search results: SearchWiki with sound. By now you might have noticed you can click the "x" next to a specific result, resulting in an animation of an explosion as part of the SearchWiki feature (this is the image file). After hitting the Join button on the new experiment, you'll additionally hear a sound during that explosion (recorded by Google co-founder "Sergey Brin himself", as Google says). Organizing the world's information one gimmick a time... [Thanks WebSonic.nl!] Update: If on the other han ...

22 Nov 2008 2:21pm GMT

Google has released a template to create collaborative pixel art in Google Spreadsheets. Just change the background color of cells in this copy of the spreadsheet I made, and we'll see where it goes! (Also see Google's template, video and more.) [Via Andy!] On that note, have a look at the older Pixel Group page here. You can invert any pixel in the black and white image by clicking it. Update: There's a snapshot now. [Thanks all!]

22 Nov 2008 1:39pm GMT

"Colorful soup" -- BunteSuppe.de -- is the name of a German collaborative art tool. Just drag & drop any tile on the screen to create a larger picture.

21 Nov 2008 11:35pm GMT

Google has gone live with a big change to their result pages, at least for those of you who are logged in (if you're not seeing it yet, it may still be rolled out for your Google Account). It's called SearchWiki, and lets you edit the position of the results you're getting, and add comments to them. SearchWiki was in experimental stage for some time now. Specifically, you'll be seeing three icons accompanying results, and further options below the listing: Up vote: An up arrow, similar in functionality to what you may know from social sites like Reddit or Digg. Clicking it will turn the icon green and move this specific result up ...

21 Nov 2008 11:23am GMT

EtherPad is a collaborative, real-time text editor created by, among others, two ex-Google employees*. An EtherPad document is quickly set up without any need for registration. You can then share the URL of the document, and others who will visit that page will then be able to see, in real-time, whatever you're typing**. This has an interesting feel to it because there's no "security buffer" as in typical chat programs: every letter you write will be shown as you write it, including occasional errors before you fix them. [Edit: I removed the link to the document now, but you can start your own EtherPad of course...] Please join this EtherPad to give it a try (n ...

20 Nov 2008 3:15pm GMT

Google announced that on December 31st they will shut down Lively, which was their 3D chat world, and somewhat of a potential competitor to Second Life. Room widgets embedded in other sites are then supposed to show an image but no more interaction, which would add Lively to the list of Google's canceled products. Google's post on this decision does not really give a detailed reasoning for this shut-down of a product which was just released this year, except that they're saying "we want to ensure that we prioritize our resources and focus more on our core search, ads and apps business." In particular, this leaves some questions ...

20 Nov 2008 2:03pm GMT

The Shanghaiist reports: With political arrows still being shot back and forth between Beijing and Dharamsala [home of the exiled current Dalai Lama], China has been panning out its efforts to win the propaganda battle over Tibet (...) Lately we've been observing lots of Google ads pointing to the China Tibet Information Center appearing in places like Youtube ... and even our Google Reader. Given the massive reach of Google's self-serve contextual ads, this means anytime you're viewing something related to China or more specifically Tibet anywhere on the web, that ad may appear, pointing you to http://eng.tibet.cn/ where China's version of the Tibet story is presented. You'd think these state behemoths ar ...

20 Nov 2008 12:44pm GMT