[G] Chrome notebooks for business

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Chrome notebooks for business

Today we launched the Chrome notebook Pilot program. Chrome notebooks will be great for businesses, schools and government agencies -- especially Google Apps customers -- because they deliver a faster, simpler and more secure computing experience, with lower total cost of ownership than traditional PCs.

Learn more on the Official Google Blog and visit the Chrome notebook site to apply for the pilot.

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Product Manager, Chrome OS for business

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/chrome-notebooks-for-business.html

[G] Now available with Google Apps: Google Analytics

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Now available with Google Apps: Google Analytics

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Analytics
In today’s world, it is increasingly important for organizations to have a presence on the web. But once your organization has invested time and resources in a website, how do you measure the impact of this investment? Where is your traffic coming from and what is it doing when it gets to your site? Which pages on your site are the most engaging and which pages have the most user dropouts? All of these questions can be answered with Google Analytics, Google’s enterprise-class web analytics service, which is now available for free with your Google Apps account!

Google Analytics provides data about your web properties, including traffic volume, number of visitors, and time spent on your site, in a straightforward and easy to understand way.


Google Analytics also makes it easy to track where your traffic comes from, both in terms of referring sources as well as geographic location.


Google Analytics is designed to be easy to use for everyone in your organization, from the product manager to the chief of marketing. Even though it’s simple to use, Google Analytics offers advanced features such as custom reports, segmentation, e-commerce capabilities, API access, and onsite search for power users that want to construct a more tailored experience. Google Analytics delivers easily-digestible insights that can be used across your organization to increase website traffic and engagement, and to improve the return on your web investment.

Just like other Google Apps services, Google Analytics runs in Google’s cloud so it delivers all of the world-class reliability and scalability that you have come to expect from Google Apps. Also, sharing Analytics data and delegating access to colleagues in your organization is simple using their existing Google Apps accounts. And, because the documents, spreadsheets and sites that you create using Google Apps live in the cloud and have unique web addresses, you can use Google Analytics to track traffic to your domain’s docs in addition to your website.

Learn more and get started
Google Analytics can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about how Google Analytics can help you track engagement with your website take a look at our product tour or read some customer stories to learn how Google Analytics has had an impact on an organization like yours. Or, check out the Google Analytics blog for the latest news and tips and tricks.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Analytics at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics team

Note: Google Analytics may not be available in all areas.

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/now-available-with-google-apps-google_07.html

[G] Cyber Monday Reflection: The Importance of E-commerce Search

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Cyber Monday Reflection: The Importance of E-commerce Search

Last week, we asked you and the twittersphere to share your shopping experiences during a record-breaking Cyber Monday. We were pleased to hear from so many of you, and the good news is that you found a lot of great deals (we’re jealous!).

We looked at each of your comments and noticed a few interesting trends:

• 77% of those surveyed used search within an e-commerce website to find products.
• Responders were most impressed by e-tailers who had great deals (22%) and a fast/easy shopping experience (14%). (Top Trends)
• Shoppers cited a difficulty finding items (11%) more frequently than shipping problems (10%) or a lack of good deals (8%). (Top Trends)

This Cyber Monday, online retailers seemed to be focused exclusively on offering great deals and promotions. Yet when provided with an open-ended format to comment on their shopping experiences, consumers were most concerned with findability. Here’s what some of them had to say:

"I was utterly appalled by the experience. All the products were just in a long list, where you had to click through the pages to browse. There was no search box... it took me nearly half an hour to find what I wanted.”

"[It was] difficult to find what you want, meaning you spent hours searching."

“You couldn't search worth a darn. So disappointing... Why is it so hard to get this right?"

"Their site was extremely lagged for most of their sale. It cost them a purchase from me because I gave up."

We think it’s time for online retailers to re-evaluate their priorities. Google Commerce Search was created to address the above concerns and more, and retailers who have implemented it have seen searches increase, search time decrease, and conversions rise significantly. Consider BabyAge.com, an IR500 website who switched to GCS and saw searches rise 58% and search page views grow 64%, contributing to a 34% increase in sales conversions. Implementing a hosted e-commerce solution like Google Commerce Search can fundamentally improve your shopping experience, but don't take our word for it – hear what the CEO of BabyAge.com has to say.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Product Marketing, Google Commerce Search Team

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/cyber-monday-reflection-importance-of-e.html

[G] Four Googlers elected ACM Fellows this year

Official Google Blog: Four Googlers elected ACM Fellows this year

(Cross-posted from the Google Research Blog)

I am delighted to share with you that, like last year, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has announced that four Googlers have been elected ACM Fellows in 2010, the most this year from any single corporation or institution.

Luiz Barroso, Dick Lyon, Muthu Muthukrishnan and Fernando Pereira were chosen for their contributions to computing and computer science that have provided fundamental knowledge to the field and have generated multiple innovations.

On behalf of Google, I congratulate our colleagues, who join the 10 other ACM Fellows and other professional society awardees at Google in exemplifying our extraordinarily talented people. I’ve been struck by the breadth and depth of their contributions, and I hope that they will serve as inspiration for students and computer scientists around the world.

You can read more detailed summaries of their achievements below, including the official citations from ACM—although it’s really hard to capture everything they’ve accomplished in one paragraph!

Dr. Luiz Barroso: Distinguished Engineer
For contributions to multi-core computing, warehouse scale data-center architectures, and energy proportional computing

Over the past decade, Luiz has played a leading role in the definition and implementation of Google’s cluster architecture which has become a blueprint for the computing systems behind the world’s leading Internet services. As the first manager of Google’s Platforms Engineering team, he helped deliver multiple generations of cluster systems, including the world’s first container-based data center. His theoretical and engineering insights into the requirements of this class of machinery have influenced the processor industry roadmap towards more effective products for server-class computing. His book "The Datacenter as a Computer" (co-authored with Urs Hoelzle) was the first authoritative publication describing these so-called warehouse-scale computers for computer systems professionals and researchers. Luiz was among the first computer scientists to recognize and articulate the importance of energy-related costs for large data centers, and identify energy proportionality as a key property of energy efficient data centers. Prior to Google, at Western Digital Research Corporation, he worked on Piranha, a pioneering chip-multiprocessing architecture that inspired today’s popular multi-core products. As one of the lead architects and designers of Piranha, his papers, ideas and numerous presentations stimulated much of the research that led to products decades later.

Dr. Richard Lyon: Research Scientist
For contributions to machine perception and for the invention of the optical mouse

In the last four years at Google, Dick led the team developing new camera systems and improved photographic image processing for Street View, while leading another team developing technologies for machine hearing and their application to sound retrieval and ranking. He is now writing a book with Cambridge University Press, and will teach a Stanford course this fall on "Human and Machine Hearing," returning to a line of work that he carried out at Xerox, Schlumberger, and Apple while also doing the optical mouse, bit-serial VLSI computing machines, and handwriting recognition. The optical mouse (1980) is especially called out in the citation, because it exemplifies the field of "semi-digital" techniques that he developed, which also led to his work on the first single-chip Ethernet device. And more recently, as chief scientist at Foveon, Dick invented and developed several new techniques for color image sensing and processing, and delivered acclaimed cameras and end-user software. A hallmark of Dick’s work during his distinguished career has been a practical interplay between theory, including biological theory, and practical computing.

Dr. S. Muthukrishnan: Research Scientist
For contributions to efficient algorithms for string matching, data streams, and Internet ad auctions

Muthu has made significant contributions to the theory and practice of Internet ad systems during his more than four years at Google. Muthu's breakthrough WWW’09 paper presented a general stable matching framework that produces a (desirable) truthful mechanism capturing all of the common variations and more, in contradiction to prevailing wisdom. In display ads, where image, video and other types of ads are shown as users browse, Muthu led Ad Exchange at Google, to automate placement of display ads that were previously negotiated offline by sales teams. Prior to Google, Muthu was well known for his pioneering work in the area of data stream algorithmics (including a definitive book on the subject), which led to theoretical and practical advances still in use today to monitor the health and smooth operation of the Internet. Muthu has a talent for bringing new perspectives to longstanding open problems as exemplified in the work he did on string processing. Muthu has made influential contributions to many other areas and problems including IP networks, data compression, scheduling, computational biology, distributed algorithms and database technology. As an educator, Muthu’s avant garde teaching style won him the Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching at Rutgers CS, where is on the faculty. As a student remarked in his blog: "there is a magic in his class which kinda spellbinds you and it doesn't feel like a class. It’s more like a family sitting down for dinner to discuss some real world problems. It was always like that even when we were 40 people jammed in for cs-513."

Dr. Fernando Pereira: Research Director
For contributions to machine-learning models of natural language and biological sequences

For the past three years, Fernando has been leading some of Google’s most advanced natural language understanding efforts and some of the most important applications of machine learning technology. He has just the right mix of forward thinking ideas and the ability to put ideas into practice. With this balance, Fernando has has helped his team of research scientists apply their ideas at the scale needed for Google. From when he wrote the first Prolog compiler (for the PDP-10 with David Warren) to his days as Chair at University of Pennsylvania, Fernando has demonstrated a unique understanding of the challenges and opportunities that faced companies like Google with their unprecedented access to massive data sets and its application to the world of speech recognition, natural language processing and machine translation. At SRI, he pioneered probabilistic language models at a time when logic-based models were more popular. At AT&T, his work on a toolkit for finite-state models became an industry standard, both as a useful piece of software and in setting the direction for building ever larger language models. And his year at WhizBang had an influence on other leaders of the field, such as Andrew McCallum at University of Massachusetts and John Lafferty and Tom Mitchell at Carnegie Mellon University, with whom Fernando developed the Conditional Random Field model for sequence processing that has become one of the leading tools of the trade.

Posted by Alfred Spector, VP of Research

URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/four-googlers-elected-acm-fellows-this.html

[G] An update on Chrome, the Web Store and Chrome OS

Official Google Blog: An update on Chrome, the Web Store and Chrome OS

(Cross-posted on the Google Chrome Blog)

On the Chrome team, we’re constantly amazed by the speed of innovation on the web. We designed Chrome to make the web shine, and we hope our upcoming efforts will help support this vibrant ecosystem even more. By making the web faster, helping people discover great apps, and making computers more fun to use, the next year of computing should be even more exciting than the last one.

Chrome

This year, the number of people using Chrome has tripled from 40 to 120 million. Speed is what people love most about Chrome, and we’re always working to make the browser even faster. Therefore we’re bringing Google Instant to the Omnibox, showing search results and loading web pages as you type. We’ve also overhauled V8, Chrome’s JavaScript engine. It now runs complex JavaScript programs up to twice as fast as before. These two features are available in our early access channels and will be rolling out to everyone soon.

Chrome Web Store

Today the Chrome Web Store is open for business. Developers have already started uploading apps, and we expect the number to grow over time. Right now the store is only available in the U.S., but will expand to many countries and currencies early next year. The store will be featured prominently in Chrome, helping people discover great apps and developers reach millions of users around the world.

Chrome OS

Last year, we announced our effort to design an operating system that is built and optimized for the web. Many people already spend all their time in a web browser, and by building an operating system that is essentially a browser, we can make computers faster, much simpler and fundamentally more secure.

We’re not done yet, but Chrome OS is at the stage where we need feedback from real users. Some of the features of Chrome OS require new hardware, but we didn’t want to sell pre-beta computers. Instead we’re launching a pilot program where we will give test notebooks to qualified users, developers, schools and businesses. We're starting with the U.S. and will expand to other countries once we get the necessary certifications. To participate in the pilot program, visit the Chrome notebook website.

The test notebooks exist only to test the software—they are black, have no branding, no logos, no stickers, nothing. They do have 12.1 inch screens, full-sized keyboards and touch pads, integrated 3G from Verizon, eight hours of battery life and eight days of standby time. Chrome notebooks are designed to reach the web instantly, are easy to share among friends and family, and simply by logging in, all of your apps, bookmarks and other browser settings are there. Setting up a new machine takes less than a minute. And even at this early stage, we feel there is no consumer or business operating system that is more secure.

In the first half of next year Chrome notebooks will be available for sale from Acer and Samsung. More manufacturers will follow. Also, Chrome OS is designed to work across a wide range of screen sizes and form factors, enabling our partners to deliver computing devices beyond notebooks.

We’re excited to get Chrome notebooks into the hands of users. The data from our test pilots is key to building something wonderful. We look forward to working together to make computers better.

Posted by Linus Upson, VP Engineering and Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management

URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/update-on-chrome-web-store-and-chrome.html

[G] Update on Google Docs offline and the new Chrome Web Store

Official Google Docs Blog: Update on Google Docs offline and the new Chrome Web Store

The Chrome Web Store was announced at the Chrome event in San Francisco today, giving Chrome users an easy way to discover a broad range of amazing web apps. You can install our Google Docs web app by clicking Install on our store landing page. This will add a handy shortcut to your favorite web productivity app.

In addition, at the event today, we were excited to demonstrate a feature that we expect to deliver early in 2011 -- the return of offline support for Google Docs. For those who used offline, we are bringing back the much improved feature by taking advantage of advancements in modern browser technology like HTML5.

Together, the web app plus the upcoming offline feature will make it even easier to access your docs everywhere you are.

Posted by: Jonathan Rochelle, Group Product Manager

URL: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/12/update-on-google-docs-offline-and-new.html

[G] Event time zones in Google Calendar

Official Gmail Blog: Event time zones in Google Calendar

Posted by Oleksandr Kyreiev, Software Engineer

Dealing with time zones can be a headache. Whether you’re a regular traveler or trying to plan ahead for your weekend in Paris, it’s often difficult to keep track of time differences. We’ve heard your feedback and are pleased to announce a new addition to Google Calendar: event time zones.

With event time zones, you can specify the time zone for a given event. So when you’re home in Florida, you can more easily set up dinner with your friend in Paris for the following week. Events will appear on your calendar according to the current time zone you’re in, and when you change to your destination time zone they’ll be in the right place. Just click the “Time zone” link to the right of the date and time fields on the event page. You can even set up events which start in one time zone and end in another, ideal for those of you who fly often.

URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/event-time-zones-in-google-calendar.html

[G] Improvements up and down for Picasa Web Albums Uploader

Official Google Mac Blog: Improvements up and down for Picasa Web Albums Uploader

By Greg Robbins, Software Engineer

Our new release of Picasa Web Albums Uploader for Mac OS X adds some valuable improvements suggested by users. If you share photos and videos on Picasa Web Albums with friends and family, you’ll find this update works even more smoothly with iPhoto and other photo management applications on your Mac.

The uploader application and iPhoto export plug-in now try to identify when files are duplicates of photos or videos already in the destination album, and will offer to skip uploading the copies. This is especially helpful when exporting directly from iPhoto, since now you can upload a growing iPhoto album or event repeatedly without having to carefully exclude the files you previously shared.

When photos are resized or are converted to JPEG, the new uploader also offers better image quality, and more consistent preservation of photo metadata like photo orientation and camera details.

This release is also a better foot soldier on the Data Liberation Front. When you use the Picasa Web Albums Uploader application to quickly download one or all of your albums, it will retrieve not just photos but now also a video file for each of your movies when MPEG-4 versions are available from the server. This makes Picasa Web Albums an even better choice for sharing your high-definition videos.

The latest release of the uploader, version 1.4, is available from the download page. If you have an older version of the uploader on your Mac, it may have already updated itself. To share your questions or suggestions, join the conversation in the Mac Uploader area of the Picasa Help forum.

URL: http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2010/12/improvements-up-and-down-for-picasa-web.html

[G] Chips&Media delivers VP8 HD video hardware decoder IP

The WebM Open Media Project Blog: Chips&Media delivers VP8 HD video hardware decoder IP

Silicon video IP maker Chips&Media has begun shipping its CODA960 multiformat HD video hardware core, which supports up to 1080p60 playback of VP8 video. VP8 is the video codec used in WebM.

Chips&Media representatives went on the road recently to show the industry's first FPGA demonstration of WebM 1080p hardware decoding. For more information, visit the Chips&Media web site.

URL: http://blog.webmproject.org/2010/12/chips-delivers-vp8-hd-video-hardware.html

[G] A Summer of Accessibility

Google Open Source Blog: A Summer of Accessibility

Tekla (formerly mEADL) is a collection of open hardware and open source applications that may be used to enable access to mobile devices for people with motor impairments. The idea for Tekla was the brainchild of the mobile accessibility team at the Inclusive Design Institute (IDI), which became a new mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code in 2010. Our goal has been to bridge some of the gaps currently preventing people with disabilities from using mobile devices.

Google Summer of Code student Eric Wan is a developer who employs accessibility switch access in his daily life. Having him on our team was incredibly valuable because he has a personal understanding of the practical issues involved in creating an accessibility solution. Google Summer of Code provided the means for Eric to "scratch his own itch" and now many more switch users may potentially benefit as the IDI is working with Komodo OpenLab to commercialize the technology.

The video above shows Eric using the “sip and puff” switches attached to his wheelchair to send commands to his Android handset in order to start the phone's SMS application and compose a text message - all without ever touching the phone!

How it works:
Switch events from Eric's wheelchair are sent to the phone via the Tekla shield, a bluetooth interface based on the Arduino open-hardware platform. Once on the phone, these switch events are used to navigate an on-screen keyboard provided by the Tekla open-source app, which is available for free from the Android market.

Challenges:
There is still some accessibility work to do on Android devices. For example, menus that appear when pressing the device MENU key and some pop-up windows will block the on-screen keyboard, sometimes locking switch users out of the phone. Also, some third-party application developers will disable access features in their interfaces, making their apps unusable with the Tekla shield. For example, Eric can sign in to Skype, but he cannot use the "call" button or the dialer due to limitations of the user interface. Luckily though, most functions and apps are accessible because developers generally have to go out of their way to make their apps inaccessible.

Acknowledgements:
Eric is an engineering grad student at the University of Toronto, and he helped develop Tekla with me (his mentor) and Zongyi Yang, another U of T student. In addition to funding from the 2010 Google Summer of Code program, development on Tekla has been funded by the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. Tekla is also being developed as part of the AEGIS Project.

By Jorge Silva, Google Summer of Code Mentor for Inclusive Design Institute

URL: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/12/summer-of-accessibility.html

[G] New tools to grow your business globally

Official Google Blog: New tools to grow your business globally

Imagine you’re a men’s tailor in Bangkok, and you sell custom suits to travelers passing through Thailand. You start a website to sell your suits online and begin to notice that the majority of your website traffic comes from overseas. How do you respond to this international demand?

Businesses of all sizes face a number of obstacles when they want to expand internationally. First, they must identify the right market to sell their products or services, such as custom men’s suits. Then they have to create versions of their website and ad campaigns in the language of the market they want to reach. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they need to reach new customers who may be interested in their products and services.

Starting today, businesses can access a number of new resources from Google to help them overcome these obstacles and start growing internationally. We’re launching a new website, called Google Ads for Global Advertisers, which will serve as a central hub for Google’s tools and tips for businesses looking to expand to foreign markets. This website pulls together resources for businesses to find the right market for their products and services, translate their websites and ad text, find new customers with relevant online ads, and understand options for international payment, shipping and customer service.


We’re also introducing Global Market Finder, a new free tool to help businesses identify markets with high demand for their products or services. The Global Market Finder automatically translates your keyword—for example, [business suit]—into 56 languages and then uses Google search trends data to see where in the world people search for your product or service. It helps businesses evaluate new markets by showing the volume of local searches, estimated price for keywords and competition for each keyword in each market. With this tool, businesses can answer questions like “how competitive is this market?”, “how does demand in one country compare to demand elsewhere in the world?” and “how much would it cost to start advertising in this new market?” You can read more about these new tools on the Inside AdWords blog.

Google has already helped hundreds of thousands of businesses reach customers in foreign markets. From a mosaic company in Lebanon to a bespoke shoe retailer in Sydney, a tech support company in India and a bed and breakfast in Poland, tools like AdWords have helped businesses reach new customers and drive traffic to their websites. We think our new website and tools will encourage even more businesses to expand internationally, whether you’re a small business testing a single market for the first time or a mid-size company advertising your products to an entire region.

After all, there are more than 1.9 billion consumers online. Wouldn’t you like to add some of them as customers?

Posted by Srinidhi Viswanatha, Global Advertisers team

URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-tools-to-grow-your-business.html

[G] A Priority Inbox update: time savings, new features, and your feedback

Official Gmail Blog: A Priority Inbox update: time savings, new features, and your feedback

Posted by Pal Takacsi-Nagy, Engineering Manager

It's been a couple of months since we first launched Priority Inbox. Since then, we’ve heard from a number of you who’ve found it helpful in combating information overload, and we’ve seen evidence of this in aggregate too. Looking at median time in conversation view, we noticed that typical Priority Inbox users spend 43% more time reading important mail compared to unimportant, and 15% less time reading email overall as compared to Gmail users who don’t use Priority Inbox. We’re excited about the impact Priority Inbox can have, and we’re listening to your feedback in order to make it even better.

For example, one thing we heard is that you wanted to know why Gmail classifies certain messages as important. So starting today, when you hover over an importance marker () you’ll see a short explanation (e.g. “Important because you marked it as important” or “Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.”).


You also told us that you thought Priority Inbox didn’t learn fast enough, so we've made it much more responsive to your manual corrections.

If you have more ideas for improvements, please share them with us on our new product ideas page — or just vote on ideas that others suggest. Your feedback will help us make Priority Inbox work for even more Gmail users.

URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/priority-inbox-update-time-savings-new.html

[G] Now available with Google Apps: Google Places

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Now available with Google Apps: Google Places

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Places
You already know that Google Apps is a great way to run your business and ensure that your employees can collaborate and work effectively. But are you also taking advantage of Google’s other online tools that can help your company build a strong external presence and customer base? Our recent infrastructure upgrade has made doing so much easier: now you can access Google Places with your existing Google Apps account.

Google Places offers business owners a free and easy way to make sure that potential customers can find their business when searching online at Google.com and in Google Maps, both from desktops and mobile devices. With your free Google Places account, you can:

• Be found: Verify your business’s information to make sure people can find you on Google.


• Stand out: Engage customers with photos, coupons, custom posts, and more on your Place page.


• Get insight: Use feedback about your listing to make smarter business decisions.

Claiming your business listing with Google Places is easy and verification methods are in place to make sure data is accurate. Once you’ve claimed your listing, you can update it through Google Places at any time using your Google Apps account by signing in at google.com/places. In addition to creating your listing, you can also enhance it by highlighting special offers with coupons, sharing photos and videos of your location or products, marking your service areas, and responding to reviews from customers.

Once your business listing is up and running, you can use the Places dashboard to gain valuable insights about your listing’s performance. For example, you can view top search terms for your business, which can help you set up a more targeted AdWords campaign. Or, you can view an interactive map showing the origin of customers who request driving directions to your current location, which could help you decide where to open up a new location.

Learn more and get started
Google Places can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Places at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Brianna Brekke, Google Places team

Note: Google Places may not be available in all areas

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/now-available-with-google-apps-google_06.html

[G] SAP joins the Google Apps Marketplace with SAP StreamWork

Official Google Enterprise Blog: SAP joins the Google Apps Marketplace with SAP StreamWork

Editor’s Note: This is a guest blog post from David Meyer, senior vice president for On-Demand, Productivity and Sustainability Solutions at SAP, the leading business software vendor to more than 100,000 customers in over 120 countries.

What did I miss at the last meeting? Why do I have seven different copies of a spreadsheet named “Final Version”? Where should we host the next event? These are all questions and problems that can easily be resolved through a new way of working in the cloud available through the integration of Google Apps and SAP StreamWork, now available in the Google Apps Marketplace.

SAP StreamWork brings together people and information - from the web, your desktop, or business systems - and applies structure to discussions with business tools including pro/con tables, SWOT analyses, and polls to drive fast, meaningful results. Think about how easy it can be to allocate resources, prioritize sales leads, or define new marketing campaigns in a single, well-organized location. With Google Apps integration, the SAP StreamWork environment will be joined with the tools you are already familiar with in the cloud.

SAP StreamWork will work with OpenID so you can use your Google Apps login to access your SAP StreamWork account and navigate to it through the Google universal navigation bar. Additionally, Google Apps will also be accessible directly from SAP StreamWork, providing you with the ability to use Google’s calendaring, email and document creation and management tools as part of your problem-solving process in SAP StreamWork. Direct integration will be available for users in the first part of 2011.

In joining the Google Apps Marketplace, we see a great opportunity to reach over 3 million Google Apps businesses who have already embraced the cloud and we invite them to try out SAP StreamWork.

Join us for a live webinar and Q&A session with Google and SAP at 11am on December 14th demonstrating the SAP StreamWork integration with Google Apps and discussing best practices for making decisions faster with distributed teams.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Product Marketing, Google Apps Marketplace Team

URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/sap-joins-google-apps-marketplace-with.html

[G] Introducing Nexus S with Gingerbread

Official Google Blog: Introducing Nexus S with Gingerbread

The very first Android phone hit the market in November 2008. Just over two years later, Android’s vision of openness has spurred the development of more than 100 different Android devices. Today, more than 200,000 Android devices are activated daily worldwide. The volume and variety of Android devices continues to surpass our wildest expectations—but we’re not slowing down.

Today, we’re pleased to introduce the latest version of the Android platform, Gingerbread, and unveil the next Android device from the Nexus line of mobile products—Nexus S. And for developers, the Gingerbread SDK/NDK is now available as well.

Nexus S is the lead device for the Gingerbread/Android 2.3 release; it’s the first Android device to ship with the new version of the Android platform. We co-developed this product with Samsung—ensuring tight integration of hardware and software to highlight the latest advancements of the Android platform. As part of the Nexus brand, Nexus S delivers what we call a “pure Google” experience: unlocked, unfiltered access to the best Google mobile services and the latest and greatest Android releases and updates.

Take a look at our backstory video for more on the vision behind this product and to understand why we think “a thousand heads are better than one”:



Nexus S is the first smartphone to feature a 4” Contour Display designed to fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and along the side of your face. It also features a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, front and rear facing cameras, 16GB of internal memory, and NFC (near field communication) hardware that lets you read information from NFC tags. NFC is a fast, versatile short-range wireless technology that can be embedded in all kinds of everyday objects like movie posters, stickers and t-shirts.

Gingerbread is the fastest version of Android yet, and it delivers a number of improvements, such as user interface refinements, NFC support, a new keyboard and text selection tool, Internet (VoIP/SIP) calling, improved copy/paste functionality and gyroscope sensor support.

Here’s a glimpse of the “magic” of Google on Nexus S:



You can find more Nexus S videos and information at google.com/nexus or follow @GoogleNexus on Twitter for the latest updates. After December 16, Nexus S can be purchased (unlocked or with a T-Mobile service plan) online and in-store from all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores in the U.S. and after December 20 at Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy retailers in the U.K.

We’ll be open-sourcing Gingerbread in the coming weeks and look forward to new contributions from the Android ecosystem in the months ahead.

Posted by Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering

URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/introducing-nexus-s-with-gingerbread.html

[G] Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices

Official Google Blog: Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices

Today is the first page in a new chapter of our mission to improve access to the cultural and educational treasures we know as books. Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale. Find the latest bestsellers like James Patterson’s Cross Fire and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, dig into popular reads like Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken and catch up on the classics like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Gulliver’s Travels.



We designed Google eBooks to be open. Many devices are compatible with Google eBooks—everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers. With the new Google eBooks Web Reader, you can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud. That means you can access your ebooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa—using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage.

In addition to a full-featured web reader, free apps for Android and Apple devices will make it possible to shop and read on the go. For many books you can select which font, font size, day/night reading mode and line spacing suits you—and pick up on the page where you left off when switching devices.

You can discover and buy new ebooks from the Google eBookstore or get them from one of our independent bookseller partners: Powell’s, Alibris and participating members of the American Booksellers Association. You can choose where to buy your ebooks like you choose where to buy your print books, and keep them all on the same bookshelf regardless of where you got them.

When Google Books first launched in 2004, we set out to make the information stored in the world’s books accessible and useful online. Since then, we’ve digitized more than 15 million books from more than 35,000 publishers, more than 40 libraries, and more than 100 countries in more than 400 languages. This deep repository of knowledge and culture will continue to be searchable through Google Books search in the research section alongside the ebookstore.


Launching Google eBooks is an initial step toward giving you greater access to the vast variety of information and entertainment found in books. Our journey has just begun. We welcome your feedback as we read on to the next chapter.

Update 8:11 AM: Some of you may be having trouble watching the YouTube video. We're working on the problem and will update here again when it's fixed.

Posted by Abraham Murray, Product Manager, Google Books

URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/discover-more-than-3-million-google.html

[G] SAP joins the Google Apps Marketplace with a collaborative decision-making app

Official Google Blog: SAP joins the Google Apps Marketplace with a collaborative decision-making app

Today SAP, the leading provider of business software to more than 100,000 customers in more than 120 countries, is launching their SAP StreamWork collaborative decision-making app in the Google Apps Marketplace. SAP StreamWork brings together people and information—from the web, the desktop or business systems—and applies structure to discussions with business tools including pro/con tables and polls to drive fast, meaningful results.

Just like the other 200+ Marketplace applications, users will be able to login to their StreamWork account with their Google Apps account and navigate to it from the Google universal navigation bar. SAP will bring deeper integrations in the near future.

To learn more, read the guest blog post on the Google Enterprise blog by David Meyer, SAP’s senior vice president of On-Demand, Productivity and Sustainability Solutions and register to attend our live webinar with SAP discussing tools to optimize your business processes at 11:00 a.m. PT on December 14.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team

URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/sap-joins-google-apps-marketplace-with.html

[G] Known Issue: Problems with Socialize service.

The FeedBurner Status Blog: Known Issue: Problems with Socialize service.

Issue: Posts being sent by the Socialize service to Twitter are not always being delivered, and attempts to connect your Twitter account in Socialize resulting in server errors. We are investigating the problem and will update this post as soon as we have more information.

URL: http://feedburnerstatus.blogspot.com/2010/12/known-issue-problems-with-socialize.html

[G] Google doodles for your phone

Official Google Mobile Blog: Google doodles for your phone

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog.)

While we’ve had oodles of Google doodles on our desktop homepage since Larry and Sergey created our very first in 1998, doodles on our mobile homepage have been few and far between. Today, we’re happy to announce that we’re bringing more doodles to your phone, beginning with Android 2.0+ and iOS 3+ devices worldwide. In fact, almost all of the doodles we show on our desktop homepage will now have corresponding mobile versions on these phones. When the doodles are available, just go to google.com in your mobile browser to see them.

Want your doodles within easy reach? You can get to google.com quickly by adding a shortcut to your home screen.

Posted by Steve Kanefsky, Software Engineer

URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/google-doodles-for-your-phone.html

[G] Ready... set... track Santa!

Official Google Mobile Blog: Ready... set... track Santa!

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and Google Lat Long Blog)

From feasting on a turkey dinner to singing carols around the fire, there are certainly plenty of traditions to enjoy during the holiday season. Much to the delight of the child in each of us, the ritual of gift-giving continues today, and I know I still find cheer at the bottom of my stocking every Christmas morning.

Another tradition that brings joy to youngsters everywhere is the one started in 1955 by NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which every year counts down to Christmas Eve and tracks Santa’s whereabouts as he delivers presents across the globe. Google similarly started tracking Santa in 2004 and has been partnering with NORAD on this fun project since 2007. Keeping the tradition alive, today marks the kick-off of this year’s countdown at www.noradsanta.org. On the NORAD website, kids can play holiday-themed games (a new one is released each day) and get updates from the North Pole as Santa prepares for his big sleigh ride.

If you haven’t tracked Santa in years past, we hope this is the year you’ll start a new tradition of visiting www.noradsanta.org and following Santa’s journey all around the world. Starting at 2 a.m. EST on December 24, you’ll be able to track him in real-time on Google Maps from your computer or phone as well as on Google Earth with the plug-in by searching for [santa].

So this year, along with my family’s usual tradition of gathering around to hear my mum read “Twas the night before Christmas,” we’ll gather around the computer to see when Santa might be coming to our neighborhood. In honor of the occasion, I wrote a new opening verse:

'Twas the night before Christmas, and Santa was near
According to NORAD, he would soon be right here
So we hopped into bed and dreamt of new toys
And awoke in the morning to much Christmas joy

Happy holidays to all, and to tide you over till Christmas Eve, enjoy this video with highlights from Santa’s journey last year!



Posted by Bruno Bowden, Software Engineer

URL: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/12/ready-set-track-santa.html

[G] Call credits for military families this holiday season

Google Public Policy Blog: Call credits for military families this holiday season

Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager
(Cross-posted from the Google Voice Blog)

Keeping in touch with family during the holiday season can be challenging for anyone, but it’s especially difficult for military families with loved ones serving around the country or overseas.

Gmail’s built in video chat and free calls to the U.S. and Canada can help keep friends and family in contact regardless of how far apart they may be. To make staying in touch this holiday season even easier for military families, we’re offering a $10 calling credit to help them reach their loved ones serving abroad.

These international call credits can be used to make calls with Google Voice or from right inside Gmail, and will provide families with roughly 30 minutes of call time to Afghanistan, 60 minutes to Iraq, or hundreds of minutes to many countries in Europe and around the world.

To make this possible, we’ve partnered with Blue Star Families and Sesame Street, two organizations dedicated to supporting service members and their families.

Photo by Sesame Workshop, 2010

To be eligible for $10 calling credits, military family members must:

1. Be a member of either Blue Star Families or Sesame Street Family Connections — registration is free for all military families
2. Provide their Gmail address
3. Enable calling in Gmail and accept the terms of service OR have an existing Google Voice account
4. Complete this registration form by December 22, 2010

We recognize the sacrifices military family members make when loved ones serve abroad, and we’re proud to help make it a little bit easier for families to stay connected over the holidays.

At this time, Google Voice and calling in Gmail are available in the U.S. only.

URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/12/call-credits-for-military-families-this.html

[G] Making Copyright Work Better Online

Google Public Policy Blog: Making Copyright Work Better Online

Posted by Kent Walker, General Counsel

There are more than 1 trillion unique URLs on the web and more than 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. It’s some pretty fantastic stuff - content that makes us think, laugh, and learn new things. Services we couldn’t have imagined ten years ago - iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, and many others - help us access this content and let traditional and emerging creators profit from and share their work with the world.

But along with this new wave of creators come some bad apples who use the Internet to infringe copyright. As the web has grown, we have seen a growing number of issues relating to infringing content. We respond expeditiously to requests to remove such content from our services, and have been improving our procedures over time. But as the web grows, and the number of requests grows with it, we are working to develop new ways to better address the underlying problem.

That’s why today we’re announcing four changes that we’ll be implementing over the next several months:

• We’ll act on reliable copyright takedown requests within 24 hours. We will build tools to improve the submission process to make it easier for rightsholders to submit DMCA takedown requests for Google products (starting with Blogger and web Search). And for copyright owners who use the tools responsibly, we’ll reduce our average response time to 24 hours or less. At the same time, we’ll improve our “counter-notice” tools for those who believe their content was wrongly removed and enable public searching of takedown requests.

• We will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete. While it’s hard to know for sure when search terms are being used to find infringing content, we’ll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose.

• We will improve our AdSense anti-piracy review. We have always prohibited the use of our AdSense program on web pages that provide infringing materials. Building on our existing DMCA takedown procedures, we will be working with rightsholders to identify, and, when appropriate, expel violators from the AdSense program.

• We will experiment to make authorised preview content more readily accessible in search results. Not surprisingly, we’re big fans of making authorised content more accessible on the Internet. Most users want to access legitimate content and are interested in sites that make that content available to them (even if only on a preview basis). We’ll be looking at ways to make this content easier to index and find.

These changes build on our continuing efforts, such as Content ID, to give rightsholders choice and control over the use of their content, and we look forward to further refining and improving our processes in ways that help both rightsholders and users.

URL: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/12/making-copyright-work-better-online.html

[G] Choose the next community member to go on the homepage

YouTube Blog: Choose the next community member to go on the homepage

On the Rise is a program where you determine which YouTube upstart appears on the homepage. emilynoel83, a morning news anchor who creates makeup tutorials, won the inaugural edition and was featured in November, promoted socially, and covered in the blogosphere. Emily doubled the number of subscribers she acquired in the month (compared to the month before), and her catalog also saw a boost in views.

It was so much fun that we want to do it again, taking four more channels that’ve recently seen good subscriber growth but still have less than 100,000 subscribers and putting them up to your discerning tastes. Please vote for your favorite channel in the poll in the top right corner of this blog by Tuesday, December 7, and we’ll put the lucky winner on the homepage on Saturday, December 11. Here are the nominees, in alphabetical order:

corycotton is home to a group of trick-shot basketball entertainers whose swooshes and dunks will leave you floored:



JustJesse197 is a showcase for the amazing tricks and utter cuteness of a five-year-old shortie Jack Russell Terrier named Jesse:



ShowMeTheCurry is Hetal Jannu and Anuja Balasubramanian, who offer easy-to-follow lessons in Indian cooking:



tjw1963 features Teresa teaching the world to crochet one stitch at a time:











Now go vote!

Mia Quagliarello, Community Manager, recently watched “Candlelight - The Maccabeats.”

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/OhgRz7BK7fI/choose-next-community-member-to-go-on.html

[G] The True Value of Search advertising

Inside AdWords: The True Value of Search advertising

We know that understanding search advertising and trying to measure its return on investment is not always easy. Marketers and business owners often find it difficult to quantify the indirect effect that online search is having on offline sales.

The AdWords Online Classroom has recently launched a free, on-demand market insights presentation, The True Value of Search, to help you understand the value of search marketing beyond direct response.

During this short video tutorial, we’ll introduce you to the ROPO effect (Research Online, Purchase Offline), latent conversion and how search is involved in the buyer's research and purchase journey. We’ll discuss search as part of the broader media and marketing mix as well as search for branding and how to integrate it with offline marketing. You’ll even see some real life examples of how search campaigns have driven offline sales.

So, if you’re interested in learning about how valuable search is for you, check out this course now!


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/true-value-of-search-advertising.html

[G] Change to the AdWords advertising policy on alcohol

Inside AdWords: Change to the AdWords advertising policy on alcohol

We’ve changed our AdWords advertising policy on alcohol to allow ads that promote the sale of hard alcohol and liquor. This is an extension of a policy change that we made in December 2008, which permitted ads that promote the branding of hard alcohol and liquor.

Since then, hard alcohol advertisers have been able to promote websites that offer information about their brand, their products, or drinks that can be made with their products. Now, they can also promote websites that sell hard alcohol online, direct users to retailers where their products are sold, or feature sales promotions.

To comply with the policy, the ad and website must abide by certain advertising restrictions, including (but not limited to) not targeting minors, not implying that drinking alcohol provides certain advantages, and not showing inappropriate content. They are also subject to any further restrictions in the countries that they target. For full details on the policy, please see the alcohol content guidelines.

We’re constantly evaluating our advertising policies to ensure that they continue to be effective, and we made the decision to change our policy on alcohol to help more advertisers use AdWords for the promotion of their products.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/12/change-to-adwords-advertising-policy-on.html

[G] New ways to see your data

DoubleClick Publisher Blog: New ways to see your data

DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) provides several ways for you to understand where your revenue is coming from with comprehensive reporting on your ad inventory and delivery. Customizable reporting options enable you to easily segment your data across a variety of metrics, such as by advertiser, geography, or even by your own targeting criteria.

In order to ensure that you have the most critical information you need, when you need it, we've redesigned the reporting interface to better surface this information. The most noticeable improvement is the addition of on-screen charts.

These graphs give you an instant visualization of your reports so you can easily spot trends over time, identify patterns, and uncover new opportunities. This should make it even easier for you to find and share the data you need to make informed decisions.

In addition to the release of on-screen charts, we’ve also made improvements to sharing your reports with internal stakeholders and advertisers.

• Faster load times: Your list of saved and shared reports loads almost instantly, no matter how many reports you have.
• New configuration panel: We've optimized the layout of report configuration options, which should reduce the amount of time it takes for you to customize your reports.
• Better navigation: Toggle between different types of reports without having to return to the home page.
• In-product help resources: Each page contains a help widget with links to Help Center articles about generating reports.
• Additional export formats: In addition to CSV, now you can export your reports in TSV, Excel CSV, and XML formats.

We hope these improvements make it even easier for you to get the data you need, as fast as you need it.

Posted by Stephen Kliff, Product Marketing Manager

URL: http://doubleclickpublishers.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-ways-to-see-your-data.html

[G] Rediscover Historical Imagery in Google Earth 6

Google LatLong: Rediscover Historical Imagery in Google Earth 6

Historical imagery is one of the most powerful features of Google Earth, enabling you to go back in time and browse the visual historical record of our planet - from the evolution and rise of developing communities to the destruction caused by hurricanes, earthquakes and fires. With Google Earth 6, we’ve made it easier than ever to discover historical imagery. In addition to streamlining the timeline interface, we’ve added a date button to the status bar to notify you of past imagery that you might be interested in exploring. So now, when you zoom in on a location in our latest version of Google Earth, the button will appear highlighting specific years. Clicking it enables historical imagery and takes you back to the year you selected. For instance, when I zoom in on the headquarters of a certain company with a fruit namesake nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, Google Earth suggests imagery from 1948. Clicking the date button reveals the fruit tree orchards that used to inhabit that very location. I wonder if they were apple trees.

Google Earth 6 suggests historical imagery to explore, e.g. of Silicon Valley in 1948

In the almost two years that historical imagery has been available, we have captured several moments of cultural significance, such as the inauguration of the first African American President of the United States, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and the transformation of South Africa in preparation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Washington D.C., January 20, 2009. Can you spot where the jumbotrons were installed?

But the feature is more than just what historians deem significant. We built the historical imagery database to enable anyone to see and tell their own personal history. A great example comes from fellow historical imagery engineer Reuel Nash:

In 1979, my wife and I spent the first night of our marriage in a hotel at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. It was still there in 1995, which you can see in Google Earth. The hotel and the surrounding area has since been replaced by Terminal D. You can see the terminal construction (and destruction of the hotel) literally from the ground up using historical imagery.

The construction of Terminal D at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport

We have a vast amount of data in our historical imagery archive, so you’ll be able to tell your own personal stories by browsing those places that are special to you. In fact, we have more square miles of high resolution imagery in our historical imagery archive than in our default view. In the coming years, we look forward to expanding this imagery collection even further. Visit the Historical Imagery Showcase to watch video tours of cities with imagery dating as far back as 1940.

Posted by Chris Co, Google Earth Software Engineer

URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/12/rediscover-historical-imagery-in-google.html

[G] How Local Search Ranking Works

Google LatLong: How Local Search Ranking Works

We’ve been quite busy this year working on Google Places, Tags, Boost, and our shiny new addition: Hotpot. With so many different products and features now available for local businesses, we wanted to take a step back and explain how the ranking of local listings works when people search on Google and Google Maps.

Product Manager Jeremy Sussman takes us under the hood in this informative video. Below are a few key takeaways, but we encourage you to watch the video, which features helpful examples and visuals.

Local search ranking refers to the placement and order of local information on a Google or Google Maps organic search results page. There are a variety of factors we take into account to provide you with results that match your local search, and three of the primary signals are relevance, prominence and distance. The best way to help potential customers connect with your business is to ensure that your basic company information like its name, address and phone number, are accurate, and then to add rich details like photos, hours of operation and more. You can do this by claiming and verifying your business via Google Places. However, claimed business listings do not receive any special ranking treatment over unclaimed business listings.

Google Tags and Boost are great online advertising solutions for local businesses. Tags make your organic business listings stand out on the Google and Google Maps search results page with a bright yellow marker that highlights specific attributes such as offers, videos or photos. And Boost is an effective complement to your organic Places listing because it quickly and easily creates an ad that can appear alongside the search results - giving your business additional exposure to people searching online. Neither of these advertising products available through your Google Places account affect the organic ranking of your business listing on Google or Google Maps.

Conversely, Hotpot - our new local recommendation engine based on ratings from you and your friends - can definitely affect the ranking of the local businesses you see in your organic search results. If you’re signed in to your Google account and have enabled Hotpot, you’ll get personalized recommendations based on the ratings you and your friends provided - making it easier for you to discover new places you’ll enjoy.

Posted by Brianna Brekke, Senior Strategist, Google Places

URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-local-search-ranking-works.html