Google Data » Unknown

New UI for all Google Drive pickers

Unknown — Wed, 17 Sep 2014 20:08:00 +0000

We have launched a new UI for all Google Drive pickers--the interface that allows people to select and insert content stored in Google Drive (e.g. Insert files from Drive, Insert Images from Drive, etc). The UI will closely align with the new Google Drive UI, and will move all menu options from vertical tabs on the left side of the picker to horizontal tabs running along the top of the picker.

Release track:

Rapid release and Scheduled release (gradual rollout)

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Introducing the next generation of publisher training

Unknown — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 18:54:00 +0000

At Google, we’re constantly updating our publisher products to improve user experience and push the boundaries of innovation in the digital advertising space. We know it can be difficult to stay current with these ongoing updates when you have an online business to manage, which is why we’re excited to introduce Google's brand new online training center, Publisher University!

This new offering allows you to deep dive into the product areas that are most valuable to you through tailorable, self-study training solutions for DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and AdSense.

As your one-stop training destination for all publisher-facing products, the materials have been designed to suit a variety of roles and skill levels. Whether you’re starting out as a trafficker or you’re a seasoned manager, there’s a training solution suited to your needs:

Certification: Review one of our engaging online courses and demonstrate your knowledge of Google publisher products by taking an online exam. Once you’ve passed you’ll obtain a printable certificate of completion.
Mix and Match: Here you’ll find all of the publisher training materials conveniently located in one place. Go ahead and pick the topics that are most relevant for you.
Labs: Practice what you’ve learned through in-product exercises and activities. For example, you can practice your trafficking skills in a real DFP network!
What’s New: Check out the latest feature releases and how to use them.
Learning Paths (Coming soon): If you’re simply not sure where to start, we can suggest a learning path for you and help you to explore the training options available!

Access the same high-quality content delivered at our in-person classroom trainings from the convenience of your own computer. With a huge variety of regularly updated learning resources, there’s never been a better time to brush up on your skills.

Visit g.co/PublisherU and kick-start your training today!

Posted by Marcus Jacobs, Technical Trainer

Introducing the new Google Analytics Partner Gallery

Unknown — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 13:58:00 +0000

Google Analytics has a vibrant ecosystem of analytics practitioners, advocates, and developers that drive great conversations, learnings, and sharing among passionate users. A central part of this ecosystem is partners, which can help users quickly increase the business value of Google Analytics through implementation expertise, analysis, and integrations.

To make it easier to find services and apps that are important to your business, we’ve re-launched the App Gallery as the Partner Gallery, the new destination to find partners and review their offerings. It includes:

Services by Google Analytics Certified Partners

Certified Partners are vetted by Google and meet rigorous qualification standards. This includes agencies and consultancies who offer web analytics implementations, analysis services and website testing and optimization services.

Apps by Google Analytics Technology Partners

Ready-to-use applications that extend Google Analytics in new and exciting ways. This includes solutions that help analysts, marketers, IT teams, and executives get the most out of Google Analytics and complement functionality.

The Partner Gallery includes new features and improvements:

A brand new look and layout.
A combined view of both services and apps so you don’t need to visit multiple sites to find a solution.
New search capabilities and category selection making it easier to filter and find what you’re looking for.
Google Analytics Certified Partners are sorted based on your location to find partners that have an office near you.
Media assets like screenshots / videos / case studies that highlight customer success stories and illustrate app features.
Comments and ratings to review user experiences and provide feedback.

Visit the Partner Gallery to browse partner services and apps. If you’re interested in the Google Analytics Certified Partner or Technology Partner programs, learn how to become a partner.

Pete Frisella, Developer Advocate, Google Analytics Developer Relations team

Q&A with Neal Mohan: A Sneak Peek at the DoubleClick Live Stream

Unknown — Fri, 30 May 2014 13:00:00 +0000

DoubleClick’s annual digital advertising summit is just around the corner, streaming live on YouTube on Wednesday, June 4th. (Sign up here to watch.) We caught up with Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice President of Display and Video Advertising Products, to hear what’s on his mind as we get ready for the event.

Q: What topics should we expect to hear about this year?
A: I don’t think it will come as a surprise that our team has been very focused on how to make digital work for brands and premium publishers. You can expect to hear a lot more about that. Also, since this event marks Google’s annual conversation on the future of digital advertising, we’ll discuss how digital is redefining consumer behavior, content development, and the ways that advertisers and publishers reach their customers.

Q: Will the live stream include any special guests?
A: I’ll be joined by Nikesh Arora, our Chief Business Officer at Google, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO and Co-Founder of DreamWorks Animation. I’m looking forward to hearing Jeffrey talk about how technology has changed content creation.

Q: What consumer trends are impacting the way brands and publishers think about digital?
A: When we started this DoubleClick event 14 years ago, going online was a deliberate act that required going to a computer and “logging-in”. The days of going online are coming to an end. Today’s digital experience is one that is always-on and always with us. As a result, digital has become far more personal, and one of the most personal forms of communication - video - is playing a more central role in our online lives. All these factors have major implications for brands and publishers, which we’ll discuss at the event.

Q: So...any scoops you can give us?
A: As I mentioned, video has been very much on my mind lately. Getting video right is something that is essential to our brand, agency, and publisher partners...expect to hear more about what we have planned to help make that happen.

We hope you can join us on Wednesday, June 4th at 9:30 am PDT / 12:30 pm EDT. Register to watch the live stream or to receive the recording.

-The DoubleClick Team

Join us for a conversation on the future of digital advertising

Unknown — Thu, 08 May 2014 13:00:00 +0000

Digital is no longer just another marketing channel. It’s a medium that’s changing the art of storytelling and reinventing the way companies connect with consumers.

How will digital advertising evolve next? You’re invited to tune in live as industry leaders tackle the question at DoubleClick’s annual event on digital trends.

Speakers include:
Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation
Nikesh Arora, Chief Business Officer at Google
Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising at Google

Register now for the live stream

Wednesday, June 4
9:30 am PDT - 10:45 am PDT / 12:30 pm EDT - 1:45 pm EDT

Time not convenient? When you register you’ll receive a link to watch the recording on demand.

Here’s footage from last year’s event to give you a taste of the 2014 live stream:

We hope you can join!

Posted by Jane Brinkley, Product Marketing Manager

Buzzing towards victory with native: BuzzFeed on DFP

Unknown — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 18:48:00 +0000

Native advertising is a becoming a dominant force in the online

advertising industry and at DoubleClick, we’re building tools to power publishers’ native solutions. Today, we’re shining a light on BuzzFeed, who is using DFP to succeed in this space.

BuzzFeed is a leading social news and entertainment company whose popular website curates viral and shareable online content to over 100 million unique monthly users worldwide. Their mantra is “great advertising is content” and they’ve applied this across their entire monetization strategy. Eric Harris, BuzzFeed’s Executive Vice President of Business Operations explains that the site exclusively uses ‘social advertising’, a form of native advertising, to ‘communicate the aspirations and attributes of the brands we’re working with...and promote it on our site in a way that’s clearly marked as advertising, but similar to how we promote our other content.” Scaling this burgeoning format to a large user base is no small feat. So, we caught up with Eric to learn how DFP is helping BuzzFeed execute against this strategy.

Scaling for success

BuzzFeed needed a customized and robust infrastructure that could keep up with its growth and reliably serve ads across different platforms. The team turned to DFP for it’s scalability, enabling them to “focus on what we do best, and giving us the credibility that comes with working with the industry leader.” Using DFP for ad serving and inventory management has been critical for BuzzFeed’s success. “We haven’t had to worry about anything with DFP – it just works.” Eric emphasizes.

Integrating the best of BuzzFeed with DFP
In addition to ad serving, BuzzFeed leverages the openness and flexibility of the DFP API to integrate its proprietary technologies- which help determine the content to promote- with DFP’s ad targeting and delivering capabilities to serve the ads.

When it comes to tracking, DFP also enables BuzzFeed to accurately measure its social advertising: “The fact that DFP easily integrates with other third-party tracking solutions and our custom analytics – with low discrepancies – is a big benefit for us,” says Eric.

Taking engagement cross-device
Moreover, with over half of its traffic (and growing) coming from mobile devices, BuzzFeed deeply values the ability to work fluidly and consistently across platforms with DFP. “It is hugely important for us that we can work with just one vendor – DoubleClick – to serve ads seamlessly across desktop, mobile web and mobile apps,” notes Eric.

Powering long-term growth
As it examines the future of its native advertising program, BuzzFeed has three clear goals: leadership in social, content-driven advertising, continued growth in mobile, and international expansion. Eric notes, “with the flexibility, scale and robust infrastructure that it offers, DFP plays an important role in all three of these goals.”

To get the full scoop on BuzzFeed’s success with native advertising, download the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick for Publishers blog for even more customer success stories.

Posted by Jane Brinkley, Product Marketing Manager

Brace for the Future

Unknown — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 23:14:00 +0000

[This post is by Dan Morrill, Open Source & Compatibility Program Manager. — Tim Bray]

Way back in November 2007 when Google announced Android, Andy Rubin said “We hope thousands of different phones will be powered by Android.” But now, Android’s growing beyond phones to new kinds of devices. (For instance, you might have read about the new 7” Galaxy Tab that our partners at Samsung just announced.) So, I wanted to point out a few interesting new gadgets that are coming soon running the latest versions of Android, 2.1 and 2.2.

For starters, the first Android-based non-phone handheld devices will be shipping over the next few months. Some people call these Mobile Internet Devices or Personal Media Players — MIDs or PMPs. Except for the phone part, PMP/MID devices look and work just like smartphones, but if your app really does require phone hardware to work correctly, you can follow some simple steps to make sure your app only appears on phones.

Next up are tablets. Besides the Samsung Galaxy Tab I mentioned, the Dell Streak is now on sale, which has a 5” screen and blurs the line between a phone and a tablet. Of course, Android has supported screens of any size since version 1.6, but these are the first large-screen devices to actually ship with Android Market. A tablet’s biggest quirk, of course, is its larger screen.

It’s pretty rare that we see problems with existing apps running on large-screen devices, but at the same time many apps would benefit from making better use of the additional screen space. For instance, an email app might be improved by changing its UI from a list-oriented layout to a two-pane view. Fortunately, Android and the SDK make it easy to support multiple screen sizes in your app, so you can read up on our documentation and make sure your app makes the best use of the extra space on large screens.

Speaking of screen quirks, we’re also seeing the first devices whose natural screen orientation is landscape. For instance, Motorola’s CHARM and FLIPOUT phones have screens which are wider than they are tall, when used in the natural orientation. The majority of apps won’t even notice the difference, but if your app uses sensors like accelerometer or compass, you might need to double-check your code.

Now, the devices I’ve mentioned so far still have the same hardware that Android phones have, like compass and accelerometer sensors, cameras, and so on. However, there are also devices coming that will omit some of this hardware. For instance, you’ve probably heard of Google TV, which will get Android Market in 2011. Since Google TV is, you know, a stationary object, it won’t have a compass and accelerometer. It also won’t have a standard camera, since we decided there wasn’t a big audience for pictures of the dust bunnies behind your TV.

Fortunately, you can use our built-in tools to handle these cases and control which devices your app appears to in Android Market. Android lets you provide versions of your UI optimized for various screen configurations, and each device will pick the one that runs best. Meanwhile, Android Market will make sure your apps only appear to devices that can run them, by matching those features you list as required (via tags) only with devices that have those features.

Android started on phones, but we’re growing to fit new kinds of devices. Now your Android app can run on almost anything, and the potential size of your audience is growing fast. But to fully unlock this additional reach, you should double-check your app and tweak it if you need to, so that it puts its best foot forward. Watch this blog over the next few weeks, as we post a series of detailed “tips and tricks” articles on how to get the most out of the new gadgets.

It’s official folks: we’re living in the future! Happy coding.

Weight Watchers weighs in on their success with Google Publisher Tag and DFP

Unknown — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:00:00 +0000

A top name in weight loss and healthy living for 50 years, Weight Watchers serves over 140 million ad impressions a month at WeightWatchers.com.

Weight Watchers began using the Google Publisher Tag (GPT) in 2012 once they upgraded to the DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) ad server. They were hoping for better targeting, but they got much more.

Higher ROI, happier advertisers
With up to five levels of targeting hierarchy, GPT let Weight Watchers improve its targeting and end manual re-tagging. The results have been strong with Click Through Rates across all standard display ad units are up 13%, and for leaderboards up 76%. Advertisers are loving the performance and Weight Watchers now runs four times more monthly campaigns with advanced targeting than with basic demographic and geo-targeting.

100% boost in operational efficiency from DFP

"I would actually say we've had a 100% increase in efficiency," says Jordan Tuck of Weight Watchers. Campaign setup is faster, and new features like the ability to update multiple line items on the same page save even more time later.

30% rise in indirect inventory earnings

With the move to DFP, Weight Watchers benefited from Dynamic Allocation with DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) to monetize indirect inventory. Their indirect inventory rates are up 30% year-over-year, and the clickthrough rate is 2.5 times higher than it was before AdX. AdX now has 70% share of their indirectly sold inventory.

Weight Watchers helps its customers "move the needle," and DFP and AdX have helped them do the same with their own online properties.

Read the full Weight Watchers story »

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

Google Translate – now in 80 languages

Unknown — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 18:29:00 +0000

Whether you’re trekking to a new place or simply trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t share a language with you, Google Translate can help you connect to new information and people. Today, we’re launching 9 new languages that span Africa, Asia, and Oceania and have over 200 million native speakers, collectively.

Spotlight on our new languages

In Africa, we’re adding Somali, Zulu, and the 3 major languages of Nigeria.

Hausa (Harshen Hausa), spoken in Nigeria and neighboring countries with 35 million native speakers
Igbo (Asụsụ Igbo) spoken in Nigeria with 25 million native speakers
Yoruba (èdè Yorùbá) spoken in Nigeria and neighboring countries with 28 million native speakers

Somali (Af-Soomaali) spoken in Somalia and other countries around the Horn of Africa with 17 million native speakers
Zulu (isiZulu) spoken in South Africa and other south-western African countries with 10 million native speakers

Throughout Asia, we’re launching languages spoken in Mongolia and South Asia.

Mongolian (Монгол хэл), official language in Mongolia and also spoken in parts of China with 6 million native speakers
Nepali (नेपाली), spoken in Nepal and India with 17 million native speakers
Punjabi language (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ) (Gurmukhi script), spoken in India and Pakistan with 100 million native speakers

Thanks to the volunteer effort of passionate native speakers in New Zealand, we’re adding the language of the Maori people.

Maori (Te Reo Māori), spoken in New Zealand with 160 thousand speakers

Punjabi on the Google Translate desktop web app

Mongolian on the Google Translate Android app

-----

You can help to add your language to Google Translate

Although Google Translate is an automatic tool, a new language sometimes needs a little love from native speakers to get off the ground. You can help launch your language by volunteering to help us gather and translate texts in your language. Sign up with this form. We’re also constantly fine-tuning our translations. You can help with these efforts by clicking the translated text and editing it to be correct.

As always, we realize that we’re just getting started and have a long way to go. But hopefully these new languages in Translate help you to connect with new friends and new cultures.

Posted by Arne Mauser, Software Engineer

Have an easier conversation with Google Translate on Android

Unknown — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:47:00 +0000

Cross-posted from the Inside Search Blog

Have you ever been in that frustrating situation where you meet someone -- yet can’t communicate because you don’t speak each other’s language? Well, hopefully communication can become a whole lot easier with the launch of the new Google Translate app for Android. The app now features faster and simpler speech translation, additional language support, and a sleek new look.

Converse without boundaries

Let’s say you're taking your first vacation abroad and decide to head to Spain. The only problem? You don't speak Spanish. Now -- equipped with just your Android device -- you can have a fully translated back-and-forth conversation from Spanish to English with very little work. All you need to do is open up your Translate app and press the microphone icon. We’ve also added gesture support, so with a simple turn of the screen, you can switch back and forth between languages. This makes ordering food in that authentic Tapas restaurant a whole lot easier!

More translate options for more languages

With today’s updated Translate app, we also offer more language support for our handwriting feature, allowing you to directly write words in Hebrew, Greek, Javanese, and Esperanto on your device screen and have them translated on the fly. You can also use our camera translation feature to take a photo of written text with your Android device and highlight which words you’d like to be translated, now including additional language support for Malay and Ukranian.

We hope Google Translate can continue to help break down more language barriers in easier ways, all on your mobile device. We'll be rolling the update out via the Google Play Store today and tomorrow. We hope you give it a whirl!

Posted by Matthew Gaba, Product Manager

W3C officially released the Final Report on the Social Standards: The Future of Business workshop

Unknown — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 15:34:00 +0000

Earlier this week, the W3C officially released the Final Report on the Social Standards: The Future of Business workshop and announced to its Advisory Committee that chartering of new social standards will begin.

The W3C-OpenSocial Foundation joint workshop was convened with the goal of formulating a standardization strategy to make "social" a first-class citizen of the Web. The current landscape around social applications on the Web is fragmented, holding back business results; the Open Web Platform, with W3C's royalty-free patent policy, offers a sound base for moving forward.

Conceived by the W3C Social Business Community Group, the workshop was hosted by AppFusions and sponsored by IBM and the Open Mobile Alliance. The workshop featured two-days of presentations and intense discussions of the challenges, use cases, and potential standardization strategies for social. The workshop brought together over 70 individuals from more than 50 companies around this theme, ranging from start-ups like Crushpath to established enterprise social networks like Yammer. Boeing, AT&T, Dachis Group, Ford, Google, IBM, Jive Software, MIT, Mozilla, Oracle, SAP, SugarCRM, Salesforce, Telecom Italia, Tibco, UCF, W3C and many other industry leaders and social business platform corporations were at the workshop.

The lack of adequate standards makes it difficult to create platform bridging or application integration software that comprehensively serves mainstream social business needs of both users and organizations. A number of points of consensus emerged in the creation of this roadmap, including establishing one or more new Working Group(s) to create the next version of OpenSocial on top of the Open Web Platform, the creation of a group responsible for coordinating activities and messaging in the social space, and pursuing work in the federation of social profiles, common data formats such as ActivityStreams, and work on "NoSQL" graph-based data" such as pursued by the Property Graph Model and API Community Group. New working groups around social standards at the W3C will be discussed in the Social Business Community Group.

Workshop discussion topics included:

Key use cases and requirements driving social business
Technologies that can be standardized to solve the problems facing social business
Overall architecture of social business interoperability needs
The difference between standards inside the enterprise and across enterprises
Organic approaches that are evolving without standardization, such as user engagement and custom integration designs
Next steps for evolved social specifications, ranging from OpenSocial to the Federated Social Web

"For a long time, the W3C has thought that social standards need to be a first-class citizen on the Web. By partnering with the OpenSocial Foundation, we will lay the groundwork for this next step in the evolution of the Web, at our joint workshop in August," said Harry Halpin, a W3C team member. "We expect that social standards will eventually have as huge an impact as HTML5 has had, both across the enterprise and for users."

"OMA is a pioneer in the area of social network standardization, leveraging early specifications and actively liaising with W3C and OpenSocial to achieve an end-to-end, standard solution in the mobile space," said Laurent-Walter Goix, Mobile Social Network Champion at OMA. "We're proud to have sponsored this workshop, which comprehensively addresses social business by joining the needs, opportunities and minds of many industry players towards a timely and relevant standardization effort."

"There is a tremendous need for a standardized component model for delivery of cloud applications into the enterprise, and across many platforms. OpenSocial is the only community-led initiative working in this space to define a standard," said Mark Weitzel, President of the OpenSocial Foundation. "In working with the W3C, we believe that we can accomplish more and reach a broader audience of developers to proliferate and optimize solutions across enterprises. We are excited to progress our objectives with these upcoming discussions in San Francisco."

About AppFusions

AppFusions is a leader in packaged platform-to-platform integration solutions bridging information silos, and streamlining enterprise process and data redundancies. As early development adopters, AppFusions is already deploying OpenSocial-compliant integrations with Jive Software or IBM Connections on one side, and Atlassian JIRA, Confluence, Stash, FishEye, Crucible, and/or Bamboo on the other side.

Overall, the company's achievements include packaged solutions with Atlassian JIRA, Confluence, Crowd, IBM Connections, IBM Sametime, Jive, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Alfresco, Google Analytics, LingoTek, UserVoice, Parature, iRise, and more. AppFusions' customers include Fortune 10s to SMBs. Learn more at http://appfusions.com.

About Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)

OMA is the wireless industry’s focal point for the development of mobile service enabler specifications, which support the creation of interoperable end-to-end mobile services. OMA drives service enabler architectures and open enabler interfaces that are independent of the underlying wireless networks and platforms and that work across devices, service providers, operators, networks, and geographies. More information at www.openmobilealliance.org.

A fresh look for Google Translate on iOS, with more languages and new features

Unknown — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 21:55:00 +0000

Cross posted from the Inside Search Blog.

When you’re trekking around a new place or trying to communicate with someone who speaks a different language, Google Translate helps break down the language barrier. Today we updated and optimized the Google Translate app for iOS 7, where you’ll see a fresh new look, handwriting support, and 70+ languages.

If you’re on vacation in Kyoto, and want to learn more about an exotic flower arrangement, use text-input to type in your question and translate from English to Japanese with ease. You can also hear your translation spoken back to you in Japanese.

If a shopkeeper in Paris wants to talk with a visitor from Spain, they can tap the microphone, speak naturally, and quickly translate from French to Spanish with a few simple taps.

If you are an expat living in China and want to know what’s on the menu, use the Handwrite feature to discover a tasty new treat. Tap the Handwrite icon, and input natural handwriting in nearly 50 languages.

Google Translate is useful in many situations, especially while you’re on the go. We hope you enjoy the new design and features.

Posted by Masakazu Seno, Software Engineer, Google Translate

Translate Google+ posts and comments with Google Translate

Unknown — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 15:56:00 +0000

Whenever there's a Google+ public post or comment that isn’t in your language, you'll now see a "Translate" link underneath the text. Clicking the link translates the text in-line, and clicking again returns to the original. (You can set/check your language prefences here: www.google.com/settings/account )

The Google Translate team is always working to make information more accessible to individuals around the world. In Google+ this means bringing people together regardless of their written language, and breaking down language barriers that can limit the exchange of ideas.

We’re rolling out the feature gradually on desktop, so look for the new “Translate” link, and let us know your thoughts!

Posted by +Ed Chi, Research Scientist, and +Lichan Hong, Software Engineer

Announcing Publisher Connection: the newsletter that brings the best of Google right to your inbox

Unknown — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 13:00:00 +0000

From DoubleClick to Google+ to YouTube to Wildfire - each month we create a ton of content to help publishers like you grow your business and navigate an increasingly complex landscape.

Until now, we haven’t put the best of this content one convenient place - your inbox. That’s why we’re launching Google Publisher Connection, a monthly newsletter with case studies, research, events and trends designed to help you stay ahead of the curve and on top of the issues impacting your business.

Subscribe now and we’ll add you to the monthly Google Publisher Connection mailing list.

Read the first issue here.

Posted by David Hertog, Product Marketing Team

More News at Your Fingertips

Unknown — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 23:00:00 +0000

Anand Paka, Google News Product Manager

Did my favorite team win or lose? Should I carry sunscreen or rain gear when I go hiking this weekend? And what did I miss in the world of technology and business? These quintessential questions of the day are all ones that Google News can provide quick answers to with some nifty new features. The aim is all about making news more relevant and useful to you by surfacing content that you might need in a hurry.

1. For avid sports fans, a newly introduced “Sports Scores” section on the News homepage and the Sports page will give a snapshot of live, recently concluded and imminent sporting activity. From this summary, it’s easy to dive in further and do things like click on a score for details of the match or on a specific team to get recent news about it. The section is customizable; for example, if you prefer not to see hockey scores, you can turn hockey ‘off’ while keeping the other sports ‘on’. You can also remove the entire section if you prefer. At the outset, we’re launching in the US, with the big four sporting organizations covering basketball, football, baseball and hockey. Over time, this section will expand to other countries and sports. Stay tuned.

2. Our homepage also has a new Weather section on the right-hand column. With a quick glance, this section lets you see the 4-day weather forecast starting from today. The weather section is ‘smart’ - it defaults to show the weather for your current location. (As with local news, you can set this location manually.) We think this is a neat feature as you can track local weather conditions right next to the top stories without having to jump elsewhere to get this information.

3.The Editors’ Picks section has been a great channel for publishers and readers alike. It offers publishers a unique way to showcase their best work and build their brand, while enabling readers to discover great content that they might otherwise miss. Today we have extended Editors’ Picks from our homepage to our section pages so that you can now enjoy these hand picked articles for the particular section that you are reading at any given time. Editors’ Picks are now being introduced into the Technology and Business sections with plans to add more over time.

Look for these features the next time you visit Google News.

Take your Phrasebook on the go—and translate by camera in 16 more languages

Unknown — Wed, 08 May 2013 22:37:00 +0000

When you’re traveling in another country, you want quick access to your favorite translated phrases—whether it’s “Where can I find a museum?” or “Do you know where the bathroom is?” Google Translate lets you save these translations in your Phrasebook, but you still could not easily access them on the go from your phone or tablet. Starting today, you can automatically sync the phrases in your Phrasebook to your Android device using the Google Translate mobile app, so you can carry your most useful phrases with you wherever you go.

To get started, select Phrasebook in the app menu of the Google Translate app for Android. (Notice that Phrasebook replaces the Favorites feature; your saved phrases are now part of your Phrasebook.) To sync your phrases, simply sign in to your Google Account by tapping the ‘Sign in’ button at the top of your Phrasebook.

With your favorite phrases synced across devices, we hope you’ll never be at a loss for words again.

Last but not least, this latest release of Google Translate for Android sees a significant improvement to the camera-input feature. You can now use camera-input to find translations in 16 additional languages: Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Swedish.

Happy translating!

Minqi Jiang, Associate Product Manager, on behalf of the Google Translate Team

More than 70 of the world’s languages in the blink of an eye

Unknown — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

If you took a quick snapshot of content available on the web, you might think that everyone around the world spoke English, Chinese, French or Spanish. But in fact, millions of people around the world speak an incredible array of languages that currently have a small presence across the web.

Google Translate helps bridge the divide between the content available online and people’s ability to access that information. Starting today, you can translate another five languages using Google, which combined are spoken by more than 183 million people around the globe:

Bosnian is an official language in Bosnia and Herzegovina that’s also spoken in regions of neighboring countries and by diaspora communities around the world.
Cebuano is one of the languages spoken in the Philippines, predominantly in the middle (Visayas) and southern (Mindanao) regions of the nation.
You can hear the Hmong language spoken in many countries across the world, including China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and throughout the United States.
Javanese is the second most-spoken language in Indonesia (behind Indonesian), with 83 million native speakers.
Marathi is spoken in India and has 73 million native speakers. Google Translate already supports several other Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

With the exception of Bosnian, these new languages are “alpha,” meaning while the quality isn’t perfect, we will continue to test and improve them over time.

You can access Translate on the web at https://translate.google.com, on your Android or iOS device, or via Chrome and in Gmail. We are excited to reach the 70+ language milestone, and we look forward to continuing to add more languages.

Bosnian: Google Prevodilac sada podržava više od 70 jezika!

Cebuano: Google sa Translate misuporta na karon sa kapin sa 70 ka mga!

Hmong: Google Translate nim no txhawb nqa tshaj li 70 hom lus!

Javanese: Google Translate saiki ndhukung luwih saka 70 basa!

Marathi: Google भाषांतर आता 70 पेक्षा जास्त भाषांचे समर्थन करते!

Posted by Sveta Kelman, Program Manager, Google Translate

Google Translate now supports Khmer

Unknown — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 01:20:00 +0000

What better way to start Cambodian new year than with the addition of the Khmer language to Google Translate as our 66th supported language. We hope that this will help open up the web to Khmer speakers and likewise make Khmer content more accessible to the rest of the world.

Our focus is and always will be our users. The Google Translate team works hard to improve the quality of our translations so that each newly launched language is of a quality good enough to help the users who rely on it. Khmer now meets our standards to be launched with “alpha” status. That means it is an early version of the translation system that will be usable in many situations, but may not be adequate for all.

Today’s Khmer launch comes with these useful features: virtual keyboard (in case you want to type in Khmer but do not have Khmer keyboard handy) and ability to read Khmer text phonetically for users who don't read Khmer alphabet.

Khmer is a challenging language for translation systems for two reasons: There isn’t a lot of Khmer data on the web and words are not usually separated by spaces; so in addition to teaching our translation system a new language, it also has to learn how to separate words (what we call segmentation).

Over time, we will improve the system and make our Khmer translations better. We constantly improve our algorithm when we find new translations and learn from your alternative translations.

If your language is not yet supported, please rest assured that our team is working hard behind the scenes to support additional languages. The more your language is used on publicly available websites with translations into other languages, the sooner we are likely to start supporting it. So please use your language on the web and help us collect new translations by uploading your translations with the Translator Toolkit.

សួស្ដីឆ្នាំថ្មី (Happy New Year)!

Post by Arne Mauser, Software Engineer, on behalf of the Google Translate Team

The World’s Languages in Your Pocket (No Internet Required)

Unknown — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:18:00 +0000

Have you ever found yourself in a foreign country, wishing you knew how to say "I'm lost!" or "I'm allergic to peanuts”? The Internet and services like Google Translate can help—but what if you don't have a connection?

Today we're launching offline language packages for Google Translate on Android (2.3 and above) with support for fifty languages, from French and Spanish to Chinese and Arabic.

You can select [Offline Languages] in the app menu to see all the offline language packages available for download. To enable offline translation between any two languages, you just need to select them in the offline languages menu. Once the packages are downloaded, you're good to go.

While the offline models are less comprehensive than their online equivalents, they are perfect for translating in a pinch when you are traveling abroad with poor reception or without mobile data access.

So go out and explore another language or another culture without worrying about Internet access. There’s a whole world offline out there.

Posted by Minqi Jiang, Associate Product Manager, on behalf of the Google Translate Team

Nominations are now open for OpenSocial Community Board Members

Unknown — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 13:27:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that the nominations for the Community Elected Board seat are now Open! The nomination period will run from March 22, 2013 through April 5, 2013. To nominate yourself for the board, simply email officers@opensocial.org with you name, company/project affiliation, and desire to be on the board.

Anyone OpenSocial member is able to serve on the board. The only requirement to nominate or hold the position is that you must be a member of the OpenSocial Foundation. There are no membership fees to join OpenSocial. All you need to do is fill out a simple on-line membership application.

Never Forget a Useful Phrase Again – Introducing Phrasebook for Google Translate

Unknown — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:19:00 +0000

Your knowledge of a language is largely determined by how well you can say the right things at the right time. But with so many useful phrases out there, it can be hard to keep track of them all, let alone recall them when needed.

With Google Translate, you can find the right thing to say, but you may not remember the translation at the right time. You might find yourself performing the same translation again and again, until you finally commit the translation to memory.

Phrasebook for Google Translate jumpstarts this slow learning process by allowing you to save the most useful phrases to you, for easy reference later on, exactly when you need them. By revisiting the useful phrases in your Phrasebook from time to time, you can turn any brief translation into lasting knowledge.

It’s easy to start using Phrasebook. Simply click the star under the translated text to save the translation in your Phrasebook.

To view your Phrasebook, simply click the Phrasebook icon above the upper-right corner of the box containing the translation.

Click any phrase in your Phrasebook to load it back in the translation area. Using the Phrasebook controls, you can filter your phrases by language pair or search for a specific phrase. You can also easily listen to each phrase by hovering over the entry and selecting the text-to-speech icons.

We hope your new Phrasebook will come in handy as you use Google Translate. We'd love to hear any feedback you have about this new feature. You can tell us what you think about Phrasebook through the "Send Feedback" option at the bottom of the Google Translate homepage.

- The Google Translate Team

Watch the webinar: Navigating the Road to the Consolidated Buying Platform

Unknown — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

On February 19th, we held a webinar in which we discussed both the immense potential of consolidated buying platforms as well as considerations and requirements for achieving such integration. If you missed this event, you can watch it here on demand.

During the webinar, our guest Joanna O’Connell, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research presented the results of new commissioned research on Navigating the Road to the Consolidated Buying Platform. While the study began with interviews focusing on the consolidation of display buying through DSPs, it became clear over the course of the research that marketers and media execs are actually thinking in much larger terms about consolidated platforms—wanting truly integrated cross-channel solutions for media management, buying, and attribution.

Joanna believes that the future of digital media is audience-centric, programmatic, and data-driven, with the growth of real-time buying demonstrating this marketplace shift. Consolidated platforms that streamline reporting, consolidate buying, and enable cross-channel management are a natural progression of this evolution. They can offer agencies and advertisers new operational efficiencies, improved targeting and campaign performance, and more accurate reporting and insights. In this presentation, Joanna painted a picture of an industry ripe for consolidation but in need of a clear path to get there.

So how do we get from simply buying in various media channels to a seamless, data-driven, multi-channel approach to media management? According to the commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, the first step is consolidating reporting, which leads to more effective measurement as well as operational efficiencies for more accurate analyses. Beyond that, each agency and advertiser must evaluate how consolidating data, audiences, and measurement could lead to better buying, attribution, and ultimately marketing insights for their own business.*

* "Navigating the Road to the Consolidated Buying Platform," Jan 2013

Posted by Emily Wright, Product Marketing Manager

Introducing Our New Input Tools

Unknown — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 20:24:00 +0000

Considering the vast number of ways that users type in our 65 supported languages, we are pleased to announce the integration of Google’s new input tools in Google Translate. We have always allowed you to choose among alternative input methods, but your choice was limited. For example, only one of four popular input methods for Chinese was previously available. Our new input tools greatly expand the set of available input methods for many languages.

A Cyrllic letter-printing telegraph keyboard

We believe that your choice of input tools is important, because the best way to input text with a keyboard varies from language to language, and even from person to person. Every language has its own set of popular input methods, each familiar to its own subset of users. For example, the Portuguese keyboard has two common layouts, one popular in Brazil and another in Portugal. In addition, given the popularity of Latin-alphabet keyboards, a transliteration input tool is often the preferred input method for many languages, allowing users to convert Latin-alphabet input into the proper written script. (Chinese has over 80,000 characters. Try fitting them all on a keyboard.) With the right transliteration input tools turned on, you can simply type “privet” to input привет, “tieng chao” for tiếng chào, and “nihao” for 你好.

It’s easy to start using our new input tools. Once you have chosen your input language, you will see the input tools icon at the bottom of the text area. Click the icon to turn on the input tool or switch to another input tool in the drop-down menu.

The new input tools are now also available in other Google products, including Gmail, Drive, Chrome, and Android, as well as in Windows. We hope our new input tools will make your translation experience easier than ever!

- The Google Translate Team

Join our webinar: Navigating the Road to the Consolidated Buying Platform

Unknown — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0000

featuring Joanna O’Connell, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc.
and Danny Huynh, Managing Director of Digital and Client Leadership, Mindshare
hosted by Chip Hall, Director of Media Platforms Sales, Google

Digital ad spend is growing. Programmatic is on the rise. DSPs are gaining traction. But for marketers and media buyers, this often becomes just another channel to add to the many they already manage. So how do we get from simply buying RTB to a seamless, data-driven, multi-channel approach to media management?

Please join DoubleClick on February 19th for a webinar in which we explore the trend of consolidated media buying and management. In this webinar:

Joanna O’Connell

Forrester Research

Danny Huynh

Mindshare

Register here for the webinar to be held on Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at 10:00am PST / 12:00pm CST / 1:00pm EST. The full study conducted by Forrester on the topic will be available for download following the webinar.

Posted by Emily Wright, Product Marketing Manager

Attend an upcoming DoubleClick Bid Manager Training Webinar

Unknown — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:14:00 +0000

DoubleClick Bid Manager: 15 Minute Campaign Tune-Up
Wednesday, February 27th, 2013 – 12:30pm - 1:30pm EST

Join us for the first in a new series of live webinars covering tips and tricks to managing your campaigns in DoubleClick Bid Manager. This one hour session covers quick and easy ways to make pacing and performance improvements to campaigns when you are limited on time. This training is ideal for DoubleClick Bid Manager users who work in the interface and have set up and launched at least one campaign. Please register in the DoubleClick Bid Manager Help Center.

Posted by Molly Larrison, DoubleClick Bid Manager Product Trainer

Come learn more about OpenSocial at ApacheCon US in Portland this February

Unknown — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 11:00:00 +0000

I'm excited to announce the OpenSocial Foundations presence at ApacheCon NA in Portland at the end of February. We have two great sessions lined up...

Make #hashtags come alive using Apache Rave and OpenSocial! ( http://na.apachecon.com/schedule/presentation/196/ ) presented on Monday, February 25th at 1:30pm by John Mertic and Mark Weitzel. We will take a deep dive into how to build integrations into Apache Rave using SugarCRM. Then, we'll see how that same integration can also be deployed on other OpenSocial containers, such as IBM Connections and Jive.
OpenSocial Embedded Experiences with ActivityStrea.ms in Apache Rave ( http://na.apachecon.com/schedule/presentation/143/ ) presented on Tuesday, February 26th at 5:00pm by Matt Franklin. This presentation will show how you can take advantage of the OpenSocial support in Rave to build a stream-based user interface that offers situational awareness via ActivityStrea.ms and in-context interaction with via Embedded Experiences.

As a foundation, we are very excited to be participating in this event, and look forward to helping more people become aware of this open standard for social business middleware.

OpenSocial Foundation Events for Q1 2013

Unknown — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:51:00 +0000

Happy New Year everyone! We hope 2013 will be as promising and rewarding of a year as it's shaping up for OpenSocial. We are excited to announce us being a part of several events this quarter...

IBM Connect

Once again there will be lots of OpenSocial going on at IBM Connect, going on in Orlando from January 27th thru the 31st. In the exhibits area stop by the IBM Signature Solutions Area to see how OpenSocial is being leveraged to extend the reach and integration of Social Capabilities to third-party applications. You'll learn more about OpenSocial and other standards are driving innovation for integration across business applications.

There also are a number of OpenSocial related sessions, namely...

INV211 : The New Social Business Paradigm with OpenSocial
AD103 : Social Standards Across IBM Connections, IBM Notes, IBM iNotes and IBM Domino
AD206 : IBM Lotus Domino XPages: Embrace, Extend, Integrate
AD212 : Whats New in IBM Lotus Notes Widgets and LiveText: Linking Your Data to the World!
ID101 : What's New in IBM iNotes 9.0 Social Edition
BP209 : In The Land of Social Apps, the API is King
JMP102 : Extending Your App Arsenal With OpenSocial

ApacheCon NA

We will also be a part of ApacheCon North America 2013, going in Portland, OR from February 24th thru the 28th. The official conference, trainings, and expo of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), ApacheCon draws Open Source users, developers, gurus, students, novices, community managers, and enthusiasts to address today’s issues, opportunities, and solutions focusing on the ASF’s nearly 150 projects and initiatives. With both Shindig and Rave as official Apache projects, we will be bring the OpenSocial message through two sessions...

Make #hashtags come alive using Apache Rave and OpenSocial! - http://na.apachecon.com/schedule/presentation/196/
OpenSocial Embedded Experiences with ActivityStrea.ms in Apache Rave - http://na.apachecon.com/schedule/presentation/143/

CeBIT 2013 - Hannover, Germany

We will also be at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, which is the world's largest and most international computer expo. Held each year on the Hanover fairground, it is considered a barometer of the state of the art in information technology. We are excited to have a panel discussion with several OpenSocial Foundation board members, along with foundation president Mark Weitzel, on one of the stages. In addition, look for OpenSocial foundation members SugarCRM and IBM exhibiting, and come visit the OW2 village.

We look forward to having more events in 2013 to bring the OpenSocial message to the social business community.

10 Resolutions to Reach Programmatic Zen in 2013

Unknown — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0000

‘Tis the season to make our resolutions for 2013. But instead of making ones that you know you won’t keep, how about trying our countdown of 10 resolutions to make your programmatic display campaigns more effective this year? Just think of it—all the satisfaction of accomplishing your goals, and no wasted gym memberships. Here’s to your best year yet!

10. I will be kind to others.
But being truly kind is a big step. So why not start by being kind with your ad placements Use precise, contextual targeting layered with audience data to pinpoint the most relevant moments for your ads. You’ll be surprised by how much the right people appreciate hearing from you at the right times. And remember to say “please” and “thank you”.

9. I will open myself up to new experiences.
Order something new off the menu. Choose somewhere you’ve never been for your next vacation. Or get really crazy and add mobile and video campaigns to all your display buys in order to better reach your audience. After all, studies have shown that cross-screen campaigns are more effective, and let’s face it, you’re not getting any younger.

8. I will discover my true self.
Self-discovery is a lifelong journey. Take the first step by seeking to better understand your ad campaigns. Learn more about where your ads are showing and how they’re performing. Insist on full transparency in reporting and the accurate and actionable insights you need to fully know your campaigns.

7. I will take control of my destiny.
Repeat this phrase: “I am strong. I am smart. And, gosh darn it, I will take control of my display buys!” Give yourself the ability to act on the metrics that matter most in your campaigns. Surround yourself with partners and technologies that give you the control to customize your buys and optimize to meet your unique goals. You deserve it.

6. I will develop deeper, more meaningful relationships.
Step 1: Call your mother. She misses you. Step 2: Deepen your relationships with publishers by using private exchanges and preferred deals to combine the best of programmatic buying with direct publisher contact. This way you get access to the right inventory and the right audiences.

5. I will stop punishing myself.
Are your destructive, subconscious thoughts driving you to compete against yourself and pay more for the same impressions? Stop the cycle by becoming more strategic about buying audiences across platforms and consolidating wherever possible.

4. I will live in the moment.
Breathe deeply. Hold it. Release. Each moment in your ad campaign is unique and precious, so find systems that can generate up-to-date reports and optimize your budgets, and bids in real time. Make buying decisions that are right for your campaign at that particular time. It’s a close second to true inner peace.

3. I will get serious about my future.
401(k)s, your kid’s college fund, that marathon you always say you’ll run? Sure, add those to your list this year, but also include finding technologies that will grow your business. Align yourself with partners who are both effective now and are planning for the future—with technology and infrastructure that will scale with the pace of your business.

2. I will give credit where credit is due.
Being in the limelight may feel good, but it’s important to recognize those who have helped you along the way. The same is true for your ads. Give all your impressions their appropriate credit by moving beyond the last-click attribution model. And don’t forget to thank your family and the academy.

1. I will listen to Thoreau.
Thoreau tells us to simplify. But don’t abandon your possessions just yet. Instead, as the display ecosystem gains in complexity and fragmentation, look for solutions that streamline the buying process and make insights and analysis faster and easier. See, no pond necessary.

Happy New Year from DoubleClick Bid Manager! And be sure to check back with us on Friday for five resolutions for better search management in 2013.

Posted by Emily Wright, Product Marketing Manager

A better Google News experience on tablets

Unknown — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:36:00 +0000

Posted by Mayuresh Saoji, Product Manager, Google News[Edited 02/13/2013] Update: The new Google News experience for tablets is now available in most English editions worldwide. Hope you enjoy it!There’s something special about reading news on your tablet. Indeed, swiping through Google News on your tablet is a comfortable and effective way to find more articles from great publications that satisfy your needs and tickle your serendipitous interests. Starting today, Google News feels even more natural and fluid on tablet devices. For example:

You can find new articles, news sources, and even topics of interest with intuitive gestures. Swipe horizontally between sections – from Business to Entertainment, for example – or tap “Explore in depth” to see multiple articles and other info related to a particular story.
We’ve also added more breathing room between articles, making it easier to spot the stories you really care about.

We think these improvements will help Google News send even more visits to news sites (six billion per month and counting).

To give it a try, just visit news.google.com with your Nexus 7, Nexus 10, or iPad.

OpenSocial Foundation becomes OW2 Consortium Associate Member, announces availability of OpenSocial 2.5 specification

Unknown — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:28:00 +0000

Paris, France – November 30, 2012 – OpenSocial Foundation announced today on becoming an OW2 associate member. This formal relationship brings two market-leading open foundations together, bringing the message of social cloud middleware to a larger worldwide market. OpenSocial Foundation is a Platinum sponsor and exhibitor at this year’s OW2Con, with foundation president Mark Weitzel keynoting today on how open standards and open source are driving social business.

“The OpenSocial Foundation continues its commitment to reaching out across the industry to build a robust social business ecosystem. We are excited to work closer with OW2 and it’s consortium members to further advance standard based social middleware.” said Mark Weitzel, President of the OpenSocial Foundation

"We were excited to have OpenSocial as a Platinum sponsor of OW2 Con this year." said Cedric Thomas, CEO of the OW2 Consortum. "With the growth of cloud computing and SaaS delivered social business applications there is a great deal of synergy between OpenSocial and OW2. It only seemed natural to find ways to align our efforts more closely together. We look to move away from legacy portal systems and towards social systems of engagement, we look forward to working with the OpenSocial and Apache Rave communities to define and build the next generation open, standards based, social platform."

Announcement of OpenSocial 2.5 specification.

In addition, the OpenSocial Foundation also announces today the general availability of version 2.5 of the OpenSocial specification. This release adds in new features that were previously in incubation, such as the Common Container, which formalizes the APIs for application lifecycle and management, as well as adds new capabilities such as the ability to introspect the services with an OpenSocial platform through a metadata API.

“OpenSocial provides the leading and most mature standards based component model for SaaS delivered social business applications.”, said Mark Weitzel, President of the OpenSocial Foundation.
“Version 2.5 continues to set the benchmark for community driven innovation and fosters interoperability, choice, consistency, innovation, and quality between social platforms and 3rd party applications.”

For a more complete list of the changes, see the full release notes at http://bit.ly/os25publishedspecissues, and you can download the full specification at http://docs.opensocial.org/display/OSD/Specs.

About OW2
Founded in January 2007, OW2 is an independent industry community dedicated to developing open source code infrastructure and to fostering a vibrant community and business ecosystem. The OW2 Consortium hosts some one hundred technology Projects, including ASM,Bonita, eXo Platorm, Funambol, JOnAS, Joram, Orbeon Forms, PEtALS, SpagoBI and XWiki. More information at: www.ow2.org.

About OpenSocial
The OpenSocial Foundation, an industry recognized standards body, dedicated to advancing the social web through community innovation and open source. Established in 2008, the Foundation provides the leading and most mature standards based component model for SaaS delivered social business applications. Widely supported by a majority of leading consumer and enterprise social platforms, such as IBM, Jive, and SugarCRM, the OpenSocial specification fosters the development of a growing set of socially-aware off-the-shelf applications. Through open source projects such as Apache Rave and Shindig, it provides a well-defined way for 3rd party applications to richly interact with users directly in their activity stream. For more information, visit www.opensocial.org.

Come see us at OW2Con and be a part of the OpenSocial EU Workshop!

Unknown — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:14:00 +0000

We are excited to announce we will be in Paris from November 27-29, 2012 to be a part of OW2Con. OW2Con is the annual conference for the OW2 consortium, which is an open source foundation focusing on open source middleware components. OpenSocial aligns nicely with that, and as such we are excited to be one of the Platinum sponsors for the event. Mark Weitzel, president of the OpenSocial foundation, will be keynoting at the conference on the changing landscape of social business and how open source is a part of it.

In addition, we will be holding a one-day workshop on November 27th, highlighting the shift to Social Middleware components in the industry today. We'll showcase how various companies are adopting this today and how they are doing it, and will provide the opportunity for hands-on demos of the technology and learning how to begin building OpenSocial container objects and leveraging embedded experiences. Learn more about the day's schedule at http://www.ow2.org/view/OW2Con-2012/OpenSocial_Workshop.

Both events are free to be a part of, but advanced registration is requested. You can register for the events at http://www.ow2.org/view/OW2Con-2012/OpenSocial_Workshop_Register . We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Improving news search with expandable results

Unknown — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:29:00 +0000

Posted by Rudy Galfi, Product Manager Last year we updated Google News to make it easier for you to scan for stories that are interesting to you and let you dig deeper when you find them. Today we’re announcing an update that brings some of those same ideas to news search. Over the next few days we’ll be rolling out the following features:

Click-to-expand news results clusters: Each news results cluster is collapsed down to one result with the exception of the first cluster. Click on the “Show more” link to see articles from more sources. This improvement makes it much easier to scan through the search results to find just the collection of news coverage you’re looking for.
Multimedia: Within some of the expanded results clusters you’ll see a bar of videos and photos that relate to each cluster’s content. Click on any of these for more coverage of the story.
Layout updates: The cluster image now appears on the left and the source information has been moved to below the article links for better readability.

You can try this out by doing a search on Google News or by clicking on the “News” filter on the web search results page. We hope you like these changes and that they improve your experience searching the news.

Improvements to the look of performance reports

Unknown — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:34:00 +0000

Your Ad Exchange performance reports are key to understanding your account’s activity and earnings. Sometimes it can be challenging to interpret the wealth of data you’re presented with, so we’re excited to introduce some changes which improve the usability of your reports and make them more illustrative.

The graph area now covers the entire width of the
screen as the list of metrics has been moved from the right hand side to the top navigation in a metrics overlay window. A new date selector allows for more granularity when inspecting specific date ranges. Apart from the current timeline graph, you can now choose from four new graph types to visualize the data you’re looking at. For example, the country report now allows you to see where your users are located on a world map and for other reports you can select pie or bar charts.

In addition, the metrics table below now displays all available data which you can see by scrolling down the page, with fixed bars showing the averages and totals for the report you’re looking at. If you’re interested to see how specific account changes are related to account performance, you can now select “Events” directly from the metrics overlay window.

For more information on these changes, visit the Ad Exchange Help Center.

Posted by Matt Goodridge, Product Manager

Google News turns 10

Unknown — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 18:21:00 +0000

Posted by Krishna Bharat, Distinguished Scientist and Founder, Google News

Google News launched on September 22, 2002—exactly a decade ago.

Inspired by the widespread interest in news after the September 11 attacks, we invested in technology to help people search and browse news relevant to them. Google News broke new ground in news aggregation by gathering links in real time, grouping articles by story and ranking stories based on the editorial opinions of publishers worldwide. Linking to a diverse set of sources for any given story enabled readers to easily access different perspectives and genres of content. By featuring opposing viewpoints in the same display block, people were encouraged to hear arguments on both sides of an issue and gain a more balanced perspective.

In the last ten years, Google News has grown to 72 editions in 30 languages, and now draws from more than 50,000 news sources. The technology also powers Google’s news search. Together, they connect 1 billion unique users a week to news content.

Google News today

As we have scaled the service internationally, we have added new features (Local News, Personalization, Editors’ Picks, Spotlight, Authorship, Social Discussions), evolved our design, embraced mobile and run ancillary experiments (Fast Flip, Living Stories, Timeline). In parallel, we have monitored our quality and challenged our engineers to improve the technology under the hood—increase freshness, group news better, rank stories more accurately, personalize with more insight and streamline the infrastructure.

Take a look back at the past decade in Google News through the top stories from each year and a few notable features that have launched in the interim:

It’s undeniable that the online news landscape has changed immensely. Smartphones and social networks have transformed how news is accessed and sourced, and shifted the relationship between readers and authors. Open journalism is the norm, and aggregation by humans and machines is an integral part of the ecosystem. New technologies such as Hangouts on Air have the potential to connect users, journalists and opinion makers and transform how stories are discussed.

Opportunities abound, and we are excited for where we can take this product in the next decade. While change is inevitable, one thing remains the same: our mission is to bring you the news you want, when you need it, from a diverse set of sources.

(Cross-posted on the Official Google blog)

A newly hatched way to tag your news articles

Unknown — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:10:00 +0000

Posted by Rudy Galfi, Product Manager, Google News

The day after the historic 1929 stock market crash, Variety bannered their front page with these words: “WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG.” It’s a great headline: pithy, catchy, and expressive of the substance of the story as well as the scale of its consequences. It’s also worth noting that Variety’s editors had a full day to write the headline—millions of readers weren’t trying to search for the story within seconds of hearing about it.

The Web has transformed both how news organizations report information and the way users find it. Imagine if “WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG” were used as a headline today by an online news site. Since the headline is a sequence of text that’s only readily understandable by a human, most machine algorithms would probably attach some sort of biological association to it. In turn, this would make it difficult for millions of curious users who are using Google.com or Google News to find the best article about the stock market crash they just heard about.

To help solve this problem, today we’re excited to announce a news_keywords metatag. The goal is simple: empower news writers to express their stories freely while helping Google News to properly understand and classify that content so that it’s discoverable by our wide audience of users.

Similar in spirit to the plain keywords metatag, the news_keywords metatag lets publishers specify a collection of terms that apply to a news article. These words don’t need to appear anywhere within the headline or body text. Taking the Variety example above, news keywords such as “stocks”, “stock market”, or “crash” would be helpful in allowing Google News to better understand the article content for ranking without forcing the editors to water down the creativity of a great headline. Because the metatag appears only as part of the HTML code of a page, visitors to a site won’t ever see the magic under the hood.

Keep in mind that this metatag will be one signal among many that our algorithms use to determine ranking. The news_keywords metatag is intended as a tool -- but high-quality reporting and interesting news content remain the strongest ways to put your newsroom’s work in front of Google News users.

You can learn more about getting news_keywords set up by reading our Help Center article.

Announcing Audience Extension: a new way to create more premium inventory in DoubleClick for Publishers

Unknown — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:08:00 +0000

Today at the London ATS Trading summit we announced the launch of Audience Extension, a new feature within DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) designed to generate more premium revenue for publishers by leveraging their audiences across the web.

Audience extension enables you to reach your audience across other publishers, bundle these impressions with your own inventory, and resell those packages to your direct advertisers at a premium. Audience extension inventory comes from the vast pool of brand safe inventory via publishers on DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Audience Extension can be used without leaving DFP; flight dates, targeting and bid parameters are set directly within your core ad server.

Audience extension is best suited to publishers with high value content channels within their owned and operated inventory that are consistently sold out, or who have defined audiences onsite that have a value to advertisers that transcends the context of their own site. It’s also used by publishers looking to reach a critical mass of users from a given geo-location.

Key Benefits

A single place to manage, execute and optimize buying across owned & operated and external inventory
Bid management capabilities integrated in the core ad server
Integrated data management
Cross-inventory performance reporting, analytics & insights
Complexity hidden from sales team & ad operations

Posted by Sean Harvey, Business Product Manager

What’s new in DoubleClick for Publishers

Unknown — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:39:00 +0000

We’re always adding new features to DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). The list below contains some highlights. For a complete list, please visit the DFP or DFP Small Business Help Centers.

Available in DFP and DFP Small Business:

Line Item Bulk Edit: We’re constantly working on improving the trafficking process to enable you to create and change your campaigns more easily and effectively. You can now change the start and end date, the quantity, and the rate of several line items at once by using the bulk edit feature on the order overview page.

New AdMob SDK: The new Google AdMob SDK v6.1.0 for Android and v6.1.4 and v6.1.5 (non-UDID and UDID, respectively) for iOS are available for download. The new versions include the ability to specify multiple ad sizes in an AdView, introduce an app event listener for custom creatives that fire custom app events, and fix bugs reported from previous versions of the SDK.

Available in DFP:

Copy Creative Templates: If there is a creative template that you often use, you can now copy the template if you would like to re-use it for new creatives.

Available in DFP Mobile:

Allow non-matching images in aspect ratio creatives: Offers the ability to upload an image asset which doesn't match the aspect ratio you have selected in the line item.

Suggested ad units: You can now create mobile ad units by approving suggestions generated from actual traffic. When a not-yet existing ad unit generates impressions we will show it after some impressions as a suggested ad unit in the inventory screen of the network where users can approve them to become actual ad units. This saves you time by automatically creating ad units in advance, while still maintaining control over your overall inventory structure.

Multiple sizes for ad units in applications: You can now create ad units with multiple sizes in applications, allowing you to sell high-value custom sizes without compromising your ability to deliver standard banners or use ad networks.

Available in DFP Video:

Pausing / Archiving for Content & Sources: Content and Source will have new status: Archiving. Archiving a content source marks all of its content as archived. You can also mark video content as archived and this will persist until the user sets it back to the "video source setting"

DFP API Hangouts:
On September 18th at 11am PT join the DFP API Team and Ad-Juster in a hangout focused on how Ad-Juster integrates with the DFP API to make Publisher's lives easier. Ad-Juster, a company that helps ad operations teams automate the pulling of countless reports from multiple sources, will present a demonstration of their tool and also discuss how they integrate with the API. Add questions before and during the live hangout and don't forget to add this event to your calendar. To ensure your computer is ready please follow the instructions prior to the event. Thanks, and see you there!

Posted by Alex Strittmatter, DFP Product Specialist

A New Look and Additional Publisher Controls on DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange

Unknown — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:53:00 +0000

As part of our Google-wide initiative to deliver a new and improved Google experience across all of our products, we’ve been making continuous enhancements to the Ad Exchange. Now, when you log into your account, it will still have the same structure but you’ll notice that some gradual updates have been made. There are some new settings in the interface, including cleaner design elements. If you are also using AdSense, Analytics or AdWords, you’ll be familiar with some of these updates.

The Ad Exchange interface has been refreshed with newly designed menus, tabs, navigation, and buttons. This new look simplifies the interface to make it more visually appealing, while keeping the features where you are accustomed to finding them.

Check out the ‘before’ and ‘after’ look:

Old Interface: Notice changes made to the Left Navigation panel

New Interface: Notice updated Left Navigation, Contextual Help and Alert Summary locations

To provide a more intuitive environment with a streamlined look, we have moved and added a few things. Here are some of the update highlights:

Contextual Help: One of the changes you’ll notice is the location of help content in your account, which has moved from the left navigation bar to a dedicated ‘Help’ link in the top right corner of every page in your account.
Alert Summary: We’ve added a new alert summary to the top of the page which collects all of the critical alerts for your account together in one place. Now, when you click the alert summary, a full list of your critical alerts displays without navigating you to a different page.
Performance Reports: You’ll notice that your Performance Reports are now organized by type (Common reports, Quick reports, Saved reports). Click ‘Common reports’ to access your standard reports, and then use the new date range selector. You’ll still be able to choose to either see your default report or daily account performance, just as before. You can read more about these updates in the Ad Exchange help center.

More Granular Publisher Controls
To give our publishers more granular controls over the ad categories available on their sites, we’ve also updated the blocking options within publisher controls.

New Interface: Provides Filter Control in General categories at the ad unit level

When you create or edit an ad unit, the Ad Exchange now enables publishers to set up an additional filter -- to block general categories at the ad unit level, which was previously only available at the account level.

Posted by Scott Spencer, Director, Product Management

New Challenges in Computer Science Research

Unknown — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:43:00 +0000

Posted by Jeff Walz, Head of University Relations

Yesterday afternoon at the 2012 Computer Science Faculty Summit, there was a round of lightning talks addressing some of the research problems faced by Google across several domains. The talks pointed out some of the biggest challenges emerging from increasing digital interaction, which is this year’s Faculty Summit theme.

Research Scientist Vivek Kwatra kicked things off with a talk about video stabilization on YouTube. The popularity of mobile devices with cameras has led to an explosion in the amount of video people capture, which can often be shaky. Vivek and his team have found algorithmic approaches to make casual videos look more professional by simulating professional camera moves. Their stabilization technology vastly improves the quality of amateur footage.

Next, Ed Chi (Research Scientist) talked about social media focusing on the experimental circle model that characterizes Google+. Ed is particularly interested in how social interaction on the web can be designed to mimic live communication. Circles on Google+ allow a user to manage their audience and share content in a targeted fashion, which reflects face-to-face interaction. Ed discussed how, from an HCI perspective, the challenge going forward is the need to consider the trinity of social media: context, audience, content.

John Wilkes, Principal Software Engineer, talked about cluster management at Google and the challenges of building a new cluster manager-- that is, an operating system for a fleet of machines. Everything at Google is big and a consequence of operating at such tremendous scale is that machines are bound to fail. John’s team is working to make things easier for internal users enabling our ability to respond to more system requests. There are several hard problems in this domain, such as issues with configuration, making it as easy as possible to run a binary, increasing failure tolerance, and helping internal users understand their own needs as well as the behavior and performance of their system in our complicated distributed environment.

Research Scientist and coffee connoisseur Alon Halevy took to the podium to confirm that he did indeed author an empirical book on coffee, and also talked with attendees about structured data on the web. Structured data is comprised of hundreds of millions of (relatively small) tables of data, and Alon’s work is focused on enabling data enthusiasts to discover and visualize those data sets. Great possibilities open up when people start combining data sets in meaningful ways, which inspired the creation of Fusion Tables. An example is a map made in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, that shows natural disaster data alongside the locations of the world’s nuclear plants. Moving forward, Alon’s team will continue to think about interesting things that can be done with data, and the techniques needed to distinguish good data from bad data.

To wrap up the session, Praveen Paritosh did a brief, but deep dive into the Knowledge Graph, an intelligent model that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another-- things, not strings-- which launched earlier this year.

The Google Faculty Summit continued today with more talks, and breakout sessions centered on our theme of digital interaction. Check back for additional blog posts in the coming days.

What’s new in DoubleClick for Publishers

Unknown — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:56:00 +0000

Our engineers have been hard at work during the last few weeks to provide you with some new, exciting features in DFP. For a complete list, please visit the DFP or DFP Small Business Help Centers.

Available in DFP:

Teams: Imagine that your organization operates an East and West coast sales team, and you'd like to restrict access to your East coast orders and advertisers so only users on your East coast team can view and edit the campaigns. With the new Teams functionality in DFP, you can now group your network's users into teams, defined by you, enabling you to restrict access to any combination of companies, orders and inventory. Learn more.

Auto-Macro Insertion for Creative Templates: The key to successfully serving third-party creatives and minimizing discrepancies is to make sure that you are properly inserting macros into the third-party code. A macro is a short piece of code provided by DFP that will enable your third-party tags to properly track clicks or track impressions. In addition to automatically inserting macros for reconginzed third-party creatives, DFP will now also recognize and insert macros for third-party code in custom creatives and custom creative templates. This provides you with the same macro-insertion support and efficiencies you are used to when trafficking regular 3rd party creatives.

Ad Exclusions: There are situations when you will want to avoid an advertiser running on a competitor's website. For example, if you've got a news story about a plane crash, you probably don't want to run airline ads next to it. Ad Exclusions provide controls to prevent labelled line items to deliver on specific inventory. These labels can additionally be added per default on company level to ensure a smoother workflow for your trafficking operations.

Creative Upload for Standalone Creative Library: The recently launched Standalone Creative Library now supports the ability to upload creatives and creatives sets directly, which can be stored for later use.

Local Time Zone Trafficking: In addition to being able to change the role and language you use DFP in, you can now change a DFP user's time zone to match the user's location. When you do, the displayed times throughout the trafficking sections of DFP will be adjusted to match the time in the location you've set for the user.

Available in DFP and DFP Small Business:

Additional Reporting Scheduling options: We’ve added further granularity to reporting scheduling options to give you more insights into the health of your inventory. You can now schedule your reports with additional breakdowns such as year-to-date, quarter-to-date, month-to-date, and lifetime.

SDK Mediation for Mobile: SDK Mediation is a form of ad network optimization for mobile in DFP which allows you to set up a waterfall (or daisy chain) of networks, where one network after another is called until an impression is filled. Use this new feature to send impressions from mobile applications to ad networks via the ad networks' own SDKs.This is useful when:

An ad network only accepts requests from its own SDK
Certain custom formats are only available in the ad network's SDK
Information provided by the SDK, such as location information or a unique user ID, enables higher CPMs

Available in DFP Mobile:

Frequency Capping: Frequency capping is now available for mobile in two ways:

Line item frequency capping: For mobile web, this uses cookies in a similar fashion as desktop (the DoubleClick cookie where possible; otherwise the DFP first party cookie). For mobile applications, this uses a double-anonymised identifier generated by the Google AdMob SDK.
Ad unit frequency capping: Ad unit frequency capping now works for mobile in cases where there is an identifier available.

Available in DFP Video:

Fallback Image for VAST Non-linear ads: It’s now possible to display a fallback image when VAST non-linear ads fail to render.
VPAID Creative Validation: DFP will validate hosted linear and non-linear VPAID creatives and notify the user if it's invalid.

Posted by Alex Strittmatter, DFP Product Specialist

Google Offers app now available on iPhone

Unknown — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Today we’re announcing the new Google Offers app for iPhone. Now, iPhone users can discover, buy and redeem Google Offers, as well as deals from our partners, on-the-go. Some of the features of the new Google Offers app for iPhone include:

Instant savings, just around the corner: Quickly discover offers near you in map view or search for deals by category to easily find the right deal for you.
See & use the deals you want, when you want them: All of your purchased and saved offers are tracked in "My Offers,” for easy access from your iPhone or online.
Savings made simple: Instantly redeem most offers with your iPhone, without having to print vouchers.
Never miss a great deal: Get notifications when new deals are available or when a deal that you’ve purchased or saved is about to expire.

Browse deals near you in map view, purchase offers directly from the app, and get instant access to all of your deals in “My Offers”

Download the Google Offers app for iPhone today from The App Store. This app is only available in the U.S.

Posted by Robert Kim, Product Manager, Google Offers

Spurious conversions in Website Optimizer reports

Unknown — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 20:21:00 +0000

We have gotten reports of spurious conversions appearing in Website Optimizer reports over the last few days. We have since fixed the underlying problem and reprocessed the affected data. Please do let us know if you still see any problems with the numbers in your reports. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Posted by Enrique Muñoz Torres, Sr. Product Manager, Google Analytics

Chatting with Neal Mohan about DoubleClick Insights

Unknown — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:09:00 +0000

On Tuesday, June 5th, at 9am - 1pm PST, we will be live streaming DoubleClick Insights -- a series of spirited, thought-provoking conversations about the future of digital marketing with leaders from top advertisers, agencies and publishers. We caught up with Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising, and the host of DoubleClick Insights to ask him about the event.

Q: Why did Google decide to host DoubleClick Insights this year?
A: Every year, DoubleClick hosts our Client Advisory Board event to talk to our advertising and publishing customers about our plans, and to learn how our solutions could better serve their businesses. Customers at the advisory board have asked that we share more of our perspective on the industry trends we’re seeing. To share these trends not only with our customers, but with the broader digital advertising community, we will be hosting the first DoubleClick Insights event, live streaming on YouTube.

Q: What will the discussions at DoubleClick Insights focus on?
A: We’ve invited executives from leading agencies, advertisers and publishers to help us lead conversations around three important themes:

How do we better adapt to the empowered consumer? In a world where consumers are increasingly in control, what do advertisers and publishers need to do to better engage and increasingly fickle consumer.
Where does the ad technology ecosystem go next? We’ve seen explosive growth in ad tech over the last 20 years, but there’s still a lot that could be done to unlock all of the potential value for publishers, marketers – and ultimately consumers.
Finally, we want to take a look at how all of this technology is being used and ask ourselves if all this technology is leading to better ad creative, or is it just creating complexity that is holding us back.

You can view the full DoubleClick Insights agenda here.

Q: You mentioned other executives helping lead the conversation. Who is speaking at DoubleClick Insights?
A: We've invited an array of the most influential speakers from every facet of advertising and media to join us for DoubleClick Insights. To call out a few of our speakers: Terry Kawaja, Founder and CEO, LUMA Partners; David Kenny, Chairman & CEO, The Weather Channel Companies ; Jimmy Pitaro, Co-President, Disney Interactive Media Group; Omar Tawokol, Chief Executive Officer, BlueKai, Kurt Unkel - President, Vivaki; and many more. You can view the full speakers list here.

Q: You’ve said before that digital advertising will become a $200 billion dollar industry. Will DoubleClick Insights answer what the next growth phase looks like for digital marketing?
A: I believe that the only way to create real value for all of us is by working better together because we are on the same journey -- whether that’s ad tech working better together, or advertisers and publishers working better together. There is no single, magic solution for solving all of our challenges, so we need to work across the ecosystem to deliver on the full potential for digital marketing.

Q: Where can I find more information on DoubleClick Insights?
A: You can watch DoubleClick Insights on YouTube on June 5th, 2012 at 9:00am PST.

If you're following us on Google+ or Twitter (@DoubleClick and @DoubleClick_pub), use the #dclkinsights tag as you're watching the event to ask questions or share comments during the event.

Posted by Stephen Kliff and Scott Brown, DoubleClick Marketing

‘Save a Copy As’ is my new favorite command

Unknown — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 22:40:00 +0000

Every time I talk to Mitchel Stangl, I learn something new. Mitchel’s a mechanical engineer who uses SketchUp Pro to build massively intricate models of processing and manufacturing facilities. On his last visit to SketchUp HQ, Mitchel helped me improve my workflow by telling me about the File > Save A Copy As… command (which we apparently added at his suggestion).

When I’m working on a big model in SketchUp, I like to save a new copy of my file every few hours. Doing so lets me easily go back to a previous version in case I’ve accidentally deleted something I need — this happens more often than I care to admit. It also provides a measure of protection against file corruption, which isn’t common, but can be devastating.

For the last eight years, I’ve been choosing File > Save As… and creating a numbered copy in the folder that contains my project. The result is a long, long list of sequentially numbered files. The most recent is the one with the highest number appended to the end, as you can see in the screenshot below. Simple, no?

Using File > Save As... to create a sequential archive of files is straightforward, but there's a more efficient way to work.

There are two problems with this system (as I’ve come to find out the hard way): First, when I come back to a project after a hiatus, I’m never 100% sure that I’m working on the latest version of my file. Maybe I saved a newer version somewhere else? Second, when I’m working on a set of drawings in LayOut, the linked SketchUp file always needs to be the most recent one. Every time I change the name of the SketchUp file (three or four times a day), I need to manually re-link the new model to my LayOut file. Yech.

If you periodically "Save As" your SketchUp model with a new version number, the workflow with LayOut is awkward. You'll spend a lot of time relinking your current model to your LayOut file.

Using the Save A Copy As… command (instead of Save As…) takes care of both these issues. It lets you save a version of your model as a new file without renaming the one you’re working on. The saved versions can be numbered and archived, but the “master” version is always called the same thing. There’s no confusion about which is the latest, and working with LayOut is twenty times easier. Presto.

Choosing Save A Copy As... allows you to save "snapshots" of your model while continuing to work on the same file. I like to keep an archive of old versions in a separate folder, just to keep things tidy.

I love it when answers to complicated problems are so simple. Thanks Mitchel!

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

SketchUp Pro Case Study: Alexander James International

Unknown — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:30:00 +0000

We recently came across some marvelous work from Alexander James International (AJI), an interior design firm in the UK that specializes in the Hotel & Leisure market. Michael Reekie, Senior Interior Designer for AJI, was good enough to provide some insight into how they use SketchUp Pro.

I started using SketchUp Pro about five years ago. At that time we considered it a tool to help produce quick 3D line drawings of small areas. Gradually, its value has become more apparent and with the recent addition of Shaderlight, it is now considered to be an invaluable tool by the whole design team.

At the earliest stages of the design concept, I import a CAD plan of the project into SketchUp from which I build a model. It gives us a three dimensional awareness and makes space planning both easier and more accurate.

The SketchUp model offers better awareness of space which aids in the design and in space planning.

I continue to use SketchUp Pro throughout the design process, periodically using a fast, low resolution Shaderlight render to check the progress of lighting levels, features, furniture, and finishes.

SketchUp model with entourage and Shaderlight lighting elements, when rendered, will help validate the design, look and feel.

When I am sure that no other changes are necessary I produce a high resolution rendering which is imported into Photoshop. I can then make any small changes to colours or light levels and add people or anything else that I feel would enhance the final visual.

Final Render: SketchUp Pro + Shaderlight + Photoshop

Before using SketchUp I produced hand-rendered visuals. The uncomplicated nature of the program has made the transition easy and very effective. SketchUp has become an invaluable tool for the whole design team.

A big thanks to Michael Reekie (michael@aji.co.uk) and the whole AJI team for providing this snapshot into their SketchUp workflow. Great work!

Posted by Chris Dizon, SketchUp Sales

Introducing Google Play: All your entertainment, anywhere you go

Unknown — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:06:00 +0000

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Entertainment is supposed to be fun. But in reality, getting everything to work can be the exact opposite—moving files between your computers, endless syncing across your devices, and wires…lots of wires. Today we’re eliminating all that hassle with Google Play, a digital entertainment destination where you can find, enjoy and share your favorite music, movies, books and apps on the web and on your Android phone or tablet. Google Play is entirely cloud-based so all your music, movies, books and apps are stored online, always available to you, and you never have to worry about losing them or moving them again.

With Google Play you can:

Store up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new tracks
Download more than 450,000 Android apps and games
Browse the world’s largest selection of eBooks
Rent thousands of your favorite movies, including new releases and HD titles

Starting today, Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will become part of Google Play. On your Android phone or tablet, we’ll be upgrading the Android Market app to the Google Play Store app over the coming days. Your videos, books and music apps (in countries where they are available) will also be upgraded to Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music apps. The music, movies, books and apps you’ve purchased will continue to be available to you through Google Play—simply log in with your Google account like always.

To celebrate, we’ll be offering a different album, book, video rental and Android app at a special price each day for the next week in our “7 Days to Play” sale. In the U.S., today’s titles include the collection of top 40 hits Now That's What I Call Music 41, the popular game Where's My Water, the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the movie Puncture for just 25 cents each. In addition, you'll find great collections of hip-hop, rock and country albums for $3.99 all week, detective novels from $2.99, some of our editorial team's favorite movies from 99 cents, and our favorite apps from 49 cents.

In the U.S., music, movies, books and Android apps are available in Google Play. In Canada and the U.K., we’ll offer movies, books and Android apps; in Australia, books and apps; and in Japan, movies and apps. Everywhere else, Google Play will be the new home for Android apps. Our long-term goal is to roll out as many different types of content as possible to people around the world, and we’ll keep adding new content to keep it fresh.

To learn more, head over to play.google.com/about or keep up with the latest on our Google+ page. If you’re headed to Austin later this week for South by Southwest, come to the Google Village to see Google Play in action. We can’t wait for you to try Google Play and experience a simpler way to manage your entertainment.

Posted by Jamie Rosenberg, Director of Digital Content

Sending us feedback is now much easier!

Unknown — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:36:00 +0000

Posted by Mariko Suzuki, Google News Strategist Do you have any feedback or suggestions you would like to share with the Google News Team? We always love to hear from you, so we made submitting feedback much easier.

Simply click the “Send Feedback” link at the bottom of Google News pages. The Google Feedback gadget will appear, and you can leave us general comments, problem reports or feature suggestions. The feedback gadget will also help you send us a screenshot if you want to draw our attention to a specific aspect of the site. Use the tool to highlight an area relevant to your feedback and black out any personal information before submitting the screenshot to us.

Although we won’t be able to reply to your comments individually, your feedback will help us create a better Google News experience. This tool will be launching worldwide, beginning with the U.S. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Announcing the 2012 Google News elections section

Unknown — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 23:07:00 +0000

Posted by Scott Zuccarino, Product Manager Who just endorsed whom? What do the latest polls say? How much money did they raise this quarter? Keeping up with the 2012 elections in the U.S. and staying abreast of breaking developments can be quite a task in today’s fast-paced news cycle. So today, we’re excited to continue our tradition of supporting you during elections season. Google News is launching an Elections section on its homepage which will organize and present elections coverage as it grows through the general election -- Tuesday, November 6, 2012.

The Elections section will be visible by default for all US users and will be located beneath the Health section. It will bring readers the latest and most relevant news stories, using all of the ranking intelligence that users have come to expect of Google. You should also check out Google’s official elections page, YouTube’s collection of candidate videos, and the elections Trends Dashboard to find out more about how people are interacting with the elections online.

Galaxy Nexus now available in the U.S.

Unknown — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:24:00 +0000

Starting today, Galaxy Nexus by Samsung will be available in the U.S. on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Network. Visit google.com/nexus to buy it online, or go to your nearest Verizon Wireless, Best Buy, Costco or Radio Shack store. Galaxy Nexus is also available through our carrier partners in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Korea and Japan. Soon, it will be available in Australia, France, Russia, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere!

Galaxy Nexus is the first phone with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and combines the latest Google software with cutting-edge Samsung hardware. With a super slim profile, Galaxy Nexus features a 4.65” Contour Display with a true high definition (720p) resolution HD Super AMOLED screen. Galaxy Nexus also features a lightning-fast dual-core 1.2GHz processor combined with 4G LTE or HSPA+ technology. To see Galaxy Nexus in action, check out this video:

Paired with Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest Android software, Galaxy Nexus is simple and beautiful. WIth innovations like Android Beam, a camera with fun Live Effects and zero-shutter lag for instant photo capturing, a deeply integrated Google+ experience, and a new People app, Galaxy Nexus is beyond smart. Galaxy Nexus is also the first device to feature Face Unlock, which uses state-of-the-art facial recognition technology to unlock your phone. For a look at how powerful your smile can be, check out the video below.

Posted by Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile

Androidify yourself with new winter gear

Unknown — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Celebrate the most wonderful time of the year and Androidify yourself with a bunch of new winter gear. Dress up your Android with candy canes, mittens, skis, antlers, sweaters and more! (Did someone say 2012 party glasses?) Head over to Android Market to get the latest Androidify update and make your Android ready for the season!

Posted by Thomas Gayno, Marketing Manager, Creative Lab

More Powerful +1s on Google News

Unknown — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:10:00 +0000

Posted by Erich Schmidt, Software Engineer Over the past few months, myriad sites across the web (including Google News) have adopted the +1 button to help start conversations. But there hasn’t been an easy way for signed-in users to see what news articles your friends are enjoying -- until now. Starting today, the Spotlight section will sometimes include articles that your Gmail contacts and people in your Google+ circles have publicly +1’d. You can see their profile pictures and click through to their Google+ profiles, just like on Social Search. And of course you can +1 the stories too, expressing your opinion and optionally sharing with your circles. Here’s what Spotlight looks like with social annotations:

We hope this change helps you find more great articles to enjoy, and gives more power to your +1s.

Highlighting journalists on Google News

Unknown — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:36:00 +0000

Posted by Eric Weigle, Software Engineer Great journalism takes more than facts and figures -- it takes skilled reporters to knit together compelling stories. Knowing who wrote an article can help readers understand the article's context and quality, see more articles by that person, and even interact directly with them. Whole communities can form around prominent contributors, which is why we started showing information about content creators next to their material in Google Search. Accordingly, Google News is rolling out more information about journalists over the next several weeks, starting with English-language editions. When reporters link their Google profile with their articles, Google News now shows the writer’s name and how many Google+ users have that person in their circles. For the lead article for each story, Google News also shows that reporter’s profile picture and enables readers to add them to their Google+ circles right from the Google News homepage.

If you are a journalist and would like to participate, please follow the instructions in our Help Center. If you are a reader, we hope you enjoy learning more about the faces behind the news.

New in Reader: a fresh design, and Google+ sharing

Unknown — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Posted by Alan Green, Software Engineer

Today we're rolling out the new Reader design, and the Google+ features that we mentioned just over a week ago. Before the day's over, all Reader users will be able to enjoy the following improvements:

A new look and feel that's cleaner, faster, and nicer to look at.

The ability to +1 a feed item (replacing "Like"), with an option to then share it with your circles on Google+ (replacing "Share" and "Share with Note").

Integrating with Google+ also helps us streamline Reader overall. So starting today we'll be turning off friending, following, shared items and comments in favor of similar Google+ functionality.

We hope you'll like the new Reader (and Google+) as much as we do, but we understand that some of you may not. Retiring Reader's sharing features wasn't a decision that we made lightly, but in the end, it helps us focus on fewer areas, and build an even better experience across all of Google.

If you decide to stay, then please do send us your feedback on today's set of improvements. Google+ is still in its early days, after all, and we're constantly working on improvements. If, however, you decide that the product is no longer for you, then please do take advantage of Reader's subscription export feature. Regardless where you go, we want to make sure you can take your data with you.

Updates to Google Reader on the web are rolling out gradually and should reach all users by end of day. A new Android application will follow soon. If you have questions about today’s announcements, please check out our Help Center.

More points of view on Google News

Unknown — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:28:00 +0000

By Jayakumar Hoskere, Software Engineer

When a big story breaks, there are often over a thousand articles written about the news event. At Google News, we work hard to surface the most relevant and interesting content to you -- so you can spend less time sorting through thousands of articles, and more time consuming news from a range of diverse perspectives. For instance, since introducing expandable stories, we have added additional labels to call out special types of articles in many editions. These labels are designed to highlight different content types on Google News, and show you stories that complement and expand upon standard news reporting. The four labels we recently launched include:

Live Updating: A live-updating article, such as a liveblog.
Featured: An article a publisher has told us is standout.
Fact-check: An article providing fact-check content about the story.
Your Preferred source: An article from a source that you preferred.

Evaluating a story from different angles often provides a sharper perspective. That is why we also now highlight special types of articles in many Google News search results. Your search results will not only show recent articles, but also those from diverse perspectives that relate to a given query.

We also recently added the Translate button to non-English international stories in expandable story boxes in the U.S edition, giving you the ability to read pieces from all over the world -- even if you don’t speak the language.

We hope you find these changes useful as we continue to develop opportunities for you to find more interesting and valuable content.

News joins Google Dashboard

Unknown — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:48:00 +0000

Posted by Panchapagesan Krishnamurthy, Software Engineer

Halloween is almost here and we're celebrating early. No trick -- just a treat. As of now, you can access Google News in the Google Dashboard. This gives you the ability to see basic information about your Google News personalizations, check out our privacy policy and click through to edit your preferences.

We're excited to bring you this additional level of control and encourage you to give it a whirl.

ScriptCover makes Javascript coverage analysis easy

Unknown — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 23:02:00 +0000

By Ekaterina Kamenskaya, Software Engineer in Test, YouTube

Today we introduce the Javascript coverage analysis tool, ScriptCover. It is a Chrome extension that provides line-by-line Javascript code coverage statistics for web pages in real time without any user modifications required. The results are collected both when the page loads and as users interact with it. The tool reports details about total web page coverage and for each external/internal script, as well as annotated code sources with individually highlighted executed lines.

Short report in Chrome extension’s popup, detailing both overall scores and per-script coverage.

Main features:

Report current and previous total Javascript coverage percentages and total number of instrumented code instructions.
Report Javascript coverage per individual instruction for each internal and external script.
Display detailed reports with annotated Javascript source code.
Recalculate coverage statistics while loading the page and on user actions.

Sample of annotated source code from detailed report. First two columns are line number and number of times each instruction has been executed.

Here are the benefits of ScriptCover over other existing tools:

Per instructions coverage for external and internal scripts: The tool formats original external and internal Javascript code from ‘