tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75038103658936553362024-02-06T22:38:13.342-08:00New From Google BlogsNew from Google blogs,such as the Google News Blog, The Official Google Blog, Google Research Blog,Google Webmaster Central Blog,Google Health Advertising Blog,Google Librarian Central and more. But-This-Site-Is-Not-Sponsored-By-Or-Affiliated-With-Google.Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.comBlogger1104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-32425508738901430552011-12-16T06:28:00.000-08:002011-12-16T06:31:24.093-08:00Games Now Available On Android Market In Korea<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiaybHfXQDuRkGBOh3rcKxiV1czljwwCWqfikpj9-_x85FE8IFpwtc95_NNEO1Z-qLkgqIikDv-PEB6kpPXkhZoJ440deKBWPCLOaHghyphenhyphen3jrb3lQ2-pL645jExmnpCUOOb2ZnwF_vC6vY/s1600/6424088217_4d337fa441.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 298px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5686733356715760354" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiaybHfXQDuRkGBOh3rcKxiV1czljwwCWqfikpj9-_x85FE8IFpwtc95_NNEO1Z-qLkgqIikDv-PEB6kpPXkhZoJ440deKBWPCLOaHghyphenhyphen3jrb3lQ2-pL645jExmnpCUOOb2ZnwF_vC6vY/s320/6424088217_4d337fa441.jpg" /></a><br />In the 24 months since the first Android device became available locally, Korea has quickly become the second-largest consumer of apps worldwide. The Android developer team blog today announced the of "bringing games to Android Market in Korea."<br /><br />"Starting right away, Android users in Korea can explore the many thousands of popular game titles available in Android Market and download them onto their devices. For paid games, purchasing is fast and convenient through direct carrier billing, which lets users in Korea easily charge their purchases to their monthly mobile operator bills," revealed the Android developers team members.<br /><br />Adding the team members said "If you are a game developer, now is the time to localize your game resources, app descriptions, and marketing assets to take advantage of this new opportunity."<br /><br />Via <em><a href="http://www.ditii.com/2011/11/29/games-now-available-on-android-market-in-korea-now-follow-think-with-google-for-holiday-insights-and-tips/">diTii.com</a></em>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-49783100699778523312009-11-24T17:29:00.001-08:002009-11-28T00:31:12.804-08:00Send attachments while offlineOne of the most requested features for Offline Gmail has been the ability to include attachments in messages composed while offline. Starting today, attachments work just the way you would expect them to whether you are online or offline (with the exception that when you're offline you won't be able to include inline images). Just add the attachment and send your message.<br /><br />If you have Offline Gmail enabled, you'll notice that all your mail now goes through the outbox, regardless of whether you're online or offline. This allows Gmail to capture all attachments, even if you suddenly get disconnected from network. If you're online, your mail will quickly be sent along to its destination.<br /><br />If you haven't tried offline access yet, visit the <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&fs=1&view=pu&st=labs">Labs tab</a> and follow these instructions to get started:<br /><ol><li>Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.</li><li>Click Save Changes.</li><li>After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline" link in the upper righthand corner of the Gmail page, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.</li></ol>Now that you can send attachments while offline, we'd love to see pictures of you using Gmail in unusual places while you're disconnected from the web. Pictures of you using Gmail in an airplane, igloo, or submarine are all welcome. Email your photo to hikingfan@gmail.com and we'll post the most interesting ones here.<br /><br />Via <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Official Gmail Blog</span></a>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-28266394988348668272009-09-05T00:29:00.000-07:002009-09-05T00:37:14.734-07:00A hearty welcome to NewsGator users<p>A little while back, our friends over at NewsGator told us that lots of people who use their client RSS readers like <a href="http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/feeddemon/default.aspx">FeedDemon</a> and <a href="http://www.newsgator.com/individuals/netnewswire/default.aspx">NetNewsWire</a> had been asking for the ability to synchronize with Google Reader, since maintaining two separate subscription lists was a hassle. Today, <a href="http://blogs.newsgator.com/daily/2009/07/newsgator-consumer-rss-reader-product-changes-google-sync.html">we're happy to report</a> that we've worked with NewsGator to make this possible, and new versions of their client readers released today will use Google Reader as the synchronization backend. If you use one of these applications, check out NewsGator's <a href="http://www.newsgator.com/productinfo/producttransition.aspx">instructions</a> and <a href="http://www.newsgator.com/productinfo/consumerinfo.aspx">FAQ</a> on transitioning your subscriptions.</p> <p>Now that Google Reader can be used as the online companion to NewsGator's client applications, they've decided to discontinue consumer use of <a href="http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NewsGatorOnline/Default.aspx">NewsGator Online</a>, their free web-based RSS reader, at the end of August. If you've been using this service, you'll need to <a href="http://www.newsgator.com/productinfo/producttransition.aspx">transition</a> your subscriptions to Google Reader. To do this, all you need to is a <a href="https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Freader%2Fview%2F&hl=en&service=reader">Google account</a> (you already have one if you use Gmail), and here's a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1d-b8wzzMY&feature=channel_page">video</a> to help you get started. To those of you who have been waiting for this integration and to those of you who are using Reader for the first time, welcome!</p> <p>As always, we'd love to hear your feedback in <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/google-reader-help">our help group</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/googlereader">Twitter</a> or <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/google/products/google_google_reader">Get Satisfaction</a>.</p>Via <a href="http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/07/hearty-welcome-to-newsgator-users.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Google Reader</span></a>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-72649205857965787632009-09-05T00:27:00.000-07:002009-09-05T00:29:09.346-07:00Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server now available<div>If you have a corporate BlackBerry smartphone, you might be interested to know that the Google Apps team has just made the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server available for download. This connector makes it possible to use Google Apps email, calendar, and contacts with corporate BlackBerry phones' built-in applications.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you manage IT for your organization, you'll want to read the <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/08/google-apps-connector-for-blackberry.html">Enterprise team's blog post</a> that details the Google Apps Connector.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you don't manage IT but you want your company to adopt Google Apps and the Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, tell your IT team that it's time to <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/googleapps.com/go-google/">"Go Google"</a>.<br /><br />Via <a href="http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/08/google-apps-connector-for-blackberry.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Google Mobile</span></a><br /></div>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-75158840016677152932009-09-05T00:25:00.000-07:002009-09-05T00:27:35.304-07:00YouTube Mobile App gets Five New LanguagesWe're happy to announce that the <a href="http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-youtube-app-for-windows-mobile-and.html">YouTube Mobile Application</a> for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 devices is now available in five new languages. We now support users with localized content in Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Swedish, and Czech. This brings the <a href="http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/06/youtube-mobile-application-in-more.html">total</a> number of languages the app supports to 12.<br /><br />YouTube's Mobile Application makes it easy to quickly load and watch high-quality YouTube videos on your mobile phone, even in weak coverage areas. To get the update or to try the app for the first time, simply visit m.youtube.com/app in your phone's browser.<br /><br />We'd love to get your feedback, so visit our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/label?lid=20fc10ac8612cc7c&hl=en">forum</a> if you have questions or want to chat about YouTube mobile.<br /><br />Via <a href="http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/08/youtube-mobile-app-expands-to-five-new.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Google Mobile</span></a>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-30071516454163939822009-09-05T00:22:00.000-07:002009-09-05T00:23:21.403-07:00Google Adds Contact Chooser Feature to GmailWhen composing messages, you probably rely pretty heavily on <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6597">auto-complete</a> to add recipients. Auto-complete is convenient and fast, and usually does the trick. But sometimes seeing your list of contacts can help you remember all the people you want to include on your email. So, we've added a contact chooser to Gmail. Click the "To:" link (or Cc:/Bcc:) when composing a message and you'll see something like this:<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SpSLzrgyNSI/AAAAAAAAAY8/yvFlRWasvVE/s1600-h/contact_chooser.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SpSLzrgyNSI/AAAAAAAAAY8/yvFlRWasvVE/contact_chooser.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5374073975329666338" border="0" /></a><br />You can click on the contacts you want to add or search for others.<br /><br />If you use contact <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=30970">groups</a>, your groups will appear in a drop-down menu in the contact chooser, so you can select contacts from the groups you've already created. And if you happen to use Gmail in Chinese, Japanese or Korean, being able to pick from your list of contacts should be particularly useful since auto-complete doesn't offer the same search as you type experience that it does in other languages.<br /><br />Via <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/composing-message-try-contact-chooser.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Gmail</span></a>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-52811919917206356522009-09-05T00:20:00.000-07:002009-09-05T00:21:58.548-07:00What Google Did Right In Yesterday’s “GFail” incidentGmail's web interface had a widespread outage earlier today, lasting about 100 minutes. We know how many people rely on Gmail for personal and professional communications, and we take it very seriously when there's a problem with the service. Thus, right up front, I'd like to apologize to all of you — today's outage was a Big Deal, and we're treating it as such. We've already thoroughly investigated what happened, and we're currently compiling a list of things we intend to fix or improve as a result of the investigation.<br /><br />Here's what happened: This morning (Pacific Time) we took a small fraction of Gmail's servers offline to perform routine upgrades. This isn't in itself a problem — we do this all the time, and Gmail's web interface runs in many locations and just sends traffic to other locations when one is offline.<br /><br />However, as we now know, we had slightly underestimated the load which some recent changes (ironically, some designed to improve service availability) placed on the request routers — servers which direct web queries to the appropriate Gmail server for response. At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system "stop sending us traffic, we're too slow!". This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn't access Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn't be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally because these requests don't use the same routers.<br /><br />The Gmail engineering team was alerted to the failures within seconds (we take monitoring very seriously). After establishing that the core problem was insufficient available capacity, the team brought a LOT of additional request routers online (flexible capacity is one of the advantages of Google's architecture), distributed the traffic across the request routers, and the Gmail web interface came back online.<br /><br />What's next: We've turned our full attention to helping ensure this kind of event doesn't happen again. Some of the actions are straightforward and are already done — for example, increasing request router capacity well beyond peak demand to provide headroom. Some of the actions are more subtle — for example, we have concluded that request routers don't have sufficient failure isolation (i.e. if there's a problem in one datacenter, it shouldn't affect servers in another datacenter) and do not degrade gracefully (e.g. if many request routers are overloaded simultaneously, they all should just get slower instead of refusing to accept traffic and shifting their load). We'll be hard at work over the next few weeks implementing these and other Gmail reliability improvements — Gmail remains more than 99.9% available to all users, and we're committed to keeping events like today's notable for their rarity.<br /><br />Via <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-on-todays-gmail-issue.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Gmail</span></a>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-68344529363318548112009-09-05T00:18:00.000-07:002009-09-05T00:20:17.632-07:00More ninja tips in more languagesWhen we published the <a href="http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html">Gmail tips guide</a> in July, we promised it would help you become a Gmail ninja. Now, if you want to become a Gmail ниндзя or 忍者, you can do that too: these tips are now available in <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/es/tips.html">Spanish</a>, <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/fr/tips.html">French</a>, <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/pt-BR/tips.html">Brazilian Portuguese</a>, <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/ja/tips.html">Japanese</a>, <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/ru/tips.html">Russian</a>, and <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-GB/tips.html">UK English</a>.<br /><br />We've also added a handful of new tips to the English site, culled from suggestions you submitted. Some of the new tricks to help manage your email efficiently include <a href="http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html#black">sending and receiving mail from multiple addresses</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html#master">adding formatting to chat messages</a>, and <a href="http://www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html#master">selecting multiple messages at once</a> using shift-select. Thanks to everyone who submitted ideas, and please <a href="https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=cmIyZ08xLXhTeWQ2eWhFX3FMeFdnSVE6MA">keep them coming</a>.<br /><br />Via <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-ninja-tips-in-more-languages.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Gmail</span></a>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-15809295717662645542009-09-04T17:21:00.001-07:002009-09-05T00:15:49.427-07:00Helping create responsible digital citizensWith more and more kids going online, whether to connect over social networking sites, mingle in chat rooms or play games, it's become increasingly important for families, schools and service providers to work together to ensure that the younger generation understands their responsibilities while they explore the virtual world.<br /><br />A few weeks ago, Google participated in the <a href="https://www.cacconference.org/">21st Annual Crimes Against Children Conference</a> in Dallas, where over 3,500 members of law enforcement, child advocacy groups, the tech industry and the <a href="http://www.missingkids.com/">National Center for Missing and Exploited Children</a> (NCMEC) convened to share ideas, discuss strategies and explore new technologies designed to combat the many and varied forms of crimes against children. We had the opportunity to describe some of the positive steps Google is taking to <a href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/search/label/Child%20Safety">educate and safeguard minors</a> who use our products and services, as well as the unique ways we support the individuals on our staff who do child exploitation-related work.<br /><br />According to a recent NCMEC study in patterns and trends in online child victimization, the past few years have seen a 6% increase in reports of kids providing images and videos of themselves when asked by online acquaintances; sending naked photos of themselves through text messages ("sexting"); and cyber-bullying. This new trend underscores the need to <a href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/07/best-practices-for-online-child-safety.html">educate</a> our younger users, their families and teachers on ways to create and enjoy safe online experiences.<br /><br />We're doing our part by working with child safety organizations and law enforcement around the globe to spread positive messages about life online. For example, in mid-September, we're launching a global training program on YouTube to help teens teach other teens about these issues. This is just one step among many that we're taking to help create a generation of responsible digital citizens.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6479491108286515994-367521021152154219?l=googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com'/></div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="margin-bottom:0;line-height:1.4em;"> <p style="margin:1em 0 3px 0;"> <a name="2" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif;font-size:18px;" href="http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/voices-of-support-for-google-books.html">Voices of support for the Google Books settlement</a> </p> <p style="font-size:13px;color:#555;margin:9px 0 3px 0;font-family:Georgia,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-Serif;line-height:140%;font-size:13px;"> <span>Posted:</span> 04 Sep 2009 07:45 AM PDT</p> <span class="byline-author">Posted by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5i-882MqmbcSlfP4o30s3SjwANAnm0PWp3DB54twAKKyMFcVmjlRS2LV32DdoAYyfK3XX0hIph8NB5W4H0eU5CP79zmlf_7GWEm93q9Qa-6ONuvQO77yC7ZvQ3x7ukcWmXBcbhrgBsidy/s1600-h/books.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5i-882MqmbcSlfP4o30s3SjwANAnm0PWp3DB54twAKKyMFcVmjlRS2LV32DdoAYyfK3XX0hIph8NB5W4H0eU5CP79zmlf_7GWEm93q9Qa-6ONuvQO77yC7ZvQ3x7ukcWmXBcbhrgBsidy/s400/books.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377623361188264706" border="0" /></a>We've spent a lot of time with authors, publishers, academics, civil rights groups and other communities this summer discussing how the Google Books settlement will impact them. We've met individually with a number of organizations and participated in <a href="http://net.educause.edu/live0916" id="s39o" title="their">their</a> <a href="http://www.bpl.org/news/googlebooks/" id="qxf-" title="events">events</a>. And we've hosted <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/shortstack/2009/07/minorities_give_thumbs_up_to_g.html" id="n0o1" title="our">our</a> <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6673684.html" id="q6no" title="own">own</a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218900194" id="bk5m" title="forums">forums</a> across the country.<br /><br />Yesterday, we took part in another <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/09/03/the-social-benefits-of-the-google-books-settlement/" id="rkkv" title="event">call</a> with even more groups, including the <a href="http://www.aapd.com/" id="oy5o" title="American Association of People with Disabilities">American Association of People with Disabilities</a>, the <a href="http://www.civilrights.org/" id="a4:6" title="Leadership Conference on Civil Rights">Leadership Conference on Civil Rights</a>, the <a href="http://www.lulac.org/" id="evh0" title="League of United Latin American Citizens">League of United Latin American Citizens</a>, the <a href="http://www.nfb.org/" id="qbfe" title="National Federation of the Blind">National Federation of the Blind</a>, the <a href="http://www.usstudents.org/" id="utnh" title="United States Students Association">United States Students Association</a> and others, who together voiced their support for the agreement.<br /><br />These groups, along with many others we've heard from in past months, represent a large and diverse collection of many millions of people, and they believe, like we do, that providing more access to more books is of critical importance. They have voiced their support through <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/googlepublicpolicy" id="t:j_" title="videos">videos</a>, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-shapiro/books-in-limbo_b_263404.html" id="n:fu" title="op">op</a>-<a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_12893298?nclick_check=1" id="fa6h" title="eds">eds</a>, and <a href="http://twitter.com/simonwinchester" id="gr.r" title="Tweets">tweets</a>, as well as through <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/googlebookssettlement/letters-of-support" id="m5ys" title="letters">statements</a> sent directly to the Court.<br /><br />In editorials, <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/opinion/29wed3.html?_r=3&ref=opinion" id="hhg5" title="The New York Times">The New York Times</a></i> and the <i><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080703382.html" id="uhxm" title="Washington Post">Washington Post</a></i> have echoed the importance of increasing access to information. And just this week, <i><a href="http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14363287" id="svf9" title="The Economist">The Economist</a></i> weighed in with its support for the approval of the settlement and cited the benefits for authors, publishers, libraries and researchers "from Manhattan to Mumbai."<br /><br />We continue to be inspired by these stories, and we've gathered them all on a new site that can be found <a href="https://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/googlebookssettlement/" id="t92i" title="here">here</a>. We know this is a complex issue, and we want to make sure all of these voices are heard. As we get closer to the court date for the settlement approval, we anticipate there will be even stories more to share. And we'll make sure to add them to this site.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6479491108286515994-1754277822666249347?l=googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com'/></div>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-64651884031045173502009-02-26T17:36:00.005-08:002009-03-05T01:24:38.637-08:00Android Developers Blog: Android Layout Tricks #2: Reusing layouts<p>Android comes with a wide variety of <em>widgets</em>, small visual construction blocks you can glue together to present the users with complex and useful interfaces. However applications often need higher level visual <em>components</em>. A component can be seen as a complex widget made of several simple stock widgets. You could for instance reuse a panel containing a progress bar and a cancel button, a panel containing two buttons (positive and negative actions), a panel with an icon, a title and a description, etc. Creating new components can be done easily by writing a custom <code>View</code> but it can be done even more easily using only XML.</p><p>In Android XML layout files, each tag is mapped to an actual class instance (the class is always a subclass of <a href="http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/View.html">View</a>.) The UI toolkit lets you also use three special tags that are not mapped to a <code>View</code> instance: <code><requestFocus /></code>, <code><merge /></code> and <code><include /></code>. The latter, <code><include /></code>, can be used to create pure XML visual components. (Note: I will present the <code><merge /></code> tag in the next installment of <em>Android Layout Tricks</em>.)</p><p>The <code><include /></code> does exactly what its name suggests; it includes another XML layout. Using this tag is straightforward as shown in the following example, taken straight from <a href="http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/packages/apps/Launcher.git;a=tree;h=refs/heads/master;hb=master">the source code of the Home application</a> that currently ships with Android:</p><pre class="prettyprint"><com.android.launcher.Workspace android:id="@+id/workspace" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" launcher:defaultScreen="1"> <include android:id="@+id/cell1" layout="@layout/workspace_screen" /> <include android:id="@+id/cell2" layout="@layout/workspace_screen" /> <include android:id="@+id/cell3" layout="@layout/workspace_screen" /> </com.android.launcher.Workspace></pre><p>In the <code><include /></code> only the <code>layout</code> attribute is required. This attribute, without the <code>android</code> namespace prefix, is a reference to the layout file you wish to include. In this example, the same layout is included three times in a row. This tag also lets you override a few attributes of the included layout. The above example shows that you can use <code>android:id</code> to specify the id of the root view of the included layout; it will also override the id of the included layout if one is defined. Similarly, you can override all the layout parameters. This means that any <code>android:layout_*</code> attribute can be used with the <code><include /></code> tag. Here is an example:</p><pre class="prettyprint"><include android:layout_width="fill_parent" layout="@layout/image_holder" /> <include android:layout_width="256dip" layout="@layout/image_holder" /> </pre><p>This tag is particularly useful when you need to customize only part of your UI depending on the device's configuration. For instance, the main layout of your activity can be placed in the <code>layout/</code> directory and can include another layout which exists in two flavors, in <code>layout-land/</code> and <code>layout-port/</code>. This allows you to share most of the UI in portrait and landscape.</p><p>Like I mentioned earlier, my next post will explain the <code><merge /></code>, which can be particularly powerful when combined with <code><include /></code>.Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-89466265953196201732009-02-26T17:36:00.003-08:002009-03-05T01:22:52.466-08:00Official Google Enterprise Blog: The Google cloud speaks 7 new languagesToday felt like a normal day. I woke up and went through my normal morning routine: got my clothes together, checked the news, watched a few minutes of the <a href="http://www.goldengirlscentral.com/">Golden Girls</a> (hey – just being honest!), and drove off through the gray day towards work. Indeed, it turned out to be an appropriately "cloudy" day.<br /><br />Because without any work on my part, without any software updates or downloads, hardware patches or rewiring, today, our Google Translate team <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/translate-between-41-languages-with.html">added seven new languages</a> to our Google Translate tool in the cloud. This means that anyone using Google Translate technologies, including all the Google Search Appliance customers currently using <a href="http://code.google.com/p/cross-lang-ent-search/">Cross-Language Enterprise Search</a> (a recent feature added to our <a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/labs">Enterprise Labs</a>), instantly had their repertoire of languages increase to include <a href="http://translate.google.com.tr/">Turkish</a>, <a href="http://translate.google.co.th/">Thai</a>, <a href="http://translate.google.hu/">Hungarian</a>, <a href="http://translate.google.ee/">Estonian</a>, <a href="http://translate.google.com/?hl=sq">Albanian</a>, <a href="http://translate.google.com.mt/">Maltese</a>, and <a href="http://translate.google.com/?hl=gl">Galician</a>. With this launch, Google Translate has now achieved automatic translations between 41 languages (that's 1640 language pairs!).<br /><center><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jMRH5BLfV74&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jMRH5BLfV74&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></center><br />This, to me, is the beauty of the cloud, and the beauty of where we're headed in Enterprise search: securely bridging the gap that had existed in traditional enterprise deployments, bringing together the best of the corporate network and the cloud. With the <a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/">Google Search Appliance</a>, you get a hardware unit that packages the powerful algorithms of Google.com, and which allows you to search all of your internal documents securely behind your corporate firewall. While this hardware sits safely in your office, tools like Cross-Language Enterprise Search, <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/searchappliance/documentation/52/integrating_apps.html">Google Apps integration</a> and <a href="http://sites.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=90921">Google Sites integration</a>, allow an IT department to tap into the unique features and "versionless" innovation possible only in the cloud.<br /><br />Previously, bringing seven new languages into an enterprise search solution would have required the addition of entirely new hardware or software, taking hours or days to update and to train people on. Today, the cloud allows these innovations to flow directly into the Google Search Appliance, for any and all to take advantage of. Any Google Search Appliance customers interested in utilizing this tool and others like it can download these features in our <a href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/labs">Enterprise Labs</a>.<br /><br />Here's to future innovations - or as some might say:<br />"gelecek yenilikler"<br />"นวัตกรรมในอนาคต"<br />"jövőbeni innovációk"<br />"tulevikus uuendused"<br />"ardhmen novacioneve"<br />"innovazzjonijiet fil-futur"<br />"innovacións futuras"<br /><br />And to all on the Google Translate team: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_You_for_Being_a_Friend">thank you for being a friend</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Product Manager, Google Enterprise</span>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-5717905560429725312009-02-26T17:36:00.001-08:002009-03-05T01:21:49.362-08:00Official Google SketchUp Blog: Modeling for the Ocean layer in Google EarthIf you've been following the blog, you saw the <a title="tour of 3D models under the ocean" href="http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/2009/02/tour-3d-models-in-new-ocean-layer.html">tour of 3D models under the ocean</a> for the Google Earth 5.0 launch. With the SketchUp maintenance software that released yesterday, you too can model your very own <i>underwater </i>world! The first thing you'll have to do is to download the latest version of SketchUp <a title="here" href="http://sketchup.google.com/">here</a>. Once installed, a few simple options in SketchUp enable you to select whether your model is above or below the water:<br /><ol><li>Go to 'Window' then 'Preferences' </li><li>Choose 'Extensions' in the left column </li><li>Toggle on 'Google Earth Ocean Modeling' </li><li>Hit OK</li></ol><div id="hx_0" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: left"><img style="WIDTH: 462px; HEIGHT: 325px" src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=cgb3hvs_1f7nn68cw_b" /> </div><br />This will give you the option to place your model wherever you want it. Next import your desired terrain from Google Earth by finding the area you want and choosing 'Get Current View' in SketchUp. Underwater terrain will import just like above water terrain. It's easy to lose your sense of scale in the ocean, and if you get a warning that reads 'Camera altitude too high...' just move closer to the ocean floor. With your terrain imported into SketchUp, you can start your model.<br /><br />Once complete, decide whether your model will be on the ocean floor or on the surface. You can find that option under the 'Plugins' menu. If you're modeling on the land, or wish to model on the surface of the water, toggle it off, like this:<br /><div id="aa1q" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: left"><div id="fbt0" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: left"><img style="WIDTH: 502px; HEIGHT: 277px" src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=cgb3hvs_3dh2t2hf4_b" /><br /><br />If you're modeling under the surface of the water, toggle it on, like this:<br /><br /><img style="WIDTH: 501px; HEIGHT: 277px" src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=cgb3hvs_4d5xbgzgv_b" /> </div></div>If you want your model to be somewhere in-between the ocean floor and the surface of the water, simply choose 'Model on Ocean Floor' and place your model above the terrain:<br /><br /><img height="408" src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=cgb3hvs_7fdmk8rhm_b" width="484" /> <div id="euqp" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: left"><div id="pc:s" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: left"></div></div>Last, view your model in Google Earth by choosing 'Place model', and see how it looks. If you are satisfied, load your model onto the <a id="kojx" title="3D Warehouse" href="http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/">3D Warehouse</a> by selecting 'Share Model' and it may show up in the 3D Buildings layer. The same <a id="rtdj" title="terms" href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/sketchup/3dwh/acceptance_criteria.html">terms</a> that apply to buildings on land also apply to underwater models. Your submissions must be real, accurate, and correctly located. There are lots of opportunities for geo-located models underwater; ship wrecks, diver destinations and offshore structures! Don't forget to fill out the appropriate information on the upload page, and to check 'Google Earth ready'. And that's it! Piece of cake. Sponge cake.<br /><br />Posted by Adam Hecht, 3D Data SpecialistBlonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-68234851517786247592009-02-26T17:35:00.001-08:002009-03-05T01:19:45.849-08:00Google LatLong: Explore more with User Photos in Street View<break><br />Starting today, a new feature lets you browse popular user-contributed photos from <a style="COLOR: rgb(85,26,139)" href="http://www.panoramio.com/">Panoramio</a> at major landmarks around the world. The many people who virtually visit Paris to see the famous <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Eiffel+Tower,+Paris,+France&sll=41.889467,12.492442&sspn=0,359.989057&ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=48.859031,2.293519&panoid=E9JGW1q48jvgvFkjx0kYjw&cbp=12,141.90663364070392,,0,-39.63636363636365&ll=48.858927,2.293375&spn=0,359.978757&z=16">Eiffel Tower</a> or the <a title="Notre Dame cathedral" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=64.92025,135.351563&ie=UTF8&ll=48.852447,2.347984&spn=0,359.966955&z=16&layer=c&cbll=48.852388,2.348101&panoid=nU4OT5KOx_hlR4jm3dn4xQ&cbp=12,61.768560218440754,,0,-8.383116883116887" target="_blank">Notre Dame cathedral</a> in Street View can now also browse the wide array of user photos taken in the vicinity. Just look for photo thumbnails at the top right of the Street View image, and click to view. You can also connect directly to the community behind this great photo content - a link to the author's Panoramio page is shown with every user photo. <div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><div id="x33w" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; MARGIN-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: left"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglJX1j69GbOKmOrb_F6BvH9cW6bUyvG6tGn4VvprDzcqebHLP2lhw8pvIfq4Y31FBYUVDXBcpRR5cYZ63P2gq8WVXLY7H7zAQTJV87zizefnctSrO2owLrZJa-J4TO6KkSl_QNIslPVO0/s1600-h/userphotos2.PNG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306947214549813650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 279px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglJX1j69GbOKmOrb_F6BvH9cW6bUyvG6tGn4VvprDzcqebHLP2lhw8pvIfq4Y31FBYUVDXBcpRR5cYZ63P2gq8WVXLY7H7zAQTJV87zizefnctSrO2owLrZJa-J4TO6KkSl_QNIslPVO0/s400/userphotos2.PNG" border="0" /></a></div></div><div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px">The feature is available in many other places too: <a title="New York" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=&layer=c&cbll=40.758494,-73.985126&cbp=12,256.7225997768314,,0,-19.896715140577697&ie=UTF8&om=1&panoid=DK9Dj8cynpLwgcof7otkBA&ll=40.758494,-73.985126&spn=0,359.88945&z=13" target="_blank">New York</a>, <a title="San Francisco" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Golden+Gate+Bridge,+San+Francisco,+CA&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=55.192325,89.648437&ie=UTF8&ll=37.817404,-122.478247&spn=0,359.989057&z=17&iwloc=A&layer=c&cbll=37.817589,-122.478274&panoid=pBj4BOefmoQH3dvzKgYoHA&cbp=12,152.50815933494837,,0,-7.26470588235294" target="_blank">San Francisco</a>, <a title="Rome" style="COLOR: rgb(85,26,139)" href="http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=41.8914,12.492131&spn=0,359.992071&z=17&layer=c&cbll=41.891425,12.491575&panoid=iYLe1G3js2lBqQYitdYhlw&cbp=12,164.4879466257027,,0,4.376591796897557" target="_blank">Rome</a>, <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=%E9%8A%80%E5%BA%A7%E3%80%80%E6%95%B0%E5%AF%84%E5%B1%8B%E6%A9%8B&sll=35.65992,139.708521&sspn=0,359.993091&ie=UTF8&ll=35.672238,139.762932&spn=0,359.998273&z=19&layer=c&cbll=35.672526,139.763245&panoid=m9RtL6J7WNb806lUUCtEgQ&cbp=12,144.785557,,0,-31.287249&photoid=po-4097289">Tokyo</a>, <a title="Barcelona" style="COLOR: rgb(85,26,139)" href="http://maps.google.es/maps?ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=41.402811,2.174111&panoid=ITQ6bZ8XoP0F_9nwyQ5TlQ&cbp=12,12.979261944594464,,0,-17.38948747815957&ll=41.402735,2.174209&spn=0,359.989057&z=17">Barcelona</a>, <a title="Sydney" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=sydney&sll=-25.335448,135.745076&sspn=56.255093,89.648438&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.848784,151.205606&spn=0.02609,0.043774&z=15&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=-33.848775,151.205744&panoid=nojfjUkGdpX9RptHmLkneA&cbp=12,146.21049052200638,,0,-0.8235294117647076" target="_blank">Sydney</a> and <a id="ltk9" title="New Zealand" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=kerikeri&sll=-36.838931,174.787631&sspn=0.029538,0.06609&ie=UTF8&layer=c&cbll=-35.217855,173.962761&panoid=DQpiNzmcEY1a-K6eZ2JUkQ&cbp=12,305.97850500000004,,0,-25.387364&ll=-35.219539,173.964686&spn=0.006854,0.010943&z=17&iwloc=addr" target="_blank">New Zealand</a>, to name just a few. Anywhere, really, where Street View is available and where users have contributed lots of high-quality photos; of course, this usually is near famous landmarks but you never know where you'll discover more to see. With user-contributed photos you can inspect architectural details and close-up quirks, or see what is happening at a place at more than one time of day, or see whatever else it was that inspired the photographer to press the button. Take a look at this video to see more: </div><div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="WHITE-SPACE: pre;font-family:Arial;font-size:10;" ><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/x8uizSUQZSQ&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/x8uizSUQZSQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object></span><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><br /></div><div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px">If you are a <a style="COLOR: rgb(85,26,139)" href="http://www.panoramio.com/">Panoramio</a> user, you may already have a photo in Street View. If not, what are you waiting for? Just <a id="ha2." title="contribute your best photos to Panoramio" href="http://www.panoramio.com/upload">contribute your best photos to Panoramio</a> and remember to geo-tag them. Google's image-matching algorithms will analyze them at some point to see if they are also a good match for a Street View location. At the most famous places in the world, competition for space is already tough -- take a look at <a id="v5gg" title="the array of images of the Sagrada Familia" style="COLOR: rgb(85,26,139)" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?cbll=41.403047,2.173801&cbp=12,34.813865,,0,-30.378575&hl=en&gl=us&ie=UTF8&ll=41.404685,2.174752&spn=0,359.989164&z=17&layer=c&panoid=eHDJYa1Zk5MOiYwMqhRY4Q&photoid=po-17145413">the range of images of the Sagrada Familia</a> -- but on less travelled roads the world is still largely a blank canvas. Please help to fill it in!</div><br /><br /></div></div></div><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Frederik Schaffalitzky, Software Engineer, Google Zurich</span></break>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-55274255451015298912009-02-26T17:35:00.000-08:002009-03-05T01:18:40.753-08:00Google Open Source Blog: New Functionality for Moodle<span class="byline-author" style="FONT-STYLE: italic">By Cristin Frodella, Google Apps for Education Team</span><br /><br />We're always excited to jump into the world of education and when it helps Open Source, we're all the happier. Moodlerooms, a partner of <a href="http://www.moodle.org/" target="blank">Moodle</a>, the Open Source <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system" target="blank">learning management system</a>, recently approached to fund a project which would allow Moodle users to easily integrate <a href="http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/get_apps.html" target="blank">Google Apps Education Edition</a>, our communication and collaboration suite. Our <a href="http://code.google.com/opensource/" target="blank">Open Source Programs Office</a> sponsored the work and the result is an Open Source single sign-on integration between Moodle and Google. The best part is the extensibility features allow any educational software vendor to take a similar approach to provide user directory synchronization, single sign-on, and user data integration. Check out the full story on the <a href="http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/02/lms-and-google-apps-first-comes-love.html" target="blank">Google Enterprise Blog</a>.Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-76228201460665536752009-02-25T18:19:00.001-08:002009-03-05T01:17:36.529-08:00Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Browser title bar tweaksI'm often doing something on my computer and want to know if I have new mail without having to keep my Gmail window open. But if you keep Gmail minimized or in an inactive tab sometimes all you see in the browser title bar is something like "Gmail - Inbo..."<br /><br />It gets worse if you use Gmail through Google Apps and/or in a language that tends to have longer words. You have to open the window to see if there is anything new.<br /><br />So I added a tiny new feature to Gmail Labs called Title Tweaks that changes the order of the elements in the browser title bar to put the more important things first. Once you turn on Title Tweaks from the <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&fs=1&view=pu&st=labs">Labs tab</a> under Settings, your browser title bar will display something more like "Inbox (3) - Gma...".<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SaSvCapMaaI/AAAAAAAAARM/y6AVUN59kuQ/s1600-h/title_tweaks.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306558716995987874" style="WIDTH: 359px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 50px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SaSvCapMaaI/AAAAAAAAARM/y6AVUN59kuQ/s400/title_tweaks.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />That way you can see how many unread messages you have even if the window is minimized.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Fëdor Karpelevitch, Software Engineer</span>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-87059265670067883142009-02-25T17:39:00.001-08:002009-03-05T01:16:17.923-08:00Google Grants Blog: Movement-Building 101 on YouTubeRecently, social media experts and delegates from 17 international youth nonprofits met in New York City at the <a id="lvwv" title="Alliance of Youth Movements Summit" href="http://info.howcast.com/youthmovements/summit">Alliance of Youth Movements Summit</a> to discuss how young people can leverage social media and technology to end violence, oppression and human rights abuses around the world.<br /><br />In conjunction with the event, <a id="b:2d" title="Howcast" href="http://www.youtube.com/howcast">Howcast</a> -- the Summit's lead sponsor and one of YouTube's most popular how-to channels -- released a series of engaging videos that concentrate on using technology to movement-build and create social change:<br /><br /><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/p/91F35BC906AF7E55&hl=en"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/p/91F35BC906AF7E55&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />If you've ever wondered how to build a movement using social media, stage a nonviolent protest or create a smart mob (or wondered what a smart mob is), I highly recommend taking a look at the <a id="em2_" title="Alliance of Youth Movements YouTube channel" href="http://www.youtube.com/youthmovements">Alliance of Youth Movements' YouTube channel</a>.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Ramya, YouTube<br /></span></td></tr></tbody>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-6476997049373022592009-02-25T17:38:00.007-08:002009-03-05T01:15:02.485-08:00Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Canonical Link Element: presentation from SMX WestA little while ago, <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html">Google</a> and other <a href="http://ysearchblog.com/2009/02/12/fighting-duplication-adding-more-arrows-to-your-quiver/">search</a> <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/archive/2009/02/12/partnering-to-help-solve-duplicate-content-issues.aspx">engines</a> announced support for a <a href="http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394">canonical link element that can help site owners with duplicate content issues</a>. I recreated my presentation from <a href="http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west">SMX West</a> and you can watch it below:<br /><br /><object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Cm9onOGTgeM&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Cm9onOGTgeM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object><br /><br />You can <a href="http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=ddvhbrqf_70dp3rv7hn">access the slides directly</a> or follow along here:<br /><br /><iframe src="http://docs.google.com/EmbedSlideshow?docid=ddvhbrqf_70dp3rv7hn" frameborder="0" width="410" height="342"></iframe><br /><br />By the way, Ask just announced that they will support the canonical link element. Read all about it in the <a href="http://blog.ask.com/2009/02/ask-is-going-canonical.html">Ask.com blog entry</a>.<br /><br />Thanks again to <a href="http://www.thewysz.com/">Wysz</a> for turning this into a great video.<br /><br /><br />In fact, you might not have seen it, but we recently <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/introducing-google-webmaster-central.html">created a webmaster videos channel on YouTube</a>. If you're interested, you can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/googlewebmasterhelp">watch the new webmaster channel</a>. If you subscribe to that channel, you'll always find out about new webmaster-related videos from Google.Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-14317149961727030022009-02-25T17:38:00.006-08:002009-03-05T01:13:36.408-08:00Official Google Enterprise Blog: New Status Dashboard for Google AppsWe made a commitment last year to increase transparency and communication with Google Apps customers in several ways. We heard your feedback around the need for better communication when issues like <a id="usty" title="yesterday's Gmail outage" href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/update-on-todays-gmail-outage.html">yesterday's Gmail outage</a> occur.<br /></span></span><p style="font-family:arial;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal;font-size:100%;" ><span style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: rgb(255,255,255)">As part of that commitment, </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse">we're pleased to announce today the availability of the <a id="hkq5" title="Google Apps Status Dashboard" href="http://www.google.com/appsstatus" target="_blank">Google Apps Status Dashboard</a>. Customers can use this Status Dashboard to check on the current service status of </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">individual services such as Gmail, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">Google Calendar, Google Talk, </span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;">Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Video for business. Administrators of Google Apps for their businesses, schools and organizations can also view the performance of the administrative control panel.</span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: rgb(255,255,255)"> </span></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;">The Google Apps Status Dashboard</span><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal;font-size:100%;" ><span style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: rgb(255,255,255)"> represents an additional layer of transparency that we believe will be particularly useful for our business users, and it's also relevant to users of our consumer products.</span></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: rgb(255,255,255)"> The Status Dashboard is</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse"> the best place to check for information on service availability for Google Apps anywhere in the world. </span></span><span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse;font-size:100%;" >In my role on the sales team, I regularly talk with customers to make sure that they're getting the most out of Google Apps and I think that you will find this tool indispensable in managing your Google Apps deployment.</span></p><p style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WGhKfzl0HlA/SaXe2TwAaYI/AAAAAAAAACE/6fPfkvEL-qk/s1600-h/AppsDashboard.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306892760521927042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 447px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 315px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WGhKfzl0HlA/SaXe2TwAaYI/AAAAAAAAACE/6fPfkvEL-qk/s400/AppsDashboard.jpg" border="0" /></a></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse">Additionally, here are other resources I often recommend to help account administrators get up and running quickly and smoothly and also to stay on top of new functionality:</span></span> <p style="FONT-FAMILY: arial" face="Arial"></p><p style="FONT-FAMILY: arial"></p><p style="MARGIN: 0px; FONT-FAMILY: arial"></p><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:100%;"><b>Google Apps Help Center</b>. Our <a id="j:sy" title="help center" href="http://www.google.com/support/a/" target="_blank">Help Center</a> for Google Apps admins can answer questions on "getting started" and also help you troubleshoot or find out the status about known issues. Topics include everything from email routing to data migration. We update the information in the Help Center regularly so it's a good starting point for any questions you encounter as you setup and manage your Google Apps account. <b><br /><br />Google Apps Help Forum</b>. In addition to our own online support resources (see below), we have a vibrant community of Google Apps administrators who are always willing to lend a helping hand. To read tips and get help from your peers, <a id="ykzq" title="Join" href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Apps/" target="_blank">join</a> this discussion board for IT admins. This forum is moderated by Google Apps Advisors and fueled by the knowledge of expert Power Posters. Recent questions answered in the Help Forum include ones on IMAP functionality and MX record settings. <b><br /><br />Google Apps update alerts</b>. Whenever we launch improvements to any of the apps or add new administrative capabilities – whether it's a minor user interface tweak or the release of major new functionality</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse;font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >– </span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:100%;">we publish a summary with usage instructions and links where you can find more details. For example, we recently shared information on new capabilities for administrators to authorize who can upload videos to Google Video for business and instructions for setting password strength requirements. You can automatically get this information either as <a id="yk7k" title="email alerts" href="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=GoogleAppsUpdates&loc=en_US">email alerts</a> to your inbox, or you can subscribe to the <a id="v7-1" title="RSS feed" href="http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http%3A//feeds.feedburner.com/GoogleAppsUpdates">RSS feed</a>. <b><br /><br />Google Apps Channel on YouTube</b> Here you can find product tutorials and overviews, as well as video testimonials from Google Apps customers and recordings of Google Apps-related talks and webinars. We recently posted a <a id="z3g0" title="tour" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzdj2PuXKP8&feature=PlayList&p=CB91CEDD85EF4730&index=10" target="_blank">tour</a> of a corporate intranet built by one of our customers and created a <a title="New Google Apps Learning Center" href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=29CB32DA076AB3D2&page=2" target="_blank">Google Apps <span class="nfakPe">Learning</span> <span class="nfakPe">Center</span></a> playlist to educate end users on topics such as "Webmail vs. Desktop," "Archiving or Deleting" in Gmail, for example. <a id="n.5o" title="Take a look" href="http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=GoogleApps&view=playlists">Take a look</a> at the videos we've created. <b><br /><br />The Solutions Marketplace.</b> If you know that Google Apps is right for you but need some extra help, visit the <a id="yo82" title="visit" href="http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/" target="_blank">Solutions Marketplace</a> to find details about products and services from vendors whose solutions integrate and extend Google Apps. You can find vendors to help you with setup and deployment, data migration, integration with existing IT systems, user training and more. You can see how vendors have been rated by other customers and also read about <a id="pxv3" title="customer success stories" href="http://solutionsmarketplace.blogspot.com/">customer experiences with partners</a>. </span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:100%;"><br /><span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse"></span><span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse"></span><span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse"><br /><br />I hope that this information helps you get the most out of Google Apps. One of the great things about Google Apps is the community that has grown up around it, thanks to you!Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-31532818905432820972009-02-12T01:53:00.001-08:002009-02-12T06:00:07.948-08:00TubeLoc: An AS3 Player Wrapper Using LocalConnection<em>Posted by Jeff Fisher, YouTube APIs and Tools Team</em><br /><br />We know developers really like AS3, but sometimes they have difficulty getting our players to work correctly. To make this process easier for the Flashy/Flexy crowd, the awesome Ben Longoria has given us <a href="http://code.google.com/p/tubeloc/">TubeLoc</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzxQT-tIGHQr-1YaTG55BNeMicq3aNQjbD99tVL5HrcZ6rLe3xdBXmEspUP9qnV7Z_9dUdBGN98NaIpcMJ0dPheveQBsofTl9oryxXJlhaukZ-yQhXwRWhwp82U4f1qFqMnjJAHBAM9f0/s1600-h/chromeless_screenshot.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301705647628328162" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 198px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzxQT-tIGHQr-1YaTG55BNeMicq3aNQjbD99tVL5HrcZ6rLe3xdBXmEspUP9qnV7Z_9dUdBGN98NaIpcMJ0dPheveQBsofTl9oryxXJlhaukZ-yQhXwRWhwp82U4f1qFqMnjJAHBAM9f0/s320/chromeless_screenshot.png" border="0" /></a><br /><br />TubeLoc is an AS3 wrapper around the Player API that uses LocalConnection to communicate to the AS2 YouTube SWFs. It takes this a step further by also providing Flex components to make inserting a YouTube video and controls easy.<br /><br />Ready to get started? First <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/articles/tubeloc.html">read the article</a> that goes in depth on how to use TubeLoc. Next, visit the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/tubeloc/">project page</a> to download the code and play with the live demos. Finally, tell us what you think <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/youtube-api-gdata">on the forum</a>. Thanks BenBlonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-35565714361927861552009-02-12T01:21:00.003-08:002009-02-12T06:19:52.274-08:00Android Developers Blog: Apps that work togetherAndroid applications can easily be linked together using <a href="http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html">intents</a>. One example of this involves Shazam, MySpace, and the Amazon MP3 Store. Once Shazam has identified a song, you can also search for the artist's official MySpace profile page or buy the song via via the Amazon MP3 app. Here, the three developers behind these apps talk about how they accomplished this:</p><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CxF4G2N1nTE&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CxF4G2N1nTE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><p>To hear more about how the MySpace app for Android was built and lessons learned, watch Matt Kanninen:</p><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/p/3A4E4D83B9614552"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/p/3A4E4D83B9614552" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><p>Tomasz Zawada of Shazam also talks about his opinions on the Android platform and has some tips for developers building Android apps:</p><object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/p/A131466774A03834"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/p/A131466774A03834" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><p>These and the other Android app developer videos can be found <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=43E15866EF0033A2">here</a>.Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-9999539559023495742009-02-12T01:21:00.001-08:002009-02-12T06:21:12.904-08:00Google Analytics Blog: Tips and Tools for Expanding Keywords ListsYou can use Google Analytics to <a title="find the best keywords" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AaI5KVgHyg" target="_blank">find the best keywords</a> and shift budget to the highest converting keywords, but what if you're looking to expand your keyword lists? In this post, we are going to look at how you can leverage other <a id="cz6l" title="free Google tools" href="http://www.google.com/domorewithless">free Google tools</a> to optimize your marketing campaigns beyond Google Analytics.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">1)</span> Take a look at the <a id="qfg3" title="best performing keywords" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AaI5KVgHyg" target="_blank">best performing keywords</a> from your Google Analytics Keyword Report.<br /><a href="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=dcbf5zsv_3kdcth7f9_b" target="_blank"></a><div id="m2ts" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><div id="mg61" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjEn9xDZQq1y64RDc8FL44XIzo30QRDYjS7fIquMS9hoMVct4PJiNMBtlrfZoXtKKpoEMX_BesnjeUq2bAGckguKjWjog9UblhMyggo7-uPP0WEHh8RQslc02l2d4nH9_05o7LyBBnT_RF/s1600-h/dcbf5zsv_8d9vf7jd6_b.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301665850812044626" style="WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 194px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjEn9xDZQq1y64RDc8FL44XIzo30QRDYjS7fIquMS9hoMVct4PJiNMBtlrfZoXtKKpoEMX_BesnjeUq2bAGckguKjWjog9UblhMyggo7-uPP0WEHh8RQslc02l2d4nH9_05o7LyBBnT_RF/s400/dcbf5zsv_8d9vf7jd6_b.png" border="0" /></a></div></div><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">2)</span> Input these keywords, along with your site's URL, into the <a id="irpt" title="Search-based Keyword Tool" href="http://www.google.com/sktool/#" target="_blank">Search-based Keyword Tool</a> to find keywords not currently in your AdWords campaign. Suggestions from this tool are particularly useful because they're specific to the site and keywords you define, and are based on actual, past Google queries.<br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><div id="ce3y" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkSyWv2azw1oX2joQRgU3Yj688GeFx3u7RTqYfU4l5HwMUg2fWzU8jCGspoEWzz3fGRnHsFuLPottljJLsyj21gUddrMH0FVPGcOsvud1xtP9actVvdq1xIBkNpWz9eKwYAlAJCFpzkk6V/s1600-h/dcbf5zsv_9f2jfjfw7_b.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301665851650234514" style="WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 182px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkSyWv2azw1oX2joQRgU3Yj688GeFx3u7RTqYfU4l5HwMUg2fWzU8jCGspoEWzz3fGRnHsFuLPottljJLsyj21gUddrMH0FVPGcOsvud1xtP9actVvdq1xIBkNpWz9eKwYAlAJCFpzkk6V/s400/dcbf5zsv_9f2jfjfw7_b.png" border="0" /></a></div></div><br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">3) </span>For each keyword identified, you can then use <a id="y3j8" title="Google Insights for Search" href="http://www.google.com/insights/search" target="_blank">Google Insights for Search</a> -- a tool that allows you to see trends in what the world is searching for -- to see where regional interest is highest and better optimize through geotargeting. <div id="rh:x" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><img style="WIDTH: 496px; HEIGHT: 403px" src="https://docs.google.com/a/google.com/File?id=dcbf5zsv_10f9b7rkdx_b" /></div>You can also enter your top-performing keywords from Google Analytics directly into <a id="y3j8" title="Google Insights for Search" href="http://www.google.com/insights/search" target="_blank">Google Insights for Search</a> to identify the top-related and <a href="http://www.google.com/support/insights/bin/bin/answer.py?answer=94793">rising searches</a>. This can help you expand your keyword lists and keep them current by staying abreast of related search trends.<br /><div id="kdjc" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><div id="f282" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><div id="zf1a" style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0pt; PADDING-LEFT: 0pt; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1em; PADDING-TOP: 1em; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJTzivKZv3Cj-jlpbBUr_RVmPaLjrbFv5Q0UqcQ-sGwN8IStbi6GJrxMc13SlM1CgXW6jQX3MiSv1FGjeOJEQRMMPRKb_ysTPCyzJUvyqdJnnymoqroUyaAkjfD9A0dyAN9EBofB_uO9Dq/s1600-h/dcbf5zsv_11htsndqc7_b.png"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301665856842256914" style="WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 166px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJTzivKZv3Cj-jlpbBUr_RVmPaLjrbFv5Q0UqcQ-sGwN8IStbi6GJrxMc13SlM1CgXW6jQX3MiSv1FGjeOJEQRMMPRKb_ysTPCyzJUvyqdJnnymoqroUyaAkjfD9A0dyAN9EBofB_uO9Dq/s400/dcbf5zsv_11htsndqc7_b.png" border="0" /></a></div></div></div>These are just a few examples of how you can capitalize on the many Google tools available for improving your website ROI, so start expanding and optimizing your possibilities today!<br /><br /><span class="byline-author"><em>Posted by Lauren Usui, Insights for Search Team</em><br /></span><span class="byline-author"></span>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-73356601766804496272009-02-12T01:18:00.005-08:002009-02-12T06:22:45.637-08:00Google News Blog: Eight Ways to Help Google News Better Crawl Your SitePosted by Abe Epton, News Online Operations Team<br /><br />From time to time, publishers ask us what they can do to improve their listings in Google News. The following are eight of the most frequent, and useful, pieces of advice we give out. Why eight? Because at Google, we love powers of 2.<br /><br />* Keep the article body clean<br /><br />For various reasons, when crawling an article, Google News checks to make sure it can find the article body. If your article body is broken up by<br />tags, ads, sidebars or other non-article content, we may not be able to detect the actual article body, and reject your article as a result. In addition, if you place the beginning of your article's body near the title in the HTML, we'll be more likely to extract the correct title and snippet.<br /><br />* Make sure article URLs are permanent and unique<br /><br />If you reuse article URLs, our system may have difficulty crawling and categorizing your stories. In addition, make sure your article URLs have at least three digits that don't resemble a year (for example, 5232 is ok, but 2008 is not.) You can get around this requirement by submitting your articles in News Sitemaps. Also, please note that session IDs can confuse our crawler, and we may not realize that two distinct URLs actually point to the same page. You can learn more about some of these requirements <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=68323&topic=11665">here</a>.<br /><br />* Take advantage of stock tickers in Sitemaps<br /><br />Google News Sitemaps allow publishers to specify stock ticker symbols for companies mentioned in individual articles. Using these symbols helps us better identify the subjects of your articles. You can read more about the format we use for this data <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=74288&topic=11666">here</a>.<br /><br />* Check your encoding<br /><br />We occasionally see articles that declare themselves to be encoded in one format (say, UTF-8) and are actually encoded in another (say, ISO 8859-1). Don't do this. It hurts us.<br /><br />* Make your article publication dates explicit<br /><br />In order to help our crawler determine the correct date, please make the actual publication date of your articles explicit. You can do this by placing the article date and time in the HTML, between the title and the body. Also, you can remove other dates from the HTML of the article page, and add the required <publication_date>tag to articles in your <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/topic.py?topic=11666">News Sitemap</a>. Dates on article pages can be in most common formats, but for sitemaps, we ask that you use the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime">W3C</a> format; e.g. 2008-12-29T06:30:00Z.<br /><br />Note that the article times and dates displayed on Google News reflect the time at which we originally crawled the articles, and may not be the same as the publication date.<br /><br />* Keep original content separate from press releases<br /><br />If your site produces original content and distributes press releases that you'd like us to crawl, make sure to separate your original news content from your press releases by creating two different sections on your site. As you may know, Google News labels press releases distinctly in order to alert our users that the article they're about to read is a press release. If your original news sections have links to press releases, adding the rel="nofollow" attribute to all links that point to your press release articles will ensure that they're labeled correctly. You can learn more about this attribute <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569">here</a>.<br /><br />* Format your images properly<br /><br />To help Google News identify your images and crawl them along with your articles, use fairly large images with reasonable aspect ratios and descriptive captions. Make sure to place them near their respective article titles on the page and make the images inline and non-clickable. Images in the JPEG format are more likely to be crawled correctly.<br /><br />* Article Titles in Google News<br /><br />In order for Google News to crawl the correct titles for your articles, make sure the title you want appears in both the title tag and as the headline on the article page. In addition, don't hyperlink the headline on the article page - after all, your reader is already there! And it's always a good idea to have links that point to your articles use the article title as anchor text.<br /><br />If you found these suggestions helpful, you might also want to check out our more general <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769">Webmaster Guidelines</a>. The Webmaster Guidelines aren't necessarily specific to Google News, but much of the wisdom you'll find there can help make your site Google News-friendly. Our <a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/">Publisher Help Center</a> contains lots more information about many of these topics. And you can always check out the <a href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news?hl=en">Google News Help Forum</a> to give us feedback on these suggestions, and share other tips and advice with webmasters and News users.Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-91044210088853701002009-02-12T01:18:00.003-08:002009-02-12T06:24:11.140-08:00Google LatLong: Australian fires update<break><br />The <a href="http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/02/victorian-fires-update.html">Google Australia Blog</a> continues to update its map of the Victoria fires, and it now includes recent satellite imagery from the Modis Rapid Response project at NASA/GSFC. You can also view the map, further information about the fires, and recent news on <a href="http://www.google.com.au/landing/victorianbushfires/">this site</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.google.com.au/landing/victorianbushfires/"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301629587481745714" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 226px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3nkbRVxXkO7rM2ZbgtZ0-ozCXwNL9J5Cmr9VbMCSWK1L1JfzX1l8kBBlKwnu1eoLL-PNNeYMCGCl5_Bdym3puRe3IVJydFJklCToZqIPvY5q-dhKX3W8GmJOUA6T99Wj0KEAgDXLOyrA/s400/auimg.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Elaine Filadelfo, Lat Long Blog Team</span></break>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-77389266081427869212009-02-11T21:07:00.000-08:002009-02-12T06:08:59.675-08:00Official Gmail Blog: Four changes to Gmail contactsOver the past few days we've made a lot of small changes to Gmail's contact manager which, combined, should make it easier to organize the contacts you want and get rid of some of the cruft. Here's a quick summary:<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">1. Contact merge (and an important caveat about auto-complete)</span><br />Many of you may have seen Monday's <a href="http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/sync-your-contacts-and-calendar-with.html">blog post about Google Sync</a> which mentioned contact merge. Nothing had been annoying me more than seeing several copies of "Jeff Jones" on my iPhone — only one of which actually contained his phone number. I now have one "Jeff Jones" which contains all of his contact information. To do this, select the contacts you want to merge and then click "Merge these..." as shown below:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SZNsgXTEdUI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/Ig-U6urLdx8/s1600-h/merge.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301700489610818882" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SZNsgXTEdUI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/Ig-U6urLdx8/merge.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Now that you can sync your contacts to a <a href="http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=139195&topic=14794">variety of devices</a>, being able to merge contacts is more important than ever. Please note that as we mentioned on Monday, <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">there's a known issue with merging contacts that affects address <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6597">auto-complete</a>, making merged addresses sometimes come up in a suboptimal order</span> (e.g. auto-complete may bring up your friend's work address first even though you usually email their Gmail address). We're working on fixing this so the email address you use the most for any given contact will always come up first.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">2. All Contacts</span><br />Instead of Suggested Contacts, you'll now see a group called All Contacts which, as the name would suggest, is where all of your contacts live and thus a good view for merging duplicate contacts. You can still see suggested contacts by clicking the "View Suggestions" button from My Contacts. From there, you can select frequently emailed contacts to add to My Contacts.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SZNsm8cTmXI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/FfI3movr3pI/s1600-h/suggested_contacts.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301700602660886898" style="WIDTH: 399px; HEIGHT: 189px" height="189" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SZNsm8cTmXI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/FfI3movr3pI/suggested_contacts.jpg" width="434" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">3. Remove people from My Contacts</span><br />You can finally move contacts out of the My Contacts group — especially useful if you're planning to sync your contact list to your phone. Prune the contacts you don't want synced to your phone from My Contacts (click "Groups" and then "Remove from My Contacts"), and they won't get synced.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">4. Search across all contact fields</span><br />We've <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Chats-and-Contacts-en/browse_thread/thread/2d83fe9828cdb6cb/f819d70b3f554b21?lnk=gst&q=contact+search#f819d70b3f554b21">heard you</a> loud and clear, and contact search now works much better: instead of just searching contact names and email addresses, it now includes phone numbers, notes fields, and mailing addresses as well. So, if you're visiting the Bay Area and looking for friends to catch up with, you could try typing "650" or "415" in the contact manager search box.<br /><br />Please <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Chats-and-Contacts-en/topics?gvc=2&ctx=l_chat">keep the feedback coming</a> — we're working hard to make Contacts better and more useful for you.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager, Google Contacts<br /></span><span class="byline-author"></span>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7503810365893655336.post-31306599683571162822009-02-10T21:11:00.000-08:002009-02-12T06:08:11.421-08:00New in Labs: Add your location to your signatureSometime ago I noticed how all mail systems tell you when an email was written, but not where it was sent from. Because I love to travel, the first question in many messages I receive is "where are you?" and by the time I answer I am often somewhere else.<br /><br />So in my 20% time, I wrote an experimental Gmail Labs feature that detects your location and appends the city region and country names to your signature, like this:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SZI_OGRH3dI/AAAAAAAAAQk/P8gf5o4C4lA/s1600-h/location_in_signature.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301369222801645010" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SZI_OGRH3dI/AAAAAAAAAQk/P8gf5o4C4lA/location_in_signature.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />To try it, turn on Location in Signature from the <a href="http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&fs=1&view=pu&st=labs">Labs tab under Settings</a>, then go to your <a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=8395">signature preferences</a> and check the box next to "Append your location to the signature."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SZI_S6UmJNI/AAAAAAAAAQs/-j_FX39rGtE/s1600-h/location_in_signature2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5301369305494332626" style="WIDTH: 402px; HEIGHT: 98px" height="135" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JE4qNpFW6Yk/SZI_S6UmJNI/AAAAAAAAAQs/-j_FX39rGtE/location_in_signature2.jpg" width="435" border="0" /></a><br /><br />It'll use your public IP address to determine your location, so it may not always be that accurate. For example, if you're at Heathrow airport, IP detection may put you in Germany. If you want more accurate location detection, make sure your browser has a version of <a href="http://gears.google.com/">Gears</a> that supports the <a href="http://gearsblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/wifi-based-geolocation-anyone.html">location module</a>. That way, Gears can make use of wi-fi access point signals to recognize that you're actually in London.<br /><br />You'll always be able to disable the option or just delete your location from specific emails whenever you want.<br /><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Marco Bonechi, Software Engineer<br /></span><span class="byline-author"></span>Blonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02087216971146966912noreply@blogger.com0