Google Docs Gets Lots of Updates Google Docs added lots of new stuff, including saved searches, offline Google Gears access for spreadsheets and presentations, custom document stylesheets (using CSS), speaker notes in presentations, and embedded YouTube videos in presentations.
Move Your Life To Gmail With Gmail Uploader Google released last month the Gmail Uploader, a free application that moves your email and contacts from Outlook, Outlook Express or Thunderbird (on Windows XP and Vista only) to a Google Apps Gmail account. Considering the huge number of limitations (only three email programs, two operating systems, and one very specific and less popular edition of Gmail), you may never get the chance to use it, which is a shame, because most new Gmail users would love the easy migration method.
Google Charts Now Does QR Codes
Google has been trying out QR Codes (a type of 2D bar codes) in its print ads, and now they’re making it easier to generate them on the web. Before, you’d have to use a web app or software to create a QR Code, then save the image to use on your website, but now the Google Chart API can be queried to get them automatically. Right now, all you get are website URLs, though hopefully Google will extend the API to handle more complex data.
Here’s an API-generated image for this site, using the URL http://chartserver.apis.google.com/chart?cht=qr&chs=300x300&chl=http://google.blognewschannel.com/:
Blogger Adds Future Posts
Google’s Blogger has added the ability to schedule posts to be published in the future by specifying a date yet to come for your post. This feature was tested in Blogger In Draft, and is yet another feature to make its way into the ever improving Blogger.
Google Invests In New Clearwire Google entered into an agreement with Sprint and others (Comcast, Intel Capital, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks and Trilogy Equity Partners), investing half a billion dollars in a new formation of wireless ISP Clearwire. The new company will be 51% Sprint-owned, taking Sprint’s Xohm WiMax business. Google’s a wireless provider of sorts, now, and will help get open devices, including Android devices, on the network, and provide search and applications for the network.
Google Me - A Documentary About Search
This documentary features a guy searching for others with this same name as him. A concept we’ve heard before, though it seems to have resulted in an interest project.
Google’s Head of PR Goes to Facebook
Elliot Schrage leaves for Facebook, costing Google its vice president of global communications and public affairs. Of course, Google’s corporate PR policies haven’t been that smart the last few years, so maybe this isn’t great news for Facebook.
Google Maps Interface Slimmed Down
Google has finally trimmed some of the cruft building on Google Maps, combining and simplifying an interface that was getting too complicated and cluttered.
Blogger Gets Integrated Analytics
Google has integrated Google Analytics into Blogger for Blogger users that are interested, giving access to stats inside the Blogger Dashboard along with special stats tracking relevant to blogs. They’re also letting Measure Map users roll over their accounts into Google Analytics now.
Add Images To Gmail’s Interface Xoopit is a Firefox plugin that adds dynamic image preview to Gmail. You see a strip of images above your email, and there’s some sort of social networking theory at work.
H-1B Visa Situation the Usual Giant Disaster
Read at Techdirt about the H-1B (foreign guest worker) visas, which are once again running into problems due to the government not providing enough visas for American tech companies to bring skilled workers to this country. As usual, the visas for the entire year ran out in a single day, and the Department of Homeland Security is doing what it can to keep those jobs in the U.S. by allowing certain industry grads to stay in the country longer on their student visas.
Google Earth Adds Street View Google Earth now has Street View built into it, in order to see street level photos of buildings and pedestrians. Not only that, but you can blow the Street View full screen, in order to gawk at total strangers having their privacy invaded in the utmost fidelity.
Google Most Valuable Brand Again Google has been named the most valuable brand by market research firm Millward Brown Optimor, value at $86 billion and beating out GE and Microsoft ($71 billion apiece). Google’s brand value grew 30% over the last year, though Google has now won three years running.
Earth Day Search Logos
Search Engine Land has a bunch of logos that ran on Earth Day, including this one from Google:
Google Stock Earnings Benefit From Failing Dollar
Google’s earnings report, released last week, showed it beat Wall Street’s expectations by $101 million, sending the stock way up. However, Valleywag explains that, due to the sinking dollar, Google’s earnings were $202 million higher than they would have been if the dollar were stronger, meaning the surprise extra growth didn’t exist almost at all.
Google News Shows Quotes Google News has a new feature that lets you search for people who are quoted in news articles. Just throw a name into Google News and you’ll see a quote from them at the top. Click their name, and you’ll see a page full of quotes in various news stories they’re in.
Google-Monopoly (The Game)
Box HQ has put together a version of the popular Monopoly board game that replaces everything in the game with Google-related items. For example, the properties are all web companies (Microsoft and Yahoo replace Boardwalk and Park Place) and jail is the Deadpool. You can just print out the PDF and get started, or go all out and modify a Monopoly game board to turn it into Google-opoly. One problem: there aren’t enough I’m Feeling Lucky and Google.org cards.
Google Finds New CIO Google has named a new Chief Information Officer, with Benjamin Fried from Morgan Stanley’s Application Infrastructure group taking over next month. Fried worked on Google’s IPO four years ago, giving him some experience with the company. Fried takes over for Douglas Merrill, who left for EMI earlier this month.
If you haven’t used Google Website Optimizer yet, perhaps the benefits of A/B Split & Multivariable Testing and Intuitive Reports will woo you. The goals, of course, are to increase sales, improve landing pages, get more leads, determine cost per acquisition (CPA), increase time spent on site, estimate guesswork from your site design, and more.
Lots of Google Doodles
Zorgloob’s got lots of Google Doodles you may not have noticed over the weeks.
AdWords API Price Dropped Google has droppped the prices on using the AdWords API. Search Engine Roundtable has the chart of revised prices, with the cost per API unit dropping as much as 70% on some services.
AdSense Ad Review Center Available To All Google has released its Ad Review Center for Google AdSense to all publishers. The Ad Review center allows AdSense publishers to control site targeted advertising on their website, including banning and approving targeted ads.
Download YouTube Videos As MP4 Ionut shares the URL parameter that will let you download videos from YouTube as MP4 files, perfect for loading onto a portable media player. Just use a URL like this one, except change the letters “ID” with the video ID code:
A Funny Google Interview Story Read this story about one guy’s experience interviewing for a job at Google. I guarantee you won’t see where it’s going.
(via Digg)
Arrest Caught On Google Maps Street View
One unfortunate fella was being arrested by authorities, and what happened to pass by? The Google Maps Street View van, that’s who! As a result, he wound up with that moment in his life, one he’d probably like to regret, recorded into Google Maps and now pictured on a number of blogs. Whoops.
Ionut found this website that takes YouTube’s API to to create a cool application designed to improve your YouTube browsing experience. It steals some ideas from MSN Soapbox, letting you search for videos on the left side and watch them on the right side of the screen, searching for new videos while watching you current video, and building a playlist of videos to watch continuously. Check out YouTube Fast Search, it looks great.
Google Starts DoubleClick Layoffs 300 people lost their jobs today, as Google laid off 300 employees, or about 25%, of DoubleClick, the advertising firm it bought for $3.1 billion. The layoffs were expected and even warned about by Google, but it’s always sad to see people lose their job, especially in a recession. Hopefully recruiters are excited at the idea of hiring all these people, and they won’t spend too much time on unemployment.
If you can hire a DoubleClicker, or are a DoubleClicker looking for a new job, send me a message. I’ll try to connect the two sides.
Valleywag has been covering the layoffs heavily, saying that:
YouTube Starts Tagging Copyrighted Videos YouTube has started identifying music videos by the artists in them, tagging the video with “Contains Content From” and a link to the artist’s YouTube account. Artists in the program get to choose to put advertising on the video’s page and earn money from it, or they can block the videos from being viewed. Alternatively, they can elect to just receive tracking stats on their videos and see how popular they are, or link to where the music can be bought on AmazonMP3.
Google Grants Gave Out $273 Million In Free Ads Google’s blog noted the five year anniversary of Google Grants, which gives free AdWords advertising to non-profits. They said that in the history of the program, 4,000 grantees have received a stunning $273.3 million in free ads, all out of the kindness of Google’s heart*. 1,000 Googlers have volunteered their time and effort to keep the program running and help it roll out in new countries (fifteen so far).
* - okay, and a tiny bit because, in an auction pricing system, unfilled inventory actually lowers earnings on paid inventory
AdSense Ads All Scrolling Now?
Google ran a test of a modification to AdSense ads last December that added scroll up/down buttons to ad units, letting users click to switch in a new set of text ads. Looks like they really liked the performance of the ads, since many people are reporting spotting the scrolling buttons on all ad units. I can confirm seeing them on all my ad units, so it could very well be the new default.
Entire Internet Goes Crazy Over April Fools
As usual, April Fools day was the internet’s Christmas, with many major and minor websites getting in the holiday spirit, most with unfunny fake news stories. A few were interest or stood out:
YouTube turned all the Featured Videos on its front page into links to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up. The video, already the center of the Rickrolling meme, is now the unofficial anthem of April Fools day, with multiple pranks involving it somehow. The video pulled 6 million views in just one day.
Phillip listed a ton of others from Google, including a retread “We’re going to space” joke from Google (this time with Richard Branson and Mars and YouTube videos, but even less funny than when they did it in 2006), scratch-and-sniff Google Book Search, Google Talk auto converting everything you say into acronyms, a paper airplane template in Google Docs, custom email time in Gmail, Google Calendar’s Wake Up Kit (which pours a bucket of water on you if you ignore the alarm) and I’m Feeling Lucky button (random blind dates), Orkut renamed Yogurt, and more.
Blogger launched “Google Weblogs”, essentially a look at what a blog service by Google would have looked like in 2002, before Google discovered UI design
Andy talked about a Google USB Search Watch. Yes, a watch, as in what you wear on your wrist.
Google Docs Finally Gets Gears Offline Access
Google Docs, the most obvious candidate for offline access, has finally been enabled to work with Google Gears. You can now access and edit your text documents (but not spreadsheets or presentations, yet) without an internet connection, provided you’ve installed the Google Gears plugin. Wonderful news, and hopefully the start of a wave of Google products taking advantage of Google’s offline platform.
Here’s a video about it:
Google Spreadsheets Adds Gadgets Google Spreadsheets has added a directory of Google Gadgets you can use to extend its functionality. It includes charts, new table functionality, pivot tables, maps, search results, organization charts, and many other features Spreadsheets lacks. It also now has email notifications, autocomplete and a new visualization API. Unlike Docs, Spreadsheets is one area where the majority of users won’t be satisfied with an underpowered Microsoft Word, and any way Google can get advanced features in there, the better.
Google’s Search Lead Continues To Grow comScore saw Google share of the search market grow in February (surprising no one), reaching 59%. Yahoo fell to 21.6%, Microsoft slipped slightly to 9.6%, and Ask added .1% to reach 4.6%.
Viacom Will Not Get Punitive Damages Vs. YouTube A judge ruled that if Viacom prevails in its lawsuit against Google-owned YouTube over copyrighted videos, it would not be entitled to punitive damages. Instead, Viacom will have to prove actual damages, with each successfully proven “willfull” violation costing Google up to $300,000, and other costing as little as $750. Gonna have a hard time getting $1 billion out of Google that way.
Google To Layoff DoubleClickers Tuesday Valleywag reports that Google intends to hold its first round of layoffs of DoubleClick employees, trimming headcount at its acquisition to get the most value out of the buy. The layoffs should start this Tuesday, the first day of the second financial quarter of the year.
Of course, that day is also April 1, the day Google usually publishes a funny prank to amuse web surfers. If Google tries to be funny while firing hundreds, if not thousands of good people, laying them off in the middle of a recession when the job market isn’t going anywhere, I don’t think I’ll be laughing a whole lot.
Barry Diller Wins IAC Trial
In the case for control of IAC and the right to decide the company’s future, Barry Diller has defeated John Malone and won the right to break up the company into five seperate firms. Considering the hard work Diller has put into screwing up Ask.com the last few months, his victory is everyone else’s loss.
Google Israel Goes Black for Earth Hour
Google’s website in Israel turned its background black Thursday, marking off Earth Hour, some sort of awareness campaign where people turn off their lights for an hour to save the planet. While the message was nice, it was still strange to see Google ignoring its own research that clearly showed a black Google wastes more energy than a lit Google.
YouTube Showing Advanced Video Stats YouTube has launched a new feature, called Insight, which shows you more advanced stats for your own uploaded videos. It features a Google Finance-type graph that shows viewing over time, so you can see which days viewing spiked, that sort of thing. Click About This Video on your videos page, or add “http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_insight?v=” before any video ID (it won’t work if it isn’t your video).
Video Ads Make it Into Google Search Google has started showing video ads in its search results, adding a “watch commercial” or “watch demonstration” or “watch testimonial” link beneath AdWords ads. Click the link, and a video expands and plays right there in the sidebar. The video is tiny (160×140) and is about 30 seconds long, and the advertiser pays if the user watches the video, not if they click the link to go to the ad’s landing page. I saw one of the ads in action, and if they don’t cost too much more than regular ads, they seem like a good deal.
Google Documents Revamps Interface
Google Docs’ word processor application has changed its interface, adding drop-down menus and getting rid of the old tabbed toolbar interface. The old interface was a poorly implemented middle ground between the old interface paradigm common in document apps like the older versions of Microsoft Office, and the new Ribbon used in Office 2007, and Google finally wised up and junked the confusing system.
The new interface is pretty familiar to anyone who has been using Microsoft Word since the Windows 3.1 days, with drop down menus and a simple toolbar. The new menus do include a list of the keyboard shortcuts, making it easier to use those timesavers, but the changes don’t bring anything new to the table. Guess this is one area where Microsoft can claim to be bolder and more innovative.
Blogoscoped also found this, an Easter Egg (or possible prep for April Fools Day), making fun of the old Microsoft Office feature, Clippy. It’s funny, but Clippy is a remnant of Office’s past, and Docs is looking more and more like Office used to, so maybe the joke’s on Google.
Google Japan Parametron Doodle Google ran this Doodle logo in Japan last week, honoring the anniversary of some Japanese computer:
YouTube Releases API for Customizing Player YouTube released an API for customizing its embeddable player, letting you change the look of it to match the look of your website. You can write completely customizable video player, changing any element and putting together anything your mind/code can come up with.
How To Always Get Higher Quality Videos From YouTube
Now that YouTube is offering videos in different qualities and choosing for you automatically the best one for your connection, you may feel like you are missing out and not getting the best version every time. Turns out there’s a new preference option under Account > Video Playback Quality that lets you tell YouTube to always play higher quality videos, never do it, or keep deciding what’s best for you. Use this new power with great care, young one.
Google Sky Makes It Into Google Maps
Google Sky, a pretty cool but almost forgotten feature in Google Earth, where users could see the constellations and multiple star layers in Earth, is now available in your web browser. Just head to sky.google.com and you’ll get a tricked out version of Google Maps with much of the features of Sky in Google Earth, though I just can’t figure out if the cool time slider is there. While this pales in comparison to Microsoft’s in-development WorldWide Telescope project, it’s light and easy and available now, so check it out.
Google Book Search Gets API Google has released an API for Google Book Search, letting application developers query Book Search and return if a book is available in Book Search and if it has a scanned copy. Using this, some interesting mashups can be created, like a site that shows you if a book is available in your library, available to read online at Google, or showing you how to purchase it at Amazon.
MapQuest Offers Unlimited API
While MapQuest, purely on name and longevity alone, is still in some areas the number one mapping site on the net, it is certainly losing the battle among power users and critics to newer services like Google Maps and the like. One way MapQuest could distinguish itself and show off the abilities of recent upgrades would be to get mashup developers to start using its API, and a recent announcement may help. MapQuest is now letting API developers have unlimited free use of the API.
While Google and its ilk limit use of their API to certain number of views or users per day, MapQuest’s API is both without limits and without costs, making it in some ways the only option now available for super-popular mashups. MapQuest’s API comes with many popular or unique features, including aerial/hybrid views, smooth zoom transitions, a Google Earth-like Globe View, speed and friction settings (possibly perfect for iPhone flicking), and advanced shape overlays. If, in order to avoid API key errors, enough mashups make the switch, users could start noticing that MapQuest is getting a lot better these days.
Googler is Convicted Hacker Valleywag has an article about Christophe Bisciglia, a senior software engineer at Google who is also a convicted former hacker. Bisciglia got in a dispute with his boss about a decade ago at the age of 17, and decided to take revenge by flooding the system with emails, sending email to the company’s customers, and defacing their website. Obviously he’s matured since then, but lets hope the next time he loses his temper the results don’t show in your Gmail account.
Spring Google Doodle
Google ran this Doodle logo to mark the beginning of Spring:
Google Loses FCC Auction The final results in the FCC’s spectrum auction are in, and the winners of major blocks of the 700 MHz spectrum are Verizon, winner of most of the coveted and somewhat open C block with Vodaphone (along with parts of A and B block), and AT&T, winner of most of B block. In total, the auction raised over $19 billion, much more than was expected, none of it from Google.
Hulu Launches
NBC and News Corp finally launchedHulu.com, its YouTube competitor video site, to the general public last week. Early reports are that, despite a lot of criticism from the press a year ago, the site has developed into a strong, high quality platform with a decent amount of good content. Hulu has a bunch of TV shows and full-length movies, and doesn’t charge anything to show them, just inserting ads. As long as the content is there, there’s absolutely no reason Hulu won’t be a hit.
Google Completes Purchase of DoubleClick
With the European regulators finally signing off on the deal, Google completed its megabillion dollar deal to buy DoubleClick. The acquisition met with a lot of opposition from Google’s competitors, who complained that it would create a monopoly in online advertising, but both U.S. and EU officials determined that DoubleClick’s business was sufficiently different enough from Google’s core search ad business, plus a possible Yahoo/Microsoft combo would be competitive enough.
The final acquisition cost was $3.24 billion, according to Google, about $140 million than originally planned. That’s either due to inflation, unexpected costs, slight changes in the deal, or includes the cost of getting the acquisition improved in the first place. SEJournal has the text of an email Google sent to all of DoubleClick’s clients with some FAQs.
Yahoo Buzz Driving Massive Traffic
I completely recant my earlier criticism of Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo’s Digg competitor. The main difference between Buzz and Digg is that it only allows in publishers who use a Yahoo advertising program, and the top stories from Buzz make their way onto the Yahoo homepage, the most popular webpage on the planet. Publishers in the program are reporting all-time traffic records, even really popular sites like Salon and TechCrunch, making Buzz a huge incentive for publishers to use Yahoo for their ads. Yahoo should have thought of this years ago.
YouTube Integrated Into Spore
The much anticipated Spore, arriving later this year from Maxis and gaming legend Will Wright this September, will include integration with Google’s YouTube. Players will be able to upload videos of their Spore creatures to YouTube while playing the game, and an official Spore channel on YouTube will feature the best contributions from the community. I got to sit down with an EA rep at a recent games preview event, and I was shocked at how well-thought out and integral the community aspect was for Spore, and the YouTube integration represents yet another great addition.
AOL Buys Bebo AOL bought Bebo, a mega popular (in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand) social networking site for $850 million. While the acquisition price has been widely panned as too expensive, it does underscore the importance of social sites being popular in countries other than the United States, and how MySpace and Facebook are not the only real players.
YouTube is running its second video awards, asking users to choose the videos that best defined 2007. Go to the 2007 Video Awards page and pick videos in twelve categories, from Comedy to Sports to Adorable. Voting runs through Wednesday.
Embedded above is a YouTube video that has a resolution of 480×360, up from the standard resolution of 320×240. Someone at the VideoHelp forums figured out that YouTube has started making available higher res versions of its videos, offering 480×360 videos if you append &fmt=18 to the end of a video URL, as well as higher quality audio. The video is MP4 with AAC audio.
Add &fmt=6 and get 448×336 video, with 44100 Hz audio, double the normal. Download time is slower, but with a good internet connection, you won’t notice anything but the higher quality video. If you are embedding the videos and want the higher quality version, add “&ap=%2526fmt%3D18″ after the video URL in both places in the embed code (or “&ap=%2526fmt%3D6″ for the non-MP4 high quality version). Cybernet has a good side-by-side comparison of the old and new image quality.
(via Ionut)
YouTube has added a beta version of its homepage that you can personalize and use as a dashboard of your activity, subscriptions and friends. You get a list of recommended videos based on your recent activity, the latest 12 videos from 3 of your subscribed channels, list of videos uploaded, favorited and rated by your YouTube contacts, the number of items in your inbox, and statistics about your videos and your activity.
You can get the page at youtube.com/iyt, and it can be customized in several ways.
Schick is running a YouTube video contest in order to promote its Quattro Titanium and Quattro Titanium Trimmer razors. Check out the (cheezy) video, or just go to the contest website:
To participate, contestants must submit a video to YouTube by March 18, a video that shows how the Quattro razor gave you a “smooth or finely sculpted look” that gives you confidence to do amazing things. Presumably, they want you to (try to) be funny and do completely absurd things that you could have never done, at least if not for your Schick® Quattro® Titanium Trimmer.
The public will vote on the best videos, with the winner receiving $25,000.
If you aren’t at all interested in the contest, you can still fill out a form and get a free razor in the mail.
Alexa.com’s rankings of popular websites, never terribly accurate but always debated and used in arguments, have dropped Google from their number 2 spot all the way to #4. Passing Google.com are Google’s own YouTube, now #2, and Microsoft’s Live.com, now #3. Here’s Alexa’s traffic graphs of the top five sites:
Alexa’s data is based on installations of its toolbar, which skews it to a particular and not always representative audience. However, the audience would tend not to use YouTube or Live.com as much as the general population, which makes this graph all the more interesting. While Google isn’t dropping, its competitors are recording significant gains, and Google may need to watch its back (or front, depending on who you believe).
YouTube held an event in New York City this week called Videocracy, trying to entice advertisers to the platform, and it talked up some upcoming releases for the top video site. Ian Schafer blogged it, and here’s what he saw:
Upgraded video editing tools
Video recommendations based on what you view (like Amazon’s recommendations)
Expanded distribution to new platforms, like phones and TVs
Advanced analytics tools, showing where video views are coming from (both geographic locations of viewers and websites referring viewers), as well as many other metrics
Upcoming events - YouTube Games (wacky and weird sports videos), Living Legends (content featuring the famous, starting with The Rolling Stones) and The YouTube Global Gathering (simultaneous worldwide events broadcast on YouTube)
Google is running this special Doodle logo for Valentine’s Day:
That’s actually pretty sweet. Last year’s Doodle was a mess, with a lot of sites reporting that Google had forgotten the “l” in Google:
Here’s the 2005 Valentine’s logo:
In 2006, Google did not celebrate Valentine’s Day because February 14 fell during the Winter Olympic Games, and Google runs special Olympic Doodles during those days.
If you forgot to get your special someone (or your pet, whatever) something for V-Day, might I recommend hitting up Rite-Aid on the way home? There’s always something there that says “I’m not a thoughtless jerk”.
Philipp notes that Google Docs is pink today, the Google Maps Street View guy is standing on a heart-shaped platform, and YouTube’s logo is heart-shaped.
Back when YouTube was a little (expensive money hemorrhaging) startup, it was hosted by ServerBeach, a subsidiary of Peer 1. YouTube was a difficult account as its size grew, requiring manual invoicing, but when the company finished transitioning its servers to Google’s data centers in November, the ServerBeach folks sent this sarcastic video to YouTube’s founders, who thought it was so funny, it had to be uploaded to YouTube.
The latest video making its way up the YouTube charts is a political music video, starring Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas and featuring a number of celebrities, turning a Barack Obama speech into an inspirational song.
Guest stars include Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock*, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger and Nick Cannon. Two days, 698,934 views already.
Don’t interpret this post as an endorsement of Senator Obama. I like him, and find him a welcome change in some ways, but until I get a chance to vote for him, if I get a chance to vote for him in November, I won’t know enough about his policies to decide if he is the man. Whoever you vote for, make sure you know everything about them, so you are making an informed decision.
And for god’s sake, vote if you can tomorrow! Even if you just cast your vote for a favored candidate who dropped out weeks ago, please, show up and show you count.
(via Al Walentis)
It’s worth noting that Google has on YouTube a Super Tuesday page, mapping out political videos from voters, candidates and news outlets related to tomorrow’s semi-national primary day.
* - am I the only person who can’t help but think of Tommy Boy when I hear “Herbie Hancock”?
