Google World

Android share doubles iPhone in U.S., Samsung most popular vendor

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 4 May 2012 23:34:00 -0700

Google’s share of the smartphone market in the United States is now nearly double that of Apple’s iPhone according to new data published Friday. A new report from market research firm iGR states that 47% of U.S. smartphone owners have Android devices while 24% own Apple’s iPhone. The company also found that Samsung is the most popular brand among Android users in the U.S. followed by Motorola, HTC and LG. Less than half of Android users researched the mobile OS before purchasing their smartphones according to the study, and 27% said Google’s reputation was a key factor when they made the decision to purchase an Android phone. ”Understanding why consumers select specific brands and certain smartphones is critical to the success of OEMs in the highly competitive U.S. handset market,” iGR Research Analyst Sarah Thoman said in a statement. “While a user’s current handset brand influences the selection of a new Android smartphone, many other factors also come into play. For example, handset display quality and functionality also highly influenced the smartphone purchase decision.” IGR’s press release follows below.

New iGR Research Shows Samsung as Most Preferred Android Device Brand Among Consumers

Consumer Surveys Also Show That 45 Percent of Android Users Researched the OS Prior to Purchase and Specifically Wanted an Android Device

AUSTIN, TX, Jan 20, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — The popularity of the Google Android smartphone operating system (OS) has increased significantly in the last few years. New iGR research shows that, at present, 47 percent of U.S. smartphone users have an Android device, followed by 24 percent who own/use an Apple iPhone. Of the major brands supporting Android, Samsung has the highest brand preference among consumers, followed by Motorola, HTC and LG. ZTE and Huawei ranked toward the bottom of the brands studied, although note that these brands currently sell comparatively lower volumes in the U.S. market.

iGR’s new research also shows that 45 percent of Android users researched the OS prior to purchase and specifically selected an Android device when they bought a new smartphone. It also appears that Google’s reputation is driving Android sales — 27 percent of Android users said that they selected an Android smartphone because they believed that Google was a “reputable company” and therefore inferred that Android must also be reputable.

These findings, as well as others relating to consumers’ Android brand preferences and impressions, are presented in iGR’s new market study Android Brand Preferences: U.S. Consumers, published in January 2012.

“Understanding why consumers select specific brands and certain smartphones is critical to the success of OEMs in the highly competitive U.S. handset market,” says iGR Research Analyst, Sarah Thoman, who authored the study. “While a user’s current handset brand influences the selection of a new Android smartphone, many other factors also come into play. For example, handset display quality and functionality also highly influenced the smartphone purchase decision.”

iGR’s new study, Android Brand Preferences: U.S. Consumers, addresses several key topics:

The number of Android smartphones sold in the U.S. in 2011 (by quarter)

Why consumers buy Android smartphones

The profile of the typical Android smartphone user

The handset features users like on Android smartphones

How consumers rank Android OEM brands and why

How the user’s current device brand impacts that user’s Android smartphone purchase

Which Android OEM brands are associated with the major mobile operators

U.S. Cellular: We’ll take the iPhone when Apple gives us LTE

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 4 May 2012 23:31:00 -0700

www.apple.com/tr/iphone/

It’s a common misconception that Apple is picking winners and losers among the wireless operators by bestowing or withholding the iPhone, but U.S. Cellular and its parent company TDS prove otherwise. TDS CEO Ted Carlson told attendees of a UBS analyst conferenceMonday that U.S. Cellular is waiting for Apple to offer a more “cutting edge” iPhone before U.S. Cellular would be willing to take the risk of selling it, FierceWireless reported. By cutting edge, U.S. Cellular means LTE.

In November, U.S. Cellular revealed that Apple had offered it the CDMA variant of the iPhone, but it declined, saying it couldn’t make the economics work. That makes a lot of sense in this case: selling the iPhone requires enormous upfront subsidies from wireless operators, leading U.S. Cellular to question the model’s profitability. In addition, the smartphone takes a tremendous toll on operators’ data networks.

Other regional operators like C Spire have risen to the challenge, but C Spire doesn’t have what U.S. Cellular has: a big, dense, data-hungry market like Chicago. U.S. Cellular only has 20 MHz of PCS spectrum in Chicago, with which it serves a tightly packed population of more than 13 million. U.S. Cellular doesn’t have that many 1X voice and EV-DO data carriers to go around. The iPhone’s enormous data impact likely would force U.S. Cellular to shift more voice channels to EV-DO, which might upset the delicate balance between voice and data services it has in Chicago.

The smarter thing to do, from U.S. Cellular’s perspective, is wait until Apple births an LTE smartphone, presumably the iPhone 5. U.S. Cellular plans to launch its own LTE network within the month, starting in smaller markets across its regional footprint.

But if U.S. Cellular does plan to support the LTE iPhone, it won’t launch it in Chicago – at least not with its current spectrum holdings. The operator failed to pick up any 700 MHz spectrum at auction in its flagship market, though it picked up licenses in all of the surrounding regions. U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless have filed a petition with the FCC to swap some of the former’s PCS spectrum throughout the country for some of the latter’s 700 MHz spectrum in Illinois and Indiana. If Chicago is part of that deal – and Verizon is flush with Windy City frequencies – then U.S. Cellular can build a complete iPhone-worthy 4G network.

Bringing self-driving cars to NASCAR

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:53:00 -0700

Ever since mankind could go fast, we have longed to go faster. And ever since we’ve done work, we have longed to have someone else, or something else, do that work for us. You might already be familiar with our self-driving car project. We’ve spent years working on a tough engineering problem—how to create a hardware and software system capable of gathering and interpreting massive amounts of real-time data and acting on that knowledge swiftly and surely enough to navigate innumerable varieties of crowded thoroughfares without ever once (among other human frailties) exploding in a fit of road rage at the guy who just cut hard left across your lane without even bothering to flash his blinker.

Well, our autonomous cars have now been test-driven (or rather, test-ridden) for more than 200,000 miles without a single machine-caused mishap. And today we're moving the project one great leap forward with Google Racing, a groundbreaking partnership with NASCAR to help self-driving vehicles compete in the world of stock car racing. We think the most important thing computers can do in the next decade is to drive cars—and that the most important thing Google Racing can do in the next decade is drive them, if possible, more quickly than anyone else. Or anything else.

Find more photos on our Google+ page

The program remains in its infancy; we’ll surely face numerous testing and competitive hurdles before our first car peels out into a NASCAR race. But I couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities. NASCAR’s ambitious technology investments—from driver safety to green initiatives—and the sport’s spirit of challenge, effort and execution all beautifully embody our most deeply held values as a company. Having skidded around a parking lot last week myself, I’m pretty sure that none of those test miles were as hard as it will be for one of our cars to hold its own in a field of 43 jacked-up, 800-horsepower beasts screaming down a straightaway within inches of each other at upwards of 200 miles per hour. I can't imagine a more exciting challenge for our team than to race our autonomous vehicles against their carbon-based competitors.

Find more photos on our Google+ page

Larry and I have always believed in tackling big problems that matter, and we’re surer than ever that self-driving cars are one of them, capable of changing the world in all kinds of truly important ways, like reducing traffic and accidents by driving more efficiently, making correct split-second decisions and never shifting their focus off the road to check a map, text a friend, apply rear-view mirror mascara or dip a piece of tekka maki into a lid of soy sauce jostling over on the passenger seat. I hope that today’s announcement of Google Racing will mark another step along this path, and spur innovations that improve the daily lives of people all over the world. Or at the very least offer us a few cool new thrills on hot weekend afternoons.

Update Apr 1, 10:05 a.m.: As you probably guessed—no, Google Racing isn’t real. We were really happy to work with NASCAR on this April Fools' joke. The technological advancements this sport has made in the last decade are impressive and while we won’t be providing self-driving cars to compete in the races, we look forward to working together with NASCAR in the future on projects like their YouTube channel. What better way to drive change?

Google+ Hangout with the UN Secretary-General

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:50:00 -0700

We’re passionate about changing the world. But there’s another organization that’s equally passionate—and has been doing it a lot longer. For more than 60 years, the United Nations has worked to advance a global agenda on ending war and poverty, promoting human rights, protecting the environment and dealing with humanitarian crises—critical issues that will determine the quality of life for future generations to come.

So we’re delighted that on Tuesday, April 10, some of the voices of the next generation will have the chance to participate in an exclusive global conversation with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon via a Google+ Hangout from the United Nations headquarters in New York. Six young people, selected in consultation with partners in civil society, academia and United Nations offices in the field, will join from the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, and have the opportunity to ask questions on the issues that matter to them.

The Google+ Hangout with the UN Secretary-General will be streamed live at 3:30pm ET on April 10 at youtube.com/unitednations. David C. Drummond, Google’s SVP of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, will moderate.

Technology has given us the chance to advance the important work of the UN, while ensuring that global politics is made more accountable to citizens. We’re thrilled that Google can help play a small part in this.

Toward a simpler, more beautiful Google

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:48:00 -0700

Update 5:49pm: for our international readers, this post is also available in French,German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish (Latin America, Spain). - Ed.

More than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+, enjoying new ways to share in Search, Gmail, YouTube and lots of other places. It's still early days, and there’s plenty left to do, but we're more excited than ever to build a seamless social experience, all across Google.

A critical piece of this social layer is a design that grows alongside our aspirations. So today we’re introducing a more functional and flexible version of Google+. We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.

Navigation you can make your own
One of the first things you’ll notice is a new way to get around the stream. Instead of static icons at the top, there’s a dynamic ribbon of applications on the left. This approach comes with lots of perks, but some of our favorites include:

You can drag apps up or down to create the order you want
You can hover over certain apps to reveal a set of quick actions
You can show or hide apps by moving them in and out of “More”

Taken together, these powers make it easier to access your favorites, and to adjust your preferences over time. We've also built the ribbon with the future in mind, giving us an obvious (and clutter-free) space for The Next Big Feature, and The Feature After That. So stay tuned.

Conversations you’ll really care about
Once you’ve upgraded to Google+, it’s easy to share with your circles from just about anywhere. We’re dreaming bigger, though. We're aiming for an experience that fuses utility with beauty—one that inspires you to connect with others, and cherish the conversations that unfold. Today’s update is an important step in this direction, including:

Full bleed photos and videos that'll make you really proud to post
A stream of conversation "cards" that make it easier to scan and join discussions
An activity drawer that highlights the community around your content

Simply put, we're hoping to make sharing more awesome by making it more evocative. You know that feeling you get when a piece of art takes your breath away, or when a friend stops by with unexpected gifts? We want sharing to feel like that, every single time.

A new home for hanging out
Google+ Hangouts uses live video to bring people together, and the results range from heartwarming to breathtaking to music-making. Today we're adding a dedicated Hangouts page that creates even more opportunities to connect in person, including:

An always-updated list of invitations from the people in your circles
Quick access to every public and On Air hangout, for those times when you want to meet someone new, or watch a live broadcast
A rotating billboard of popular hangouts, pro tips and other items you don’t want to miss

By highlighting all the hangouts you can join, all over the world, it’s now easier to spend time together—even be there for each other. And with efforts like hangout apps already underway, you can expect more hangouts in more places in the future.

Getting there from here
Today's Google+ update extends beyond navigation, the stream and hangouts. For instance: there's a new Explore page that shows what's interesting and trending across the network. And a new profile with much bigger photos. And a new chat list that puts your friends front and center. And a whole lot more.

We're rolling out all of these improvements over the next few days, so please check back if you don't see them yet. In the meantime, you can visit this overview to learn more.

By focusing on you, the people you care about, and the stuff you’re into, we’re going to continue upgrading all the features you already know and love—from Search and Maps to Gmail and YouTube. With today’s foundational changes we can move even faster—toward a simpler, more beautiful Google.

Celebrating the Google Photography Prize Finalists

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:46:00 -0700

Back in November we announced the Google Photography Prize 2012, a competition offering student photographers a chance to share their best photographs with the world.

Groundbreaking photographer Ansel Adams once said, “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs,” so we left the themes for submission suitably broad, with 10 categories that combined classic photography genres with online photography trends including “Night,” “Travel,” “Sound/Silence” and “Me.”

We were thrilled by the interest in the contest: nearly 20,000 students from 146 countries took part, of which 100 were shortlisted. You can see these in the gallery on our website.

Our judging panel of seven leading photography experts chose the 10 finalists whose work will be shown in our exhibition in the Saatchi Gallery. Today we’re announcing the finalists: Collin Avery (U.S.), Viktor Johansson (Sweden), Kyrre Lien (Norway),Alexandra Claudia Manta (Romania), Balázs Maté (Hungary), Adi Sason (Israel),Oliver Seary (UK), Dana Stirling (Israel), Sasha Tamarin (Israel), Zhao Yi (China). Here are examples of the finalists' work—you can see their full albums on their Google+ profiles.

If you’re in London, come to the Saatchi Gallery to see the work of our finalists displayed alongside a new exhibition of international photography, Out of Focus, starting April 25. The overall winner of the Google Photography Prize will be announced on April 24, and will go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to a location of their choice with a professional photographer as their mentor.

We hope you enjoy these fantastic photos as much as we did.

Google World Inside view on ads review

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:44:00 -0700

This is the first in a series of posts that will provide greater transparency about how we make our ads safer by detecting and removing scam ads. -Ed.

A few weeks ago, we posted here about our efforts in fighting bad ads, and we shared a video with the basics of how we do it. Today I wanted to delve a little deeper and give some insight into the systems we use to help prevent bad ads from showing. Ourads policies are designed with safety and trust in mind—we don’t allow ads formalicious downloads, counterfeit goods, or ads with unclear billing practices, to name a few examples. In order to help prevent these kinds of ads from showing, we use a combination of automated systems and human input to review the billions of ads submitted to Google each year. I’m one of many engineers whose job is to help make sure that Google doesn’t show bad ads to users.

We’ve designed our approach based on a three-pronged strategy, each focused on a different dimension of the problem: ads, sites, and advertiser accounts. These systems are complementary, sharing signals among each other so that we can comprehensively attack bad ads.

For example, in the case of a site that is selling counterfeit goods, this three-pronged approach aims to look for patterns that would flag such a site and help prevent ads from showing. Ad review notices patterns in the ads and keywords selected by the advertiser. Site review analyzes the entire site to determine if it is selling counterfeit goods. Account review aims to determine if a new advertiser is truly new, or is simply a repeat offender trying to abuse Google’s advertising system. Here’s more detail on how we review each of these three components.

Ad Review
An ad is the snippet of information presented to a user, along with a link to a specific webpage, or landing page. The ads review system inspects individual ads and landing pages, and is probably the system most familiar to advertisers. When an advertiser submits an ad, our system immediately performs a preliminary examination. If there’s nothing in the ad that flags a need for further review, we tell the advertiser the ad is “Eligible” and show the ad only on google.com to users who have SafeSearch turned off. If the ad is flagged for further review, in most cases we refer to the ad as “Under Review” and don’t show the ad at all. From there, the ad enters our automated pipeline, where we employ machine learning models, a rules engine and landing page analysis to perform a more extensive examination. If our automated system determines an outcome with a high degree of confidence, we will either approve the ad to run on Google and all of our partners (“Approved”), approve the ad to show for appropriate users in specific locations (“Approved - Limited”) or reject the ad (“Disapproved”). If our automated system isn’t able to determine the outcome, we send the ad to a real person to make a final decision.

Site Review
A site has many different pages, each of which could be pointed to by different ads, often known as a domain. Our site review system identifies policy issues which apply to the whole site. It aggregates sites across all ads from all advertisers and regularly crawls them, building a repository of information that’s constantly improving as new scams and new sites are examined. We store the content of advertised sites and use both machine learning models and a rules engine to analyze the sites. The magic of the site review system is it understands the structure of language on webpages in order to classify the content of sites. Site review will determine whether or not an entire site should be disabled, which would prevent any ads leading to that site showing from any account. When the automated system isn’t able to determine the outcome with a high degree of confidence, we send it to a real person to make a decision. When a site is disabled, we tell the advertiser that it’s in violation of “Site Policy.”

Account Review
An account is one particular advertiser’s collection of ads, plus the advertiser’s selections for targeting and bidding on those ads. An account may have many ads which may point to several different sites, for example. The account review system constantly evaluates individual advertiser accounts to determine if the whole account should be inspected and shut down for policy violations. This system “listens” to a variety of signals, such as ads and keywords submitted by the advertiser, budget changes, the advertiser’s address and phone number, the advertiser’s IP address, disabled sites connected to this account, and disapproved ads. The system constantly re-evaluates all accounts, incorporating new data. For example, if an advertiser logs in from a new IP address, the account is re-evaluated to determine if that new signal suggests we should take a closer look at the content of the advertiser’s account. If the account review system determines that there is something suspect about a particular account with a high degree of confidence, it automatically suspends the account. If the system isn’t sure, it stops the account from showing any ads at all and asks a real person to decide if the account should be suspended.

Even with all these systems and people working to stop bad ads, there still can be times when an ad slips through that we don’t want. There are many malicious players who are very persistent—they seek to abuse Google’s advertising system in order to take advantage of our users. When we shut down a thousand accounts, they create two thousand more using different patterns. It’s a never-ending game of cat and mouse.

We’ve put a great deal of effort and expense into building these systems because Google’s long-term success is based on the trust of people who use our products. I’ve focused my time and energy in this area for many years. I find it inspiring to fight the good fight, to focus on the user, and do everything we can to help prevent bad ads from running. I’ll continue to post here from time to time with additional thoughts and greater information about how we make ads safer by detecting and removing scam ads.

Exploring Jerusalem’s Old City streets with Street View

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:42:00 -0700

Every year, 3.5 million people come to Israel to visit ancient sites that are holy to billions of people, to walk among the unique stone of Jerusalem, or to relax on the beaches of the Mediterranean.

Inside Jerusalem's Old City

To help you explore Israel’s history and present, we’ve launched imagery of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Haifa on Street View. You can explore the narrow streets of Jerusalem’s Old City and each of its four quarters, walk along the Via Dolorosa and see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, visit the Western Wall and theMount of Olives. You can stop by the Biblical Zoo, then visit the Israel Museum and the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum—and explore more with the Art Project and the Yad Vashem photo archive. Or you can stroll through Tel Aviv’s bohemian Neve Tzedek neighborhood and the ancient port of Jaffa, and take a virtual trip to some of Tel Aviv’s scenic beaches or to Haifa’s Baha’i Gardens.

We hope you’ll use Street View to discover, explore and more. Some are already using the new imagery to help others—for example, Access Israel, an organization working to make Israel more accessible for people with disabilities, has embedded Street View in its accessibility mapping project of Israeli cities (note: in Hebrew).

We’ll be adding more Street View coverage of sites and streets in the coming months, and are hoping to bring Street View to more places around the region soon.

Google World explain to people how to use google for perfectly

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 17:07:00 -0700

googleworld-tr blogspot | izlesene.com

Google world-tr still going on to explain eveything about google. if you dont know how to use google perfectly you should watch this video.

More Options for Google+ Badges

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 9 Apr 2012 07:34:00 -0700

UPDATE (2/2/12): The new Google+ badge is now out of preview and available to all users on all sites.

When we launched Google+ pages in November, we also released Google+ badges to promote your Google+ presence right on your site. Starting today in developer preview (and soon available to all your users), we're adding more options for integrating the Google+ badge into your website. You can configure a badge with a width that fits your site design and choose a version that works better on darker sites. You'll also see that Google+ badges now include the unified +1 and circle count that we added to Pages last month.

If you’re still considering whether to add a Google+ badge on your website, consider this: We recently looked at top sites using the badge and found that, on average, the badge accounted for an additional 38% of followers. When you add the badge visitors to your website can discover your Google+ page and connect in a variety of ways: they can follow your Google+ page, +1 your site, share your site with their circles, see which of their friends have +1’d your site, and click through to visit your Google+ page.

The Google+ Badge makes it easy for your fans to find and follow you on Google+. With these additional options, we hope it's even easier to create a badge that fits your website.

Follow the conversation on Google+.

Improving Google+ Plugins Across the Web

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 9 Apr 2012 07:32:00 -0700

Over a million websites use Google+ plugins -- like the +1 button and the badge for Pages -- to help visitors connect with their brand and share their content with others. Today we're excited to announce a number of improvements to these plugins that make sharing and connecting even easier.

Easier to share from the +1 button
Starting today, it’ll be a little easier to share right from the +1 buttons all across the web. Now, after you +1 something, the share box will pop open right away, without an extra click. Add a comment if you want, choose the people you want to share with, and you’re done.

Easier to follow brands and businesses
When you add Google+ pages to your circles, it's typically to follow their news and updates. That's why we're updating badges for Google+ pages to read "Follow." With just one click, this button adds a business or brand to your "Following" circle, and if you want to customize which circle they're in, you can do that too.

If you're one of the many businesses and brands with a Google+ page, we've also put together a handy style guide (pdf) which includes recommended language and images for promoting your page.

Adding a badge for people, not just pages
We heard you! Now anyone (including Britney Spears!) can add a personal Google+ badge to their web pages, and let visitors add them to circles quickly and easily.
We’ve got lots more planned for the Google+ plugins, stay tuned!

#googleplusupdate

A New Look for the +1 Button

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 9 Apr 2012 07:31:00 -0700

UPDATE (3/14/12): Today, we released the new +1 button from preview and it’s now rolling out to all users. You may also notice the numbers in your +1 buttons increase, as we update our plugins to better reflect social activity around your content. Our Webmaster Tools Help Center article has more details on this update. Join the conversation on Google+.

Following in the footsteps of our new red and white Google+ icon, the +1 button is sporting a fresh coat of paint. Starting today, this update will be visible first to our Google+ Platform Preview Groupand shortly thereafter we’ll roll it out to the public.

Check out the new pixels:

Before you’ve +1’d

After you’ve +1’d

The +1 buttons you’ve already installed will automatically update; there’s nothing you need to do. Stop by the updated configuration tool to see how these changes look across all the various sizes and shapes of the +1 button.

We’ll update this post when these changes graduate to the public.

Follow the conversation on Google+.

Moving the Google+ Hangouts API Out of Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 9 Apr 2012 07:30:00 -0700

One of the most important ways we connect with others is in person. That's why we're so excited about Google+ Hangouts, and why we launched a preview of the Hangouts API a few months ago. Today we're moving this API out of preview, and enabling developers to launch and share their hangout apps with the entire Google+ community!

Hangout apps are regular web apps, running in a big window inside the Hangout UI. In addition to using shared-state APIs to give users real-time interactivity, you also have access to built-in Hangout features, such as:

Initiate a group video chat with up to 10 people
Control hangout microphones, cameras, speakers and volume levels
Add sound effects and attach image overlays to faces
Set UI elements such as the video feed, chat pane, and notifications

It’s easy to get started: read the documentation, build and publish your app, and then let users know. You can easily get the word out in one of two ways: 1) post a link to it on Google+, and/or 2) add the new hangout button to your website. In either case, anyone who clicks will start a new hangout with your app running inside. It then appears in the “Recent” apps pane for future hangouts.

To get the ball rolling, we're introducing a new "Apps" pane in Google+ Hangouts, as well as some featured applications, including Aces Hangout, Cacoo, Scoot & Doodle, Slideshare, Clubhouse Challenge by Bravo, and Google Effects. We’re looking forward to seeing what you can dream up in the weeks and months ahead.

Follow the conversation on Google+, and happy building!

Eadweard Muybridge on Google Screen

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 9 Apr 2012 04:10:00 -0700

Eadweard J. Muybridge ( /ˌɛdwərd ˈmaɪbrɪdʒ/; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904) was an English photographer of Dutch ancestry who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.^[1]

Names

Born Edward James Muggeridge, he changed his name several times early in his US career. First he changed his forenames to the Spanish equivalent Eduardo Santiago, perhaps because of the Spanish influence on Californian place names. His surname appears at times as Muggridge and Muygridge (possibly due to misspellings), and Muybridge from the 1860s.
In the 1870s he changed his first name again to Eadweard, to match the spelling of King Edward shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which was re-erected in Kingston in 1850. His name remained Eadweard Muybridge for the rest of his career.^[2] However, his gravestone bears a further variant, Eadweard Maybridge.
He used the pseudonym Helios (Greek god of the sun) on many of his photographs, and also as the name of his studio and his son's middle name.^[3]

Early life and career

Muybridge was born at Kingston upon Thames, England on 9 April 1830. He emigrated to the US, arriving in San Francisco in 1855, where he started a career as a publisher's agent and bookseller. He left San Francisco at the end of the 1850s, and after a stagecoach accident in which he received severe head injuries, returned to England for a few years.
While recuperating back in England, he took up photography seriously sometime between 1861 and 1866, where he learned the wet-collodion process.^[4]^[5]
He reappeared in San Francisco in 1866 and rapidly became successful in photography, focusing principally on landscape and architectural subjects, although his business cards also advertised his services for portraiture.^[6] His photographs were sold by various photographic entrepreneurs on Montgomery Street (most notably the firm of Bradley & Rulofson), San Francisco's main commercial street, during those years.

Photographing the West

Muybridge began to build his reputation in 1867 with photos of Yosemite and San Francisco (many of the Yosemite photographs reproduced the same scenes taken by Carleton Watkins). Muybridge quickly gained notice for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West, published under his pseudonym Helios.^[7] In the summer of 1873 Muybridge was commissioned to photograph the Modoc War, one of the US Army's expeditions against West Coast Indians.^[8]

Stanford and the galloping question

Main article: Sallie Gardner at a Gallop

Muybridge's The Horse in Motion

In 1872, former Governor of California Leland Stanford, a businessman and race-horse owner, had taken a position on a popularly-debated question of the day: whether all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time during the trot. Up until this time, most paintings of horses at full gallop showed the front legs extended forward and the hind legs extended to the rear.^[9] Stanford sided with this assertion, called "unsupported transit", and took it upon himself to prove it scientifically. Stanford sought out Muybridge and hired him to settle the question.^[10]
In later studies Muybridge used a series of large cameras that used glass plates placed in a line, each one being triggered by a thread as the horse passed. Later a clockwork device was used. The images were copied in the form of silhouettes onto a disc and viewed in a machine called a Zoopraxiscope. This in fact became an intermediate stage towards motion pictures or cinematography.

Galloping horse set to motion using photos by Eadweard Muybridge.

In 1877, Muybridge settled Stanford's question with a single photographic negative showing Stanford's Standardbred trotting horse Occident airborne at the trot. This negative was lost, but it survives through woodcuts made at the time. By 1878, spurred on by Stanford to expand the experiment, Muybridge had successfully photographed a horse in fast motion.^[11]
Another series of photos taken at the Palo Alto Stock Farm in Stanford, California, is called Sallie Gardner at a Gallop or The Horse in Motion, and shows that the hooves do all leave the ground simultaneously — although not with the legs fully extended forward and back, as contemporary illustrators tended to imagine, but rather at the moment when all the hooves are tucked under the horse as it switches from "pulling" with the front legs to "pushing" with the back legs.^[10] This series of photos stands as one of the earliest forms of videography.
Eventually, Muybridge and Stanford had a major falling-out concerning his research on equine locomotion. Stanford published a book The Horse in Motion which gave no credit to Muybridge despite containing his photos and his research, possibly because Muybridge lacked an established reputation in the scientific community. As a result of Muybridge's lack of credit for the work, the Royal Society withdrew an offer to fund his stop-motion photography. Muybridge subsequently filed a lawsuit against Stanford, but lost the dispute.^[10]

Murder, acquittal and paternity

In 1874, still living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Muybridge discovered that his wife had a lover, a Major Harry Larkyns. On 17 October, he sought out Larkyns and said, "Good evening, Major, my name is Muybridge and here's the answer to the letter you sent my wife"; he then killed the Major with a gunshot.^[12]
Muybridge was put on trial for murder. One aspect of his defense was a plea of insanity due to a head injury that Muybridge had sustained following his stagecoach accident. Friends testified that the accident dramatically changed Muybridge's personality from genial and pleasant to unstable and erratic. The jury dismissed the insanity plea, but he was acquitted for "justifiable homicide". The episode interrupted his horse photography experiment, but not his relationship with Stanford, who paid for his criminal defense.^[13]
After the acquittal, Muybridge left the United States for a time to take photographs in Central America, returning in 1877. He had his son, Florado Helios Muybridge (nicknamed "Floddie" by friends), put in an orphanage. Muybridge believed Larkyns to be his son's true father, although as an adult, the son bore a remarkable resemblance to Muybridge. As an adult, Floddie worked as a ranch hand and gardener. In 1944 he was hit by a car in Sacramento and killed.^[14]

Later work

American bison cantering – set to motion using photos by Eadweard Muybridge

Muybridge often travelled back to England, and on 13 March 1882 he lectured at the Royal Institution in London in front of a sell out audience that included members of the Royal Family, notably the future King Edward VII.^[15] He displayed his photographs on screen and described the motion picture via his zoopraxiscope.^[15]
At the University of Pennsylvania and the local zoo Muybridge used banks of cameras to photograph people and animals to study their movement. The models, either entirely nude or with very little clothing, were photographed in a variety of undertakings, ranging from boxing, to walking down stairs, to throwing water over one another and carrying buckets of water. Between 1883 and 1886 he made a total of 100,000 images, working under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. They were published as 781 plates comprising 20,000 of the photographs in a collection titled Animal Locomotion.^[16] Muybridge's work stands near the beginning of the science of biomechanics and the mechanics of athletics.

A phenakistoscope disc by Muybridge (1893)

The phenakistoscope – a couple waltzing

Recent scholarship has pointed to the influence of Étienne-Jules Marey on Muybridge's later work. Muybridge visited Marey's studio in France and saw Marey's stop-motion studies before returning to the U.S. to further his own work in the same area. However, whereas Marey's scientific achievements in the realms of cardiology and aerodynamics (as well as pioneering work in photography and chronophotography) are indisputable, Muybridge's efforts were to some degree artistic rather than scientific. As Muybridge himself explained, in some of his published sequences he substituted images where exposures failed, in order to illustrate a representative movement (rather than producing a strictly scientific recording of a particular sequence).
Similar setups of carefully timed multiple cameras are used in modern special effects photography with the opposite goal of capturing changing camera angles with little or no movement of the subject. This is often dubbed "bullet time" photography.
At the Chicago 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Muybridge gave a series of lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion in the Zoopraxographical Hall, built specially for that purpose in the "Midway Plaisance" arm of the exposition. He used his zoopraxiscope to show his moving pictures to a paying public, making the Hall the very first commercial movie theater.^[17]

Death

Eadweard Muybridge returned to his native England for good in 1894, published two further, popular books of his work, and died on 8 May 1904 in Kingston upon Thames while living at the home of his cousin Catherine Smith, Park View, 2 Liverpool Road. The house has a British Film Institute commemorative plaque on the outside wall which was unveiled in 2004.^[18] Muybridge was cremated and his ashes interred at Woking in Surrey.

Legacy

Many of Muybridge's photographic sequences have been published since the 1950s as artists' reference books.^{[citation needed]} Cartoon animators often use Muybridge's photos as a reference when drawing their characters. Since 1991, the company Optical Toys has published Muybridge sequences in the form of movie flipbooks.
Filmmaker Thom Andersen made a 1974 documentary titled Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer, describing his life and work.
Composer Philip Glass's 1982 opera The Photographer is based on Muybridge's murder trial, with a libretto including text from the court transcript. A promotional music video featured an excerpt of the opera dramatizing the murder and trial, and included a considerable number of Muybridge images.
The play Studies in Motion: The hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge debuted in 2006, a co-production between Vancouver's Electric Company Theatre and the University of British Columbia Theatre. While blending fiction with fact, it tells the story of Muybridge's obsession with cataloguing animal motion. The production started touring in 2010.
In 2007, Canadian poet Rob Winger wrote Muybridge's Horse: a poem in three phases, a long poem nominated for the Governor General's Award for Literature, Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and Ottawa Book Award. It documented his life and obsessions in a 'poetic-photographic' style. It won the CBC Literary Award for Poetry.
In 1985, the music video for Larry Gowan's single "(You're a) Strange Animal" prominently featured animation rotoscoped from Muybridge's work. In 1986, a galloping horse sequence was used in the background of the John Farnham music video for the song "Pressure Down". In 1993, the rock band U2 made a video of their song "Lemon" into a tribute to Muybridge's techniques. In 2004, the electronic music group The Crystal Method made a music video to their song "Born Too Slow" which was based on Muybridge's work, including a man walking in front of a background grid.
Kingston University in London, UK has a building named in recognition of Muybridge's work as one of Britain's most influential photographers.
In addition, Muybridge's work has influenced:

Harold Eugene Edgerton — pioneered stroboscopic and high speed photography and film, producing an Oscar-winning short movie and many striking photographic sequences
Étienne-Jules Marey — recorded first series of live action with a single camera
Thomas Eakins — American artist who worked with and continued Muybridge's motion studies, and incorporated the findings into his own artwork
Thomas Edison — owned patents for motion picture cameras
William Dickson — credited as inventor of motion picture camera
Marcel Duchamp — artist, painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2
Francis Bacon — artist who made numerous paintings from photographs by Muybridge
John Gaeta — used the principles of Muybridge's photography to create the bullet time slow-motion technique of the 1999 movie The Matrix.^[19]
Steven Pippin — British artist who converted a row of laundromat washing machines into sequential cameras in the style of Muybridge

Exhibitions and collections

A collection of Muybridge's equipment, including his original biunial slide lantern^[20] and Zoopraxiscope projector, can be viewed at the Kingston Museum in Kingston upon Thames, South West London. The University of Pennsylvania Archives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania hold a large collection of Muybridge's photographs, equipment, and correspondence.^[21]
In 1991, the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts hosted a major exhibition of Muybridge's work, which later traveled to other venues. A book-length exhibition catalogue was also published.^[22] The Addison Gallery has significant holdings of Muybridge's photographic work.^[23]
In 2000–2001, the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History presented the exhibition Freeze Frame: Eadweard Muybridge's Photography of Motion, plus an online virtual exhibit.^[24]
From 10 April through 18 July 2010, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. mounted a major retrospective of Muybridge's work entitled Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change. The exhibit has received favorable reviews from major publications including The New York Times.^[25]
An exhibition bringing together around 150 of Muybridge's works took place in autumn 2010 at the Tate Britain, Millbank, London.^[26] An exhibition of important items bequeathed by Muybridge to his birthplace of Kingston upon Thames, entitled Muybridge Revolutions, opened at the Kingston Museum on 18 September 2010 (exactly a century since the first Muybridge exhibition at the Museum) and ran until 12 February 2011.^[27]

^{from wikipedia.org}

25 Google Plus Resources, Articles, and Reviews to Help You Get Started

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 8 Apr 2012 02:27:00 -0700

Google+ (or is it “Google Plus”?), the search giant’s big social initiative, has arrived and there’s a lot to learn. Google’s answer to Facebook has been in the works for a year and has been delayed several times due to disagreements about its design, purpose, and execution. Facebook’s threat to Google’s domination of the Web was a wake-up call that ignited the development of the new social platform. Even though Facebook’s traffic seems to be slowing in the U.S. and Canada, the network’s exponential growth frightened Google’s leadership into taking action. When Facebook discovered the company’s plans, it went into “lockdown” for 60 days and focused on completing new features like Facebook Groups, Facebook Messages, and Facebook Places.
Google refers to Google+ as a “project” rather than a product, stressing that its goal is to make Google itself more social rather than being a standalone social network that competes directly with Facebook. “It’s ‘Plus’ because it takes products from Google and makes them better and ‘project’ because it’s an ongoing set of products,” said Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of Social. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably, well, a duck. And Google+ looks like and quacks like Facebook in many ways.

I’ve jumped into the Google Plus fray to try it out and determine what potential benefits it offers social media marketers. If you’d like to connect with me on Google+, I’m happy to include you in my circle!

25 articles, resources, and reviews to help you understand the basics of Google+

Google+ Unveiled: 9 Things You Need to Know
A handy guide for learning all about Google+ features.
Facebook vs. Google+ [Infographic]
A nice side-by-side comparison.
A Walkthrough of Google’s New Social Network, Google+
Screenshots of Google+ features that show you the basics of the platform.
Getting Started With Google Plus
A screencast by Chris Brogan that shows what to do.
Circles, Hangouts, Sparks: A simple guide to getting started in Google Plus
While experienced social media users will have an inherent understanding of the of the similarities between Google Plus and other social media platforms, there are several unique features to Google’s new service.
The Google Plus 50
50 thoughts about Google Plus, also from Chris Brogan.
How To Use Google Plus
At its core level, Plus is not that much different from other social networks, yet there’s also so much more. How do you get started with Google Plus? Here’s a breakdown of the nuts and bolts.
Google+: The Complete Guide
Google+ isn’t the easiest thing to understand. It has a lot of features that can confuse beginners. Even advanced users can miss a lot of the little gems and nuances that define Google+.
Google+ Guide: All You Need to Know about Google+
A detailed guide which explains all the basic and advanced features such as UI, Profile, friends, chat, spark, features.
28 Google+ Tips to Enhance Your Google Plus Experience
A list of handy tips and tricks.
Google Plus: 8 Quick Tips and Tricks
Google Plus (aka Google+), Google’s new social network, might offer the right mix of sharing and privacy to woo you away from your Facebook account. If you don’t know how to use it, though, it’s just a confusing mess of circles and contacts.
Your Google+ Guide: 15 Tips For Newbies
What exactly are these “Sparks” and “Circles”? And what are the other key features of Google+? How can you make the most of your Google+ experience?
Google+ Improves on Facebook
Google+, Google’s social network, has easy-to-use privacy controls and allows video chats with as many as 10 people.
19 Essential Google+ Resources
A collection of tools, reviews, and tips
61 Google Plus Tips, Thoughts, and Requests
Enough said.
How to Create Google Plus Profile Custom URL
Interested in adding the new Google Plus to your social media repertoire? Be sure and grab a custom URL for your Google Plus Profile.
5 Things Small Businesses Must Know About Google Plus
Google+ (also known as G+, Google Plus or Plus) is the biggest trending topic online these days. So, what is it and why should you care about it?
How Will Google Plus Affect SEO?
Officially, there’s no official indication of how Plus will affect SEO, but plenty of speculation and some obvious hints about where things may be headed.
Facebook engineers bring Google+ Circles to Facebook
Four Facebook engineers have built Circle Hack, which lets you build friend lists on Facebook exactly how you build Circles on Google+.
Google Plus vs. Facebook: 6 Things Google+ Has That Facebook Doesn’t
As the title suggests, this is a rundown of how Google+ is different from Facebook.
Google+: Where all the guys are
Google+ is the equivalent of Alaska in the social networking world. At least two sites tracking Google+ user demographics say males make up more than 73 percent of the site’s users.
By the Numbers: Google+ the Biggest Social Network Launch Ever?
Two-week-old Google+ has 10 million users already. That’s an enormous number, and makes it likely that Google+ has had the fastest out-of-the-gate velocity of any social network ever.
Google+ and its two-pronged relevance problem
Google Plus has got off to a great start, but it faces two problems – both related to relevance.
Paul Adams: Seeing Google+ In Public Is Like Bumping Into An Ex-Girlfriend
“It was like when you first see her you have a moment where you have a niggle of regret and wonder for a split second, but that quickly passes when you remember why you broke up with her.”
What MySpace’s Tom Anderson Thinks of Google+
Tom Anderson, best known as the default friend on MySpace during its early years, co-founded MySpace with Chris DeWolfe in 2003.

Have you found any Google+ resources around the Web that you think are particularly helpful? Please share them!

WSJ Pulls Back On What Google Searchers Can Read For Free

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 8 Apr 2012 02:25:00 -0700

Are you used to using Google as a way around the Wall Street Journal’s paywall? Think again. The WSJ has been holding back stories available through Google’s “First Click Free” program, a move that I suspect other newspapers might soon emulate.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that I wasn’t able to read some Wall Street Journal stories when visiting from Google. I figured this was some type of bug. But a recent case got me digging deeper: the Journal’s story about how Google created a workaround past Safari’s default privacy settings as a way of enabling +1 buttons on Google’s ads.
I was unable to read the full story after finding it listed in search results at Google, either in regular Google web search listings or in Google News. Instead, I was shown only a short summary with a prompt to subscribe or log-in. That shouldn’t have been the case, given that the WSJ participates in the First Click Free program, which I’ll explain in more depth below.

WSJ: Not Everything Included In First Click Free

As it turns out, the Journal has been keeping some stories out of First Click Free for over half-a-year.
“Google FCF [First Click Free] is a way to introduce our content to new readers and broaden our audience. As a strategy, we hold back a few of our top stories by not having the full story crawled, which limits select articles from being available via FCF. We have been doing this since last summer as a strategy to encourage subscriptions,” emailed Ashley S. Huston, Vice President, Corporate Communications, for the Wall Street Journal, when I asked about the situation.

What Is First Click Free?

The Wall Street Journal, like many newspapers with registration requirements or paywalls, participates in Google’s First Click Free program. That program allows publications to provide the full-text of articles to Google that are normally kept behind some type of barrier. This means Google can better understand what a story is about, which in turn means it might have more visibility in Google, generating more traffic for the publication.
To be in First Click Free, Google requires that anyone coming to those articles from a Google search be allowed to read the entire article, without having to register or pay. This helps reduce people who get upset with Google for listing content that they can’t easily view.
If the person tries to click from the article they found via search to another article, then a barrier is allowed to go up. They get the first click from Google for free, hence the “First Click Free” name. All subsequent clicks can be blocked unless they’ve registered or paid.
What prevents someone from finding the articles they want, then searching for them and repeatedly using First Click Free to bypass barriers? Google does allow limitations. People must be allowed up to five free clicks per day, the rules say. Then they can be limited.
That five free clicks per day rule, by the way, is why the New York Times limits visitors from search engines to that amount even though oddly, it allows anyone from social media sites to have as many reads as they want. My article from last year, The Leaky New York Times Paywall & How Google Limits Led To Search Engine Limits, explains more about this.

WSJ Goes Hybrid: First Click Free & Subscription Required

First Click Free has typically been an all-or-nothing implementation by newspapers. They’ve either made all their content available through the program (such as the New York Times does) or none of it (such as The Times does). The WSJ is pioneering a hybrid model. Some content is offered through First Click Free. Some isn’t at all.
In the case of the WSJ’s Google-Safari privacy article, unless you paid, you simply were not going to read it. It was an effective strategy. My WSJ subscription had lapsed about two weeks before the article came out. I was waiting for the inevitable renewal offer for around $150 per year for home delivery and web access. But I wanted to read that story so much that day that I renewed at the $260 list price.
Today, by the way, the article is available for free. That’s even more cleverness on the part of the WSJ. Now that it has become dated, along with being widely cited and excerpted, there’s probably more value in making it completely open for anyone to read (and likely link to), as a way of building traffic that earns ad revenue, rather than subscription revenue.
Here’s another example of the selective withholding in action. Consider this WSJ story that’s listed in Google:

If I click on that story from Google to the WSJ, I get a barrier — so it’s being withheld from First Click Free:

Is It Cloaking?

At this point, some search marketers and others technically savvy about how Google works might be wondering if the WSJ is cloaking, a huge no-no with Google.

Cloaking means that you show Google something different than you show human visitors. Google dislikes this. It wants to see exactly what a human visitor to a site would see, lest the site somehow try to trick Google (say showing content that says a page is about one thing, when it’s about something else).

The problem here is that what a human visitor sees will depend on whether they have a WSJ subscription or not. Those who do see the full article. Those who don’t see only a summary.

In cases like this, the fallback to determine if cloaking is happening is usually whether a publication is doing something special for Google that it wouldn’t do for humans. On that basis, the WSJ seems fine.

No, Not Cloaking

For this particular article, the WSJ is doing nothing out-of-the-ordinary for Google than it would do for any other visitor who doesn’t have a subscription. Only a summary article is shown to Google, as the cached version reflects:

Oddly, somehow Google is seeing the full-article for the page snapshot (Google Instant Preview) it makes that leads to the cached copy, when you hover your mouse to the right of the listing:

Overall, the Journal seems to have found an interesting way to have its Google cake and eat it, too. It gets to participate in First Click Free, which allows the full-text of its articles to be recorded by Google (full-text articles are more likely to rank for a wider-range of searches than summaries). That means traffic that helps drive ad revenues.

It also gets to withhold the full-text of some key articles, which still likely get plenty of traffic via Google even though only summary articles are shown. However, by being selective in this way, it helps increase subscriptions.

What’s Subscription-Only Getting Confusing

The only issue the WSJ really faces is that potentially, Google might decide that it’s time to change the rules to disallow this type of selective withholding.

Technically, withholding articles as the WSJ does is making them subscription-only content, which should require Google to insert a “Subscription” notation next to the article. Google does this because, as you can imagine, it’s annoying for searchers who are used to going from Google News to the full-text of articles only to get a registration barrier.

Google isn’t currently tagging any of this withheld content from the WSJ as subscription-content, as it should. That’s probably the case because it doesn’t know how. Typically, as I explained, sites are either entirely subscription-only or First Click Free. Google probably needs to figure out a way to deal with a hybrid situation like this.
Heck, I’ve found Google had a tough-enough time displaying subscription-only labels in the past. But beyond the WSJ, life is getting even more complicated.
Consider that “subscription-only” Newsday actually gives five free visits per month to anyone:

So is it a subscription site or not? Google doesn’t label it that way, even though you can clearly see the content that Google is indexing is the non-subscriber material:

Meanwhile, The Times supposedly gives no free clicks:

Yet clearly, The Times is also letting Google have full-access to some articles:

Since the site advertises itself as subscription-only, should those stories have a “subscription” tag next to them? Or since they are available to anyone, should they not carry this, as is currently the case?

I’ll be following-up with Google more about this. I did talk with the company initially, but it didn’t provide any official comment on the WSJ’s experimenting, other than it was something Google typically had not seen.

Shortcuts in Google Search

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 8 Apr 2012 02:06:00 -0700

Have you ever wondered how to search Google for terms inside a specific website? Or find how many sites link to yours? Below is a list of common advanced search techniques with descriptions and examples:
Search for an exact phrase
"exact phrase to search"
Will return only results with the exact phrase.
Search within one website
site:www.website.com "search phrase"
This example searches through www.website.com for the phrase “search phrase”.
Search for link to a specific website
link:www.website.com
Will return all the websites that have a link to www.website.com.
Exclude words or phrases from search results
search phrase -excluded
Searches for the phrase but will only return results excluding the text after the minus sign.
View a cached version of a web page
cache:www.website.com
View a cached version of www.website.com
Search for a specific type of file
google ebook filetype:pdf
Searches for only PDF files containing ‘google ebook’
Search for phrase only in websites’ title tag
allintitle:"google articles"
Searches for web pages with “google articles” in the title tag.
Search for keyword only in website’s URL
inurl:googlearticles
Searches for pages with ‘googlearticles’ in the URL, including the domain name and subdomain or page names.
These are a great way to quickly search from Google’s home page, without having to click over to the advanced search.

Ditch Paper Catalogs Without Missing Out on Your Favorite Products

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 8 Apr 2012 01:43:00 -0700

If you love shopping catalogs, but hate having all the paper clutter in your home, here’s a easy new way to ditch the mess (and save a few trees at the same time).
Try using the Google Catalogs app (available on both Android and iPad). It’s just like flipping through your favorite printed versions, without the inevitable trip to the curb with a heavy recycling bin. Plus, you can get more information and head directly to a store’s website to purchase the item. Take a look at the full list of catalogs available and start shopping greener.
Find out more ways to be eco-friendly during earth month with The Ultimate Guide to Going Green.

Project Glass

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 5 Apr 2012 13:44:00 -0700

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?

+Babak Parviz +Steve Lee +Sebastian Thrun

Project Glass: One day...

youtube.com – We believe technology should work for you — to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don't. A team within our Google[x] group started...

$5 for $10 at Starbucks, and Google Offers donates $3 to Create Jobs for USA

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 5 Apr 2012 13:39:00 -0700

You don’t need an excuse to order your favorite Starbucks beverage (a venti half-caf vanilla soy latte, of course)—who does? Well, your coveted morning java just got a little sweeter, because today’s exclusive Google Offer not only gets you a pick-me-up of your favorite handcrafted beverage—it also gives you the unique opportunity to help create and sustain jobs in America. For every Google Offer purchased, Google Offers will donate $3 (up to $3 million) to Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) for the Create Jobs for USA Fund. Started by the Starbucks Foundation and OFN, Create Jobs for USA provides loans to community businesses, creating jobs for people across the country. No, you don’t ever need an excuse to pop by your second home (we think of it that way, too) for your go-to venti half-caf. But now, you can do it knowing you're making the country a little bit better.

You Autocomplete Me

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 5 Apr 2012 13:31:00 -0700

Could Web-search algorithms make spelling a lost art?

Want to know more about Brittany Griner, the 6-foot-8 dunking phenom who helped Baylor’s women’s basketball team win a national championship on Tuesday night? How about the war in Afganistan, the morgage crisis, and American Idle? Go ahead and Google it.

“Did you mean: American Idol?” Google asks. Oops. Sure did. With each of the other misspellings above, Google is so confident it knows what you meant that it doesn’t even bother to ask. “Showing results for brittney griner,” it notes, before offering, in small text, an option to “search instead for brittany griner.” (Microsoft’s Bing search engine does the same thing, with slightly altered wording.)

Over the past five years, Web browsers have become better at spelling than most humans. In a 2008 Slate piece, Chris Wilson noted that browsers had surpassed traditional spell-check programs as well. Microsoft Word will turn morgage into mortgage, but it sees nothing wrong with American Idle, and it thinks the way to fix Brittany Griner is to make her a Grinner or a Grinder. And while Word’s spell-check function has stagnated, browsers get smarter by the day, assimilating new search data in real time. Search engines don’t just catch errors; they prevent you from making them in the first place. To find the latest on Afghanistan, just type “Afg” and select from the options in the drop-down autocomplete menu.

This functionality will soon be coming to a word processor near you: Last month, Google began applying similar algorithms to the spell-check feature on Google Docs, marking one of the first attempts to apply Web-based, contextual spell-checking to a word-processing program. Smartphone autocorrect tools are also improving, though embarrassing errors remain all too common. And mobile personal-assistant tools like Siri and Voice Actions for Android combine cutting-edge voice-recognition technology with search data to cut out the need for typing entirely.

With spelling becoming more and more optional, it’s easy to draw a parallel to the changing nature of arithmetic. Once upon a time, if you wanted to divide 154 by 19.6, you had to get out a pen and paper. Now, an electronic calculator—or the calculator on your computer or your watch or your iPhone—will do it for you. Just as long division has become all but obsolete, could autocomplete make spelling a lost art—something for kids to learn in elementary school, never to use again?

Probably not. Still, it’s a big improvement over what has come before.

Kids may struggle equally with spelling and arithmetic, but the latter is vastly easier for machines. Numerical calculations, which follow simple, unchanging rules, are right in a computer’s wheelhouse: Fourteen times eleven is 154 no matter what the context. By contrast, complement is a correct spelling if you’re talking about two things that go together but a spelling error if you’re doling out praise. To tell the difference, a computer needs to do something much harder than consult its internal dictionary. It needs to understand the meaning of your sentence. That’s what artificial intelligence researchers call a “hard problem.”

A “hard problem,” in AI, is more than just a problem that’s tough to figure out. Rather, it’s a problem that can’t be solved without also solving the fundamental problem of the field: how to make a computer think like a human.

Spell-check programs work best when they don’t have to think. Type typpo and any spell-checker will recognize that you probably meant typo. That’s what’s known as a “nonword” error—a spelling mistake that results in a combination of letters that doesn’t match any real word in the dictionary. Though many typos are of this sort, unfortunately these are the types of mistakes that humans are already adept at noticing. Both humans and spell-checkers struggle more with “word errors”—spelling mistakes that result in a real word but not the one that was intended. Homophones are one pitfall; proper names are another.

Far from making spelling obsolete, traditional spell-checkers often serve to reinforce its importance. A widely cited 2005 study found that students actually caught fewer spelling and grammar mistakes when their word processor’s language-checking program was turned on. The explanation: People placed undue confidence in the software, skipping over misspellings that the computer didn’t flag.

The same can happen with Web-based spell-checking, but it’s less common. That’s because search-based algorithms consider two things that spell-checkers don’t: context and human experience. Rather than checking a string of letters against a dictionary, Bing and Google check your phrase against the millions of other Web searches that people have conducted. The moment you type mor, a search engine will find the most popular search results that start with those three letters: mortgage calculator, morgan stanley, morgan freeman. It can work even if you start off on the wrong foot. Type tarmig and the first suggestion is ptarmigan, an oft-misspelled game bird. And while autocomplete isn’t perfect on homophones, it’s better than Word’s spell-checker. If you type here, it doesn’t know that you might have misspelled hear. If you type do you here what I here, however, it knows which Christmas carol you’re asking about.

Still, autocomplete is no substitute for human spelling skill, for several reasons. For one, you need to get somewhat close to a word’s proper spelling in order for it to be helpful. Second, it hasn’t yet been incorporated into most email and word-processing programs. The recent Google Docs upgrade is a significant improvement over traditional spell-check tools, but work remains to be done. Google Docs now flags the Brittany in “Brittany Griner Baylor” because that’s a popular search term. But when it comes to a phrase like “Brittany Griner of Baylor,” which you’d be more likely to use in an essay, Google Docs is mute. Spell-check programs will probably never make spelling as easy as a calculator makes arithmetic. But at least now they can put two and two together.

Top 6 finalists team info below cast your vote!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 3 Apr 2012 09:13:00 -0700

Cast your vote!

We've chosen the six finalists for the Google Model Your Town Competition, and all of them are spectacular. Now it's your turn to help choose the winner. View the entries, then vote for the team you think did the best job. Take a look at the details page for criteria you can use to make your decision.

Public voting ends May 1, 2012. Please be aware - you will only be able to cast ONE vote. We'll announce the winning team (and town) on this website on or around May 15, 2012.

Top 6 finalists team info below:

Click on each image below to view team details.

Evansville
Indiana, United States

Getaria
Gipuzkoa, Spain

Leominster
Herefordshire, United Kingdom

Lowell
Massachusetts, United States

Toruń
Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland

Zielona Góra
Lubuskie, Poland

Getaria

Town: Getaria, Gipuzkoa, Spain
Team members: Josetxo Perez Fernandez, Pedro Domecq Aguirre

Take a tour of the models in Google Earth

View models in the Google 3D Warehouse

Vote for this town

Crossing the 50 billion km mark and giving Google Maps for Android a fresh look

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 3 Apr 2012 09:05:00 -0700

Every day, millions of people turn to Google Maps for Android for free, voice-guided GPS navigation to guide them to their destination. So far, Navigation on Google Maps for Android has provided 50 billion kilometers of turn-by-turn directions, the equivalent of 130,000 trips to the moon, 334 trips to the sun, 10 trips to Neptune or 0.005 light years! When getting to your destination matters most, Google Maps for Android will get you there:

A new look for Navigation on Android 4.0+ phones
In today’s release of Google Maps 6.5 for Android we’ve redesigned the Navigation home screen in Android 4.0+ to make it easier to enter a new destination or select from recent and favorite locations by swiping left or right.

Left: New Navigation home screen Right: Navigation in Google Maps for Android

Crisper, faster maps for high pixel density devices
If your device has a high pixel density screen, such as those on Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy S II, Droid Razr and others, you’ll now get higher resolution map tiles that take better advantage of the pixels-per-inch on your screen. The result is a crisper, less cluttered map that is easier to read:

Left: Previous style Right:New style in Google Maps 6.5 for Android

Compare our new map on the right to the previous map on the left. The road network is easier to see, less obstructed by labels, and has more color contrast. At more zoomed-in levels, you’ll notice a more controlled amount of maps labels to avoid cluttering the map and blocking out street names. The new style also helps maps react faster to panning, zooming and twisting.

You'll start seeing the new style as you navigate around new areas on the map; however, you can see these changes immediately by clearing your cache from the Maps settings.

Pick your preferred public transit mode and route option
Google Maps 6.5 for Android now lets you choose to prioritize a particular transit mode (such as the bus or subway) and route option (like taking the recommended route, one with fewer transfers or one with less walking). Whether you just need to get somewhere as fast as possible, or you want to avoid the risk of a missed connection or you prefer not to tire your legs, you can get the transit directions that best suit you. Transit directions and schedules are available for 475 cities around the world.

To start using Google Maps 6.5 for Android, download the update from Google Play. Learn more about how to use other great features of Google Maps for Android on the redesigned Google Maps YouTube channel that has 12 new videos available today.

Google worlds art projects how to use the site

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 3 Apr 2012 08:58:00 -0700

South African rock designs. Brazilian street graffiti. Australian aboriginal art. Today we’re announcing a major expansion of the Google Art Project. From now on, with a few simple clicks of a finger, art lovers around the world will be able to discover not just paintings, but also sculpture, street art and photographs from 151 museums in 40 countries.

Since we introduced the Art Project last year, curators, artists and viewers from all over the globe have offered exciting ideas about how to enhance the experience of collecting, sharing and discovering art. Institutions worldwide asked to join the project, urging us to increase the diversity of artworks displayed. We listened.

The original Art Project counted 17 museums in nine countries and 1,000 images, almost all paintings from Western masters. Today, the Art Project includes more than30,000 high-resolution artworks, with Street View images for 46 museums, with more on the way. In other words, the Art Project is no longer just about the Indian student wanting to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is now also about the American student wanting to visit the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi.

The expanded Art Project embraces all sizes of institutions, specializing in art or in other types of culture. For example, you can take a look at the White House in Washington, D.C., explore the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, and continue the journey to the Santiniketan Triptych in the halls of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi. In the United States alone, some 29 partners in 16 cities are participating, ranging from excellent regional museums like the Gibbes Museum of Artin Charleston, South Carolina to top notch university galleries such as the SCAD museum of art in Savannah, Georgia.

Here are a few other new things in the expanded Art Project that you might enjoy:

Using completely new tools, called Explore and Discover, you can find artworks by period, artist or type of artwork, displaying works from different museums around the world.

Google+ and Hangouts are integrated on the site, enabling you to create even more engaging personal galleries.

Street View images are now displayed in finer quality. A specially designed Street View “trolley” took 360-degree images of the interior of selected galleries which were then stitched together, enabling smooth navigation of more than 385 rooms within the museums. You can also explore the gallery interiors directly from withinStreet View in Google Maps.

We now have 46 artworks available with our “gigapixel” photo capturing technology, photographed in extraordinary detail using super high resolution so you can study details of the brushwork and patina that would be impossible to see with the naked eye.

An enhanced My Gallery feature lets you select any of the 30,000 artworks—along with your favorite details—to build your own personalized gallery. You can add comments to each painting and share the whole collection with friends and family. (It’s an ideal tool for students.)

The Art Project is part of our efforts to bringing culture online and making it accessible the widest possible audience. Under the auspices of the Google Cultural Institute, we’re presenting high-resolution images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, digitizing the archives of famous figures such as Nelson Mandela, and creating 3D models of18th century French cities. Our launch ceremony was held this morning at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris:

For more information and future developments, follow the Art Project on Google+. Together with the fantastic input from our partners from around the world, we’re delighted to have created a convenient, fun way to interact with art—a platform that we hope appeals to students, aspiring artists and connoisseurs alike.

Reorganizing internal vs. external backlinks

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:49:00 -0700

Today we’re making a change to the way we categorize link data in Webmaster Tools. As you know, Webmaster Tools lists links pointing to your site in two separate categories: links coming from other sites, and links from within your site. Today’s update won’t change your total number of links, but will hopefully present your backlinks in a way that more closely aligns with your idea of which links are actually from your site vs. from other sites.

You can manage many different types of sites in Webmaster Tools: a plain domain name (example.com), a subdomain (www.example.com or cats.example.com), or a domain with a subfolder path (www.example.com/cats/ or www.example.com/users/catlover/). Previously, only links that started with your site’s exact URL would be categorized as internal links: so if you entered www.example.com/users/catlover/ as your site, links fromwww.example.com/users/catlover/profile.html would be categorized as internal, but links from www.example.com/users/ or www.example.com would be categorized as external links. This also meant that if you entered www.example.com as your site, links from example.com would be considered external because they don’t start with the same URL as your site (they don’t containwww).

Most people think of example.com and www.example.com as the same site these days, so we’re changing it such that now, if you add either example.com or www.example.com as a site, links from both the www and non-www versions of the domain will be categorized as internal links. We’ve also extended this idea to include other subdomains, since many people who own a domain also own its subdomains—so links from cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorized as internal links for www.example.com.

Links for www.google.com	External links	Internal links
Previously categorized as...	www.example.com/ www.example.org/stuff.html scholar.google.com/ sketchup.google.com/ google.com/	www.google.com/ www.google.com/stuff.html www.google.com/support/webmasters/
Now categorized as...	www.example.com/ www.example.org/stuff.html	scholar.google.com/ sketchup.google.com/ google.com/ www.google.com/ www.google.com/stuff.html www.google.com/support/webmasters/

If you own a site that’s on a subdomain (such as googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com) or in a subfolder (www.google.com/support/webmasters/) and don’t own the root domain, you’ll still only see links from URLs starting with that subdomain or subfolder in your internal links, and all others will be categorized as external links. We’ve made a few backend changes so that these numbers should be even more accurate for you.

Note that, if you own a root domain like example.com or www.example.com, your number of external links may appear to go down with this change; this is because, as described above, some of the URLs we were previously classifying as external links will have moved into the internal links report. Your total number of links (internal + external) should not be affected by this change.

As always, drop us a comment or join our Webmaster Help Forum if you have questions!

Posted by Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst