New From Google Blogs

Greater access to voting information

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:25:00 -0700

At Google, we pride ourselves on helping people find things on the Internet. And every four years in America, Google Trends shows that people are searching to find voting information, like how to register and where to vote.

It's hard to believe that in 2008, information so important to U.S. citizens and the democratic process isn't well organized on the web. To solve this problem, we've released our US Voter Info site, an effort to simplify and centralize voting locations and registration information.

We developed the site in the hope that it will increase voter participation. We were helped by a number of partners, including many state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others involved in the Voting Information Project.

Are you registered to vote? What's the best way to obtain an absentee ballot? When people visit the site, answers to these questions appear. And anyone with a website can provide the same information. The US Voter Info gadget places a simple search box that expands to show a full set of voter information when someone enters an address.

We are also offering a simpler way to find out where to vote. By entering a home address, citizens across the country will be able to find their polling place for election day.

To encourage political participation, we've opened up this data to third-party sites and developers through an API developed by Dan Berlin, one of our open-source engineers. We're excited to share this data, and hope that others will find it useful in encouraging citizens to vote.

Organizing information is our mission. We do that every day with web content, and we want to do the same thing with information to inform and empower voters and to help them get to the polls this election season.

Posted by JL Needham, Public Sector Content Partnerships, and Abe Murray, Product Manager

Saving electricity one data center at a time

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:43:00 -0700

Hundreds of millions of users access our services through the web, and this traffic requires lots of computers. We strive to offer great Internet services while taking our energy use very seriously. That's why, nearly a decade ago, we started work to optimize the energy efficiency of our servers and later set out to build the most environmentally sustainable data centers possible. We now believe that Google-designed data centers are the most efficient in the world.

The graph below shows what we've achieved: our data centers use considerably less energy for the servers themselves, and much less energy for cooling, than a typical data center. We achieved this milestone by significantly reducing the amount of energy needed for the data center facility overhead. Specifically, Google-designed data centers use nearly five times less energy than conventional facilities to feed and cool the computers inside. Our engineers worked hard to optimize every element in the data center, from the chip to the cooling tower.

As a result, the energy used per Google search is minimal. In the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than we will use to answer your query. To learn more about our 5-step approach to efficiency, please check out our new website about efficient data centers.

Link - from Official Google Blog

RabbitMQ Tech Talk at Google London

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:28:00 -0700

My day job involves working with Google's strategic mobile partners to solve tricky problems but in the evenings I'm usually to be found at the eXtreme Tuesday Club and similarly geeky gatherings. I'm usually the bloke with the Nikon D50 alternating between talking about new features in Python and taking pictures. Sometimes, like PyCon UK, I get to do both and I end up with photos like this:

That doesn't always happen though. For instance last Thursday I invited some special guests to our London office. Alexis Richardson, Matthias Radestock and Tony Garnock-Jones from LShift/CohesiveFT traveled all the way from their Silicon Roundabout offices to Victoria to give a tech talk about, RabbitMQ, their open source messaging platform. Their talk covered everything from how distributed systems are built in Erlang to their preferred approach to fixing Twitter's scaling problems.

Since the Google Moderator tool had launched the night before I thought we should experiment with using that to supplement the questions from the assembled Googlers. We only got 2 online questions but I think that with the feedback that team is getting here. This could become a really useful tool for technical conferences.

Afterwards I took the guys upstairs to the canteen for lunch with various Google engineers where we got to discuss everything from implementing Protocol Buffers in C# to Jaiku and the future of federated micro-blogging. Lunch wasn't recorded but the Tech Talk was so you'll soon be able to see it for yourself on Youtube. We'll update this blog post when the video is ready.

In the meantime you can read the slides here:

Ade Oshineye,
Technical Solutions Engineer, PSO, Google London

Link:UK Developer Blog: RabbitMQ Tech Talk at Google London

Vehicle to Grid (V2G) Overview

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:28:00 -0700

Current concerns about climate change, energy security and record high oil prices have generated a lot of enthusiasm for plug-in vehicles -- both plug-in hybrids and pure battery electric vehicles. Widespread adoption of plug-in vehicles would result in significant reductions in CO2 emissions from transportation. It would also reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by replacing petroleum-sourced energy with renewable, domestically produced electricity. But the benefits of plug-in vehicles extend beyond just those well known areas. These vehicles are also enablers for new technology that could offer significant benefits to the electric grid and to plug-in vehicle owners. In particular, Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology - in the form of vehicles capable of full bi-directional power flow (true V2G) and those capable of uni-directional "smart charging" - allows these grid-connected vehicles to provide grid stability and load management services in near real time. This gives the grid operators additional grid stability headroom, allowing even adoption of renewable energy on the grid. Plug-in vehicle owners would benefit from cheaper electricity rates and could even profitably contract with their utilities to have their vehicle provide grid ancillary services such as grid frequency, regulation and spinning reserves.

So how does V2G work "under the hood"? Historically, plug-in vehicles have simply connected to the grid and charged. There was no communication or control between the vehicle and the grid, and power flowed only from the grid to the vehicle. A fully V2G-capable plug-in vehicle is equipped with a communications interface that receives signals from the grid as well as an intelligent charging system/battery management system (BMS) that allows bi-directional power flow both to and from the vehicle. When this vehicle is connected to the grid, control signals are sent from the grid operator to manage the flow of energy between the vehicle and the grid. In the simplest case, the grid might just turn the vehicle charger on and off in response to grid load. The grid could also tell the vehicle to defer charging until off-peak hours, or possibly have the vehicle charge only when the electricity rates are at their lowest. In the most complex scenario, the grid might send a constant flow of messages to the vehicle, changing the charging rate or even reversing the flow of energy to feed back to the grid depending on a variety of factors including the current grid load, the current amount of renewable generation, the state of charge of the vehicle, and real-time energy pricing.

The benefits of V2G extend past grid load management. An NREL study shows that plug-in vehicles acting as a storage resource on the grid would help the penetration of intermittent renewable energy generation resources such as solar and wind. The energy storage offered by the plug-in vehicles would help smooth the peaks and valleys of renewable energy. This is particularly beneficial in the case of wind energy, which in many geographic locations often produces the greatest amount of energy during low-demand hours, such as late in the evening or at night.

Though V2G has many benefits to offer, it is not a near-term solution. Deploying V2G will require significant investment to evolve the existing grid into the Smart Grid of the future - the existing grid simply does not have the infrastructure in place to communicate with vehicles. Additionally, the V2G services depend on a fairly large scale deployment of plug-in vehicles to be of any value to utilities and grid operators. Several promising pilot projects have demonstrated the capabilities of V2G, but no large scale implementations are in the foreseeable future. There is also significant work to do to formalize standards for how the vehicles will connect and communicate with the grid, and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has committees working specifically in these areas - J1772 for connections and J2293 for communications. Lastly, there are issues to work through concerning the impact of constant cycling of the vehicle's battery and the effect this will have on battery life.

The good news is that many of the benefits of grid-connected vehicles don't require that they be deployed with full V2G functionality right from the start. An excellent starting point is just manufacturing vehicles with industry-standard connections that can do "smart charging" directed by the grid. A PNNL study shows that even if plug-in vehicles comprised three-quarters of the American passenger car fleet, the existing grid has sufficient power generation capabilities to handle the charging needs of these vehicles if they are charged during off-peak hours -- all without requiring any new power plants. In addition, the ability to control the charge time and energy flow rate of plug-in vehicles represents value to utilities and grid operators for grid ancillary services and for the ability to dispatch load to match up with real-time renewable generation even if the vehicles are not capable of sending power back to the grid. Finally, even if the grid itself is not capable of handling bi-directional power flow from vehicles, full V2G capabilities could be deployed as part of a "smart garage" at a home or a business, sometimes referred to as V2H (vehicle to home). In this scenario, the plug-in vehicles would be treated as a power generation resource along with solar or wind power, and controlled directly by an energy management system which controls the energy load at the home or business.

Though V2G is still in its infancy and many questions remain -- Who should own the batteries in the vehicles? What communications technology should be used? How would we handle the intermittent connectivity & mobility of vehicles? -- it has a great deal of potential and will be an integral part of the next generation power grid fueled significantly by clean, renewable energy resources.
Link:RechargeIT Blog: Vehicle to Grid (V2G) Overview

AdWords for disaster relief

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:25:00 -0700

In recent posts we've called attention to Grants recipients providing relief during times of crisis around the world. Our goal for these posts is to bring awareness to organizations uniquely suited to provide support when disaster strikes and give you a place to find information and ways to help.

We'd also like to offer optimization help to those of you whose organizations are seeing an increase in traffic from disasters. Rather than waiting for one to strike, we thought we'd share some tips with you now so you can prepare for future events:

Ready your accounts
Create a specific campaign for disasters and a specific ad group for the crisis at hand. If your organization provides relief for disasters, create a campaign within your account specifically for disasters. And when you respond to a disaster, create an ad group within your disaster campaign for the current disaster. This kind of organization will make it easier to manage your keywords, ad texts and budgets to best handle the traffic and disseminate information to those in need.
Prioritize your budget
Allot the majority of your budget to your disaster campaign when disasters occur. When the majority of your traffic is focused on your disaster relief efforts, shift your account budget to focus mainly on that campaign. You can then pause previous disaster ad groups in the campaign and activate the current disaster ad group to support the increased traffic with the most relevant information. If the rest of your account is drawing too much traffic away from your disaster relief campaign, you can also pause these ad groups/campaigns to give your disaster campaign more traffic.
Build a targeted keyword list
Create a very precise keyword list for your crisis ad group. You'll want a list that's specific to the disaster at hand and to the support you're providing. Use geo-targeting or geographical terms if relevant, such as "Hurricane Gustav shelters in Houston." Avoid general terms such as "hurricane", "tropical storm" and "disaster," as they won't be as effective as more narrowly targeted terms.
Send users right to the source
If you're asking for donations or volunteers in your ad text, be sure to link your ads directly to the landing pages where these options are given. Put as few clicks as possible between the user and the information they are seeking.

While we hope you won't have to use them, these tips may help you prepare for possible crises so that you can spend your time helping those in need. To discuss these strategies further, visit our Help Group, and start a discussion about best practices for managing increases in traffic.
Link:Google Grants Blog: AdWords for disaster relief

Advanced Website Diagnostics with Google Webmaster Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:22:00 -0700

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:07 AM

Running a website can be complicated—so we've provided Google Webmaster Tools to help webmasters to recognize potential issues before they become real problems. Some of the issues that you can spot there are relatively small (such as having duplicate titles and descriptions), other issues can be bigger (such as your website not being reachable). While Google Webmaster Tools can't tell you exactly what you need to change, it can help you to recognize that there could be a problem that needs to be addressed.

Let's take a look at a few examples that we ran across in the Google Webmaster Help Groups:

Is your server treating Googlebot like a normal visitor?

While Googlebot tries to act like a normal user, some servers may get confused and react in strange ways. For example, although your server may work flawlessly most of the time, some servers running IIS may react with a server error (or some other action that is tied to a server error occurring) when visited by a user with Googlebot's user-agent. In the Webmaster Help Group, we've seen IIS servers return result code 500 (Server error) and result code 404 (File not found) in the "Web crawl" diagnostics section, as well as result code 302 when submitting Sitemap files. If your server is redirecting to an error page, you should make sure that we can crawl the error page and that it returns the proper result code. Once you've done that, we'll be able to show you these errors in Webmaster Tools as well. For more information about this issue and possible resolutions, please see http://todotnet.com/archive/0001/01/01/7472.aspx and http://www.kowitz.net/archive/2006/12/11/asp.net-2.0-mozilla-browser-detection-hole.aspx.

If your website is hosted on a Microsoft IIS server, also keep in mind that URLs are case-sensitive by definition (and that's how we treat them). This includes URLs in the robots.txt file, which is something that you should be careful with if your server is using URLs in a non-case-sensitive way. For example, "disallow: /paris" will block /paris but not /Paris.

Does your website have systematically broken links somewhere?

Modern content management systems (CMS) can make it easy to create issues that affect a large number of pages. Sometimes these issues are straightforward and visible when you view the pages; sometimes they're a bit harder to spot on your own. If an issue like this creates a large number of broken links, they will generally show up in the "Web crawl" diagnostics section in your Webmaster Tools account (provided those broken URLs return a proper 404 result code). In one recent case, a site had a small encoding issue in its RSS feed, resulting in over 60,000 bad URLs being found and listed in their Webmaster Tools account. As you can imagine, we would have preferred to spend time crawling content instead of these 404 errors :).

Is your website redirecting some users elsewhere?

For some websites, it can make sense to concentrate on a group of users in a certain geographic location. One method of doing that can be to redirect users located elsewhere to a different page. However, keep in mind that Googlebot might not be crawling from within your target area, so it might be redirected as well. This could mean that Googlebot will not be able to access your home page. If that happens, it's likely that Webmaster Tools will run into problems when it tries to confirm the verification code on your site, resulting in your site becoming unverified. This is not the only reason for a site becoming unverified, but if you notice this on a regular basis, it would be a good idea to investigate. On this subject, always make sure that Googlebot is treated the same way as other users from that location, otherwise that might be seen as cloaking.

Is your server unreachable when we try to crawl?

It can happen to the best of sites—servers can go down and firewalls can be overly protective. If that happens when Googlebot tries to access your site, we won't be able crawl the website and you might not even know that we tried. Luckily, we keep track of these issues and you can spot "Network unreachable" and "robots.txt unreachable" errors in your Webmaster Tools account when we can't reach your site.

Has your website been hacked?

Hackers sometimes add strange, off-topic hidden content and links to questionable pages. If it's hidden, you might not even notice it right away; but nonetheless, it can be a big problem. While the Message Center may be able to give you a warning about some kinds of hidden text, it's best if you also keep an eye out yourself. Google Webmaster Tools can show you keywords from your pages in the "What Googlebot sees" section, so you can often spot a hack there. If you see totally irrelevant keywords, it would be a good idea to investigate what's going on. You might also try setting up Google Alerts or doing queries such as [site:example.com spammy words], where "spammy words" might be words like porn, viagra, tramadol, sex or other words that your site wouldn't normally show. If you find that your site actually was hacked, I'd recommend going through our blog post about things to do after being hacked.

There are a lot of issues that can be recognized with Webmaster Tools; these are just some of the more common ones that we've seen lately. Because it can be really difficult to recognize some of these problems, it's a great idea to check your Webmaster Tools account to make sure that you catch any issues before they become real problems. If you spot something that you absolutely can't pin down, why not post in the discussion group and ask the experts there for help?

Have you checked your site lately?

Link:Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Advanced Website Diagnostics with Google Webmaster Tools

Getting out the vote in Ohio

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:18:00 -0700

As election day approaches on November 4, Google is working with state and local election officials across the country to make voter information as widely available and as accurate as possible. Today, we announced a big step forward in that effort with the State of Ohio.

Thanks to the leadership of Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Ohio is the first state to make comprehensive voting information available through our U.S. Voter Info Guide, a searchable database of election information powered by Google Search and Maps.

In addition, when voters in Ohio do a Google search for “where to vote” or “where to register," they will be directed to maps.google.com/vote, where they can enter their addresses and find registration information, absentee and early vote details, and their polling place.

Our guide already includes voting locations for a number of states and the District of Columbia, and we are aiming to have voting information for all 50 states added by mid-October. We hope that this tool will equip voters with the information they need to make it to the polls on election day. Don't forget to vote!

Link:Google Public Policy Blog: Getting out the vote in Ohio

Nominations for OpenSocial Foundation Elections due Wednesday

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:16:00 -0700

To complete the ramp up of the OpenSocial Foundation, we need your input: the OpenSocial Foundation has two board seats that are to be filled by individuals representing the community.

If you have someone in mind for the board:

Nominations have been open since early September and will close on Wednesday, October 1, at 11:59 PM PST, so that the election can take place next week.

Looking forward to hearing from you. If you have questions or comments, please drop a note on the OpenSocial Community forum.

Link:OpenSocial API Blog: Nominations for OpenSocial Foundation Elections due Wednesday

Check Your Specs: Meeting Google TV Ads Technical Requirements

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:13:00 -0700

Before you create a new television campaign and get your commercial running on the Google TV Ads system, it's important to make sure your ad meets our technical specifications, so that you can upload it without complication. Advertisers that have already created their ad can easily open it in their favorite editing program and follow some simple guidelines to make it Google TV Ads-friendly.

Visit our Help Center for tips on using Adobe Premiere Pro and Sony Vegas to adjust your ad to meet our specifications.

Visit our Google TV Ads YouTube Channel to watch step-by-step instructions for using Final Cut Pro and Sony Vegas to meet the technical requirements.

Once your ad meets specifications, you can easily upload your ad, create a campaign, and get it running in no time!
Link:Traditional Media: Let's Take it Offline: Check Your Specs: Meeting Google TV Ads Technical Requirements

Slideshow for Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:11:00 -0700

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 2:15 PM

This week, we're excited to release the Slideshow for Facebook gadget.

Designed for Facebook users, this gadget connects to your Facebook account and finds a wide variety of photos from your friends' collections. These photos then appear, one-at-a-time, in the gadget's frame. It's an automated slideshow — an easy, great way to stay in touch with old friends!

Link:Inside Google Desktop: Slideshow for Facebook

AdSense for content, now in Thai

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:06:00 -0700

Late last year we welcomed Thai to our AdSense for search family, and we're now excited to let you know about the launch of AdSense for content in Thai. If you're a publisher with a Thai website, you'll now be able to earn money for valid clicks and impressions for Google ads on your site. Get started by logging in to your account and visiting the AdSense Setup tab to generate ad code. Or, if you don't have an AdSense account yet, review our program policies and then feel free to submit an application.

To celebrate this launch, why not look up a few Thai recipes and prepare traditional dishes like Som Tum, a spicy green papaya salad, or Tom Yam, a hot and sour soup? We hope they'll leave you content and ready to create new content of your own.

ยินดีต้อนรับสู่โปรแกรมของเราค่ะ

Link:Inside AdSense: AdSense for content, now in Thai

Diving into the Great Barrier Reef Au

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:04:00 -0700

Australia is home to many geographical treasures, and the Great Barrier Reef has to be one of my favourites. There's a magnitude, a depth, and a diversity of marine life that just leaves me in awe of this ecosystem that stretches more than 2,500 kilometres along the Queensland coast -- from Bundaberg up to Cape York.

You can now use Google Maps to find and explore the largest reef system in the world. Through close collaboration with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, we now provide map data and updated satellite imagery of the islands, reefs, cays, and rocks in Google Maps.

You can plan holiday travels, scope out your dives, engage your students, and visualise the reef with greater interactivity. Of course you can also overlay your own information on the reef system and share with family, friends, or the world.

It's also my hope that in line with the goals of the International Year of the Reef 2008, the addition of the Great Barrier Reef to Google Maps will help strengthen awareness, improve understanding, and generate action to help conserve our international treasure.

If you're lucky enough to have visited the reef, enjoy reliving your memories. If you've not yet been, happy discovering.

Link:Official Google Australia Blog: Diving into the Great Barrier Reef

Diving into the Great Barrier Reef

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:02:00 -0700

Google Positioned in Leaders Quadrant

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 08:00:00 -0700

In their recently released Magic Quadrant for Email Security Boundaries (published September 11, 2008), Gartner Inc., an information technology research and advisory company, placed Google in the "Leaders Quadrant." Quadrant leaders, as Gartner defines them, are "performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction, and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market." Quadrant leaders also "offer a comprehensive and proficient range of email security functionality, and show evidence of superior vision and execution for current and anticipated customer requirements.

Leaders typically have relatively high market share and/or strong revenue growth, own a good portion of their threat or content-filtering capabilities, and demonstrate positive customer feedback for anti-spam efficacy, and related service and support." The report goes on to say that "The email security market is rapidly maturing, yet continues to show strong growth and remains a 'must have' security purchase."

We're pleased to be included in this report and recognized in the leaders quadrant, as it underlines, in our opinion, the importance we attach to protecting against email-based threats and the ways we're helping our customers do so. Since the integration of the Postini email security product line in 2007 into Google's Enterprise Apps, Google has continued to innovate these products with functionality for our customers, including a new early detection quarantine that uses our own heuristics to detect new virus strains before virus signatures are available. We have also added new content filter types, policy prioritization for messages that trigger more than one policy, and new policy engine interface features.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2008 by Gartner, Inc., and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Link:Official Google Enterprise Blog: Google Positioned in Leaders Quadrant

Explore Your Hardware: iotools and prettyprint

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:56:00 -0700

One of the most difficult and tedious things we do here in the Platforms Team is figure out what is going wrong with a new piece of hardware. Generally that means we need to examine a bunch of hardware registers and see how the device is configured. If you've never had to do this, let us assure you - it isn't much fun, especially when you have a few hundred bit fields to decode.

We're software guys, so the solution, of course, was to write some code! We thought some of you out there might find our work useful, so we're happy to release these tools.

The first piece is iotools - a suite of simple command line tools which allow you to read and write hardware registers. With iotools you can write simple shell scripts to read the device information you need, process it, and write it back to the hardware. Currently iotools includes support for PCI, IO, memory mapped IO, MSR, CPUID, TSC, SMBus, and CMOS. It also includes a bunch of simple arithmetic and logical tools to make your scripting even easier.

The second piece is prettyprint - a library and set of tools which allow you extract hardware data in human-readable form. prettyprint includes a simple device description "language". Once a device has been described, prettyprint can find any instances of the device and produce a tree of objects which can be read from and written to symbolically. Never again will you have to remember that bits [8:6] of the wibble register contain the frobnicator amplification factor, encoded in 1/2 dB units. prettyprint will just tell you.

These tools have proven to be useful to us in the platforms team at Google. We hope some of you find them useful too. Patches are welcome!

To find out more, please visit the iotools home page or iotools discussion group and the prettyprint home page or prettyprint discussion group.
Link:Black Googler Network visits New Orleans
Link:Google Open Source Blog: Explore Your Hardware: iotools and prettyprint

Black Googler Network visits New Orleans

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:54:00 -0700

On August 29, 2005, millions of Americans watched in horror as the wind, rain and flood waters wiped away the homes, businesses and livelihood of citizens along the Gulf Coast of the US. In the days that followed, a record number of volunteers flooded disaster response agencies, government agencies, churches and local outreach organizations with calls to find out how they could help. I was one of those volunteers and what I experienced changed my life forever.

Three years later, much of the region remains abandoned. Repair of city infrastructure and tourism (the primary economic source for this part of the nation) are slow and stagnant in much of the region. We will be successful in turning around these trends only if we come together and rededicate ourselves to this effort. As part of the Black Googlers Network (BGN), 32 colleagues and I traveled to the region for what was initially slated as a Katrina Rebuilding Outreach Trip. As New Orleans slowly comes back to life, we will be standing side by side with the proud and resilient residents of this amazing city to help them repair the lives they've worked so hard to rebuild, sending a clear message that they are not forgotten.

As our group planned to deploy so quickly after Hurricane Gustav, most agencies were still shut down because their employees were evacuated to other parts of the country. Notable exceptions to this shut down were two organizations to which I have personal ties - St. Bernard Project and The Idea Village.

St. Bernard Project is a nonprofit, community-based organization that began rebuilding homes in August 2006 (boasting 177 projects to date) that were damaged by flood waters from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. St. Bernard Parish is a working class community and was one of the hardest hit parishes of the city because of its location just 5 miles from the now infamous Industrial Levee.

The Idea Village is an organization working to accelerate the growth of the entrepreneurial community in the embattled New Orleans region. During our visit, BGN assisted with the development of the launch plan for their 504ward $200,000 business plan competition by employing our business savvy, creative thought processes and Google product knowledge. Launched on September 25th, this competition hopes to keep the thousands of young people who have flocked to New Orleans since Katrina engaged by soliciting ideas on how to develop a strong foundation of entrepreneurial ventures. The Idea Village's motto is "Trust Your Crazy Ideas," but I don't see anything crazy about wanting to rebuild one of America's greatest cities.

The highlight of the trip was that at each build site, the families whose homes we were returning to their former grace stopped by to say hello, offer their gratitude and recount the stories of survival. Andrea was the owner of the home I was rebuilding. She was the mother of two small children and was anxious to return a sense of normalcy to all of their lives. Andrea told us of the time her adventurous son wandered into the deep grass behind her home only to come face to face with one of the region's indigenous deadly snakes. He curiously inspected the snake, only to be whisked up by his attentive mother just as the serpent was preparing to strike. This snake's venom could kill a full grown man in 20 minutes. The closest emergency room, as a result the devastation, is over 45 minutes away. Even with all of the progress made to get people back into their homes, communities are fractured and without basic services and business opportunities.

On the final day of our trip, we went to the Upper and Lower Ninth Ward, the areas most devastated by the hurricanes. The neighborhoods were absent of life; there is little or nothing for residents to come back to. But signs of hope included children riding bikes, families and neighbors barbecuing on the front lawns of their homes (many still tattooed with the post storm FEMA markings) and a few bold projects such as the The Musicians' Village and Brad Pitt's Make it Right project. These things remind me not to view New Orleans with sadness or pity, but with respect, dignity and a pledge to offer a hand in their greatest time of need. In our case, 64 hands.
Link:Black Googler Network visits New Orleans

Googlers Beta

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:50:00 -0700

Frontend web design and backend server programming are enough to make many people's heads spin. However, for Matt Pokrzywa, it was the essence of his highly technical work during his summer internship with Google and the Checkout team. Here is his story in our on-going series about our awesome interns, our Googlers Beta.
"On top of becoming a better programmer, working at Google has made me a better designer and problem solver."
Matt Pokrzywa, Software Engineering Intern
Name: Matt Pokrzywa
Hometown: Pleasantville, NY
Department: Software Engineer - Google Checkout
Education: Cornell University, B.S. in Computer Science 2009

My internship experience can be best described as "work hard, play hard." Spending this summer at Google has allowed me to work on some really tough challenges and work with some of the smartest people in the world. I was placed on a small team on Google Checkout and from the first day onward, I knew the work I was doing was real engineering work that otherwise would have been assigned to a full time engineer. I even joined my team for a week trip to Mountain View to do a technical deep dive with the Google Sites team. While having such responsibilities was difficult and often times stressful, working at Google offered so many ways to break the tension. Whether it was playing ping-pong or Guitar Hero with my coworkers, or getting out to explore Manhattan with my fellow interns, Google provided so many awesome ways to relax and just chill out.

Besides being so much fun, working at Google was a learning experience like no other. I can honestly say I learned more in my 14 weeks here than I did the entire previous school year. I was fortunate enough to be assigned projects that allowed me to explore so many areas of Google technology. I worked with frontend web design, backend server programming, and I actively took part in brainstorming and design sessions to define the future of our product. On top of becoming a better programmer, working at Google has made me a better designer and problem solver in general.

Having interned in other technology companies before, I have to say that the Google internship experience blew all the others away. The quality of the code and the documentation, the brilliance of everyone around you, and the incredibly fun and relaxed company culture is something you'll not experience anywhere else.

Link:Googlers Beta

Fortgeschrittene Website-Diagnose mit den Google Webmaster-Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:47:00 -0700

Es kann ganz schön kompliziert sein, eine Website zu betreiben. Gut, dass es die Google Webmaster-Tools gibt. Sie bieten Unterstützung dabei an, potentielle Probleme zu erkennen, bevor sie zu einer echten Gefahr werden. Einige der aufzufindenden Probleme mögen ziemlich klein sein - beispielsweise doppelt vorhandene Titel und Beschreibungen - andere dagegen können als schwerwiegend gelten (etwa wenn die Website nicht erreichbar ist). Zwar können euch die Google Webmaster-Tools nicht genau erklären, was geändert werden muss, sie sind aber auf jeden Fall dabei behilflich, festzustellen, ob es ein Problem gibt, dem man sich widmen sollte.

Schauen wir uns einige Beispiele aus dem Google Diskussionsforum für Webmaster an:

Behandelt euer Server den Googlebot wie einen gewöhnlichen Besucher?

Obwohl der Googlebot versucht, sich wie ein gewöhnlicher Benutzer einer Site zu verhalten, werden manche Server verwirrt. Beispielsweise könnte euer Server einen Großteil der Zeit problemlos laufen, aber - wie im Falle einiger IIS-Server - mit einem Serverfehler (oder einer anderen Reaktion, die mit einem Serverfehler zusammenhängt) reagieren, sobald er von einem Benutzer mit dem Googlebot User-Agent betreten wird. Im Diskussionsforum für Webmaster haben wir IIS-Server in der Web-Crawl-Diagnose-Sektion mit Statuscode 500 (Serverfehler) und Statuscode 404 (Datei nicht gefunden) antworten sehen, sowie mit Statuscode 302 beim Senden des Sitemap-Files. Falls euer Server zu einer Fehlerseite weiterleitet, solltet ihr sicherstellen, dass wir diese Fehlerseite crawlen können und dass sie die entsprechenden Statuscodes liefert. Sobald ihr das gemacht habt, können wir entsprechende Fehler ebenfalls in den Webmaster-Tools anzeigen. Schaut euch doch http://todotnet.com/archive/0001/01/01/7472.aspx und http://www.kowitz.net/archive/2006/12/11/asp.net-2.0-mozilla-browser-detection-hole.aspx für weiterführende Informationen zu dieser Problematik und mögliche Lösungen an!

Falls die Website auf einem Microsoft-IIS-Server gehostet wird, solltet ihr auch beachten, dass bei URLs zwischen Groß- und Kleinschreibung unterschieden wird (und entsprechend behandeln wir sie auch). Das betrifft auch URLs in der robots.txt-Datei. Dabei solltet ihr vorsichtig sein, falls euer Server URLs benutzt, ohne auf Groß- bzw. Kleinschreibung zu achten. "disallow: /paris" beispielsweise blockt /paris aber nicht /Paris.

Enthält eure Website irgendwo Links, die systematisch nicht funktionieren?

Zeitgemäße Content-Management-Systeme (CMS) erzeugen mitunter Probleme, die eine große Anzahl von Seiten betreffen. Manchmal sind diese Probleme leicht erkennbar, wenn man einen Blick auf die Website wirft. In anderen Fällen wird es ein wenig schwieriger, das Problem selbstständig ausfindig zu machen. Falls ein solcher Problemfall jede Menge nicht funktionierender Links erzeugt, werden die normalerweise im Web-Crawl-Diagnose-Bereich in eurem Webmaster-Tools-Konto angezeigt. Erst kürzlich gab es einen Fall, wo ein kleines Coding-Problem in Bezug auf den RSS-Feed mehr als 60 000 nichtexistente URLs vortäuschte/erzeugte und im Webmaster-Tools-Konto anzeigte. Wie ihr euch vorstellen könnt, verwenden wir Zeit lieber dafür, Content zu crawlen, als 404-Errors. :)

Leitet eure Website manche User weiter?

Für manche Websites ist es vorteilhaft, sich auf User aus einer bestimmten Region zu konzentrieren. Eine Art, auf die man das erzielen kann, besteht darin, User, die von woanders kommen, zu einer anderen Seite weiterzuleiten. Bedenkt aber bitte, dass der Googlebot nicht unbedingt von innerhalb der Zielregion crawlt und ebenfalls weitergeleitet werden könnte. Dies könnte dazu führen, dass der Googlebot eure Homepage nicht erreichen kann. Falls das passieren sollte, ist es wahrscheinlich, dass die Webmaster-Tools Probleme damit haben, den Überprüfungscode auf eurer Site zu bestätigen, was dazu führt, dass eure Site den Überprüft-Status verliert. Das ist nicht der einzige Grund, warum eine Site den Überprüft-Status verlieren kann, aber falls ihr dieses Verhalten regelmäßig beobachtet, wäre es auf jeden Fall einen zweiten Blick wert. Stellt außerdem sicher, dass der Googlebot genauso wie ein gewöhnlicher Benutzer dieser Region behandelt wird, ansonsten könnte man das als Cloaking interpretieren.

Ist euer Server nicht erreichbar, wenn er gecrawlt werden soll?

Das kann den besten Sites passieren: Server können sich abschalten oder eine Firewall mag dichter sein als erwartet. Falls das passiert, während der Googlebot Zutritt sucht, können wir die Site nicht crawlen und ihr kriegt eventuell gar nichts davon mit, dass wir es versucht haben. Zum Glück zeichnen wir ein solches Problem auf und ihr könnt "Netzwerk nicht erreichbar"- und "robots.txt nicht erreichbar"-Fehler in eurem Webmaster-Tools-Konto sehen.

Wurde eure Site gehackt?

Hacker bauen mitunter seltsamen Content ohne thematischen Bezug und Links zu fragwürdigen Webseiten in eure Site ein. Für den Fall, dass diese Elemente versteckt wurden, bemerkt ihr sie eventuell nicht einmal sofort. Nichtsdestotrotz können sie ein großes Problem darstellen. Das Nachrichten-Center zeigt euch zwar eventuell Warnungen in Bezug auf manche Arten von verborgenem Text an, aber trotzdem ist es vorteilhaft, selbst die Augen offen zu halten. Die Google Webmaster-Tools zeigen euch Keywords eurer Site in der "Was Googlebot sieht"-Sektion an. So kann man einen Hack schnell aufspüren. Für den Fall, dass ihr vollkommen irrelevante Keywords vorfindet, wäre es sinnvoll nachzuforschen, was los ist. Sollte die Site tasächlich gehackt worden sein, empfehle ich euch den Blogpost "Meine Site wurde gehackt - was jetzt?".

Viele Probleme können von den Webmaster-Tools erkannt werden. Dies waren nur einige der häufigsten aus der letzten Zeit. Da es wirklich schwierig sein kann, manche dieser Probleme zu erkennen, ist es sinnvoll, das Webmaster-Tools-Konto zu Rate zu ziehen, um potentielle Gefahren zu bemerken, bevor sie zu ernsthaften Problemen werden. Und falls ihr irgendwas entdeckt, das ihr nicht eindeutig zuordnen könnt, postet doch im Diskussionsforum für Webmaster und fragt die Experten dort um Hilfe!

Habt ihr eure Site in letzter Zeit überprüft?

Advanced website diagnostics with Google Webmaster Tools (English version)

Post von John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zürich (Übersetzung von Jörg, Search Quality)

Link:Fortgeschrittene Website-Diagnose mit den Google Webmaster-Tools

Measuring Speed The Slow Way

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:45:00 -0700

By Steve Lamm, Member of Technical Staff

Let's say you figured out a wicked-cool way to speed up how quickly your website loads. You know with great certainty that the most popular web page will load much, much faster. Then, you remember that the page always loads much, much faster in your browser with the web server running on your development box. You need numbers that represent what your users will actually experience.

Depending on your development process, you may have several measuring opportunities such as after a live release, on a staging server, on a continuous build, or on your own development box.

Only a live release gives numbers that users experience--through different types of connections, different computers, different browsers. But, it comes with some challenges:

You must instrument your site (one example tool is jiffy-web).
You must isolate changes.
- The most straight-forward way to do that is to release only one change at a time. That avoids having multiple changes altering performance numbers--for better or for worse--at the same time.
Consider releasing changes to a subset of users.
- That helps safe-guard against real-world events like holidays, big news days, exploding hard drives, and, perhaps the worst possible fate of all: a slashdotting.

Measuring real traffic is important, but performance should also be measured earlier in the development process. Millions of users will not hit your development web server--they won't, right?! You need a way to measure your pages without that.

Today, Steve Souders has released Hammerhead, a Firefox plug-in that is just the ticket for measuring web page load times. It has a sweet feature that repeatedly loads pages both with and without the browser cache so you can understand different use cases. One thing Hammerhead will not do for you is slow down your web connection. The page load times that you measure on your development machine will likely be faster than your users' wildest dreams.

Measuring page load times with a real DSL or dial up connection would be ideal, but if you cannot do that, all hope is not lost. You can try the following tools that simulate slower connection speeds on a single box:

Firefox Throttle (Firefox plug-in, windows-only, free)
Fiddler: Web Debugging Proxy (free)
Charles: Web Debugging Proxy (shareware, $50)

Please share your own favorite tools in the comments. Each of these tools is super easy to install and setup options to simulate slower connections. However, they each have some caveats that you need to keep in mind.

Firefox Throttle hooks into the WinSock API to limit bandwidth and avoids using proxy settings. (If you use it, be sure to disable "burst-mode".) Right now, Firefox Throttle only limits bandwidth. That means it controls how much data arrives in a given time period after the first bits arrive. It does not limit latency. Latency controls how long it takes packets to travel to and from the server. See Wikipedia's Relationship between latency and throughput for more details. For certain webpages, latency can make up a large part of the overall load time. The next Firefox Throttle release is expected to include latency delays and other webmaster friendly features to simulate slower, less-reliable connections. With these enhancements, Firefox Throttle will be an easy recommendation.

Fiddler and Charles act as proxies, and, as a result they make browsers act rather differently. For instance, IE and Firefox drastically limit the maximum number of connections (IE8 from 60+ to 6 and FF3 from 30 to 8). If you happen to know that all your users go though a proxy anyway, then this will not matter to you. Otherwise, it can mean that web pages load substantially differently.

If you have more time and hardware with which to tinker, you may want to check out tools like dummynet (FreeBSD or Mac OS X), or netem (Linux). They have even more knobs and controls and can be put between the web browser hardware and the serving hardware.

Measurements at each stage of web development can guide performance improvements. Hammerhead combined with a connection simulator like Firefox Throttle can be a great addition to your web development tool chest.
Link:Measuring Speed The Slow Way

Google Toolbar 5 dla Firefoxa

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:42:00 -0700

W lipcu udostępniliśmy polską wersję Google Toolbar 5 dla Internet Explorera. Przyszedł czas na edycją dla Firefoxa! Ostatnie wydanie naszego paska narzędzi zawiera kilka nowych funkcji, dzięki którym korzystanie z internetu jest przyjemniejsze i wygodniejsze. Oto, naszym zdaniem, najciekawsze z nich:

Obsługa gadżetów Google. Teraz do paska narzędzi Google możesz dodawać przyciski obsługujące gadżety. Chcesz sprawdzić godzinę? Prognozę pogody? Program telewizyjny? Możesz to zrobić jednym kliknięciem, niezależnie od tego jaka witryna otwarta jest w przeglądarce. Ponowne kliknięcie powoduje zamknięcie gadżetu.
Autouzupełnianie. Nie lubisz wypełniać formularzy? Nie jesteś jedyny :) . Dzięki funkcji autouzupełniania, pisanie długiego formularza trwa tyle... co kliknięcie myszą.
Toolbar zawsze dostępny. Teraz wszystkie ustawienia Toolbara są przyporządkowane do Twojego profilu. A to oznacza, że masz do nich dostęp z każdego komputera, na którym zainstalujesz Toolbar.
Notatnik. Teraz Google Toolbar jest zintegrowany z aplikacją Notatnik Google.

Polską wersję Google Toolbar 5 beta dla Firefoxa możesz pobrać stąd.

Napisane przez: Piotr Zalewski, Account Strategy Coordinator Adres URL tego postu Strony połączone z postem
Link:Google Toolbar 5 dla Firefoxa

Six Hats of Software Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:35:00 -0700

Julian Harty, one of our senior test engineers, is presenting a keynote at the STARWEST conference today (Wednesday, October 1) on Six Thinking Hats for Software Testers. Expanding on the Thinking Hats concept, originated many years ago by Edward De Bono and used by large numbers of people and various types of businesses, Julian's talk will add his experience and views about how Thinking Hats can be used in software testing. At Google, we have found it delivers breakthroughs in the short term and great results in the longer term -- one Googler called it the "universal unblocker."

For those of you unable to attend the conference, a video recording will be available. Julian has also written an article on this topic to appear in Better Software magazine within the next few months.

Links:Six Hats of Software Testing

전세계 패션과 음악으로 더욱 다양해진 아이구글 테마!

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 05:08:00 -0700

저희는 아이구글 페이지에 나만의 개성을 표현하고 싶은 분들을 위해 다양한 아이구글 아티스트 테마를 선보인 바 있습니다. – 지난 4월, 세계적인 아티스트들을 초청한 것을 시작으로 현재까지 진행 중인 이 프로젝트는 아이구글 홈페이지를 좀 더 역동적으로 꾸밀 수 있도록 아티스트 테마 디자인을 제공해 드리고 있습니다.
이번에 새롭게 제공되는 작품들은 전세계 패션과 음악계를 대표하는 아티스트 28명의 디자인을 모아놓은 것입니다. 놀랍게도 이들은 매우 폭넓고 다양한 스타일과 장르를 선보이고 있습니다. Radiohead와 Gnarls Barkley는 화려한 색상을 사용했습니다. Gucci, Burberry, Vera Wang은 아름다운 무늬로 작품을 선사했습니다. Bob Dylan, Celine Dion은 예상대로 대중적인 아이콘을 작품으로 보여줬습니다. 이처럼 아이구글에는 여러분의 성격이나 기호, 기분에 따라 선택 적용할 수 있는 훌륭한 작품들이 많이 있습니다.

이 번 아이구글 테마를 음악가와 패션 디자이너 분들을 중심으로 한 이유는 무엇일까요? 옷과 음악이 우리 자신의 성격이나 스타일을 표현하는데 도움을 준다는 생각했기 때문입니다. 처음 아이구글 아티스트 테마를 발표했을 때, 많은 사용자들이 패션과 음악 분야에서 더 많은 테마 디자인이 제공되기를 원한다는 사실을 알게 됐습니다. 이번에 소개된 새로운 콜렉션이 여러분에게 보다 많은 선택권을 제공하고, 나만의 개성을 표현하는데 많은 도움이 되길 바랍니다.
새로운 테마 콜렉션을 감상해 보시고 마음에 드시는 작품을 하나 골라보세요. 내가 원하는 테마를 선택하는 것은 아주 간단합니다. 클릭 몇 번으로 바로 해결됩니다. 어떤 것을 고를지 고민되신다면, 매일 새로운 작품들을 자동으로 보여주는 샘플러 테마를 선택해 보세요.
앞으로도 전 세계의 많은 아티스트들의 작품을 계속해서 제공해 드릴 예정이니, 많은 관심 부탁드립니다.

작성자: 구글 제품 및 사용자 경험담당 부사장 마리사 메이어, 제품 마케팅 매니저 미카엘라 프레스콧
Links - From: Google 한국 블로그

A Time for Enrichment

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 05:04:00 -0700

Over the next few days, we're attending three conferences, Online Market World and Startonomics, both this week in San Francisco, and SMX East, next week in New York City.

We would highly recommend all three - more details about the shows are below and you can register at the websites. Maybe we'll see you there! We've always found that we learn more in one day at these conferences then we do in weeks of sitting in front of our computer screens. Nothing helps us stay up-to-date more than having conversations with other smart people and learning new skills in seminars.

Also, some authors who are near and dear to our heart are doing book signings at two of the shows, where they will be giving away copies of their informative and cutting edge books.

Online Market World (San Francisco)
This conference starts Wednesday and runs through Thursday in San Francisco. If you're doing any marketing or selling on the web, this is going to be a smart show for you. Take a look at this agenda. You might want to check out Web Analytics Glory in Just 30 Minutes: Measure More Than Clicks which will be presented by our own Avinash Kaushik on Thursday at 11:45am. Afterwards, he'll be doing a book signing and giveaway of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day in the lunch area at 12:30pm for the first 500 people who show up!

Google will also have a booth that you can stop by in the expo hall, and there will be a book signing there as well. Tim Ash with SiteTuners, a Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant, is the author of Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions. He will be singing books at the booth from 4:15pm to 5pm on both Wednesday and Thursday. Tim will be speaking on Wednesday at 3:00pm in the panel Advanced PPC: What It Is, How to Avoid the Pitfalls. Then on Thursday, Tom Leung from the Google Website Optimizer team will be part of a panel on Landing Page Testing Best Practices. Tim's book signings will happen directly after these talks.

Startonomics (San Francisco)
This new show is also taking place this week on Thursday in San Francisco. It's a comprehensive one day show for entrepreneurs - and those thinking of becoming entrepreneurs - to connect with each other and be inspired by those who've already walked the start-up path. Our friends Dave McClure and Jeff Veen will be speaking, among others. Take a look at the day's sessions where you can learn about very facet of making an idea a reality, from product design, marketing and monetization to scalability and strategy.

SMX East (New York City)
Then next week, SMX (Search Marketing Expo) East starts in New York City from October 6th to the 8th. Search marketing is of course right up Google's alley and Google Vice President of Search Sales and Sales Operations Tim Armstrong will be making a keynote during the show on Tuesday morning, after which, Avinash will be doing another book signing and giveaway at the Google booth.

Then, at 3:15pm on Tuesday, Jon Diorio on the Website Optimizer product team will participate in a panel on "Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing", after which Bryan Eisenberg from FutureNow, another Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant, will be at the Google booth doing a free book signing of his book, Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide To Google Website Optimizer.

At 4:45pm on Tuesday, Avinash will be speaking on a panel called "Paid Search Analytics." I will also be presenting on behalf of Google Analytics and Website Optimizer on Tuesday in a theater presentation.

Members of our team will be at all the shows, and again, we hope we run into some of you!
Links - From: Google Analytics Blog:

Google.cz slaví dva roky

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 04:58:00 -0700

Google.cz (čti: český Google) dnes slaví dva roky existence. V roce 2006 měl Google v Česku jediného zaměstnance a v podstatě jen jednu lokalizovanou službu: vyhledávání. O 24 měsíců a 24 lokalizací později lze využívat v češtině takřka všechny produkty a služby Googlu, včetně Map, Gmailu, Kalendáře, Dokumentů, Picasy, Zpráv, Bloggeru, Překladače nebo třeba Chromu. (A další jsou na cestě!)

Dvouleté výročí jsme včera oslavili malým poledním "večírkem" v restauraci Láry Fáry. Google si zasloužil i dort.

Hlavní hvězdou byla samozřejmě Táňa, která český Google celé ty dva roky tlačila kupředu.

Honza Šedivý, šéf vývojářů, mluvil o budoucnosti a nirváně kybernetiky, jak je ostatně jeho dobrým zvykem.

Logotypem Google se to jen hemžilo: Táňa, Jirka, já (seřazeni podle zjevné inteligence výrazu ve tváři, sestupně).

Všechno nejlepší, Gůgle!

Filip Hráček
Account Strategist & Blogger
Link: Google Google.cz slaví dva roky

Spotlight on: WatchToLearnChinese.com

noreply@blogger.com (Leo Star) — Wed, 1 Oct 2008 04:56:00 -0700

A common way to use the YouTube API is to make a niche site -- YouTube isn't necessarily built to be a destination site for iguana lovers, or antique car racers, or people looking to learn Mandarin. Developers can use the API to create a rich supporting feature set for these communities. It's great to come across sites like this that are done well, so when I saw WatchToLearnChinese.com, I asked one of the creators, Philipp Lenssen, editor of Google Blogoscoped, to tell us more about the site. (I was also excited because it was a good way for me to brush up on my rusty Mandarin in time for a trip to Beijing!)

Tell us about WatchToLearnChinese.com.
We recently launched Watch to Learn Chinese, a site presenting over 500 Mandarin learning videos (as well as some Mandarin videos in general for advanced learners). We noticed so many great material already existing on YouTube that we wanted to utilize the YouTube API to bring it all on a site with special notes in Pinyin, that transliteration of Chinese using the Latin alphabet. After scouring hundreds of videos and sorting them into three difficulty levels, and assigning ratings specifically looking out for usefulness to learners, we opened the doors to present this as a free learning tool. While we don't want to and can't replace a Chinese teacher or learning books, we're hoping this can serve as additional material accompanying learning courses.

Beyond the videos, we've also added a game that mixes images (drawn ones, and Creative Commons-licensed photos), sounds, and text. My Chinese partner on this project had spoken a great deal of sentences into the microphone and I edited the sound into many little pieces to be used for the game (using the free Audacity editor). For the translations of the many words and sentences, we hired a translation company -- you provide them with a Word file or similar document, select your source and target language, and after some days, you can download the translated document (we've used Click2Translate.com, but you may also find another service you prefer). It might have been the first time that translation company was ever faced with the task of not only translating into Chinese, but also into accentuated Pinyin!

On that note, we've also added a YouTube channel with learning videos of our own.

Why did you decide to use the Chromeless Player instead of just embedding YouTube content the regular way?
There were several reasons for this. For one thing, we wanted to completely customize the player -- including every last button, video buffer indicator, color and so on. (Inspiration for this approach came from TotLol.com, a YouTube API-based site for parents and their toddlers which I had reviewed as part of Blogoscoped.com, a news blog on Google topics.) Another feature of the YouTube API that came in very useful was that we were able to assign a start and end time for the core lesson of a video. Imagine you want to watch a series of 10 videos by the same presenter -- wouldn't it be nice to not always watch the 20 seconds intro, but skip right to the lesson material? (And if you do want to learn more about the presenter after the lesson, we grouped their other videos on our site and also link to their homepage, if we found one.)

Tell us a little more about the backend. Do you have any lessons learned for everyone at home?
To let you find videos on the site, we set up a little PHP/MySQL engine which searches through video title and description. To optimize this process, we do some behind-the-scenes routines to check for "fuzzy" Pinyin matches. This is one example where you can build on existing videos but then add value by offering features specialized to that content. For instance, take the Chinese Pinyin word "wǒ mén", which means "we"; it was important that searchers should be able to enter this as "wǒ mén", "wǒmén", "women" and so on, and still find a match.

To manage video additions, we created a little private form where you input the YouTube URL, a title, a description, rating, type of learning course and so on. Once the form is submitted, the program will check for existing videos on the site to avoid duplicates, and then pulls the video thumbnail to store on our server. Now, a routine server-scheduled job (the Apache Cronjob) will check if the video still exists on YouTube, in case someone made it private, or disallowed embedding, or something else happened with it. When a problem is found we can see this in the management console and decide how to handle this problem, like by removing the video or looking for a replacement. Lesson learned: be conservative when you do the checking of availability and don't immediately hide display of videos on your site were you may suspect a problem. Thanks to an overzealous early version of our availability checker, which may have stumbled upon a changed HTML tag or similar on YouTube, WatchToLearnChinese.com was completely empty one morning... because all videos had been incorrectly flagged as unavailable by us!

And now, we're hoping for happy visitors to the site, and ponder ways of growing it in the future. It was certainly a lot of fun so far.

Thanks, Philipp! Check out the docs for more info about the Chromeless Player, the the JavaScript Player API, and the Data API.
Link: YouTube API Blog: Spotlight on: WatchToLearnChinese.com