Monthly Archives: August 2012

Bestival: Live on YouTube

Bestival, the technology-loving, fancy-dressing, award-winning festival turns its sights on YouTube this year, offering the community -- wherever they may be -- the chance to tune in to the action from the event’s Main Stage and Big Top from September 7-9.



Florence + The Machine, The XX and Azealia Banks lead one of Bestival’s strongest line-ups in its nine-year history, with performances streamed from youtube.com/BestivalTV in real time. Also expect sets from the likes of Friendly Fires, Two Door Cinema Club, Emeli Sandé, Bat For Lashes, Orbital, Miike Snow and New Order. The detailed daily program of the live stream will be available on the Bestival YouTube channel.

Once Bestival comes to a close, individual songs from acts will be available on-demand for the next 90 days on the Bestival YouTube channel. But don’t let that prevent you from getting involved in the action live -- things have a tendency to happen at Bestival, so see them on YouTube first. 

Posted by Laura Quinn, YouTube Marketing Manager, recently watched “Canoeists Stunned At Swimming Koala”.

Source: YouTube UK Blog


A more dynamic mobile reading experience

Last year we introduced mobile templates on Blogger, and Dynamic Views for the desktop. Since then, over 2 million blogs have started using Dynamic Views on desktop, and users have asked us for more mobile features. So today, we’re bringing the speed and advanced reading experience of Dynamic Views to mobile.  Configuring your blog to use a Dynamic View on mobile will result in a reading experience that mirrors the desktop, but is optimized for mobile.

To configure a Dynamic View for mobile on your blog, select the "Template" tab, and then click on the settings cog under the “Mobile” preview.  

If you’re currently using Dynamic Views on the desktop and have the “Default” mobile template selected, you don’t need to do anything -- your blog will automatically start using the mobile optimized view when viewed from a compatible mobile browser. For more information, see Blogger Help.


Currently, only the “Classic” view, which is best suited for small screens, will be shown on mobile. Tablets with large screens will get the full desktop experience. As with the older mobile templates, supported browsers are WebKit-based browsers (such as Android Browser, Chrome for Android and iOS, and Mobile Safari).  

We hope your readers enjoy the modern, compelling experience that this mobile update provides.

Source: Blogger Buzz


So You Weren’t An Early Adopter: How to Kick Start Social with Google+

Join social media power influencer +Lynette Young for a look at ways your business can kick start its presence on Google+ in a Learn with Google Hangout on August 23rd at 1pm EDT/10am PDT. RSVP for the Hangout on our Google+ Event page.




Companies big and small are using social media to interact with customers and build digital brands. Even if your business wasn’t an early adopter of social, Lynette will guide you through ways to kick start this channel with Google+. In this hangout, she’ll talk through examples of businesses using hangouts, pages and unique content to grow their audience. As a Learn with Google program, you’ll also hear lots of tips and strategies you can use to build a community from scratch on Google+.  

Lynette Young is a digital media specialist helping entrepreneurs and businesses put social ideas into action. She is the founder of Women of Google+ and CEO of Purple Stripe Productions. Kari Clark of the Google+ Marketing team will moderate the conversation with Lynette and other social media specialists including:
We hope you can join us to begin using Google+ for your business. If you have a question for the panel, leave your questions as a comment on our Google+ Event.

To get yourself geared up for the hangout, check out the two newest Google+ business case studies. Toyota Global has been engaging its Google+ community with content of the latest car models and a hangout with a Toyota engineer. By incorporating Google+ badges on its website and YouTube channel, the car manufacturer has grown to over one million followers. In the education space, ES Corporation is teaching English lessons in hangouts. Using social extensions, the business also saw a 46% increase in click-through rate on search ads.

Posted by Lindsay Rumer, Google+ for Business

Source: CPG Blog


European creators: could you be YouTube’s next big thing?

Our NextUp program has unearthed some fantastic creative talent over the last year and we’re delighted to announce that today we’re launching the project again for European YouTube partners.

NextUp is a development program exclusively designed for YouTube Partners with bags of potential. We’d love to see even more partners using the site as a launchpad to career success, so we’re supporting them through funding, education and promotions via NextUp. By helping them invest in new equipment and training, talented creators are going to develop whole new genres and online experiences for audiences around the world - ironing skydiving anyone?

Eligibility

So, let’s get down to the details. If you’re an official YouTube partner in either France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, or the UK and are 18+ years old on the day of application, then you could be eligible to enter. Your channel must have between 5,000 - 100,000 subscribers as of August 17th 2012 and you must have uploaded at least 6 public videos to your channel in the last 6 months (February 17th 2012 - August 17th 2012). If you meet the eligibility requirements, then you can apply here.

In order to apply, you’ll need to submit one pilot video and answer one free response question:

  • The pilot video should be an example of the project you want to create for your channel, and demonstrate your creativity, talent, and skill with video-creation and storytelling (the video should be max. 3 minutes in length).
  • The open response question is a written outline of your YouTube project. It is required to provide additional context to your video pilot entry and has a 400 word limit.

Applications are open until September 23rd 2012. Once applications close, a panel of YouTube judges and the 2011 NextUp winners will select 25 winners from across Europe.

Prizes

Winners will receive an all expenses paid to trip to London, where you’ll be able to attend a week of hands-on training and mentorship in our brand new creator space, complete with studios, editing suites and the latest audio-visual equipment. In addition, winners will get a €4,000 video equipment package and €3,000 in cash to help boost the quality of your content as well as promotion across YouTube to help you build your audience

We can’t wait to see what creative ideas you all come up with in 2012!

Kinzie Kramer, YouTube Partner Marketing, recently watched "Come With Us -- Lindsey Stirling & Can't Stop Won't Stop".

Source: YouTube UK Blog


New Learn with Google Webinars Help Make the Web Work for You

It’s almost back-to-school time, but students aren’t the only ones who are getting geared up to learn. Today, we’re announcing our next series of Learn with Google webinars, which will arm you with the tools you need to get the most out of Google’s advertising products and solutions. Over the next couple of months, 12 webinars will teach you tips and how-to’s to help make the web work for your business.

Check out the full schedule below:

  • Aug 23 at 10am PDT How to Kick Start Social with Google+ (Hangout on Air)
  • Aug 28 at 10am PDT Optimizing your Video Ad Campaigns
  • Aug 29 at 10am PDT Google+: Enhancing Marketing and Making Social Accountable
  • Sept 5 at 10am PDT Go Bigger, Faster with AdWords Editor
  • Sept 6 at 10am PDT Making the Most of Recent AdWords Updates
  • Sept 12 at 10am PDT Driving Cost-Effective App Downloads with AdWords
  • Sept 13 at 10am PDT Go Bigger, Faster with AdWords Scripts
  • Sept 18 at 10am PDT Better Together: Combining Targeting Strategies in Display
  • Sept 19 at 10am PDT The Importance of Search Advertising
  • Sept 20 at 10am PDT Measuring the Impact of Online Advertising on Offline Sales
  • Sept 26 at 10am  PDT GoMo: Mobilize your Site and Maximize your Advertising
  • Sept 27 at 10am PDT Optimizing Display Campaigns: Tips, Tricks, & Tools

Visit our webinar page to register for any of the sessions and to access past webinars on-demand. We’ll be adding new webinars as they’re scheduled, so check back regularly for updates. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding our Learn with Google Webinar calendar to your own Google calendar to automatically see upcoming webinars.

Whether your goal is to engage the right customers in the moments that matter, make better decisions, or go bigger, faster, we hope that you’ll use these best practices and how-to’s to maximize the impact of digital and grow your business. We’re looking forward to having you in class at an upcoming Learn with Google webinar!

Erin Green, Marketing Coordinator

Source: CPG Blog


Preview fonts with the new Poster mode

Selecting just the right font for your website or application is a personal decision, and making sure the font harmonizes with your content is often time consuming. To help you narrow down your font choices, last week we announced a new tool to compare individual characters in a pair of fonts side by side. Today, we’re introducing Poster Images, which allows you to easily see what a font looks like with different effects, on a variety of different backgrounds.

To start, visit the Google Web Fonts directory and select the Poster tab at the top.




Change the font size or the appearance of the poster to check out how different styles look. When you find a font you like, hover over it to see more details and add it to your collection.
















We hope this makes choosing the right font easier and more fun!

Posted by Sang Tian, Software Engineering Intern

Scholar Updates: Making New Connections


Since Google Scholar launched nearly eight years ago, we’ve been helping people find the research they’re looking for.  But often the spark for discovery comes from making a new connection or looking in a direction that you hadn’t yet considered and that -- before your aha! moment -- you wouldn’t have known to look for.  Today we hope to start fostering these new connections with Scholar Updates.

We analyze your articles (as identified in your Scholar profile), scan the entire web looking for new articles relevant to your research, and then show you the most relevant articles when you visit Scholar.  We determine relevance using a statistical model that incorporates what your work is about, the citation graph between articles, the fact that interests can change over time, and the authors you work with and cite.  You don’t need to configure updates or enter any queries.  We’ll notify you about new updates by displaying a preview on the homepage and highlighting a bell icon on search results pages:


To get article updates relevant to your work, all you need to do is create a public Scholar profile. Article updates will automatically start to appear within a few days.

Posted by: James Connor, Software Engineer

Introducing Custom Search Element v2

Custom Search Engine (CSE) allows you to incorporate rich search functionality into your website. You do this by adding specific HTML markup - known as the Custom Search element - to web pages on your site. The Custom Search element renders a search experience (search boxes and results pages) on your site’s pages. By controlling the placement of the Custom Search element on your pages and configuring your CSE settings, you can create customized layouts that are tuned for the look-and-feel of your website.

We’re happy to announce today a new, improved version of the Custom Search element. Here are some of the key highlights and improvements of what we call Custom Search element v2.

  • Search UI is rendered based on the settings stored on the Google CSE servers. This means that any configuration changes you make in the CSE control panel will automatically be reflected on your web pages the next time they reload. You no longer need to copy-and-paste new element code into your website when you modify your CSE using the control panel.

  • All element code is loaded asynchronously for reduced page load times.

  • Client-side customization allows you to overwrite global CSE settings on a per-page basis. For example, you can enable search history, disable auto search on page load, configure different Google Analytics parameters, and more. Customization is done through an easy-to-use HTML syntax which does not require any Javascript knowledge.

To start using Custom Search element v2 on your website, go to the “Get code” section of the CSE control panel and follow the instructions shown there.

We’ll continue to support older versions of the Custom Search element for the time being but encourage you to update your CSE implementation to take advantage of the improvements.

Posted by Ying Huang, Software Engineer

New Fonts, Early Access, and More

Over the last few months, we’ve been busy adding support for web fonts to Google documents and Google presentations. Today, we’re adding seven font families in Google Web Fonts, a new tool to compare similar fonts, and an early access program to get feedback on non-latin scripts in development.

When you choose a new font, you want it to look good for all your readers, regardless of the platform or browser they’re using. To help make fonts look better in more places, we’re starting to hint more families in Google Web Fonts, thanks to the ttfautohint project, which automates this process. Amarante, Capriola, Courgette, and Quando were hinted using this tool.

Eagle Lake expands on our existing collection of calligraphic font styles, and you can use Metal Mania to bring out your inner guitarist. We’re also very excited to be including a special contribution from our friends over at Adobe - Source Sans Pro, their first open source type family.

As the number of fonts in Google Web Fonts continues to grow, it’s becoming harder to select the right font from among many potential choices. To make this process easier, you can now easily compare two fonts side by side using the new comparison tool. Just add a few fonts to your collection, select Review, and click on the Compare tab at the top.



You can then overlay glyphs from each font on top of each other, and use the slider to transition between fonts to see the differences between them more clearly.

Non-latin fonts can be more complex than latin fonts, both as designs and as font software, which often require more time to develop and polish. The designers of these fonts may not be native readers, and we’re hoping for your feedback to help them understand where their fonts need improvement. You can try them out by downloading them from the Google Web Fonts early access page.

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager