Monthly Archives: March 2013

Get inside your favorite movies with Google Play

“What’s his name again? Wasn’t he the guy in that movie with the battle of the bands?” Now, while you're watching a movie on Google Play, you can find out that it’s Jack Black (of course!), who was born in Hermosa Beach and is 43 years old. And with one click you can search the web and learn the fun fact that his parents are both rocket scientists.

We’ve added info cards to the Google Play Movies & TV app so you can easily learn more about the actors, related films and even what song is playing in many of your favorite movies. When you’re watching a film on your tablet, simply press pause and cards will pop up with information about actors on screen. You can tap on an actor’s face to learn more about him, like his age, place of birth, his character in the movie, and his recent work, or scroll through the info cards to learn more about the movie or soundtrack. When you resume the movie, the cards will disappear.


This new feature is offered for hundreds of movies in Google Play and we’re adding more every day. If you’re in the U.S. and have a tablet running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and higher, download the latest version of the Google Play Movies & TV app to check it out. We hope to bring info cards to more movies in more countries and devices soon.

Posted by Ben Serridge, Product Manager for Google Play

The World’s Languages in Your Pocket (No Internet Required)


Have you ever found yourself in a foreign country, wishing you knew how to say "I'm lost!" or "I'm allergic to peanuts”? The Internet and services like Google Translate can help—but what if you don't have a connection?


Today we're launching offline language packages for Google Translate on Android (2.3 and above) with support for fifty languages, from French and Spanish to Chinese and Arabic.

You can select [Offline Languages] in the app menu to see all the offline language packages available for download. To enable offline translation between any two languages, you just need to select them in the offline languages menu. Once the packages are downloaded, you're good to go.
 



While the offline models are less comprehensive than their online equivalents, they are perfect for translating in a pinch when you are traveling abroad with poor reception or without mobile data access.








































So go out and explore another language or another culture without worrying about Internet access. There’s a whole world offline out there.

Posted by Minqi Jiang, Associate Product Manager, on behalf of the Google Translate Team

A reminder about promotional and commerce journalism

Posted by Richard Gingras, Sr. Director, News & Social Products


Credibility and trust are longstanding journalistic values, and ones which we all regard as crucial attributes of a great news site. It’s difficult to be trusted when one is being paid by the subject of an article, or selling or monetizing links within an article. Google News is not a marketing service, and we consider articles that employ these types of promotional tactics to be in violation of our quality guidelines. 

Please remember that like Google search, Google News takes action against sites that violate our quality guidelines. Engagement in deceptive or promotional tactics such as those described above may result in the removal of articles, or even the entire publication, from Google News.

If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, or marketing materials (for your company or another party), we strongly recommend that you separate non-news content on a different host or directory, block it from being crawled with robots.txt, or create a Google News Sitemap for your news articles only. Otherwise, if we learn of promotional content mixed with news content, we may exclude your entire publication from Google News.

The World’s Languages in Your Pocket (No Internet Required)

Have you ever found yourself in a foreign country, wishing you knew how to say "I'm lost!" or "I'm allergic to peanuts”? The Internet and services like Google Translate can help—but what if you don't have a connection? 

Today we're launching offline language packages for Google Translate on Android (2.3 and above) with support for fifty languages, from French and Spanish to Chinese and Arabic. 

You can select [Offline Languages] in the app menu to see all the offline language packages available for download. To enable offline translation between any two languages, you just need to select them in the offline languages menu. Once the packages are downloaded, you're good to go.

 

While the offline models are less comprehensive than their online equivalents, they are perfect for translating in a pinch when you are traveling abroad with poor reception or without mobile data access.
  

So go out and explore another language or another culture without worrying about Internet access. There’s a whole world offline out there.

Posted by Minqi Jiang, Associate Product Manager

YouTube hits a billion monthly users


In the last eight years you’ve come to YouTube to watch, share and fall in love with videos from all over the world. Tens of thousands of partners have created channels that have found and built businesses for passionate, engaged audiences. Advertisers have taken notice: all of the Ad Age Top 100 brands are now running campaigns on YouTube. And today, we’re announcing a new milestone: YouTube now has more than a billion unique users every single month.

What does a billion people tuning into YouTube look like?
  • Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.
  • Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences.
  • If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India.
  • PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!
From the aspiring filmmaker in his basement and the next great pop musician, to the fans all around the world who tune in, subscribe and share their favorite videos with the planet, thank you for making YouTube what it is today. You have truly created something special.

Posted by The YouTube Team
[Cross-posted from the Global YouTube Blog]

P.S. To learn more about what’s powering this growth, check out our blog post about Gen C and mobile devices.

Google Keep–Save what’s on your mind

Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all...it’s rarely where you need it when you need it.

To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.

If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it.


Changing priorities isn’t a problem: just open Keep on your Android phone or tablet (there’s a widget so you can have Keep front and center all the time) and drag your notes around to reflect what matters. You can choose the color for each note too.

Pro tip: for adding thoughts quickly without unlocking your device there's a lock screen widget (on devices running Android 4.2+).



Google Keep is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above. You can access, edit and create new notes on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep and in the coming weeks you'll be able to do the same directly from Google Drive.

Posted by Katherine Kuan, Software Engineer

Join the Conversation About Same-Sex Marriage on Google+

Posted by Ramya Raghavan, Google+ Politics Team

 In exactly one week, the Supreme Court will begin hearing oral arguments on the issue of same-sex marriage. It’s been a hot topic and there will no doubt be a flurry of activity related to the cases. Recently on Google+, we’ve seen a variety of posts about this issue and the community is just getting warmed up.

 Starting tomorrow at 2 p.m. EDT, you can view a series of Google+ Hangouts exploring the issues related to the same-sex marriage debate. The “State of our Unions” Hangout series will include Washington Post journalists and writers such as Chris Cillizza, Nia Malika-Henderson, Jonathan Capehart, Liz Tenety and Robert Barnes as well as participating organizations The Advocate, The Center for American Progress, The Family Equality Council, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, The Heritage Foundation, SCOTUSblog, and Third Way (#stateofourunion).

State of our Unions hosted by The Washington Post
  • March 20 - Tell it to me straight: The facts behind the cases
  • March 21 - Evolving Conversations: Is this the new civil rights movement?
  • March 22 - Keeping Faith: The role religion plays in the gay marriage debate
  • March 26 - Getting Real: What are the real-life impacts of these decisions?
  • March 27 - Arguments made -- now what?
The Pride Plus Google+ Community will also cover the topic with “At Last? A Marriage Equality Hangout Series”, taking your questions and debating them among their panel of activists and LGBT nonprofits (#Time4Marriage).

 At Last? A Marriage Equality Hangout Series hosted by Pride Plus
  • March 22 - Why “Marriage” Matters
  • March 25 - Real Couples, Real Stories
  • March 28 - If we win? If we lose?
So whether you're a political junkie or just want to express your opinion, join the conversation with other community members and experts who are passionate about the topic by using the above hashtags or #supremecourt and #gaymarriage.

Make a silent movie by talking to Chrome

Last month, the Web Speech API brought voice recognition to Chrome users in more than 30 languages. We thought it would be fun to demonstrate this new technology by using an old one: silent film.

The Peanut Gallery lets you add intertitles to old black-and-white movie clips just by talking out loud while you watch them. Create a film and share it with friends, so they can bring out their inner screenwriters too.

Introducing the Peanut Gallery

We hope that developers will find many uses for the Web Speech API, both fun and practical—including new ways to navigate, search, enter text, and interact with the web. We can’t wait to see how people use it.

Source: Google Chrome


Never Forget a Useful Phrase Again – Introducing Phrasebook for Google Translate

Your knowledge of a language is largely determined by how well you can say the right things at the right time. But with so many useful phrases out there, it can be hard to keep track of them all, let alone recall them when needed.

With Google Translate, you can find the right thing to say, but you may not remember the translation at the right time. You might find yourself performing the same translation again and again, until you finally commit the translation to memory.

Phrasebook for Google Translate jumpstarts this slow learning process by allowing you to save the most useful phrases to you, for easy reference later on, exactly when you need them. By revisiting the useful phrases in your Phrasebook from time to time, you can turn any brief translation into lasting knowledge.

It’s easy to start using Phrasebook. Simply click the star under the translated text to save the translation in your Phrasebook.



To view your Phrasebook, simply click the Phrasebook icon above the upper-right corner of the box containing the translation.


Click any phrase in your Phrasebook to load it back in the translation area. Using the Phrasebook controls, you can filter your phrases by language pair or search for a specific phrase. You can also easily listen to each phrase by hovering over the entry and selecting the text-to-speech icons.



We hope your new Phrasebook will come in handy as you use Google Translate. We'd love to hear any feedback you have about this new feature. You can tell us what you think about Phrasebook through the "Send Feedback" option at the bottom of the Google Translate homepage.

- The Google Translate Team

CPG Blog 2013-03-14 17:01:00


Think Insights: Marketer data, information and inspiration just got a new address


Today marks the debut of the new Think Insights, Google’s hub for marketing insights and inspiration for advertisers and agencies. On google.com/think, you can learn about the latest research in digital marketing, be inspired by creative brand campaigns, and find useful products and tools. You’ll also find industry-leading case studies and Google’s latest research, strategic perspectives, interviews with innovators and experts and more—all to help you make the most of the web.

Every week, we’ll feature content that spans industries and interests. Here’s a snapshot of our top stories:

  • In Understanding the Full Value of Mobile, learn how sporting goods industry leader adidas worked with digital performance agency iProspect to understand how mobile drives value beyond mobile commerce, particularly in-store sales. The campaign proved the mobile brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI.

  • The Hyundai Elantra: Driveway Decision Maker campaign lets you watch your favorite Hyundai model drive right to your driveway, using a combination of Google Maps Street View, projection mapping and real-time 3D animation.

  • YouTube Ads Leaderboard shows which YouTube ads most moved audiences this month, through a winning combination of savvy promotion and smart creative strategy; a new list is featured each month.

    For consumer marketers, come visit the Consumer Goods industry page, which has all of the latest research and insights coming out of the CPG industry, all in one place. Check out the headlining story, Young Males’ Digital Path to Purchase, which examines how the internet affects what guys buy. The conclusion? Guys 18-34 years old search twice as much as the rest of the population, and half discover new products in the process.



In our Perspectives section, we tap our own experts—as well as heads of industry, digital visionaries and Wharton professors—to lend their insights and analyses on the topics that matter most to marketers. The Product & Tools section contains information about our products and advertising platforms, as well as Planning Tools like the Brand Impressions tool and the popular Real-Time Insights finder.

For consumer marketers, come visit the Consumer Goods industry page, which has all of the latest research and insights coming out of the CPG industry, all in one place. Check out the headlining story, Young Males’ Digital Path to Purchase, which examines how the internet affects what guys buy. The conclusion? Guys 18-34 years old search twice as much as the rest of the population, and half discover new products in the process.

We built google.com/think to help you do it all—stay up-to-date on the latest in digital marketing, arm yourself with data to support your business cases and create inspiring campaigns. Explore the site now, and if you like what you discover, don't forget to subscribe to our Think Letter for a monthly round-up of our most popular content.


Authored by Lisa Gevelber, Head of Global Ads Marketing

Source: CPG Blog