Archive for April, 2009

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

The first three months of the Obama Administration have brought the new American President unprecedented challenges. Back in November, when he was elected, everyone knew the economy and the Middle East would be critical issues for Obama to attack early on. But like every president before him, he's had to deal with the unexpected as well: who could have predicted pirates off the Somali Coast or swine flu?

As citizens and pundits from all political perspectives analyze the President's first 100 days in office today, Obama himself will address the nation tonight on the 100-day anniversary of his inauguration -- and we're going to carry a live stream of the conference from the White House YouTube channel. Be sure to tune in at 8pm EDT to watch it live.

We're also featuring commentary and analysis from top news organizations on our homepage today. Hear Karl Rove grade the President on Fox News. Get a re-cap from Al-Jazeera on what Obama has accomplished in his opening act. Watch the Washington Post talk with Americans in DC about their early impressions of the new President.

You can join in the conversation by making a video: How is the Obama Administration doing, and what advice would you give the President moving forward? Upload your thoughts to YouTube and add them as a video response to this Citizentube video, and we'll feature some of them on our News page tomorrow.

Finally, don't forget to come to youtube.com/whitehouse at 8pm EDT to watch President Obama address the nation.

Posted by Steve Grove, YouTube News & Politics

by Claudine Zap

Are you having 90s flashbacks? The Luke Perry sideburns circa Beverly Hills 90210 are back.

Matthew Broderick can be seen sporting some serious man chops. (For a role in a play, but still.) "17 Again" heartthrob Zak Efron is mussing up his clean-shaven look for the facial hair trend. And, well, New York Daily News unkindly points out that Samantha Ronson seems to have gotten into the side-hair game as well.

We're not at the Peach Pit anymore.

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I'm writing this at 30,000 feet, I have jet lag, and I'm worn out; but JSConf was worth it! If you don't believe me you should check out twitter on the subject. I don't think I've ever seen a community so excited by a conference, and rightly so.

Tech conferences can be such grand affairs, with thousands of attendees. JSConf squeaked in at a mere 150. There were representatives of every major JavaScript framework (except one, you know who you are). The JavaScript community doesn't get together often, but when it does, it's incredibly fun. The 2 days in DC were so chock full of conversation and presentations, the only complaint people had was that they couldn't be in all of them.

JSConf was like a who's-who of JavaScript practitioners - Photo by @voodootikigod

At many conferences, the crowd can be very mixed. It wasn't that JSConf wasn't diverse (I saw everyone from sys-admins to designers), but the focus was very clearly on JavaScript. The talks didn't beat around the bush, it was all action. Not only that, every session was recorded in glorious video. Everyone will get a chance to revisit the talks, for free.

So let's get down to it. I'm not going to try and recall every talk, for a start I couldn't attend them all, but I'm going to pick some of my favourites:

The Real-Time Web with XMPP

Have you ever heard of Long Polling? Long polling is an awesome alternative to comet. It works like this: instead of holding a connection open, violating HTTP and REST, you make a request. The server holds this connection open until it either gets some data to send you or a timeout happens, in which case it returns false.

As soon as you get a response you poll again to wait for the next set of data. This is one just one of the excellent real-time web topics Jack Moffitt covered. Everything from XMPP to their Strophe.js libraries which converts JS object literals into XML for you.

Jack and his team are using XMPP and Strophe.js to power a number of real time web sites. Apparently Chess Park has an average game time of 2 minutes. This wouldn't be possible if it wasn't really fast. I look forward to seeing more real-time web things coming out of this year's JSConf.

PhoneGap

So many high end phones like the iPhone and Android come with all of these crazy features like GPS and accelerometers. The Phone Gap team figured out that while you can't access those features in a regular mobile web browser, you can use them as part of an application framework. This gives you a way to rapidly develop an app using the rich features of the phone via a standard web stack.

Brian LeRoux admitted that this wouldn't power any high-end 3D games (think Katamari) but there's still a huge amount you can do. He showed off a couple of samples including a ball maze game that uses the accelerometer and the "PhoneGap Simulator." The Simulator provides an emulator for PhoneGap on the phone that allows you to move the device (to change the accelerometer) or simulate physical functions of the phone. Best of all both PhoneGap and the emulator are Open Source.

If you like the idea of ball games written in JavaScript you should also try out the BrowserPlus accelerometer demo for your laptop, although I have to admit I'm a tad less agile swinging my Macbook Pro around the room than my iPhone.

TestSwarm

Whatever John Resig does is interesting, he's that kind of guy. Throwing a bit of a left-field ball, John talked about three topics. I know other people will talk about the other stuff. So I'm just going to say Deep Leap is really fun and leave it at that. The thing that John talked about that we've all really been waiting for is TestSwarm.

I've seen a live demo, and it was awesome. John says it's still a bit too early to call it ready for alpha but man it's going to be worth it. TestSwarm does exactly what John said it would when he announced it on his blog. I've seen him distribute his unit tests to remote machines running different browsers. But, whoops, no Firefox 3 in this swarm. Let's add this machine. A click later and the Firefox 3 tests were complete.

One of the best suggestions after the talk was about connecting Deep Leap and TestSwarm. Why not let players of Deep Leap run test in the background? asked someone in the audience. That sounds like a truly marvellous idea, run SETI as your screen-saver and play JavaScript games for the betterment of mankind.

All in all, the talks, the outstanding JavaScript community, and the 90F weather in DC made this one of my favourite conferences of all time.

Tom Hughes-Croucher
Your friendly neighbourhood evangelist

The success of your business both online and offline is very important to us, which is why today we'd like to share a message from David Fischer, our VP of Global Online Sales and Operations:

It's no secret that small businesses play a key role in Google's success as a company and drive the economy as a whole. AdWords, AdSense, Apps – you name it – have all grown because small businesses use them. Because of that, increasing their bottom line is very important to us.

In Washington, D.C. and state capitols across the country, we often witness policy debates, legislative initiatives, and regulatory changes that significantly affect the small business constituency – the same constituency that has helped make Google what it is today. But the recent economic downturn has turned entrepreneurship into an uphill battle. So we asked ourselves a simple question: What can we do to help broaden the collective voice of small business both on Capitol Hill and in the states? We want to know about the issues that are important to our small business partners so that we can better invest in their goals and objectives and ultimately, their success.

Today we're launching a new initiative called the Small Business Network. It's designed to promote business-friendly policies at the federal and state levels. We plan to tackle a number of important technology policy issues - the first two of which are increasing broadband access and preserving an open Internet. And we also want to have a dialogue with small business owners about other issues that affect their online business.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by President Obama in February, sets aside $7 billion to increase access to high-speed Internet or broadband for the 20 million Americans who live in underserved areas. By expanding broadband access and preserving an open platform, small businesses in America have the ability to reach all consumers at an affordable cost and compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world. We hope that the Small Business Network will encourage lawmakers to grant those funds to the right providers and create broadband access for all small businesses across the country.

If you are a small business owner who is interested in learning more this initiative, visit Google's Small Business Network site to find out how you can be a part of it.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Hello all,

As we mentioned in our December blog post "A preview of 2009 API changes," we've been hard at work on re-building the AdWords API to offer our developers improved speed, functionality, and flexibility.

Today, we're announcing the launch of the API 2009 sandbox, so you can begin experimenting with the latest version of the AdWords API. We're using a new version naming convention to highlight the significant differences between this version, called AdWords API v2009, and v13.

There are several key differences in how API v2009 works:

• More operations in a single call: We're changing the way services
  are constructed so that you'll be able to accomplish more work per
  call. Specifically, operations will accept a variety of modifiers
  acting on elements across ad groups. For example, you'll be able to
  add, update, and delete keywords across ad groups, all within a single
  call.
  
• Lower costs: We will reduce API units consumed for the new
  asynchronous methods, and are exploring other ways to improve the
  value you get from the AdWords API by lowering costs and increasing
  efficiency of quota use. The v2009 sandbox is free to use, and once
  these services are in production, they will be tied to a new rate
  sheet that lowers the average cost of an operation. The new rate sheet
  will apply only to API v2009, and will be launched when v2009 goes
  into production.
  

Most AdWords functionality is available in the core services we
exposed today:

• AdGroupAdService
• AdGroupCriterionService
• AdGroupService
• CampaignCriterionService
• CampaignService
• CampaignTargetService

Forthcoming features include:

• Asynchronous calls: We'll offer asynchronous calls, which will allow
  you to work with large sets of data faster and more easily. Instead of
  having to wait for our system to fully complete your request before
  you can make another one, you'll be able to make another call as soon
  as the API service confirms that it's received your previous call. No
  more waiting for large requests to be finished. (Synchronous methods
  will still be supported as well).
  
• Partial failure acceptance: We plan to support partial failure, so
  large posts aren't rolled back due to a few errors. This allows you to
  keep moving forward with development and not have to re-do the same
  posts.
  

We'll release the remaining features needed for full AdWords parity in the coming months. Forthcoming features include: Reporting, Keyword tools, MCC functionality, and change history.

How to access the API v2009 Sandbox:
The API v2009 Sandbox does not charge for quota, and will accept your current Google account login. In addition, the backend database for the v2009 Sandbox is shared with the v13 Sandbox environment. This means that any existing campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords that
you created under your login email using the v13 Sandbox will exist in the v2009 Sandbox. Please remember that the sandbox is a testing and development environment. The changes made here will not impact your live AdWords account. You can read more about Sandbox best practices here: http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/2009/03/adwords-api-sandbox-best-pract...

What comes next:
We plan to launch the core functionality of API v2009 on our production servers in about 2 months, with the remaining functionality needed for AdWords parity released over the following 3 months. During that time, both AdWords API v13 and v2009 will be fully supported. We'll begin the sunset period for v13 once we've reached feature parity in API v2009. Since we're introducing more changes than usual, we'll extend the normal 4-month sunset period for v13, so it won't sunset until sometime in early 2010.

Documentation for the API v2009 sandbox is available on our codesite at: http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/v2009/docs/

We hope you'll kick the tires of our new API and give us plenty of feedback. We've established a special email address for you to share your thoughts: adwordsapi-relaunch@google.com. We look forward to your comments, suggestions and questions.

Thank you,

Doug Raymond
Product Manager, AdWords API

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Update: The maintenance is now complete. Thanks for your patience.

by Vera H-C Chan

As part of our continuing series, "A Searching Portrait: Barack Obama's 100 Days," below are the people, economic obsessions, and animated controversies that dominated February 2009 searches. (Check here for January 2009)

Approval, threats, and cartoon protests
Days into the Obama administration, and searchers already look for  "obama approval ratings." Pleased citizens craftily learn "how to make hope poster barack obama," but a disgruntled handful pursue "impeach obama" options. On Valentine's Day, a First Couple date at Table 52 heartens the romantics. The feel-good vibe, however, turns ugly with the controversy over the New York Post chimp cartoon, which bcomes the most-searched subject in February, after the stimulus package.

Obama gets set for his State of the Union address, but a looming oratorical threat comes in the form of Bobby Jindal...until the Louisiana governor gets a critical slapdown. Good thing for Jindal, some are distracted by "joe biden's forehead."

Come join the party...or not
The Indonesian "barack obama lookalike" delights a few before attention returns to more serious matters. Among the many staffers to come through the Search box, Tom Daschle falls by the wayside, but Pentecostal pastor Joshua Dubois secures a position with possibly the longest-titled department yet: the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. After much wrangling, Tim Geithner makes his public debut as Treasury Secretary, but after hearing the speech, people rather know... where's the dog?

Democrats (especially Dianne Feinstein) slaps Obama's hand about proper political protocol, Leon Panetta gets sworn in as CIA director. Then, Senator Judd Gregg changes his mind about being Secretary of Commerce... Thank goodness for Hillary Clinton and her first Asia visit as secretary of state.

Stimulating news
At last a stimulus plan, but be careful for what you wish. People try to sift through the package and magic "billion dollar stimulus grants." As one eye turns to a frenetic Dow Jones, the other is kept on "recovery.org" and details about the "first time homebuyer credit," "economic stimulus package tax rebates," "mortgage relief plan" and much more. Speaking of handouts, here comes the "gm bailout."

Check in for March and April concerns on mortgages, NCAA brackets, and overseas etiquette of bows and handshakes. 

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by Claudine Zap

Apologies to the petite and the mousy haired: Sometimes bigger really is better. What other proof do you need than the International Fantasy Hair Competition. Walking with head held upright optional.

You can put away your hairspray for now. The teased tresses we're seeing were on stage, not on the street. For one night in New Hampshire, feathers, flowers, chicken wire, and birds topped the noggins of 50 models looking to be a head above the rest. The winner sported a halo of peacock feathers. And lots and lots of hairspray.

The literally hair-raising styles also raised money for a good cause. Proceeds of the competition supported a local food bank. Not to mention the cause of huge hair. View a slide show here.

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Just as having the right web analytics data is critical to making smart marketing decisions, having the right set of tools is equally imperative when it comes to testing & tuning your Google Analytics implementation. Read on to discover the tools used by one Analytics Pro in troubleshooting and solving Google Analytics problems every day.

Why you need tools and what you can use them for

Implementing Google Analytics can be easy - just copy and paste the script produced during the account or profile creation process, right? Yes, and no. For more complex websites, it's a good idea to take some extra steps yourself, or hire someone, to validate your installation and make sure everything's working as it should.

When problems arise they are usually easy to spot within Google Analytics reports. Odd data such as a high degree of "self-referrals" (visits being reported as "referred" from your own domain name), a strangely high rate of conversions for an unexpected traffic source or medium, or an amazingly low bounce rate (3.8% bounce rate isn't really good, it's broken) are signs something may be wrong.

Enter the toolbox! In it you'll find an array resources for quickly identifying the root causes of Google Analytics anomalies - those most commonly being

• JavaScript errors,
  
• cookie problems, or
  
• client-side page load time issues (not to be confused with slow connections... this is different).
  
  

Tools every Google Analytics professional should have

1) The Browser to Start with: Firefox

The Firefox browser is probably the most important tool for technical debugging work with Google Analytics. The browser itself isn't what matters so much as the myriads of add-ons that are available for it. To get started on building your toolbox, get Firefox if you don't have it already (and don't worry, there are some tools for Internet Explorer too!).

2) Working with JavaScript: Firebug for Firefox

• Detecting JavaScript errors quickly and easily - identify the script and line of code within the script that is the culprit
• Testing JavaScript code within the browser environment without having to edit an actual page on the server using the script console window in Firebug

Firebug can do much more than just detect script errors and help you rapidly test JavaScript, but these applications are particularly useful for Google Analytics technical work, especially when used in conjunction with additional tools detailed below.

3) Working with Cookies: Web Developer Toolbar in Firefox

The Web Developer Toolbar is most useful for Cookie analysis and diagnosis when working with Google Analytics. It is much faster to use when needing to view just what cookies have are currently set for a given page you are viewing. You can easily see key information for each cookie, find the "utm" cookies, and view details such as the domain the cookies were written for and what the values are.

4) Tracking the Data Stream: Live HTTP headers

Debugging JavaScript and cookies is where troubleshooting begins. Once you are confident the scripts are working properly and cookies are appropriately set, the reporting mechanism for Google Analytics, the utm.gif tracking hit, must still take place in order for data to be reported into your Google Analytics account. Live HTTP headers is a tool of choice for identifying when these utm.gif tracking hits take place.

Bonus configuration option for Live Headers: under the "config" tab enter ".*__utm\.gif.*" (without the quotes) into the "Filter URLs with regexp" field, and make sure the field is checked. This will limit the Live Headers window to only show utm.gif hits, otherwise finding one or two utm.gif hits amidst all the other requests that will fly by may feel like the proverbial search for a needle in the haystack

5) Page Execution Speed: Chrome JavaScript Console

The JavaScript Console in Google's new Chrome Browser is perfect for detecting potential issues on sites that have a lot of other JavaScript running or have the Google Analytics tags placed on the page in a manner that other elements may slow down the code from running. The JavaScript console "resources" pane shows the number of seconds it takes for the Google Analytics script to be loaded and the utm.gif tracking hit to run.Consider this example: it took 6.58 seconds from when the browser began loading this page to when the ga.js file was loaded - and it took even more time before the utm.gif hit was fired! How many people leave before 6.58+ seconds? We will never know because of a latency issue on this page.

Tip: using this tool, if you detect a latency problem, consider optimizing the other JavaScript running on your site, optimizing image files, or placing the Google Analytics code higher in the page so that it does not have to wait for everything else to complete before it runs (note that placing the code in the of the page can bring some additional dependencies with it, so consider seeking the counsel of an experienced Google Analytics professional if considering this change).

Tools for Internet Explorer

While many will argue that Firefox or Chrome is a "better browser," we must face the reality that, for now at least, Internet Explorer sill leads the global market in browser use. Thus, if you do all your debugging in Firefox or Chrome, you may easily miss problems that would arise for Internet Explorer users. Or perhaps you're already aware of such problems and need to diagnose them further. Here are a few tools that are available for IE.

6) JavaScript Debugging in Internet Explorer: DebugBar

DebugBar is sort of like an Internet Explorer hybrid incarnation of the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug add-ons for Firefox. Using this tool you can track down JavaScript errors in Internet Explorer in the same way Firebug works, plus some advantages. You really have to check it out to get a feel for all the features. Bottom-line: use this tool for analysis of JavaScript errors you suspect are holding up accurate Google Analytics reporting.

7) Live Data Stream Analysis in Internet Explorer: Fiddler2

Fiddler is like Live HTTP Headers, except that it is a standalone application that can detect HTTP traffic between any application your computer and outside web servers. This makes it more accurate than Live Headers in Firefox. It can be used with Internet Explorer, but also other browsers, including Firefox. The tools for analyzing captured requests, utm.gif hits included, are superior to Live HTTP Headers in many ways.

8) Cookies in Internet Explorer: IE Cookies Viewer

This small but powerful tool lets you easily find, view, and even modify cookies for Internet Explorer. It is indispensable for Google Analytics diagnostic and troubleshooting work when encountering cookie domain issues.

In Conclusion

So, there you have it: a plethora of tools that are tried and true means to the trouble-free Google Analytics end you're seeking. Here's a recap shortlist of the tools:

• Firefox browser
• Firebug for Firefox
WebDeveloper Toolbar for Firefox
• LiveHTTPHeaders
• Internet Explorer
• DebugBar: web developer toolbar for Internet Explorer
• Fiddler2 for request header analysis
• IE Cookies Viewer
• Chrome
• JavaScript Console tool for latency measurement

Posted by Caleb Whitmore of Analytics Pros, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

The Google I/O Developer Conference is coming up in just four weeks, on May 27 – 28, 2009 in San Francisco, California, so we thought now would be a good time to give you a sneak preview into some of the exciting Enterprise sessions we have planned.

Growing a SaaS-based services business reselling Google Apps
presented by Jeff Ragusa

Traditional value-added resellers are looking for ways to adapt their business for the world of cloud computing and the new Google Apps Authorized Reseller program provides the perfect framework for moving a services business in this direction. This session will focus on revenue opportunities for partners in this area ranging from assisting with SaaS product selection, to guidance on best practices, to custom application development, deployment & integration work, and managed services. Learn how Google's reseller program can enable service providers to take advantage of these opportunities through marketing, sales and technical tools and resources. See Jeff's video invitation to his session here.

Extending the Google Search Appliance to Crawl Valuable Data Behind the Firewell
presented by Nitin Mangtani

The Google Search Appliance is an on-premise hardware and software solution that brings Google search into the enterprise, so users can find content quickly and securely. In this session, learn how partners today are plugging enterprise data sources into the GSA through Connectors and displaying results using OneBox. See Nitin's video invitation to his session here.

OpenSocial in the Enterprise
presented by Chris Schalk, Mark Wentzel, Dave Carroll, Rich Manalang, and Tugdual Grall

With OpenSocial's proven global success in traditional social applications, the enterprise software community has begun to realize its potential and build innovative solutions that cater to the enterprise. Join us for a session centered on how the enterprise software development community is successfully bringing social concepts and technology into the enterprise. Key enterprise players will present and demonstrate how they've successfully used OpenSocial software to build new social solutions.

One last thing to remember: even though Google I/O will be primarily geared around breakout sessions, there will be a ton of other interesting stuff going on, including the Developer Sandbox, Fireside Chats, Tech Talks and After Hours Playground. Click here to register.

Posted by Chris Kelly, Google Apps Partners team