Archive for October, 2009

When it comes to holidays, Halloween is one of our favorites. You get candy corn, creepy crawlies, ghosts and goblins, blustery weather and the goopy joys of pumpkin carving all crammed into one glorious fall fun-fest. It's also the one holiday where you can dress up as whatever you want — your favorite celebrity, your favorite animal or even, like one Googler last year, your favorite gadget.

As usual, we're in the process of devising brilliant last-minute costumes, and we got curious about what others around the globe have been searching for in preparation for Halloween.

We used Insights for Search to track the fastest-rising searches related to [costume] in the U.S. in 2009. The query at the top of the charts is [lady gaga costume] — no surprise, as the star wears quite a few costumes on a regular basis herself:


And many people seem to be planning a tribute to the late pop star Michael Jackson — searches for [michael jackson costume] started spiking in June of this year and have increased steadily since then:


Since Halloween is most popular in the U.S., we focused on queries there — but we did investigate searches in Canada and the U.K. for good measure. In Canada, people are overwhelmingly searching for costumes for two — variations on [couples costumes] dominate the top 10. Both in Canada and across the pond, searchers are looking for costumes based on Lewis Carroll's classic story Alice in Wonderland, with [mad hatter costume] in the top 10 in the U.K. and [alice in wonderland] in Canada.

Since [vampire costume] was one of the top 10 searches this year, we figured we'd check in with the various vampire TV shows and movies to see which is, um, making a killing in the costume race. The query [twilight costume] has the most search volume, with [true blood costume] not far behind. (Pointy teeth and body glitter — done!)


Thinking of dressing up your little ones? Popular queries in the U.S. related to [kids costume] include [ladybug], [minnie mouse] and [tinkerbell].


We also did some digging to see if people were taking inspiration from the movie Where the Wild Things Are and wearing a [max costume] this year. Based on the fastest-rising related terms [footie pajamas], [footed pajamas] and [max costume pattern], it seems like at least a few folks are choosing to make [max wolf suit] costumes at home:


As a dog-friendly company, we share the country-wide impulse to dress up our dogs for the holiday. Related searches for [taco dog costume], [dog shark costume] and [banana costume] (so cute!) all rank high.


At Google, we've been gearing up for tomorrow's real deal with festivities on our Mountain View campus, complete with Halloween crafts for visiting kids and a haunted house. Googlers are also pulling out all the stops for the costume contest:



We hope you have a happy Googleween!

Posted by Jordan Newman and Emily Wood, Editors, Google Blog team

by Mike Krumboltz

On Sunday night at 2:00 a.m., daylight saving time comes to an end. The result: Mornings will be a little lighter, afternoons will be a little darker, and folks who forget to change their clocks will be extremely early to work on Monday.

Like it or not, you're going to gain an hour this weekend. The question on the minds of many Web searchers is "why?" Indeed, lookups on "why do we have a time change" are tick-tocking upwards and related queries on "fall back" and "standard time 2009" are also rocking 'round the clock. Fortunately, there is no shortage of information when it comes to the reasons behind rolling back our watches. Here's the scoop.

Daylight saving time (note the singular form of "saving") is one of those love it or hate it traditions. It started in 1918 during World War I, but didn't last very long. People just didn't like it. It was later brought back during World War II, and has stuck around in one way or another ever since. It became law in 1966 with the Uniform Time Act.

But now it ends, and we're back to standard time. There is considerable debate over whether standard or daylight saving time is actually more efficient. Some people believe that daylight saving time saves energy, because the lighter it is during waking hours, the less likely you are to turn on a light. But others believe this oversimplifies things. Doubters argue that any energy savings are offset by the inconvenience, disturbances to sleep patterns, and increased emissions.

If you're an American who doesn't like the time shift, there's little you can do, aside from writing your congressperson or moving to Hawaii, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, or certain parts of Arizona. Or, you could just ignore the change and arrive everywhere an hour early for the next six months. Your call.

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It's Friday, time for some fun!

Here is a captivating way to visualize your Google Analytics data in a Treemap visualization and you can visualize your own data with our live demo.
(note: IE currently not supported for visualization part)





The goal of this example was to teach people how to use the Google Analytics API on App Engine in Java. As well as demonstrating how to use both OAuth and AuthSub along with the App Engine's various services. The code looked great, but the output was a boring HTML table. So I used some open source tools to transform the table into a pretty tree map visualization!

All the code has been open sourced on Google Project hosting. I also wrote an article describing how this application works making it easy for developers to use this example as a starting point for new data visualizations and other Google Data projects.

For the data retrieval part, this example uses the App Engine Java SDK and the Google Analytics Data Export API Java Client Library to retrieve data from Google Analytics. The example code implements both unsigned AuthSub and registered OAuth authorization methods allowing developers to get up and running quickly in development environments and later switch to a secure authorization method in production environments. The application also uses the Model-View-Controller pattern, making it flexible and allowing developers to extend the code for new applications. (like adding support for other Google Data APIs)

For the visualization part, I used the open-sourced Protovis SVG Visualization Library to create the Treemap. This JavaScript library is maintained by the Stanford Visualization Group and excels at creating brand new visualizations from a data set (in this case a boring HTML table). To handle all of the interactions, including rollover, tooltips and slider controls, I used JQuery. Here is the JavaScript source to the visualization part of the sample.

Enjoy!

By Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team

P.S. If you have created any cool new visualizations using the Google Analytics Data Export API, email us so we can highlight them as well.

Last week on October 15 I attended The ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit (try saying that three times fast), along with Tom Hughes-Croucher, and several other Yahoos from the Updates, Messenger and Search teams.

Ironically, considering the subject matter of the summit, this was also the day Balloon Boy didn't take off into the air, and this 'real time' news story, breaking in front of our eyes on CNN, Yahoo!, and Twitter was a perfect illustration of both our need for immediate information and our annoyance with current delivery and discovery methods.

Tom's session was about coming up with the concept of “Comet Tornado Reverse HTTP Proxy,” which provides a way to use Tornado to add real-time stuff to existing architecture. When Tom got back from his session, the Github guys were also talking about an implementation of his idea in NginX.

The session that most interested me was one on Gender and the Real Time Web. As with most tech conferences, there were only a handful of women, and most of them were in that session. We discovered that, of those in attendance, the women were less likely to share location details in real time, but otherwise, their real-time web habits didn't differ dramatically from the men.

Real-time information is obviously already upon us, but we struggle with how to best digest it. Do we need filters? Will important information bubble up out of the stream? How much time is someone willing to spend customizing their experience so that important information won't be missed? How does all of this affect how and what we build and design? I'm not sure much got firmly decided at the summit, but the conversations that took place will give us all some great places to start figuring out the answers.

Robyn Tippins
Community Manager, YDN

by Claudine Zap

Our top picks from the day's hottest searches.

1. Natalie Portman (Searches increased by 2,321%). The actress appeared on "Top Chef" for a vegetarian cook-off at a steak house. And then things got weird.
2. Pedro Martinez (+545%). The starting pitcher for the Phillies couldn't hold back the Yankees, who took game two of the World Series.
3. "Avatar" (+497%). The theatrical trailer can now be viewed on the Web.
4. Walmart caskets (+301%). Just in time for Halloween, you can order yours online.
5. Pumpkin carving patterns (+121%). Get into the holiday spirit and put a face on that gourd.

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by Vera H-C Chan

This, indeed, is it. The Buzz Multiplex has been cleared of all wide releases, as Michael Jackson's posthumous concert film continues to gain momentum. The massive online attention supports predictions that "Michael Jackson's This Is It" will be the "highest-grossing music documentary" to date and may even have Oscar potential.

The Wednesday premiere drew in more than $20 million around the world, and the film title continues to be entrenched in the top 700 searches on Yahoo!.

While some observers think Halloween might dampen box-office numbers, holiday celebrants will be paying their tribute to the late singer in many ways: "michael jackson costumes" have topped October costume searches on Yahoo!. That's not all: Expect weekend parties to pass out "michael jackson pumpkin pattern" for carving, play "michael jackson games," and practice the "michael jackson moonwalk."

Below, the online preparations that have been underway for a Jackson tribute:

 

Top 10 Michael Jackson Searches of the Week, as ranked by Yahoo! searches

1. Michael Jackson This Is It
2. Michael Jackson Videos
3. Michael Jackson Songs
4. Michael Jackson Thriller
5. Michael Jackson This Is It Song
6. Jackson 5
7. Michael Jackson Lyrics
8. Michael Jackson Thriller Video
9. Michael Jackson Billie Jean
10. Michael Jackson Beat It

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Today we released an update to the Bing for mobile browser at m.bing.com. In addition to being a great resource for local searches, quick answers, and maps, we have some new features to tell you about:

NFL feature – type a team or player and see upcoming games, stats, and scores. While the game is on, you can get real-time updates on the plays. (U.S. only)

            

Flight status – enter the airline and flight number and get the latest departure and landing times.

            

Bing for touch devices

Great news for you touch phone owners in the U.S.: we have a new version of Bing just for high-resolution touch devices. We optimized for touch navigation to make the most of your phone, and added a great new Movies feature. Search for Movies in your city, and you’ll see the movies playing nearby, showtimes, overviews, and even trailers and video clips. 

           

You can get to this version by going to m.bing.com with your iPhone, Zune HD, T-Mobile G1, Verizon Imagio, or Samsung Omnia. We’ll be adding support for new devices over the next couple of months.

Try Bing today at m.bing.com

Give the updated Bing a try now by visiting m.bing.com with your mobile phone. It’s available in 31 countries for just about any phone with an internet connection. For more information about Bing for mobile products, visit our website at www.bing.com/mobile.

Justin Jed – Bing mobile

Other posts of interest:

 Use Your Voice to Text, Call and Search with Bing

(Cross-posted from the Google TV Ads Blog)

Small businesses often think that television advertising is too expensive and cumbersome for them to use. They assume that they need a fancy, expensive commercial to use in their TV campaign. But Google TV Ads changes all of that — we make it easy and affordable for you to make a TV ad, plan a campaign and reach your customers through the power of television. We launched the TV for All contest two months ago to prove just that.

More than 200 companies submitted commercials for the opportunity to win $25,000 worth of free national advertising on cable channels such as CNBC, Hallmark and Bloomberg using Google TV Ads. Today, we're happy to announce the three winners of the TV for All contest based on votes from the YouTube community.

Amazing Gates, Owners.com and ZAGG.com received the largest number of votes among the 10 finalists. Each of these businesses will receive $25,000 in free national advertising through Google TV Ads advertising.


Check out the three winners and all entries at www.youtube.com/tvforallcontest. For more information on Google TV Ads and how it can help your small business succeed, visit our website at google.com/tvads.

Posted by Deeksha Hebbar, Associate Marketing Manager, Google TV Ads

Caridy Patino, developer of the YUI Event Bubbling Extension, gave a great talk today on building modules in YUI 3 at YUIConf 2009.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/equanimity/4055624319/

Some elements that stood out:

• Modules are contained pieces of functionality that can be used in YUI 3 via the use() method
• Modules are not plugins, though the plugin functionality is defined as a module. Plugins add functionality to a pre-existing object and are added via the plug() method.
• There are three ways to register modules with YUI:
  • Specify the modules to load on the seed object and let YUI pull it in, e.g.,

    YUI().use('module'...

  • Include the script defining the module on the page, and then add it to YUI, e.g.,

    <script src="module.js"></script> ... YUI().use('module'...

    This is a quick way to start using a custom module, but it is the least performant because it adds a blocking http request to the page

  • Specify the location and dependencies for a module in a configuration object passed into the YUI seed object. This is way offers the highest performance. To illustrate:

    YUI({
        modules:{
            'module': {
                fullpath: "http://example.com/module.js",
                requires: ['node', 'event']
            }
        }
    }).use('module'...
    

In general, module architecture looks something like this:

•     
  YUI.add(‘module’, function (Y) {
      //module code
  },
  /* version */,
  /* requirement list */);
  

For a good example of module structure and usage, check out Dav Glass’s YQL module in the YUI Gallery. Here’s the source code. Another good example is in tutorial for Dynamically Adding YUI and External Modules on YDN.

Slide decks and video from the YUIConf presentations should be up soon. Please follow the YUI blog for more info.

Find Caridy online:

• github.com/caridy
• twitter.com/caridy
• caridy.name

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Erik Eldridge
Yahoo! Developer Network