Archive for February, 2010

We recently finished the last of our AdWords API Hack Days in Europe, and it was great to see so many AdWords API developers come out for these events. We realize that not everyone could attend one of the Hack Days in person, so we've been working on new ways to get this information out to a wider audience. First, more of the presentations are now available on YouTube:

• Migrating from v13 to v2009
• The BulkMutateJobService
• Local Ads in v2009
• Ad Parameters in v2009

Second, we'll be holding a webinar that will include a condensed version of the topics covered in the Hack Days. This webinar is for developers, so please register only if you work with code and the API.

Migrating to the New AdWords API
Monday, March 1, 2010, 11am ET / 8am PT
Register here.
Post your questions here.

Space is limited so please register now if you plan on attending.

- Eric Koleda, AdWords API Team

Last month we reminded you that on April 22 most v13 services will be turned off. In 60 days, the following v13 services will no longer be accessible:
CampaignService
AdGroupService
CriterionService
AdService
InfoService
KeywordToolService
SiteSuggestionService

These three v13 services will continue to be accessible until the same functionality is available in the new AdWords API later this year:
AccountService
TrafficEstimatorService
ReportService
Don't worry, we won't sunset these services until their replacements have been available for at least four months.

To help you migrate your application, we've demonstrated how your code can simultaneously use the remaining v13 services and the new v2009 services. Here are some examples: Java, .NET, Python, and Ruby.

Please continue to post your migration questions and feedback on the Developer Forum.

– Jason Shafton, Product Marketing Manager

The YUI team has an opened a position for a summer intern (full details on the Yahoo! internship program are available here). If you’re a college student working toward a CS degree and the idea of spending the summer working on JavaScript/CSS projects alongside people like Douglas Crockford and on the team that created YUI (Matt Sweeney, Adam Moore, Dav Glass, Jenny Donnelly, Luke Smith, Tripp Bridges, Allen Rabinovich, Alaric Cole, Satyen Desai and others) sounds like fun, this may be the opportunity for you.

The YUI team is responsible for development and maintenance of the YUI Library, a collection of JavaScript and CSS components that help frontend engineers create Yahoo-scale web applications quickly. We also build out other parts of the professional frontend engineer’s toolchain — tools like YUI Compressor, YUI Doc, YUI Test, and YUI PHP Loader.

We’re looking for an intern who has completed at least one year of formal coursework toward a CS degree and who has a track record of creating innovative browser-based applications. Both undergrads and graduate students are welcome to apply. This may be a good fit for you if:

• you’re familiar with best practices in frontend engineering (e.g., this video should make good sense to you);
• you love JavaScript (ie, downloading and watching these videos sounds like a good time);
• you learn fast;
• you’re not afraid of big challenges.

If this sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you. Email a cover letter, resume, and link to your portfolio to yui-jobs@yahoo-inc.com. Be sure to mention your dates of summer availability.

In late 2009, the Enterprise team here at Google launched a new tool, Google Commerce Search, to help online retailers improve site usability and raise conversions. We're excited to see results and metrics coming in that show the impact this new product is having. One company, DiscountOfficeItems.com, decided to switch to Google Commerce Search from a sluggish homegrown solution and almost immediately saw sizable lifts in revenue, traffic, transactions, and average order size.

Tim Horton, CEO, will join Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager at Google Enterprise on a live webcast Thursday, March 4 at 10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST to share his experience and answer questions about their decision to switch to Google Commerce Search.

You can read more from Tim Horton on the Google Enterprise blog. Event details:

How Discount Office Items Increased Revenue 6% by Switching to Google Commerce Search
Thursday, March 4, 2010
10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST

We hope you'll join us for this live event!

Posted by Anna Bishop, Enterprise Search team

To see Google Shopper in action, watch this video:

As the YUI Team wraps up work on the core widget foundation for YUI 3, one of the things we’re seeing in the YUI 3 Gallery is transitional solutions that help flesh out YUI 3 implementations. Some of these, like Julien Lecomte’s SimpleMenu, are pure YUI 3, and others, like Adam Moore’s TreeView module, help bridge the gap between YUI 2 and 3 and will likely be replaced by other gallery modules or shipping YUI 3 widgets down the road.

Adam’s TreeView port is a conversion of the popular TreeView Control from YUI 2. The YUI 3 Gallery version runs on the YUI 3 foundation and makes use of Dav Glass’s gallery-port module to bridge some of the API changes. Not all of the features in the YUI 2 version are supported (date editing and animation, for example, aren’t included), but it’s trivial to get a standard TreeView running with this gallery module. All of the code comes off the CDN and can be combo-handled.

And here’s some sample code. Script and CSS file inclusion:

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"
href="http://yui.yahooapis.com/gallery-2010.02.17-20/build/gallery-treeview/assets/skins/sam
     /gallery-treeview.css" />
<script type="text/javascript"
     src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/combo?3.0.0/build/yui/yui-min.js&
     gallery-2009.11.02-20/build/gallery-port/gallery-port-min.js&
     gallery-2009.11.19-20/build/gallery-treeview/gallery-treeview-min.js"></script>

Markup:

<div id="treeView"></div>

Implementation script:

<script language="javascript">

//Create a YUI instance that uses the treeview gallery module
YUI().use('gallery-treeview', function(Y) {

//Associate the YAHOO variable with and instance of Dav Glass's
//Port utility:
var YAHOO = Y.Port();

//Instantiate the Tree using standard YUI 2 syntax:
var tree = new YAHOO.widget.TreeView("treeView", [
	{type:'Text', label:'Cars',expanded:true, children:[
			'Aston Martin',
			'Bugatti',
			{type: 'Text', label:'GM', href:"http://gm.com", expanded:false, children:[
				'Buick',
				'Cadillac',
				'Chevrolet',
				'GMC'
			]},
			'Renault',
			'Toyota',
			'Volkswagon'
		]
	},
	{type:'Text', label:'Computers', editable:true, children: [
			'Acer',
			'Apple',
			'HP',
			'Dell'
		]
	}
]);

// Render the tree:
tree.render();

});
</script>

Click through for a working version of this example.

Posted by Laurence Gonsalves, Software Engineer ​

Long time readers of our blog will note that we occasionally throw in links to crazy, interesting, and fun items in our posts. You may be wondering, “How can I find such interesting content to share?” Today we’re launching two new features that are designed to help you do just that:

• Recommended items get personal - When we launched Popular items many of you wanted to see even more personalized recommendations. With the latest round of improvements, we’ve started inserting items selected just for you inside the Recommended items section. This is great if you’ve got interests that are less mainstream. If you love Lego robots, for example, then you should start to notice more of them in your Recommended items.

  

• Even more related feeds - If you’ve ever discovered a cool blog on, say, underwater basket-weaving and wanted to find more on the same topic, we’ve added a few easy ways to find related feeds. Hover over any of your subscriptions, click the menu and check out “More like this...” to see related feeds.

  

  We’ll also show you related feeds when looking at the preview of any feed.

  

We hope these new features will help you find more content that interests you, whether that’s LOLcats or cooking.

As always, feel free to come visit our help forums or Twitter to leave us some feedback.