If you’re an API user, you can now view a comprehensive timeline and list of errors that occurred while making requests to the API, sorted by the number of times the errors occurred for faster prioritization. For each error, the dashboard also displays example request and response pairs, making it easier to locate and fix errors in your requests.
‘PubTalk’ is a new program highlighting publishers’ perspectives on display products and industry trends. In this installment, we hear from Theresa Giovagnoli, co-founder of AlloExpat.com, on the site’s 10th anniversary, about why they’ve worked with AdSense for 6+ years and how they’ve benefited from implementing simple optimization solutions.
AlloExpat.com is a worldwide expatriate social portal. It addresses the growing global expatriate community by being a one-stop information center and by connecting expats with professional expatriate service providers.
Inside AdSense (IA): What role does AdSense play in your business?
Theresa Giovagnoli (TG): We’re a very large portal and have dedicated websites and discussion forums for each country in our global network. We need a solution that effectively targets ads to a wide international audience. AdSense is simply the best and most efficient solution to do this. Thanks to a consistent revenue steam from AdSense, our web development team has been able to dedicate its attention to growing our global audience and content.
IA: What is the one success you’ve had with AdSense that you’d like to share with other publishers?
TG: One successful tactic we employed was recategorizing targetable custom channels. We are a global site with multiple regions. Earlier, all our regions were combined under one custom channel, but once we defined targetable channels by region, we saw CPC increase by 20%. I would highly encourage publishers to set targetable custom channels at the level that best defines their site because it allows advertisers to specifically target their website by segment or region which may lead to performance uplift.
IA: Why do you love AdSense?
TG: We have managed to implement AdSense in a non-intrusive way, generating a fair amount of revenue over the years. AdSense has played a key role in our development over the years and still does today. We’d never have come this far without it.
With IE10 in Windows 8, we reimagined the browser. We designed and built IE10 to be the best way to experience the Web on Windows. Consumers can now enjoy more touch-friendly and beautiful, fast and fluid Web applications with the updated IE10 engine included in the Windows Consumer Preview. This fifth Platform Preview of IE10 delivers improved performance and support for more HTML5:
This video shows some of the touch-friendly HTML5 technologies in the fifth IE10 Platform Preview, included with the Windows Consumer Preview. View this video on YouTube
You can read more about the improvements to the Metro style browsing experience on the Building Windows 8 blog. The remainder of this post discusses the underlying HTML5 engine.
Windows 8 includes one HTML5 browsing engine that powers both browsing experiences (the Metro style one and desktop one) as well as Metro style applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript. The common HTML5 engine provides consistently fast, safe, and powerful support for Web standards and the Web programming model, for both browser experiences as well as for Metro style applications.
Consumers experience this power with rich, beautiful visual effects that take full advantage of the underlying hardware safely. Some examples that you can try at the IE Test Drive site with the Consumer Preview include fast and fluid multi-touch support in Web pages and the latest database APIs, which enable you to take photos from a Web site offline. The Test Drive site demonstrates how much better the Web can be with rich visual effects, sophisticated page layouts, and the advances to the Web programming model. You can read the full list in the IE10 developer guide.
A Better Web Ahead
Working closely with the developer community, we see a much better Web ahead.
IE10 in the Metro style experience is plug-in free. Almost all phones and devices are already plug-in free and many sites already run plug-in free for them. To deliver the richest experience, and one experience that scales across different devices, we continue to recommend that developers detect when plug-ins are not available and rely on native browser patterns.
Similarly, we recommend that developers update their sites’ older, out of date libraries (like this one) that don’t work well with new browsers like IE10.
We also recommend that developers use feature, not browser, detection. Often, the compatibility problem reports we receive have more to do with sites detecting IE and sending it different content than they send other browsers than any particular issue in IE. You can see some examples of how IE makes up for certain sites by adjusting the information it sends to particular sites (e.g. sending an iPad identification token) based on the Compatibility View (CV) list in the post script to this blog entry.
Developers can find sample feature detection code patterns in several IE blog posts, including this one.
The quality and correctness of different browsers’ HTML5 engines continue to vary widely. We continue to contribute to the test suites under development at the HTML5 standards bodies to further the goal of interoperability and same markup. We’ve submitted 456 new tests to them that you can view at the IE Test Center as well. As different browsers improve their support of the same markup to produce the same results, we can all realize the promise of HTML5.
You can find a full list of new functionality available to developers in the IE10 developer guide here. Download the Windows 8 Consumer preview to try this update to IE10. We look forward to continued engagement with the developer community and your feedback on Connect.
―Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President, Internet Explorer
Posted by Gib Van Cleve, Information Technology Services Manager, St. Louis County Library
Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Gib Van Cleve, information technology services manager at St. Louis County Library (SLCL). He and the staff at SLCL adopted Google Apps for Government, and have found many innovative uses for Google tools to help the library’s 20 branches run more efficiently and better serve citizens.
St. Louis County Library (SLCL), with 20 branches, represents Missouri’s largest and busiest library network. We serve a large community eager to consume digital and hard-copy content, from learning games to classic novels, and that requires behind-the-scenes technologies to manage circulations and ensure efficient citizen services. But, as we grew and our collections expanded, we needed tools that could enable our staff to collaborate more efficiently to bring more transparency to the library’s operations.
In the past, managing libraries required a lot of phone calls and spreadsheets emailed back and forth. Today, that’s no longer the case. We have a small yet nimble technology group of 12 people, and we’ve been able to increase efficiency and improve citizen services by adopting Google Apps for Government. We are honored that some of our employees have been recognized as Government Transformers for their creative usage of Google Apps.
For example, our system administration manager Stephanie Nordmann created a system that tracks circulation items in a Google spreadsheet. In an instant, we see key statistics and trends such as the number of library visits, circulation counts, and the demand for certain items. Last year, it showed us e-book circulation grew by 174%, while traditional books were only up 1%. So we knew we need to stock up on e-media, enabling us to meet the growing demand.
To allow citizens to check out an item at one location and return it at another, we started supporting floating collections. It’s not easy balancing collections across multiple facilities to ensure that items are available when and where the public needs them. Our community services administrator Eric Button created a Google spreadsheet to manage floating collections systematically, tagging facilities green if they have space, yellow if their items are balanced, and red if their shelves are full. This new tool eliminates emailing back and forth and allows us to see instantaneously where to send items to meet demand.
We have found many uses of Google Apps for a broad library network. Amy Gibbons and other members of our service desk staff manage an inventory of 900 PCs throughout our library network using Google Docs. Our libraries run better and more cost-effectively so we can meet citizen requirements for educational and entertainment content—and—trust us, we’re discovering more and more uses for Google Apps to become more efficient and effective!
We’re just as excited as you are to roll into Austin this year for South by Southwest Interactive 2012 for another Texas-sized festival packed with BBQ, margaritas, and the most exciting digital chatter of the year. This year, we’ll be packing up some of our favorite things about Google and bringing them with us to the “Google Village” on Rainey St. - just a few steps from the Austin Convention Center.
We hope you’ll join some of the 40-plus Googlers participating in panels and discussions around the SXSW festival! Our participation kicks off on Friday, March 9 at 3:30 PM, in a fireside chat where senior vice president Vic Gundotra will discuss the future of the Google+ project with Guy Kawasaki.
Then, on March 10-11 at the Google Village you’ll find:
Android House with the latest and greatest from Android, complete with live music and a look at cool entertainment for your device
Google Maps House packed with cool ways to make the most of Google Maps and the places you know and love
Developer House with an exciting day of building LEGO race bots and gearing up for the ultimate rumble Sunday evening. Learn more on the Developers Blog
Discovery House where you can learn about our latest creative and advertising products, and see how Google can help you and your clients make the most of the web
As members of the advertising community, we’d love for you to come join us at the Discovery House in particular, where we’ve got a diverse lineup of discussions, teaching sessions, and social events. There’s something for everyone:
Come learn how we're working with our partners to bring together creativity and technology in new ways, and re-imagining what online advertising can be. Be sure to stick around for our re-imagined happy hour, with a new take on classic cocktails.
Participate in engaging seminars about the latest in mobile marketing, the coolest things that Google+ users are creating with Hangouts, and how to make the most of consumer insights.
Come swing by and have a drink on us in Austin - we’d love to hear all about everything exciting and innovative that you’re seeing and hearing around town, too.
Posted by Caro McCarthy, Product Marketing Manager, Google+ B2B
The Web Audio API, currently available in Chrome, provides a considerable amount of aural power to developers interested in integrating audio into their apps and games. Low latency audio playback, audio generation and realtime effects are available with a sensible API in Chrome stable.
We worked with gskinner.com to develop Technitone, a web audio experience that lets you join other players to plot tones on a grid, construct melodies and modify the output with a robust toolset of effects.
Click on over and poke around.
Your tone samples can come from your own recordings, or any of the available samples.
The left side Tools panel offers realtime audio filters, like echo reverb and pitch shift.
We keep you connected to other players in realtime using WebSockets and Node.js.
You can drop into solo mode or invite your friends to join you in a session.
Get inspired by others’ audio creations in the gallery.
Paul Irish helps developers build compelling apps for the web on the Chrome Team. He also works on HTML5 Boilerplate, Modernizr, and many bits and bobs of open source code.
Posted by Mireya Sémelas, Google eBooks Strategist
I had the pleasure today of meeting Susan Cain when she participated in an Authors@Google event hosted at our Mountain View headquarters. Her stimulating new release Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking has made it to the top of The New York Times Bestseller list.
Before becoming an acclaimed author, Susan practiced corporate law for seven years and then worked as a negotiations consultant. Her list of clients includes well-known firms like JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, One Hundred Women in Hedge Funds and many more. However, far from being the self-confident person that her career might make her appear to be, Susan declares herself an introvert. She prefers listening to talking and reading to socializing. Watch her presentation at Google here:
In her talk, Susan said that our style as introverts or extroverts is embedded in ourselves, just like our gender; and it makes us react to stimulation in different ways. Susan said that while extroverts seek stimulation, introverts tend to react more to light, sound and and other types of stimulation, preferring less of it.
From as early as our childhood days, Susan said, we are constantly exposed to extrovert environments: playgrounds in which we are made to join in games with other kids, school classes where we have to read out loud and participate in team assignments to obtain good grades. And yet, she asserted, some children stay on their parents’ laps instead of running around with others or seek quiet spots to do their homework. This attitude accompanies us through adulthood, where we're exposed to workplaces that promote open working spaces, teamwork and social gatherings.
Susan’s book asks how introverts can cope and succeed, and suggests that we try to achieve a balance between our introvert and extrovert impulses. She points out that the most successful teams and marriages include both an introvert and extrovert. "No man is an island," she stated, "...we need people around us."
At the end of her talk, Susan shared with the attendees three important takeaways that resonated, personally, with me:
Give yourself time for quiet. Guilt-free. We’re all entitled to it.
Think differently about the next generation of introvert children. Solitude is a catalyst to creativity.
Think hard about what the essence to your great power is. Susan joked that it might be the ability to fly, go back in time, win a wizard scholarship or even find the key to a secret garden, but whatever it is - she urges us to use that power, well and brilliantly.
This week we’re attending the 27th annual CSUN International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference. As the Internet evolves, screen readers, browsers and other tools for accessibility need to grow to meet the complexity of the modern web. Conferences like CSUN are an opportunity to check in with web users with disabilities: not just to share our progress in making online technologies accessible, but to also discuss improvements for the future.
Who are these users? In August, we conducted a survey with the American Council of the Blind, to find out more about how people with sight impairment use the web. We received nearly 1,000 responses from people who are blind or visually impaired, from a wide range of professions in 57 countries: teachers, software developers, social workers, writers, psychologists, musicians and students. The results paint a picture of why it is critical to improve the accessibility of web applications. Of the respondents:
Almost 90 percent reported regularly using the web to keep in touch with friends and family
Over half use a smartphone, and over half own more than one computer
Over two-thirds of respondents said they use social media
Over 50 percent have completed a baccalaureate degree, and of those, 30 percent have gone on to to postgraduate studies at the masters' or Ph.D. level
Of those who are currently students, over 70 percent have their assistive technology provided for by their school
However, for those who have left school and are of working age, 46 percent are unemployed
Better web accessibility has the potential to increase educational and employment opportunities, provide social cohesion and enable independence for the people with disabilities. We imagine a future for the web where the most visually complex applications can be rendered flawlessly to screen readers and other assistive devices that don't rely on sight, using technologies that work seamlessly on browsers and smartphones.
We've also expanded caption support on YouTube—improving access to broadcast and direct-to-web videos for people who are deaf or hard of hearing
If you're attending CSUN 2012, we hope you'll come up and say hello at one of our talks on the accessibility of our products, including the use of video in Google+ and Docs and accessibility on Android devices. And Friday we’ll host a Q&A Fireside chat with Google product teams. You can also try some of these improvements out at our two hands-on demo sessions on Thursday, in the Connaught breakout room:
10am to 12pm—Chromebooks and new features in Google Apps
1pm to 3pm—Android 4.0 Galaxy Nexus phones
If you're not attending CSUN 2012, we'd love to hear your thoughts on accessibility in our web forum.
Posted by Naomi Black, Engineering Program Manager, Google Accessibility
This year at SXSW our developer team is putting together an action-packed two days of lightning talks, code labs, developer hangouts, a LEGO Mindstorm hackathon, a mixology event, and fun surprises. Our Google Developers House (#googlesxsw) will be open on March 10th - 11th and is part of the Google Village at SXSW, which is free to all conference attendees.
Come hang out with Google Developer Advocates, Engineers, Product Managers, and other Googlers from across the company. Come for major hacking or just to chill at the Google TV lounge or roast s'mores by the GTUG firepit. If you can’t make it, don’t worry. Our partners at NewTek will be live streaming our lightning talks and the LEGO Mindstorm Rumble on our YouTube channel.
Here are a few of the activities you can look forward to at our Google Developers House at SXSW:
Lightning talks
From 11am to 2pm on March 10th we’ll be serving up lunch and fun, demo-loaded, 25-minute lightning talks to learn more about what you can build and design with the latest Google developer products. Check out the schedule to see which talks you won’t want to miss.
Code labs
Following the lightning talks on March 10th, from 3pm to 6pm we are holding interactive programming classes. Choose a code lab, roll up your sleeves, and get waist-deep in code. Learn how to build Google+ hangout apps, upgrade your Android app for tablets, or incorporate high-quality YouTube video playback in your product. Both Google+ and Android code labs are on a first come, first serve basis, but due to space constraints please fill in this form if you’d like to attend the YouTube code lab.
Mixology event co-hosted by Startup Weekend
Love science and cocktails? We do too. That’s why we’re hosting an event combining the artistry of master mixologists shaken with the science behind the craft. Be guided through various techniques, tricks and tastes. This event is co-hosted by Startup Weekend and will take place from 6pm to 8pm on March 10th.
Google Developers LEGO Mindstorm hackathon
The Google Developers LEGO Mindstorm Hackathon returns to SXSW on March 11th in even more epic proportions. Spend the day with a team building LEGO race bots controlled by Android leading up to the ultimate rumble that evening.
Developer Hangouts In Real Life
Need to debug your code? Wondering about the latest SDK release? Sign up for 15 minutes of one-on-one time on March 11th with product experts from the Google Developer Relations teams. Come armed with your code snippets, questions, curiosity, and hang out with the Googlers who know the products best.
Amy Walgenbach leads marketing for the Google+ Platform and developer marketing for games at Google.
Part of what makes Google such a fun place to work is that there’s always something going on: diverse talks, lunchtime concerts, impromptu game tournaments, you name it—all wrapped up with a collective passion for building a better web. So when we were thinking of what we should do for this year’s SXSW, it was pretty obvious: let’s package up a few of the things that we love about Google and bring them with us to Austin, Texas.
Interactive talks
Our participation kicks off on Friday, March 9, in a fireside chat where senior vice president Vic Gundotra will discuss the future of the Google+ project with Guy Kawasaki. We also have Googlers speaking on more than 25 panels, covering topics as varied as the design of Google and YouTube, changing the world through hacking and WebGL’s impact on the web.
Google Village
On March 10-11 we’ll open up the Google Village. We’re taking over Rainey Street (just a few steps away from the Austin Convention Center), setting up shop in four houses and packing them full of demos, drinks, talks and, of course, live music. Here’s what you can expect at each of the houses:
Android House: We’re showcasing the latest and greatest from Android, including phones and tablets running Android 4.0, live music on the backyard stage, and a look at cool entertainment for your device.
Google Maps House: Interested in enhancing Google Maps with biking directions or updating the business information in your local neighborhood? We'll show you how, plus many other ways you can add more map data to the places you know and love.
Developer House: Participate in code labs and spend a day with the team building LEGO® MINDSTORMS® race bots controlled by Android, leading up to the ultimate rumble Sunday evening. Learn more on the Developers Blog.
Discovery House: Find out more about our latest creative and advertising products, and see how Google can help you expand your business—or maybe start one.
Live from the Lot
There’s no place like Austin for live music, and on March 15-16 Google Music and YouTube Presents will host Live from the Lot, two days of concerts atop a downtown parking garage. We’ll have performances by The Shins, Gossip, The Ting Tings, Best Coast and Heartless Bastards, to name a few. If you can't make it in person, tune in online for a full live stream of both days’ shows at youtube.com/presents.
Plus, artists officially showcasing at SXSW can also stop by our artist lounge at Live from the Lot to relax and recharge with food, laundry machines, massages and more.
Get more details about our plans for SXSW on our website. The trucks just finished packing up the last Android statue, and we’re all ready to go. It’s Austin or bust—hope to see you there!
Update March 2: Follow ongoing updates about SXSW on their Google+ page. And don't forget to use the hashtag #GoogleSXSW to share your experiences at the Google Village and our other events.
Posted by Marc Vanlerberghe, Marketing Director for Android
