Official Google Blog: August 2012

Half a gigameter of biking navigation in 12 countries in Google Maps for Android

August 29, 2012

desktop biking directions last monthGoogle Maps Navigation (beta)

Turn-by-turn biking navigation in Copenhagenin 2010biking directions

Bike layer showing recommended streets for cycling in StockholmMap Makermembers of the biking community like Todd ScottRails-to-Trails ConservancyPosted by Larry Powelson, Software Engineer, Google Maps(Cross-posted on the Lat Long blog)

Making it easier to cast your ballot

August 28, 2012

presidential nominating conventionheld in 1832Republican National ConventionDemocratic National ConventionGet informedGoogle Politics & Elections sitelive Elections HubRegister to vote online voter guidemilitary and overseas voters Posted by Eric Hysen, Google Politics & Elections Team

Google Maps heads north...way north

August 22, 2012

Google Maps
View Larger Map
Cambridge Bay in Google Maps
21st century cartography

The hamlet of Cambridge Bay
Nunavut TunngavikGoogle Earth OutreachGoogle MapsGoogle Map Makercommunity Map Up

Catherine Moats, a member of the Google Map Maker Team, working with Chris Kalluk and others at the Community Map Up.
Street View trikebusiness interiors

The Street View Trike collecting imagery of Cambridge Bay.
Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach teamLat Long BlogGoogle Canada Blog

The U.S. election, live on YouTube

August 22, 2012

YouTube Elections HubHubhubABC NewsAl Jazeera EnglishBuzzFeedLarry KingThe New York TimesPhil DeFrancoUnivisionWall Street JournalBookmark the Elections Hub nowPosted by Olivia Ma, YouTube News ManagerYouTube Blog

Mapping the Motor City with Google Map Maker

August 22, 2012

The Michigan Trails and Greenways AllianceGoogle Map MakerGoogle MapsAdding new bike pathsbiking directions Learn more about Todd Scott and his mission to improve the map for cyclists in Detroit.Map Maker CommunityPosted by Lori Savageau, Map Maker Community Manager

Google for Entrepreneurs goes to San Diego to empower veterans and military families

August 17, 2012

Startup WeekendSyracuse University Institute for Veterans and Military Familiescreate a web sitePubCakesVeterans Sustainable Agriculture TrainingPrecious Paw PrintsherePosted Bridgette Sexton, Global Entrepreneurship Manager

Tour Brazil and prehispanic Mexican cities with more Street View imagery in Google Maps

August 17, 2012

the AmazonAntarcticaFortalezaBrasiliaRecifeNatalSalvador

Street View imagery of Brazil available before mid-August 2012

Street View imagery of Brazil available beginning mid-August 2012
Kukulkan’s Templesound of the Quetzal
View Larger Map
Chichén Itzá, Mexico

Find hundreds of magical stories like this one by visiting the colossal pyramids of Teotihuacan, emblematic sites for the Mayans such as Chichen Itza or seaside archaeological jewels like Tulum. These and other famous sites from around the world can be seen in our Street View Gallery.

Posted by Ricardo Blanco, Communications Manager for Google in Latin America

Voice Search arrives in 13 new languages

August 16, 2012

Basque
Bulgarian
Catalan
European Portuguese
Finnish
Galician
Hungarian

Icelandic
Norwegian
Romanian
Serbian
Slovak
Swedish

Voice Search app from Google PlayPosted by Bertrand Damiba, Product Manager(Cross-posted on the Android blog)

Google Maps now has schedules for more than one million public transit stops worldwide

August 15, 2012

Since 2005500 citiesGoogle Maps for Android

Left: Mobile map with all modes of public transit shown; Right: Transit Lines layer in Subway mode

Updated station pages show you departure times, lines serving the station and the distance to nearby stations.

Now, whenever you search for a city or postal code, the borders of that region are highlighted.

Under My Places you’ll notice we’ve added new tabs, which will help you access all your information from a single place; from your saved maps for use offline to your starred places and Custom Maps created on your desktop.

If you enable Location History, you’ll be able to browse the places you’ve been on a daily basis with an updated Location History dashboard.

Google Play storePosted by Christopher Van Der Westhuizen, Software Engineer, Google Maps

London calling: some reflections on the digital games

August 14, 2012

Searches set a new pace

Driven by a 900 percent increase in [ryan lochte] searches, American interest in [swimming] spiked 25 percent higher than 2008 levels.

The “Fierce Five” vaulted U.S. searches for [gymnastics] to almost double the 2008 peak.

Spurred on by a record-breaking performance by sprinter Usain Bolt, Jamaican searches for [track and field] raced up 40 percent from 2008.

Japanese gymnast and first-time gold medalist [kohei uchimura] proved he’s a “superman” in search as well as on the tumbling mat, with search volume in his home country up 420 percent over the last games.

Success may have been sweeter the second time around for wrestler [sushil kumar], the first Indian athlete to win an individual medal at successive Olympics, with searches up more than 375 percent from the 2008 games.

Top Athlete Searches (U.S.)

Top Athlete Searches (U.K.)

Top Artist Closing Ceremony Searches (U.S.)

Usain Bolt

Michael Phelps

Global streaming goes the distancepoweredYouTube blogThe multi-screen relayresearch panels conducted in partnership with NBC

Mobile makes a strong showing: Many viewers turned to one or more “second screens” beyond TV to keep updated on the Olympics—nearly half of those who did (44 percent) did so via a mobile phone or tablet.

Power viewers: Second-screen viewing didn’t seem to diminish participants’ interest in watching the games on TV...in fact, it increased it. People who followed the Games on TV plus one other screen watched 52 percent more Olympics on TV than those who didn’t; people who followed on two additional screens spent more than twice as much time (105 percent) with TV. And people who watched live streams of events online watched 66 percent more Olympics on television than people who followed exclusively on TV.

Synchronized usage: Overall, nearly 56 percent of people who followed the Games on TV and at least one other screen did so simultaneously. These simultaneous viewers also watched TV for 67 percent longer than those who only watched TV.

Gold for digital businesses

Visa’s global “Go World" campaign invited fans to show their support for Team Visa athletes in the form of cheers across social media. The campaign generated more than 59 million cheers, and Visa’s YouTube channel accounted for more than 47 million views of Visa’s commercials and athlete training videos from around the world.

Insurance provider Zurich launched a successful “Share your Sports Moments” marketing campaign on Google and YouTube, featuring members of the German Olympic team. The result: a significant uplift in the number of leads who then signed insurance contracts.

Lloyds TSB Bank, presenting partner of the Olympic Torch relay, conducted a successful AdWords campaign that kept pace with the Olympic torch as it passed through towns in the U.K., resulting in more than 190,000 clicks and more than 2 million impressions over three months.

In the U.S., across 2 million sites in our Google Display Network and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, ads shown on sports-related websites increased by 19 percent, while revenues (RPMs) for these sites increased by 14 percent, compared to the two previous weeks.

Our premium ad serving platform for publishers (DoubleClick for Publishers), which helps some of the web’s largest publishers make money from their content, broke a new record, with one major publisher serving more than 400 million ad impressions in a day across its website and mobile content—driving higher revenues and more free content.

Google App Engine“per capita” medal tallyPosted by Richard Keelty, Product Marketing Manager, U.K.

Conquer the back to school blues with Google tools

August 9, 2012

extension for ChromeEasy ways to coordinate your social and extracurricular life

Google+ Hangouts enables you to video chat with up to nine friends from your desktop, mobile phone or tablet. A great feature for when your club needs to discuss some last minute changes for the upcoming meeting.

Stay on task with Hangout Apps like Symphonical, which provides a digital wall of sticky notes for virtual brainstorm sessions.

With Google+ Events, invite all your friends to your get-together and attach a personalized video greeting to the invitation. During the event, photos from the party can be uploaded to the event page in real-time using Party Mode. So if you have to miss a party due to a study session, you can avoid that pesky FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)!

Let your friends know what you’re up to by sharing your Google Calendar with them. Or create a shared calendar just for your study group.

Stay organized and efficient—and be prepared for the unexpected

Stop the email flood from the ridiculous number of email lists you signed up for using Gmail’s auto-unsubscribe feature.

No more sore eyes from crowded inboxes—Gmail's default mode is Priority Inbox so it automatically sorts your important messages for you.

Cite your sources! Use Google Docs’ research tool to investigate highlighted portions of your essay and then generate a citation.

Group projects call for collaboration. With Google Drive, you can use shared folders so everyone can access materials without having to email updates to each other.

Using your laptop or phone, you can send any documents or presentations saved on your Google Drive to Fedex to be printed, thanks to Google Cloud Print.

Get what you need and where you’re going faster

For those of you starting at university this year, Google Maps has 360-degree panoramic Street View imagery for many campuses around the world to give you a preview of your new stomping grounds.

Back to school shopping is one of the most fun things about August. Find your way in and out of malls and department stores with indoor Google Maps on Android devices.

We college students can’t go too long without homemade food. Search for your next flight home with Flight Search. (If flying makes you a bit queasy, track any care packages by typing the tracking code into the Google search bar.)

Stay informed with Google Now. This feature, available on Android devices running Jelly Bean, can update you when the next bus is coming or provide the weather forecast for Saturday’s big game.

Reading, writing, 'rithmetic and... YouTube

Don’t break the bank on textbooks. Google Play has millions of FREE (emphasis is important) books readily available such as "Pride and Prejudice" and "Gulliver’s Travels."

With the new Nexus 7 tablet, you can take your Google Play books, music, movies, TV shows, magazines and apps (like My Majors and doubleTwist Alarm Clock) with you, wherever you go.

Locate hard-to-find books online or at a library near you with Book Search.

Put Chrome to work with educational apps.

Not a fan of traditional note taking? Chromebooks are a super fast and virus-proof laptop. It starts seconds after you boot it and will last through a whole day of classes.

A fair portion of us students aren’t fans of mental math. Type any equation into the Google search box to get the answers you need. It can graph functions as well.

We know we spend too much of our time watching funny videos on YouTube, but there are video channels that can actually help us learn more about a variety of subjects—from astrophysics to world history. Find more educational channels at YouTube EDU.

Posted by Jenise Araujo, BOLD Intern, Communications Team

Building the search engine of the future, one baby step at a time

August 8, 2012

1. Understanding the worldlaunched the Knowledge Graph

2. Putting your info at your fingertipsfeedbacksign up

3. Understanding your intentiPhone or iPadPosted by Amit Singhal, SVP Google Search

The self-driving car logs more miles on new wheels

August 7, 2012

self-driving car project

Posted by Chris Urmson, Engineering Lead

The tree versus the shadow

August 6, 2012

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. —Abraham Lincolna new Google Ventures blogJoeRichKevinthe rest of the teamPosted by Bill Maris, Managing Partner, Google VenturesGoogle Ventures Blog

A new way to visualize the global arms trade

August 3, 2012

multi-billion dollar industryan interactive data visualizationIgarape InstitutePeace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)INFO summit

WebGL GlobeChrome ExperimentsUpdate 8/16/12: Posted by Scott Carpenter, Deputy Director, Google Ideas

Giving you a better Google

August 3, 2012

we’vemadechanges

We introduced Google Apps for Teams in 2008 to allow people with a verified business or school email address to collaborate using non-email applications from Google like Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Talk. Over time, we realized that Google Apps for Teams was not as useful for people as we originally anticipated. Beginning September 4, 2012, we'll start converting existing Google Apps for Teams accounts into personal Google Accounts, and shutting down Google Apps for Teams. This change does not affect other editions of Google Apps.

We launched Google Listen through Google Labs in August 2009, to give people a way to discover and listen to podcasts. However, with Google Play, people now have access to a wider variety of podcast apps, so we’ve discontinued Listen. People who have already installed the app can still use it, but after November 1, podcast search won’t function. You can access your podcast subscriptions in Google Reader in the “Listen Subscriptions” folder and download them from the Import/Export tab.

Google Video for Business is a video hosting and sharing solution that allowed Google Apps for Business and Google Apps for Education customers to use video for internal communication. Starting this fall, we’ll migrate all videos hosted on Google Video for Business over to Google Drive, which has similar storage and sharing capabilities. All migrated videos will be stored for free and will not count against a user’s Google Drive storage quota.

Finally, Google maintains 150+ blogs and other communications channels about our products and services, and so over time we'll also be closing a number of Google-created blogs that are either updated infrequently, or are redundant with other blogs. This doesn't mean that we'll be sharing any less information—we'll just be posting our updates on our more popular channels.

Posted by Max Ibel, Director of Engineering

Our roots go global: Apply for a RISE Award today

August 2, 2012

Google RISE

on our websiteSubmit your applicationPosted by Roxana Shirkhoda, K-12 Education Outreach Specialist

Celebrate the Kennedy Space Center’s 50th birthday with Street View

August 2, 2012

NASA's Kennedy Space Centerspace shuttle

Street View fleet at Kennedy Space Centerspace shuttle launch padVehicle Assembly Building Launch Firing Room #4top of the enormous launch padVehicle Assembly Buildingspace shuttle’s main engines
Atlantis Orbiter in the Vehicle Assembly Building - View Larger Map
Saturn V rocket on display in the Apollo/Saturn V center - View Larger MapAtlantisEndeavour

maps.google.com/nasaPosted by Ryan Falor, Product Manager, Google Street View

Google+ Hangouts and the NFL: fantasy football, face-to-face-to-face

August 1, 2012

2012 NFL seasonsince the 1960s

From any NFL.com/fantasyfootball page—including the Draft and Game Centers—you can now click a single button to start a hangout with your league

Later this month, you’ll see a live indicator on NFL.com/fantasyfootball if anyone in your league is already hanging out

gloat

Fantasy football hangout (top window), live indicator on NFL.com (right), chat bar on NFL.com (bottom-left)

Hang out with your friends to conduct trades, review league business or just chat while watching the game on TV

Enjoy fantasy hangouts on the go or on the couch using the new Google+ app for phones and tablets (Android, iOS)

Get advice from top NFL Fantasy commentators as they hang out with fans and discuss the week’s results

+NFL NetworkGoogle+ pageNFL.com/fantasyfootballPosted by Nikhyl Singhal, Google+ Product Director

Official Blog

Half a gigameter of biking navigation in 12 countries in Google Maps for Android

Making it easier to cast your ballot

Google Maps heads north...way north

The U.S. election, live on YouTube

Mapping the Motor City with Google Map Maker

Google for Entrepreneurs goes to San Diego to empower veterans and military families

Tour Brazil and prehispanic Mexican cities with more Street View imagery in Google Maps

Voice Search arrives in 13 new languages

Google Maps now has schedules for more than one million public transit stops worldwide

London calling: some reflections on the digital games

Conquer the back to school blues with Google tools

Building the search engine of the future, one baby step at a time

The self-driving car logs more miles on new wheels

The tree versus the shadow

A new way to visualize the global arms trade

Giving you a better Google

Our roots go global: Apply for a RISE Award today

Celebrate the Kennedy Space Center’s 50th birthday with Street View

Google+ Hangouts and the NFL: fantasy football, face-to-face-to-face

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