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Boutiques.com reveals the fashion trends on everyone’s mind
February 9, 2011
Since we
introduced
Boutiques.com last November, we’ve been busy developing new features that we’re proud to unveil as New York Fashion Week hits the runways.
More of the boutiques you love
We’re welcoming hundreds of thousands of stunning new boutiques, including those from designers
Helmut Lang
,
Michael Kors
,
Billy Reid
and
Thakoon
.
Trend data to excite designers and fashion enthusiasts alike
Over the past few months, we’ve watched usage of Boutiques soar. Shoppers aren’t just creating their own customized boutiques, they’re enthusiastically taking our
Stylyzer Quiz
and sharing what they “love” and “hate” about products while browsing. As a result, we’ve gained a unique, aggregate view into the latest fashion trends—a reflection of what shoppers think and feel about the colors, silhouettes, patterns and prices of individual products from across the web.
So today we’re unveiling Designer Analytics, a tool that enables our design partners to benefit from this collective knowledge—giving them insight into how their products are searched, shopped and loved. With easy-to-understand data visualizations, Designer Analytics shows what colors, shapes and patterns are most loved and hated broadly (in categories such as shoes, dresses and handbags) and even down to how specific items are performing. Designers can also see how their stats compare to brands like them. Designer Analytics is available when logged in, and looks like this:
We’re also launching a public version called
Trend Analytics
that gives curious fashionistas a view into the latest, site-wide fashion trends. Using aggregate data from both Boutiques.com and Google Search, it shows the hottest colors of the season, the most-loved products and the must-have trends.
New boutique features to help you express your style
We’re adding some enhanced features for boutiques, including a photo gallery and video upload (celebrity, designers, blogger and featured boutiques only) to give more opportunities for people to express who they are and share their unique point of view.
A Fashion Week giveaway game to put your fashion acumen to the test
We’re also kicking off a fashion trivia giveaway game, called
Sartorial Pursuit
, which you can play anywhere via SMS/Twitter. Each hour during fashion week, you’ll find a new multiple-choice trivia question that ties into our trend analytics and features designers and products on the site. Follow the game on our
Twitter account @BoutiquesStyle
to answer quiz questions from home for a chance to win stylish Fashion Week prizes.
Posted by Abigail Holtz, Product Manager
Dialed up: the rapid launch and growth of Click-to-Call
February 9, 2011
This post is the first in our
series
profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. Here, you’ll get an in-depth look at how one of our most successful mobile advertising features was launched by one and a half engineers in a matter of months. -Ed.
I’ll always remember my first cell phone—a big, black brick that was really only good for making calls. While technology certainly has advanced since then, I still appreciate the speed of connecting to people and businesses instantly over the phone, something that I found harder and harder to do when I searched, for example, for the number of a restaurant to make a reservation.
So in June of 2009, a few engineers and I pooled our 20% time and worked to develop a prototype of what would eventually become
Click-to-Call
for smartphones, an ad unit that makes it easier for people to connect to a business by phone, rather than through a website.
Building the feature was the easy part; essentially, we developed an ad extension that allows advertisers to include a phone or location in their campaigns. However, it was launching it to advertisers that posed the biggest challenge.
With new products like Click-to-Call, we often choose to launch in beta, and incrementally roll out the features to a small subset of users, usually beginning at a 1% test and increasing from there. With Click-to-Call, we’d developed a mobile feature that we wanted to launch as soon as possible, but since mobile advertising was much smaller at that point—then with only about one-sixth as many search queries we get today—we calculated that it would take nearly
three years
to roll out to 10% and around
10 years
to actually launch it. At that rate, the feature would likely become antiquated long before it ever officially launched.
So I decided not to follow the usual process and took a risk, choosing to launch to 50% of Google’s mobile advertisers within the first week. In my view, there was simply no other way to collect enough feedback in a short period of time so that we could quickly iterate based on feedback. Thousands of advertisers—an unprecedented amount for a brand-new feature—were on board to try it out, and with a few engineers and some pretty massive spreadsheets, we started to see real results. Within a month, we had the magical ingredient—momentum—and from there we were collecting enough feedback to be on track to bring the feature to all advertisers in a matter of months.
This is one of the reasons I work at Google. Google gives me freedom to experiment, ownership of my ideas, and amazing resources and support. We built Click-to-Call in June 2009, began testing it in July, and had it up and running for all advertisers in January 2010. One year later, Click-to-Call ads on both search and the Google Display Network are generating millions of calls every month on mobile phones and
driving strong performance
for advertisers.
If you’re interested in exploring some of the most significant trends in mobile, you can watch our
Think Mobile
livestream this Thursday, February 10 at 1:05pm EST, where we’ll discuss why it’s “not too late for businesses to still be early” in this space.
Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Senior Product Manager, Google Mobile Ads team
Introducing the Google Translate app for iPhone
February 8, 2011
(Cross-posted from the
Google Mobile Blog
)
Back in August 2008
, we launched a Google Translate HTML5 web app for iPhone users. Today, the official
Google Translate for iPhone app
is available for download from the App Store. The new app has all of the features of the web app, plus some significant new additions designed to improve your overall translation experience.
Speak to translate
The new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate.
Listen to your translations
You can also listen to your translations spoken out loud in one of 23 different languages. This feature uses the same new speech synthesizer voices as
the desktop version of Google Translate we introduced last month
.
Full-screen mode
Another feature that might come in handy is the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size. This way, it’s much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in.
And the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support
romanized
text like Pinyin and Romaji.
You can
download Google Translate now from the App Store globally
. The app is available in all iOS supported languages, but you’ll need an iPhone or iPod touch iOS version 3 or later.
Posted by Wenzhang Zhu, Software Engineer
Happy birthday from 20,000 leagues under the sea
February 7, 2011
It wasn’t very difficult for something to spark my imagination when I was a child—whether it was a pile of leaves or a couch of stackable cushions, just about anything could jump-start my creativity. My first encounter with Jules Verne’s
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
, however, sent my imagination into hyper drive.
I first found the novel while browsing through a random aisle in my local library. The cover was dark, murky and a little worn—but it was the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen. A pair of old-fashioned divers drag their feet over the ocean floor, watching a school of fish drift by. They don’t seem to notice the twisting silhouette of a monster inching toward them.
The cover alone pulled me in, but I didn’t want to spoil all of the possible story lines by actually reading the book. Looking back, I realize that what fascinated me most was the unknown: a creative spark and the imaginative exploration that followed. Since then, I’ve become more familiar with his work and still believe that exploration is the essence of Verne’s novels. His stories pull the readers into a world filled with infinite potential—be it in the clouds, on land or under the sea.
Today’s doodle, celebrating Verne’s 183rd birthday, tries to capture that sense of adventure and exploration. Using CSS3 (and with help from our resident tech wizards Marcin Wichary and Kris Hom), the doodle enables anyone to navigate the Nautilus (nearly) 20,000 leagues with the simple pull of a lever. And for those using devices with built-in accelerometers and the latest versions of
Google Chrome
or Firefox, it’s even simpler—just tilt your device in the direction you want to explore and the Nautilus will follow.
So voyage below (and above) the waves to see what you can discover... just make sure to keep an eye out for the giant squid.
Update
Feb 9, 8:44 AM
: You can now
explore the ocean
from our Jules Verne doodle in full view and HD.
Posted by Jennifer Hom, Google Doodler
Register for Google I/O 2011
February 7, 2011
We’ve been counting down the days until Google I/O 2011 and hope that you have been, too. With 91 days, 22 hours and 45 minutes to go, we’re excited to announce that registration is now open at
www.google.com/io
. Our largest annual developer conference will take place on May 10-11, 2011 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif.
The focus of I/O 2011 will be all about the cloud, and feature the latest Google products and technologies including Android, Google Chrome, App Engine, Google Web Toolkit and Google APIs. There will be many opportunities to meet members of Google’s engineering teams and take deep dives into the technologies with more than 100 technical sessions, roundtables and more. The
Developer Sandbox
, which we introduced at I/O 2009, will be back, featuring developers from more than 100 companies to demo their apps, share their experiences and exchange ideas.
If you liked our
countdown
, stay tuned for more surprises. We’ll keep you posted on the latest developments for Google I/O 2011 at the
website
, on Twitter (
@Googleio
) and
Google Buzz
. Get your tickets early—last year we
sold out
in record time!
Registration opens with an Early Bird rate of $450, which applies through April 16 ($550 after April 16). Faculty and students can register at the discounted Academia rate of $150, which will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Learn more and register today at
www.google.com/io
.
We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!
Update
Feb 22:
The countdown was created and animated using JavaScript and HTML.
Posted by Vic Gundotra, VP Engineering
Mobile now! Helping businesses succeed in the mobile era
February 7, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
Mobile Ads Blog
)
By the end of 2011, an estimated one billion people around the world will be connected to the mobile web and 50% of all Americans will own a smartphone. Because of the explosion of web-enabled mobile devices, mobile usage is now on a hockey-stick trajectory: searches on smartphones and tablets have increased by 4x in the last year, and the world of mobile apps continues to engage mobile users—125 years’ worth of Angry Birds are played every day!
For people everywhere, the mobile era has begun.
Yet most businesses haven’t adapted their online strategies—advertising, webpage design, commerce—to mobile. The opportunity for these businesses is huge and we want everyone to be able to take part. On February 10, we’re hosting an event at our New York office called “
ThinkMobile
”: Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, and our own Dennis Woodside, SVP, Americas Operations and Jason Spero, Head of Mobile, Americas, will explore some of the most significant trends in mobile and explain why it’s “not too late for businesses to still be early” in this space. We invite you to
livestream
these talks at 1pm ET/10am PT this Thursday on desktop, or—for the first time from a Google event in the U.S.—on both Android and iOS mobile devices as well. In other words, you can Think Mobile....on mobile!
Right now, advertisers engaging on mobile are increasing brand awareness, purchase intent and sales with effective mobile search and display campaigns. Mobile developers and publishers are supporting
very profitable
businesses with advertising revenue. And consumers are benefiting from relevant and useful ads on their mobile devices.
To help all businesses take advantage of the opportunities that mobile advertising presents, we’re focusing on three core principles with our mobile ads business:
Seamless
: We’re bringing the best characteristics of desktop advertising to mobile devices. We want to help marketers and developers extend the benefits of their desktop advertising to people on mobile devices, while effectively managing their campaigns and ad space across many channels.
Inclusive
: It’s clear that mobile is about more than just one device, one type of ad format or one style of ad campaign. Our ad solutions span across search, text, display, video, commerce and more, on a wide variety of devices, and enable businesses and consumers to connect in newly relevant and useful ways.
Made for mobile
: Mobile devices have unique characteristics like location awareness and touch screens (and the ability to make phone calls!) that make it easy for people to engage with information conveniently, and create unique opportunities for businesses as well. Our ad solutions are built to help marketers, developers and publishers take advantage of these mobile-specific characteristics.
The power of constant connectivity on mobile is a thrilling new reality, and has already transformed the way people engage with information, businesses and certainly with each other. We’re just now scratching the surface of what’s possible on mobile. This is an exciting time, and there’s much more to come.
Posted by Karim Temsamani, Global Head of Mobile
This week in search 2/4/2011
February 4, 2011
This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label "
This week in search
" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
This week it got just a bit faster to find the right things to buy and the right places to go, with a little help from Google—and your friends. Simply type a few characters and get Google Instant results in the “Shopping” view, and find recommendations from your friends with Hotpot in search results.
Instant results in the “Shopping” view
Now you can shop faster than ever and get the speed of Google Instant when comparing prices, looking for nearby stores and learning about products you want to buy. For example, if you’re searching for a cast iron skillet, we’ll start showing you relevant pans as you type [cast iro...]. Click “Shopping” in the left-hand panel and try searching for [sweater wrap shawl], [android phone] or anything else.
Now results will appear as you type in the “Shopping” view and in Google Product Search
Hotpot recommendations in search results
Earlier this week we
added
Hotpot recommendations to regular search results on Google. So now, if you’re looking for restaurants in San Francisco, you can simply search Google for [
restaurants sf
]. If a friend has rated a particular place, you might see her opinion right beneath the listing. We also expanded Hotpot to 38 new languages so people can share their favorite places around the world.
Hotpot recommendations from your friends now appear right in your usual search results
Whether you’re cooking at home or dining out, we hope this week’s updates help you find what you’re looking for just a little bit faster.
Posted by Johanna Wright, Director, Search Product Management
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