I Love Google

If you programmatically create and manage custom search engines, you are probably familiar with the XML format for Custom Search. The context file, which includes the specifications for the search engine, now has a richer look and feel section that lets you define the style of the search box and search results of your custom search engine. You can choose different types of result presentation—from Google hosted results to the Custom Search element—and retrieve the code for the search box that you insert into your webpages.

The Custom Search element gives you the greatest level of control, enabling you to match the look and feel of your search results to the rest of the rest of your website. As shown in the following screenshot, gdgt uses the Custom Search element to match the style of its website.

You can control many attributes in the look and feel. The following is a sample snippet that shows the new LookAndFeel XML element in the Custom Search context file. You can either select a design from a set of predefined themes or control the attributes individually.

<LookAndFeel code="4"
         googlebranding="watermark"
         element_layout="1"
         theme="1"
         custom_theme="true"
         text_font="Arial, sans-serif">
 <Logo/>
 <Colors url="#008000"
         background="#FFFFFF"
         border="#FFFFFF"
         title="#0000CC"
         text="#000000"
         visited="#0000CC"
         title_hover="#0000CC"
         title_active="#0000CC" />
 <Promotions title_color="#0000CC"
         title_visited_color="#0000CC"
         url_color="#008000"
         background_color="#FFFFFF"
         border_color="#336699"
         snippet_color="#000000"
         title_hover_color="#0000CC"
         title_active_color="#0000CC" />
 <SearchControls input_border_color="#BCCDF0"
         button_border_color="#666666"
         button_background_color="#CECECE"
         tab_border_color="#E9E9E9"
         tab_background_color="#E9E9E9"
         tab_selected_border_color="#FF9900"
         tab_selected_background_color="#FFFFFF" />
 <Results border_color="#FFFFFF"
         border_hover_color="#FFFFFF"
         background_color="#FFFFFF"
         background_hover_color="#FFFFFF" />
</LookAndFeel>

All the attributes and child elements of LookAndFeel are documented in the developer guide.

Posted by: Kevin Glumbumble Lim, Technical Writer

Custom Search Team Notizie dalla rete News dalla rete

While 106 American football players sought yardage in the 2010 Super Bowl, millions of people sought information related to the big game from Google search. We looked at some game-day search trends and data* to see what football fans were searching for this year.

Most searched-for team
To the victor of this year's big game went the search spoils: The New Orleans Saints captured both the NFL championship and the lion's share of Super Bowl team searches in 2010.

Most searched-for player
For leading the New Orleans Saints to their 31–17 win over the Indianapolis Colts — with 288 yards, two touchdowns and 32 of 39 passes completed — quarterback Drew Brees won the Most Valuable Player award. But Peyton Manning earned the status of the Super Bowl's most searched-for player, beating out some tough competition and followed by Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, Hank Baskett and Scott Fujita.

Many fans of Reggie Bush also expressed interest in his girlfriend Kim Kardashian; searches for her name, both on its own and linked with Reggie Bush's, spiked significantly during the game. Additionally, search volume for football great Walter Payton — after whom the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award was named — was as high as that for some of the game's top five most searched-for players.

Most searched-for coach
Behind every team is a great coach, and behind every coach is an engaged online community. This year, Sean Payton, who has coached the New Orleans Saints since 2006, was the most searched-for team leader.

Most searched-for party planning terms
Die-hard football fans and casual shindig hosts alike look forward to game day for its party planning possibilities. This year, people went online to find all the information they needed to watch the game and to make sure they were well-fed during the same. Some top rising recipe searches on game day included buffalo chicken dip, guacamole, 7-layer dip and pigs in a blanket.

People were also looking for information on how and when to watch the game; searches related to the start time of the game and watch Super Bowl 2010 online were both notably high.

Most searched-for advertisers
In addition to spotlighting some of the finest football teams in the U.S., the Super Bowl is a showcase for some of the funniest, coolest and most interesting creative advertisements each year. This year, the prospect of "free" dominated the searched-for ads. The offer of free pants from Dockers garnered a spike of queries which continued throughout the game. Twice, Denny's advertised free grand slam breakfasts, leading to two bumps in searches for Denny's free breakfast, Denny's locations and Denny's.

Searchers also enjoyed ads featuring celebrities — including Betty White, who played football and ate Snickers bars, and Megan Fox, who used a Motorola smartphone.

We told the story of an American who finds love in Paris — using search queries. Google Super Bowl commercial led searchers to the love story of a man who dutifully searched for information on how to impress a French girl, long distance relationship advice and how to assemble a crib. (Full disclosure: We work for this advertiser.)

Stay tuned
Which advertiser won the position of Favorite 2010 Super Bowl Ad, according to fans? Check out YouTube's Ad Blitz results on February 17 to see which Super Bowl ad received the greatest number of positive votes from the YouTube community. Until then, you can use Google Trends to see more Super Bowl-related queries.

*We used internal tools to quickly gather this data. All of the search queries we looked at were anonymous — no personal information was used.

Posted by Jeffrey Oldham, Software Engineer

A Googler Notizie dalla rete News dalla rete, search

Feras Alhlou, president and principal consultant of E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, will be conducting a Google Analytics workshop at SMX West on March 5, called "Using Google Analytics to Improve Your Online Marketing & Business." Register here and get 10% off with this discount code: GA@SMX

Many organizations, large and small, struggle to go beyond basic web metrics of visitor counts and pageview volumes. In this workshop, senior consultant Feras Alhlou will walk you through what you need in order to drive your online marketing strategy ahead of your competition. I've had the pleasure of sitting in on Feras' workshops in the past, and it was the one of the main reasons we were so proud when E-Nor in the Bay Area joined our Google Analytics Authorized Consultant network. His clear, engaging and energetic teaching style will make the day fly by as you learn. It's time well spent.

Jeff Gillis Notizie dalla rete News dalla rete

The Google Maps API Premier team looks to customer input as we build tools that enrich websites, applications, and devices with location information. Customers frequently tell us that the higher than standard limits on web services such as geocoding and static maps are among the most valuable aspects of Maps API Premier.

However, any web service can be vulnerable to anonymous automated access. To further protect our Premier customers from unauthorized use of their client IDs, we’re adding an additional layer of security to Google Maps API Premier.

Starting today, we will be issuing a private cryptographic key, unique to each account, to all Maps API Premier customers. From now on, requests made to certain web services from Maps API Premier accounts will need to be “signed” with this key. This security enhancement will ensure that requests are authorized by the owner of the Maps API Premier client ID specified in the request.

Existing Maps API Premier customers should expect to receive an email from Google within the next 10 days containing their private cryptographic key. For documentation explaining how to use this cryptographic key to sign requests, please refer to the Maps API Premier Developer Guide. The Static Maps V2 API is the first API to support URL signing.

As of March 2, 2010, requests made to the Static Maps V2 API will need to be signed to be accepted. However, for added security, we encourage you to begin signing requests you make to this service now.

By enhancing the security of our services we better protect the interests of our customers and of our data content partners. I’m excited to continue to develop the secure infrastructure that support ongoing innovation from Google – and for our customers.

Posted by Daniel Chu, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Maps & Earth team

Ellen Petry Leanse Google Maps, Notizie dalla rete admin, earth and maps, new features, News dalla rete

MyHeritage.com, portale che da anni si occupa di fornire al popolo della Rete uno strumento per tracciare il proprio albero genealogico, ha nei giorni scorsi finalizzato un accordo con la società tedesca OSN Group, al fine di integrare nel proprio database i dati raccolti in alcuni siti europei dedicati proprio alla ricostruzione delle cronologie di ...
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Autore: Cristiano Ghidotti
Tags: albero genealogico, famiglia, myheritage

Cristiano Ghidotti Notizie dalla rete albero genealogico, famiglia, myheritage, News dalla rete, novità, Servizi e applicazioni

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Jay Kenney, CIO of Lincoln Property Company, a residential property management and development company. Prior to joining Lincoln Property, Jay was a Managing Director at BearingPoint for eight years and spent 19 years at SBC (now AT&T).

Last year Jay inherited a Novell Groupwise system powering email for 950 of his firm's approximately 3,500 employees. After careful consideration, Lincoln Property migrated from Groupwise to Google Apps, saving the company $200K – and enabling Jay to provide all 3,500 employees with company email.

Jay will be available on a live webcast this Thursday at 11:00 a.m. PST, 2:00 p.m. EST, 7:00 p.m. GMT to share his experience and answer questions about Lincoln Property Company's experience in switching to Google Apps. Michael Cohn from Cloud Sherpas, a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, will also be on hand to answer questions about the migration process.

Lincoln Property is the fifth largest property manager in the United States. When I joined the company, 950 of our 3,500 employees were using Novell Groupwise for email. We were maintaining an expensive infrastructure including servers, a SAN and data center space. It was difficult to maintain our email archive. It was also tough to find IT staff skilled in Groupwise. At the same time, we were looking to outsource as many of our mission-critical applications as possible.

Evaluating our options, we first considered remaining with Groupwise or switching to Microsoft Exchange. At the prodding of one of our tech-savvy partners, we tried out Google Apps and liked what we found. We did a comprehensive TCO analysis that included licensing and maintenance, data center costs, spam protection, server, SAN, migration costs, you name it.

The business case was clear. At approximately $200K per year cheaper than the existing system and infrastructure, Google Apps would provide email, instant messaging, great mobile options, and AV/AS protection for just $50/user/year. And, we would be able to equip all 3,500 employees with company email instead of just the 950 who were on the legacy on premise system.

After trialing Gmail, Google Calendar, and Gmail's integrated chat, we made the move to Google Apps. Cloud Sherpas was instrumental in helping us extract email and contacts data out of GroupWise and migrate it into Google Apps for 950 users in a phased migration. They also provided webinar and video training to ease our users through the transition.

Now we are on track to migrate our remaining 2,500 users in 2010. The results so far have been stellar. I’d be happy to share the lessons we’ve learned – what we did that I’m glad we did!

Please join me for this live webinar.

Lincoln Property Company finds a new home with Google Apps
Thursday, February 11, 2009
11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST / 7:00 p.m. GMT


Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino.

Ellen Petry Leanse Notizie dalla rete gone google, Google Apps, guest post, News dalla rete, switch

Compagni fedeli nei momenti di pausa, irrinunciabili punti di riferimento per i propri rapporti interpersonali o addirittura strumenti di lavoro, i social network hanno ormai invaso la quotidianità dei navigatori. Secondo ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency), agenzia dell’Unione Europea che si occupa della sicurezza nella grande Rete, questa rapida e repentina diffusione del Web ...
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Autore: Cristiano Ghidotti
Tags: consigli, sicurezza, social network

Cristiano Ghidotti Notizie dalla rete consigli, News dalla rete, sicurezza, Social Network, Tendenze

Google's search engine didn't become popular because of advertising. Many people liked that it returned relevant results, it was fast and had a simple interface, so they told their friends to try it.

Google rarely used traditional advertising to promote its products, but that started to change in 2007, when Google used billboards to promote GOOG-411. Last year, Google aggressively promoted Chrome using flashy ads.

Despite the noticeable cultural shift, it's still surprising to see that Google decided to promote its search engine at the Super Bowl.

"If you watched the Super Bowl this evening you'll have seen a video from Google called "Parisian Love". In fact you might have watched it before, because it's been on YouTube for over three months. We didn't set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search. Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience," explains Eric Schmidt.

Google's CEO mentioned in a Twitter message that someone told him: "Hell has indeed frozen over." This is Google's first Super Bowl ad:

Alex Chitu Notizie dalla rete News dalla rete, Web Search