Here comes acronym week

Posted by Vanessa Fox, Product Manager, and Adam Lasnik, Search Evangelist

If you happen to be in the Northern California city of San Jose next week, you may find yourself overhearing an enormous number of potentially cryptic-but-important acronyms like CTR, SEM, ROI, 301, and SES. That last one stands for Search Engine Strategies, one of the largest global conferences catering to webmasters, online marketers and advertisers, and the people (and companies) who love them. As luck would have it, SES is happening in San Jose Monday through Thursday next week. Google's very own (CEO) Eric Schmidt will participate in a discussion with conference organizer Danny Sullivan, and many other Googlers will be speaking at SES throughout the week as well:

Monday, Aug 7th

12:30 - 2:00 Lunch with the Google Sitemaps team
2:00 - 3:30 Social Search: Up Close With Google, Shashi Seth, Product Manager
4:00 - 5:30 The Search Laboratories, Peter Norvig, Director of Research
4:00 - 5:30 Domaining & Address Bar-Driven Traffic, Hal Bailey, Strategic Partner Manager

Tuesday, Aug 8th

9:00 - 10:15 Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues, Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager, Trust & Safety
11:15 - 12:30 Search Arbitrage Issues, Kim Malone, Director of Online Sales & Operations, Google AdSense
11:15 - 12:30 Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues, Matt Cutts, Software Engineer
1:15 - 2:45 The Bot Obedience Course, Vanessa Fox, Product Manager
3:30 - 5:00 Meet The Search Ad Networks, Emily White, Online Sales and Operations Director

Wednesday, Aug 9th

10:00 - 10:45 A Conversation With Google CEO Eric Schmidt
11:00 - 12:15 Speaking Unofficially: Search Engine Bloggers, Matt Cutts, Software Engineer

Thursday, Aug 10th

9:00 - 10:15 Meet The Crawlers, Shiva Shivakumar, Distinguished Entrepreneur
9:00 - 10:15 Search APIs, Mark Lucovsky, Technical Director and Rohit Dhawan, Product Manager
10:45 - 12:00 Search Engine Q&A On Links, Adam Lasnik, Search Evangelist
10:45 - 12:00 Vendor Chat On Measuring Success, Brett Crosby, Product Marketing Manager, Google Analytics

We hope those of you attending the conference will check out some of these panels and also stop by the Google booth in the expo hall. Googlers there will be eager to hear your feedback, answer your questions, or even just chat about the world's most colorful search engine. If you come to SES, one thing not to miss is our annual Google Dance, where SES attendees test drive some of our latest creations when they're not shaking their booties or dunking GoogleGuy (hey, it could happen). See you there?

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Saved locations on Google Maps

Posted by Thai Tran, Product Manager

One of the most common requests we've received is for the ability to store a list of personal addresses on Google Maps -- and now you can. To get started, click on the "Saved Locations" link in the upper right corner of the site and sign in to your Google Account. If you're already signed in, this link will take you to your saved locations list -- Google Maps will automatically save every location you search for. You can also go to the Saved Locations list to disable auto-saving of locations or to add, modify, or delete previously-saved locations.

From here, you can also add a label (your choice of an easy-to-remember name, e.g."home") to any of your saved locations. The next time you start entering an address or a label into Google Maps, we'll offer to auto-complete it for you if it's in your saved locations. Auto-completion is also available when you're searching for businesses. If you've labeled the address "1600 Amphitheatre Pky, Mountain View, CA" as "work" (as some Googlers would), when you start typing [pizza near work], we'll offer to auto-complete it as [pizza near 1600 Amphitheatre Pky, Mountain View, CA].

Here’s a tip: When a list of auto-completions is offered, you can hit the Tab key to select the first one.

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It's all about the photos...on a Mac

Posted by Ted Bonkenburg, Software Engineer, Infrastructure

I'm happy to tell you about the release of Picasa Web Albums Uploaders (beta, of course) for Mac OS X. Picasa Web Albums makes it simple to share photos with friends and family, and now we've made it even easier on the Mac. This new download comes with two handy tools for uploading photos: There's a plug-in for uploading your pics within iPhoto. If you don't use iPhoto, or just want to upload the occasional picture, just drag your photos into the provided standalone app and click Upload. Either way, I can't wait for my fellow Mac users to showcase their talents.

Normally I work on search engine infrastructure. I love my work on web search, but as a change of pace I decided to use my 20 percent time to make Picasa Web Albums better for Mac users. Fortunately, I was not alone. The Picasa and Mac development teams embraced the project and provided great assistance. Greg Robbins, a co-conspirator in the famous graphing calculator story, worked to refine the user interface. Later, another one of our Mac engineers, Mike Morton (I’m OK, mentor), took over as project lead, made quick work of creating the iPhoto export plug-in, and became the one responsible for incorporating feedback and finishing up the application and plug-in.

For me this has been a great opportunity to meet and work with new people, explore new technologies, and help create something that I hope the Mac community will find useful. So, please sign up for Picasa Web Albums, download the uploaders, and show the world some beautiful photos.

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Google Earth and Katrina help

Posted by John Hanke, Director, Google Earth and Maps

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast almost a year ago, people across the country and around the world wondered how to help. Many donated money; others lent their homes to dislocated survivors. A group of Googlers lent their expertise by leveraging the power of Google technology.

Over several long nights, the teams from Google Earth and Google Maps created satellite imagery overlays of the devastation in the affected region, which showed more accurately the scope of the disaster. Soon after, we were told that rescue workers and the U.S. Air Force were using Google Earth to find people who were stranded.

And last week, we received formal recognition from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Members of the NGA presented the "Hurricane Katrina Recognition Award" to the Google Earth team, as well as the Google Enterprise and Global Support groups, for their direct support during the Katrina disaster. Individual recipients included Brian McClendon, Andria McCool, Wayne Thai, Charlie Chapin, Michael Ashbridge, Chikai Ohazama, Lenette Howard, and Rob Painter, along with two folks from Carnegie Mellon University who assisted us: Randy Sargent and Anne Wright. We're pleased to be recognized in this way -- but even more pleased that we could help.

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Summer health tips

Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team

Our esteemed Google doc, Taraneh Razavi, M.D., has kindly provided a few tips on coping with such summer challenges as tick bites, thunderstorms, and heat exhaustion. She's also blogged about insect repellents and sunscreen. But as she reminds us, summer also means - there's ice cream. Stay healthy and cool, people, and have fun this and every weekend.

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Make your own buttons

Posted by Ben Lewis, Toolbar Product Manager

Custom Buttons are by far my favorite feature in the new Google Toolbar, which comes out of beta today. Clearly I’m not the only one, either -- we have over 600 buttons in the gallery, with new buttons being added every day -- and here are some some of my favorites, if you'd like to add them to your Toolbar. If you’re interested in making your own, it’s pretty easy. Just go to one of your favorite sites, right-click on the search box, and then click “Generate Custom Search.” You can find out how to add advanced features to your buttons here.

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Lane's Gifts settlement ruling

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel

We know many have you have been following the Lane's Gifts v. Google case, so we want you to know that Judge Joe Griffin ruled today to approve the proposed settlement. Here is his ruling. We're pleased Judge Griffin has affirmed the settlement as appropriate and fair to advertisers. We look forward to continuing to manage invalid clicks effectively and provide our advertisers with an outstanding return on their investment. If you're an advertiser, there's more about how the settlement applies to you here.

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