Anita Borg Scholarships now open in Australia

Posted by Neetu Vacin, Global University Programs

For three years, we've sponsored a scholarship program with the Anita Borg Institute for women studying computer science and related fields in the U.S. Now we're expanding this program to Australia, where we're very pleased to offer an opportunity to both undergraduate students and postgraduates, who may apply for AUD$5,000 scholarships.

Tell your friends, or apply yourself -- the AU program deadline is September 15th.

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Welcome to the University of California libraries

Posted by John Wilkin, Interim Co-University Librarian, University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is excited that the University of California is joining with us, the New York Public Library, Stanford, Harvard and Oxford universities in our partnership with Google.

The UC libraries are a great public system of academic libraries. They bring a wealth of new resources and titles to this partnership. We are thrilled at the idea that another public academic library recognizes the importance of making its great collection discoverable by all who search on the web. The UC libraries have chosen, like us, to incorporate all works within their library, not just titles in the public domain. In making their vast collections more discoverable, these great libraries are making a significant contribution to the dissemination of knowledge worldwide.

We began working with Google on the library project in 2004. They have been a terrific partner in this endeavor. We know that the University of California will also enjoy a productive relationship with the Google library team. We welcome the UC libraries to the partnership, and look forward to working alongside them on this important initiative.

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Our analysis of click fraud detection

Posted by Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety

A team of our engineers who specialize in detecting click fraud have analyzed various reports our advertisers have sent in from several consulting firms -- reports that claim a high incidence of click fraud on Google. I encourage you to read more about our findings on the Inside AdWords Blog, and you can see our full 17 page analysis here (PDF).

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Related Links, now with video

Posted by Bryan Chen, Software Engineer

Earlier this year, we released Google Related Links, designed to deliver fresh content to websites through an easy-to-add module. With it, you can show your users related news, web pages and searches complementing the information on your pages.

In our quest to enrich what can be offered via Related Links, we've added another tab to the mix: now you can show videos in the Related Links box. Result: visitors have access to relevant quality video content, and you add more interactivity to your site. Learn more here.

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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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