Surfing the web - new iGoogle gadget from CoastalWatch

Earlier this year, we announced an update to iGoogle, letting you expand the gadgets on your personalised homepage into 'canvas view' to access more content. A couple of examples of this new style of gadget are The Australian Business news gadget and a childcare search gadget from Careforkids.com.au.

We've just added another cool canvas view gadget just in time for summer (OK, spring - happy September 1st!) - a surf report gadget from CoastalWatch. The gadget offers up-to-the minute surf reports, live beach cams and surf forecasting - right to your iGoogle page.



But if your favourite sports take place on land rather than at sea, you can still keep up with the action with iGoogle - catch the final round of the NRL with the LeagueCentral gadget, which offers the latest league news, analysis and results from The Daily Telegraph’s team of rugby league experts.

Remember, there are around 60,000 gadgets and 200,000 feeds available in our public directory for people to add to their iGoogle page, and more than 2,000 iGoogle themes currently available, including themes designed by Australian artists - check it out here.

Posted by Katharina Friedrich, Product Marketing Manager

Transit information comes to Google Maps in Windy Wellington

Wellington, New Zealand is a popular destination for Aussie travellers - it's a culturally rich city, with great coffee, and some fun sporting events. It's also known as the Southern Hemisphere's very own windy city.

Next time you visit, you'll be able to get around even more easily on those windy days, with the addition of transit information from Greater Wellington to Google Maps.

Google Maps is already a popular source for driving directions, and Transit information makes it even easier to compare walking, driving and public transit options at various times of the day. So, for example, if you want to do a sightseeing tour around the city, you could plan a route that included Wellington trains, buses, a ride on the iconic cable car - and even finish off with a ferry trip to the South Island to continue your New Zealand tour.


View Larger Map

Wellington is the first city in New Zealand to see this feature, and we look forward to working with transit organisations across Australasia to roll this out even further. And remember, if you're in Australia you can already use Transit information to plan your journeys in Perth and Geraldton in WA, Adelaide in SA, and for Sydney's Monorail and Light Rail service in NSW. Check out the video below for more tips on using transit information on Google Maps to get around.



Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

On Cloud 9 – digital everything

This is the Lightning Talk I gave for Sydney Cloud Camp, held in the Google Australia office last week. It's about convergence of cloud computing and digital everything. It’s a very happy convergence, so I’m calling it “cloud 9”, symbolising a good place to be.

First, what do I mean by “digital everything”? Digital everything is just that, the digitisation of everything, at least, everything that is digitisable. There are of course things that don’t lend themselves to digitisation. For example, it may be some time before humans can ingest digital food! But many, if not most, of our informational and creative needs can be satisfied digitally. Digitisation is a form of de-materialisation, i.e., separating the bits from the material.

We’re already seeing it for media such as music and books, and more recently transit information and newspapers. But what if even more things were digitised? In business and government alike, let's face it, paper processes still dominate. Think of all those wasted directories that you use as door jams, and all that legal paperwork, that has yet to be digitised. The pace will pick up over the next few years, as it becomes main stream to collaborate around rich media, video, and complex business applications. But there's still a bunch of physical things out there just waiting to be digitised!

So where does the cloud fit in? First, what do we mean by the cloud? I'll define cloud computing as the intersection of "software as a service" and "utility computing". SaaS is about deploying applications as a service. Utility computing is about packaging computing resources (compute/storage/memory/network) as a metered service, similar to a traditional public utility.

Digitisation needs both aspects of the cloud. Without the cloud, digitisation means that information gets squirreled away on machines scattered around the globe. It’s pointless. The SasS aspect is what makes digital things accessible and useful and the utility aspect is what makes it scale affordably. The cloud also makes it possible to collaborate using digital information in new ways. For example, how many people ever collaborated using a physical street directory? In contrast, digital maps, naturally lend themselves to collaboration and have given rise to powerful mashups. Google Maps is a great example of this, with over half the traffic now coming from mashups on other web sites.

I also believe that the environmental benefits of cloud computing and digital things are significant. Digitisation is very green, for two reasons. First, and simplest, more digital things means fewer physical things, which in turn means fewer (precious) resources to move those physical things. Second, more digital information means more informed users. For example, when everyone has a detailed understanding of their home energy use or home water use, we can find all sorts of ways to save energy and lower power and water bills. Google PowerMeter is a great example. The cloud itself is also inherently green, because it leverages demand variability to achieve higher computer utilisation, also known as elastic computing. Higher computer utilisation in turn means doing more computational work with fewer machines, fewer idle machines, and lower energy costs, etc.

Digital everything will also profoundly affect education. Any person, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture. A doctor in the remotest part of Borneo will have access to every medical textbook every written. Or a schoolgirl in the outback will be able search all of Shakespeare’s works. It's "distance learning" on steroids.

Digital everything can also be a powerful force for democracy. Giving people the power to share and search the world’s information will continue to break down barriers and bring communities together. Of course, we need to guard against digital things becoming exclusively the realm of some digital elite or "digerati". Never has the adage, “information is power”, been truer. So it’s imperative that we, as a society, ensure equitable access to the world's information. Here in Australia, the proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) has great potential to level this information playing field, providing we get the regulatory settings right.

The cloud of digital things will improve the environment, education, democracy and more.

What can you digitise that will make lives better?

Posted by Alan Noble, Head of Engineering, Google Australia and NZ

Vint Cerf talks tech in New Zealand

Is IPv6 implementation behind schedule? You're darn tooting says Vint Cerf, in New Zealand last week speaking to IT professionals at an IPv6 conference in Auckland and Wellington. As Google's Chief Internet Evangelist and a pioneer in developing the early Internet, Vint travels the world talking about the challenges facing today's Web. Close to his heart - and one reason he was in New Zealand - is the IPv6 addressing scheme.

There are 1.6 billion Internet users around the globe, and Internet addresses (known as IP addresses or numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet) are running out swiftly as more and more people and devices get online. The current address base, IPv4, only allows for about four billion addresses (a large number, but not enough for Earth's more than six billion people!). IPv6 provides enough address space to assign almost three billion networks to every person on the planet.

Vint's advice to New Zealand's tech industry: get started now with IPv6 adoption. IPv6 was first developed in 1996 but adoption is still quite low. Businesses need to plan ahead to avoid "engineering in a crisis."

During his visit, Vint also delivered the keynote address at the Internet Industry Awards, hosted in Wellington by the Liz Dengate Thrush Foundation. This was the first year for the awards to acknowledge and encourage Kiwi entrepreneurship in IT.

Vint Cerf with Peter Dengate Thrush, the current chair of ICANN,
at the Internet Industry Awards dinner on August 20, 2009.

And of course, Vint also spent some time in New Zealand discussing the future of the Internet and what we can expect as more people and devices connect to the Web. Check out this article in The Sunday Star Times and this interview on RadioNZ to catch some of what he said.

Posted by Deborah Singer, Google Communications

Sydney hosts Google Creative Sandbox 09

Google played host to 250 of Australia's finest creative minds from across Australia last night, at the first Google Creative Sandbox to be held outside the US. In a meeting of the minds, the Creative, Media, and Technology communities shared ideas and possibilities. Australian creative agencies got to touch, feel and play with Google technology, experiments from the Google Creative Lab, and the best examples of creative campaigns from Australia and around the world.

Google's New York-based Robert Wong called on the creative community to explore and play: "This is a very special time, the web is ready, audiences are primed and creatives have this huge opportunity to do something big that's never been done before. The time is now. The best thing you can do tonight is to make friends with a geek!"

Google's Head of Agency Relations Guy Gibbs comments: "We're absolutely thrilled to have 250 of the country's most creative talent in the room tonight. It's taken a couple of years of listening, learning and collaboration for Google to develop its agency understanding and Australia has been at the forefront of that. The campaigns being developed here speak for themselves and we can't wait to see what creativity will make with the power of the web."

Managing Partner of Digital at Leo Burnett, Dominique Hind, showcased Earth Hour’s Vote Earth campaign, built on a new social mapping platform called "Show Your Vote", which uses Google's Geo and Social applications, and asks people to show their Vote for Earth in the lead up to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen this December.

Google Australia's very own Lars Rasmussen (creator of Google Wave) and Stephanie Hannon performed a playful Wave demonstration. And Aaron Koblin, Technology Lead for Google Creative Lab, wowed the crowd with his data visualisations such as Radiohead House of Cards.

Google Technology on display included:

• Chrome Experiments: developed out of Google's Creative Lab and demonstrating the awesome possibilities of the browser, using Javascript, without plugins.
• YouTube campaigns and products: including the current worldwide online dance competition from the Sydney Opera House MyMutation Opera House, beautiful Japanese Aquarium mosaic created by Asahi Advertising Inc, and novel video browsing from Warp Player.
• Insights for Search: free tools used by agencies and advertisers to provide deep insights into campaign success and consumer behaviour online.
• Social: demonstrated the recently launched social version of iGoogle and examples of how any website can awaken and strengthen the community on their site through Google Friend Connect.
• Google Wave:
• Geo: examples showing how Google Maps and Google Earth APIs can be used to create a more engaging user experience, ranging from a Coles store locator to Nike running routes and a Beastie Boys driving game, as well as the showstopper Wii Fit balance board used to navigate a virtual milktruck through Google Earth.
• Mobile applications demonstrating the eyes, ears, skin and location of a phone
• Google Content Network highighly-targeted performance display campaigns and the Google Ad Planner, a free tool to help media planners find where their audiences are browsing.

For images of the event, please click here.

Posted by Gabi Scott, Agency Team

New Features for Google Insights for Search

We explored Google Insights for Search when we announced our fastest rising searches for 2009 in Australia. Insights allows you to tap into the collective pulse within Australia, compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, categories (commonly referred to as verticals), geographic regions, and specific time ranges.

For marketers, Insights can help you determine seasonal variations in your business (When do Australians search the most for weight loss products?). It can also help you find a new market (Where in the world are searches for "shiraz" and "chardonnay" most popular?) or determine new ways to market your business (As an exterminator, what words should I use in my marketing? Answer: pest over ants or termites.)

Today Insights is available on the local au domain and we're introducing several new features in Google Insights for Search.

You can now see forecasts of future search trends for certain queries, based on an extrapolation of historical trends and search patterns. This works best for search queries and categories that are quite seasonal and have repeated patterns. For instance, search trends for the query "cheap flights" hit their peak in Australia during the beginning of the year, and we could naturally expect the patterns of previous years to repeat looking forward.



In addition, you can now visualise the way interest in given terms has changed over time, using the animated map feature. These maps show an animated depiction of how search interest changes over time in different locations. Now we can watch Masterchef mania sweep Australia state by state.

For more information, check out our video below:

You can also keep on top of the latest trends by adding a customisable gadget to your iGoogle page or embedding a gadget directly on your website.

Posted by Jeremy Wood, Product Specialist Team

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Blast Off for National Science Week

Today was an exciting day for Google Australia. We are thrilled to partner with National Science Week to launch the National Science Tour. In honour of the launch, today we hosted in our offices NASA astronaut Megan McArthur, astrophysicist and indigenous astronomy expert Ray Norris, high school students from St Andrews Cathedral College, science teachers, and science writers.





At Google we're passionate about advancing science in Australia and inspiring students to study science, maths and engineering because we believe that these will be the important and sexy jobs of the future. These fields will allow you to pursue your passions, to think big, and to progress Australia and the world.

Today we were certainly inspired to think big as we heard the awesome space travel experiences of Astronaut McArthur, fresh from her May space mission on the STS-125 deployment that serviced the Hubble Telescope.

Astrophysicist Ray Norris wowed us with explanations of black holes and explored the possibility that Aboriginal Australians were the world’s first astronomers.

If you're interested in learning more about science and astronomy (it is International Year of Astronomy and Evolution), here are some great places to start:
www.scienceweek.gov.au
www.starhunt.net.au
earth.google.com/sky/
earth.google.com/moon/

Posted by Alan Noble, Head of Engineering

Allianz combines TVC and online

Australian consumers are increasingly going online to research and purchase financial products and services. In recognition of this trend, award-winning insurance company, Allianz, has used an innovative TV and search marketing campaign to attract consumers to its online offering.

The insurance company's most recent TV commercial continues its creative campaign of using genuine customer testimonials. It features Saskia, who found Allianz by searching on Google, and who likes the fact that buying insurance online fits her lifestyle. Allianz offer 10% discount for customers who buy online.

Allianz compliments the TV commercial with a search marketing campaign to capture customers at point of relevance. Used in conjunction with an offline campaign, AdWords can provide real-time measurability of how that campaign is performing.



Posted by Mel Silva, Head of Finance Industry Sales, Google Australia and New Zealand

iGoogle now lets you share, play and collaborate with friends

iGoogle's been great with helping me organise my online life. I read the latest news, check my personal email, create (or gladly check off!) my to-do list and sometimes, even play a game of Tetris when I need a quick break --all straight from my iGoogle page. As part of the iGoogle team, we are committed to connecting users to the information that is most useful and important to them in an easy-to-use and customisable format. So I'm excited to tell you about a cool new feature to help users get more out of their iGoogle page.

Starting this week, we're rolling out some new social gadgets for iGoogle to all Australian users. Not only can you continue to do all the things you love to do on your homepage, but you now have the option to share all kinds of information, play games and collaborate with your friends too. We've released 12 new social gadgets to choose from, so that there's something for everyone. If you're into reading news or watching videos and want to share interesting findings with your friends, you can now easily do so with gadgets like GoComics, YouTube, or News.com.au. If you enjoy playing games, add favourites like Chess, Who Has the Biggest Brain, or the New York Times Crossword gadget. And if you're a productivity guru, try out our new social To-Do gadget -- we can only provide the gadget, the actual productivity is up to you!

Your current gadgets will continue to work normally and you don't have to take advantage of the social gadgets if you decide it doesn't fit your interest. But by adding and enabling social gadgets, you'll be able to have an even deeper, interactive experience with your gadgets when you share them with friends. In fact, we've created a Friends group so that you can share things with the people you care about. If you have a Friends group within your Google Contacts, you will be able to share with those friends on iGoogle without any extra work. You can add and edit friends in and out of this group at any time.


Your friends are able to see what you share or do in social gadgets through the gadgets themselves, or through a new feed of information called Updates, a way to see what your friends are doing on iGoogle without adding all the gadgets that they have. Updates can include everything from favourite YouTube videos, to recently shared photo albums, to movie plans for the upcoming weekend...the list goes on and on!


We'll be rolling out these features starting this week. So if you don't see your iGoogle page updated yet, just check back. These social gadgets will continue to have more features built into them and are the first of many to come. We're also encouraging all gadget developers to take advantage of iGoogle's growing audience of tens of millions of users and start building a social gadget for iGoogle If you're an interested developer, you can read more about it on our developer site: code.google.com/igoogle. If you have questions or feedback, check out our support site.

We hope these new social features will enhance the way you discover content and share with friends. But that's enough from me for now -- my iGoogle page is telling me that it's time to make my next Chess move!

Posted by Jeff Regan, iGoogle engineer

Inverloch Primary School students practice their Google doodling skills

Registrations are arriving daily for this year's Doodle 4 Google Australia initiative. Schools in every state and territory in Australia have registered to have their kids create their very own version of the Google logo depicting their 'wish for Australia'. If your child's school has not registered, there's still time - visit this site before August 14 to get under way.

This year, the young doodlers are lucky enough to have their creations judged by some of Australia's leading artists - Ken Done and Anne Geddes - and Hugh Evans, who's been inspiring Australians to think about their wish for not just Australia but the whole world, through the Global Poverty Project.

Here's a tip for the aspiring artists ... Ken says he'll be looking for colour, originality and creativity in his judging, and he can't wait to see the entries as they come in.

Speaking of colour, originality and creativity ... while we can't share this year's Doodles until the semi-finalists have been announced, we do have some other gorgeous art works to show you instead - and perhaps they'll provide some inspiration.

Earlier in the year, the Year 6 students at Inverloch Primary School in Victoria, inspired by this year's Anzac Day Doodle on google.com.au, decided to create their very own Google Doodles. They cleverly use some of our most iconic ANZAC day imagery - the Australian flag, poppies and rosemary, horses, and slouch hats - in their vibrant art works.










Congratulations to Ms Johnstone's class - your creations are gorgeous, and we've enjoyed decorating the Google office with them!



Posted by Katharina Friedrich, Marketing Manager