Small businesses are the celebrities of the web. It’s a little known fact, but Australians are actually searching more for builders than they are for Miranda Kerr and more for florists than they are for Julia Gillard (or at least, they were until the remarkable events of last week). That’s because Australians are spending more time online than ever before and more time online than any other media including TV. We’re increasingly going online to find out about products and businesses. According to Research International, more than 80 per cent of all Australians research products online.
These are all really compelling reasons for businesses to get online yet the majority of small businesses aren’t stepping into the spotlight like the celebrities that they are. A study from Research International showed that of the 1.6 million businesses in Australia with less than 20 employees, three quarters (74%) do not have a stand alone website and 40% do not use the Internet or email for business. With almost near saturation of Australians with access to the Internet and with the upcoming roll out of ubiquitous high speed broadband, it’s vital that businesses of all sizes are able to participate in the digital economy.
There are some shining stars. According to the Research International study, while only one in four Australian small businesses have ventured online with a website, those that market online are more likely to track the return on investment of their advertising spend and are looking to increase the proportion of their advertising spend online this year, with AdWords seeing the greatest growth. Small businesses listed the following reasons for increasing their AdWords budgets: easy to calculate return on investment, effective at reaching a large audience, suitable channel for building brand in the marketplace, and great channel to help acquire new customers.
So, if you’re a small business and you want to be found, where do you begin? The great news is that it’s easier than ever to strut your stuff on the red carpet. You don’t need a website to be found online - you can have a web presence with local business listings like Google Places. One in five searches on Google is related to location and people come to Maps to find types of businesses. They might search for cafe Fremantle or hairdresser Surry Hills. Google Places literally puts your business on the map. Anyone can list their business for free, you can provide information for your customers such as hours of operation, contact info, photos, videos, parking info, product offerings and you can manage your business listing with a personalised dashboard. We’ll even show your business in Google Search as well.
To get started now, go to google.com.au/places.
We see every day that small businesses are the ‘local celebrities’ of the Internet - they shouldn’t be shy about stepping into the spotlight.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Rumblefish Launches User Friendly Music Program for YouTube Community
(Editor's note: This is a cross-post from the Official YouTube blog).
Do you ever wonder how to find music you’re allowed to use in your videos? Have you had a video blocked due to unauthorised use of music? Well, we are happy to show our support for a new site called FriendlyMusic. FriendlyMusic gives YouTube users the option of purchasing a lifetime license to edit a song into their video. How does this work? Go to www.friendlymusic.com and browse through their catalog of pre-cleared music for YouTube. You then have the option to purchase an mp3 and download the track. Once download it, the track is yours and subject to your creativity. Add it to a YouTube video, create a mash-up with, or add it onto the existing audio in your YouTube video. Videos with Friendly Music soundtracks are licensed for unlimited views for the life of the video all over the world.
Since its launch, YouTube has pioneered ways for users to get professional music into their videos while respecting copyright -- and generating revenue and promotion for artists, songwriters, and music companies. Through Content ID and a series of unprecedented deals with music labels and publishers, we’ve turned user-made music videos into a business opportunity as well as a form of expression. With Audioswap, we built a library of songs you can drop right into your existing YouTube uploads. And with countless artists, we’ve hosted DIY music-video contests and film festivals.
To be clear, many of the FriendlyMusic tracks are still available for free in Audioswap. What’s new is that the FriendlyMusic store offers you up-front reassurance that specific songs are pre-cleared for your video -- plus the ability to edit those songs in your own video editing tools, at the point of creation. This marks the first time a music company has offered YouTube users a direct license. We’re excited about it and we hope you are too.
Try it out and let us know what you think.
Do you ever wonder how to find music you’re allowed to use in your videos? Have you had a video blocked due to unauthorised use of music? Well, we are happy to show our support for a new site called FriendlyMusic. FriendlyMusic gives YouTube users the option of purchasing a lifetime license to edit a song into their video. How does this work? Go to www.friendlymusic.com and browse through their catalog of pre-cleared music for YouTube. You then have the option to purchase an mp3 and download the track. Once download it, the track is yours and subject to your creativity. Add it to a YouTube video, create a mash-up with, or add it onto the existing audio in your YouTube video. Videos with Friendly Music soundtracks are licensed for unlimited views for the life of the video all over the world.
Since its launch, YouTube has pioneered ways for users to get professional music into their videos while respecting copyright -- and generating revenue and promotion for artists, songwriters, and music companies. Through Content ID and a series of unprecedented deals with music labels and publishers, we’ve turned user-made music videos into a business opportunity as well as a form of expression. With Audioswap, we built a library of songs you can drop right into your existing YouTube uploads. And with countless artists, we’ve hosted DIY music-video contests and film festivals.
To be clear, many of the FriendlyMusic tracks are still available for free in Audioswap. What’s new is that the FriendlyMusic store offers you up-front reassurance that specific songs are pre-cleared for your video -- plus the ability to edit those songs in your own video editing tools, at the point of creation. This marks the first time a music company has offered YouTube users a direct license. We’re excited about it and we hope you are too.
Try it out and let us know what you think.
Menulog talks Chrome extensions at DevFest today
Editor's note: We are pleased to welcome guest blogger Gary Munitz, general manager of Menulog Pty Ltd. Gary heads the team responsible for Menulog’s online marketing, web/mobile development both locally and internationally as well as their online affiliate network. Gary’s background includes over 13 years experience in IT and online marketing and has been involved in key roles in launching a number of successful start ups. He is speaking today at our Sydney DevFest.
Menulog.com.au allows customers to get food delivered from over 1000 restaurants across the country making us Australia’s largest and most comprehensive online restaurant ordering system. Our website boasts 2000+ specials, is free for customers to use, allows customers to pay the restaurant with cash or credit and offers instant confirmation.
All of this amounts to nothing if no one knows you exist. Accordingly we are always looking for cost effective ways to promote our product to the right audience. The right audience for an online product are consumers who are already online - simple.
We already invest significantly in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and these are great tools when a customer is actively looking for your product. But how does one get in front of the right audience when they are not actively looking for you at that exact time?
Offline media is an option – an expensive option – but an option nonetheless. You can spend thousands of dollars and hope that the people you are marketing to both want your product and use the Internet and remember your product when they are next in front of a computer.
Another option was a Google Chrome extension. Our extension gives our customers instant access to see the restaurants that deliver to their area, special deals nearby and popular food items without having to navigate away from the website they are currently browsing. This allows Menulog.com.au to promote their brand to the right audience throughout the day whilst they are ‘surfing’ any website. Our Google Chrome extension also highlights at different times during the day, gently reminding our customers that it is time to place their home/office delivery order. Our next version will also be pushing out great deals giving even better value for our customers.
Moreover, the technology is simple and straight forward to understand making it easy to roll out and maintain. Extensions are essentially mini websites and give developers the same type of control. Prior to the development of our extension, we created a web service that returned a JSON response of relevant data. The extension itself is a basic HTML page that uses AJAX to make the web service calls back to our server and display the JSON response. The final code bundle is then zipped (together with a manifest to manage a few extra settings) and uploaded to the Google Chrome extensions developer area.
Menulog.com.au allows customers to get food delivered from over 1000 restaurants across the country making us Australia’s largest and most comprehensive online restaurant ordering system. Our website boasts 2000+ specials, is free for customers to use, allows customers to pay the restaurant with cash or credit and offers instant confirmation.
All of this amounts to nothing if no one knows you exist. Accordingly we are always looking for cost effective ways to promote our product to the right audience. The right audience for an online product are consumers who are already online - simple.
We already invest significantly in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and these are great tools when a customer is actively looking for your product. But how does one get in front of the right audience when they are not actively looking for you at that exact time?
Offline media is an option – an expensive option – but an option nonetheless. You can spend thousands of dollars and hope that the people you are marketing to both want your product and use the Internet and remember your product when they are next in front of a computer.
Another option was a Google Chrome extension. Our extension gives our customers instant access to see the restaurants that deliver to their area, special deals nearby and popular food items without having to navigate away from the website they are currently browsing. This allows Menulog.com.au to promote their brand to the right audience throughout the day whilst they are ‘surfing’ any website. Our Google Chrome extension also highlights at different times during the day, gently reminding our customers that it is time to place their home/office delivery order. Our next version will also be pushing out great deals giving even better value for our customers.
Moreover, the technology is simple and straight forward to understand making it easy to roll out and maintain. Extensions are essentially mini websites and give developers the same type of control. Prior to the development of our extension, we created a web service that returned a JSON response of relevant data. The extension itself is a basic HTML page that uses AJAX to make the web service calls back to our server and display the JSON response. The final code bundle is then zipped (together with a manifest to manage a few extra settings) and uploaded to the Google Chrome extensions developer area.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Hiive Systems goes Google with AffinityLive
Editors Note: This guest post is from Geoff McQueen, founder of Australian software development company Hiive Systems. Their new product, AffinityLive, is soon launching in the new Google Apps Marketplace. In this post, Geoff covers some of the benefits AffinityLive users will gain through integration with Google Apps and the opportunity for existing Google Apps customers to use industry-specific applications from the Marketplace to better run their business. Geoff is speaking at today’s Google Australia DevFest in Sydney about his company’s experiences integrating with Google Apps.
Thousands of companies a day are 'going Google', moving their messaging, calendar and document collaboration to Google Apps. After experiencing the cost and time savings of moving to the cloud, the natural question is: what other business tools can we move to the cloud? This post outlines some of the benefits we've seen from integrating Google Apps and AffinityLive, our web-based software for managing work, schedules, revenue and more, in professional services businesses.
Google Apps has revolutionised how millions of businesses look at communication and collaboration. Whether you're a government, a multinational, a startup or a school, the way we use email, calendars, documents and spreadsheets is pretty standard. Unfortunately though, once businesses go beyond these common systems, requirements become a lot more industry specific. Our market, professional services businesses, need to have systems for managing a wide range of business activities, from job and task management through to scheduling resources and tracking time and profitability. While very small teams can get by with spreadsheets and military discipline, serious businesses need systems to succeed. Wouldn't it be great if these businesses could combine the benefits of Google Apps with more specialised software that is integrated, secure, easy to use and cost effective?
With the new Google Apps Marketplace, you can find dozens of applications, which integrate directly with Google Apps and move more of your business to the cloud. Our experience in preparing our application, AffinityLive, for launch in the Marketplace has already shown some really great examples of how businesspeople can benefit from the integration Google Apps provides.
1. Ease of use & management: single sign on
While early cloud adopters are likely using numerous SaaS applications already, the hassle of having to maintain accounts, remember login details and even the addresses of infrequently used services can be a big pain in the neck for your average user. And while this might be irritating for a user, for an administrator - charged with maintaining security and needing to process new employees as well as locking down access when someone moves on - having a disjointed set of sites and services is a serious issue. Thankfully, with Google Apps, users access and log into AffinityLive and other Marketplace apps via their Google Apps account, making it easy for users to access business applications, and helping administrators relax knowing they can manage access from one control panel.
2. Automatic calendar & schedule integration
To many professionals, their calendar is a central and essential tool for getting their job done. Unfortunately, many web applications have their own built-in calendars and reminder features, which causes a lot of frustration as they have to manually synchronise appointments and reminders between them. With the ability to integrate with a user's calendar in Google Apps, AffinityLive pushes all appointment and reminder information that is entered into the user's Google Calendar, and synchronises back changes into the work forecast and schedule used by AffinityLive.
3. Extend and share business contacts
While a simple and easy to use address book is great, sometimes a business needs more structured information, like the kind you find in CRM systems. Without sacrificing the simplicity of the contacts functionality in Google Apps, users can benefit by having AffinityLive push contact details across into the "All Contacts" shared list, ensuring wider corporate knowledge is easily accessible and kept up to date.
4. Coming Soon: Docs, Wave & Gadgets
With more features being added to Google Apps all the time, we're also looking forward to adding even more benefit to our users. Google Apps provides us with opportunities include Docs integration to allow for collaborative editing of the thousands of documents produced by our clients every day; Wave integration to allow users to discuss and interact around specific projects, tasks or issues; and gadgets that appear in the user's email reading window, making it a one-click process to commence a business process based on a received email.
There are many benefits for end-users and administrators baked into AffinityLive, all made possible by the rich APIs and Marketplace functionality within Google Apps. With dozens of applications already in the marketplace, and more being launched every month, Google Apps is so much more than communication and collaboration.
AffinityLive is currently in private beta, so if you're a Google Apps user, and your business is in the professional services sector, we'd love to hear from you: just register for the beta on our homepage at www.affinitylive.com.
Thousands of companies a day are 'going Google', moving their messaging, calendar and document collaboration to Google Apps. After experiencing the cost and time savings of moving to the cloud, the natural question is: what other business tools can we move to the cloud? This post outlines some of the benefits we've seen from integrating Google Apps and AffinityLive, our web-based software for managing work, schedules, revenue and more, in professional services businesses.
Google Apps has revolutionised how millions of businesses look at communication and collaboration. Whether you're a government, a multinational, a startup or a school, the way we use email, calendars, documents and spreadsheets is pretty standard. Unfortunately though, once businesses go beyond these common systems, requirements become a lot more industry specific. Our market, professional services businesses, need to have systems for managing a wide range of business activities, from job and task management through to scheduling resources and tracking time and profitability. While very small teams can get by with spreadsheets and military discipline, serious businesses need systems to succeed. Wouldn't it be great if these businesses could combine the benefits of Google Apps with more specialised software that is integrated, secure, easy to use and cost effective?
With the new Google Apps Marketplace, you can find dozens of applications, which integrate directly with Google Apps and move more of your business to the cloud. Our experience in preparing our application, AffinityLive, for launch in the Marketplace has already shown some really great examples of how businesspeople can benefit from the integration Google Apps provides.
1. Ease of use & management: single sign on
While early cloud adopters are likely using numerous SaaS applications already, the hassle of having to maintain accounts, remember login details and even the addresses of infrequently used services can be a big pain in the neck for your average user. And while this might be irritating for a user, for an administrator - charged with maintaining security and needing to process new employees as well as locking down access when someone moves on - having a disjointed set of sites and services is a serious issue. Thankfully, with Google Apps, users access and log into AffinityLive and other Marketplace apps via their Google Apps account, making it easy for users to access business applications, and helping administrators relax knowing they can manage access from one control panel.
2. Automatic calendar & schedule integration
To many professionals, their calendar is a central and essential tool for getting their job done. Unfortunately, many web applications have their own built-in calendars and reminder features, which causes a lot of frustration as they have to manually synchronise appointments and reminders between them. With the ability to integrate with a user's calendar in Google Apps, AffinityLive pushes all appointment and reminder information that is entered into the user's Google Calendar, and synchronises back changes into the work forecast and schedule used by AffinityLive.
3. Extend and share business contacts
While a simple and easy to use address book is great, sometimes a business needs more structured information, like the kind you find in CRM systems. Without sacrificing the simplicity of the contacts functionality in Google Apps, users can benefit by having AffinityLive push contact details across into the "All Contacts" shared list, ensuring wider corporate knowledge is easily accessible and kept up to date.
4. Coming Soon: Docs, Wave & Gadgets
With more features being added to Google Apps all the time, we're also looking forward to adding even more benefit to our users. Google Apps provides us with opportunities include Docs integration to allow for collaborative editing of the thousands of documents produced by our clients every day; Wave integration to allow users to discuss and interact around specific projects, tasks or issues; and gadgets that appear in the user's email reading window, making it a one-click process to commence a business process based on a received email.
There are many benefits for end-users and administrators baked into AffinityLive, all made possible by the rich APIs and Marketplace functionality within Google Apps. With dozens of applications already in the marketplace, and more being launched every month, Google Apps is so much more than communication and collaboration.
AffinityLive is currently in private beta, so if you're a Google Apps user, and your business is in the professional services sector, we'd love to hear from you: just register for the beta on our homepage at www.affinitylive.com.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
24 hours in politics is a long time in search
The last 24 hours has seen a swift but bloody political battle; an ousted leader; and Australia’s first woman Prime Minister. Australians were following online at every step of the way.
We’ve been flocking in our millions to online media reports, watching press conferences streamed live online, tweeting ferociously (replay the tweet history) - and searching for everything we can find out about this long and remarkable day in Australian politics.
As at 2pm today (Thursday, June 24), the fastest rising search term on google.com.au was no surprise:
We’ve been flocking in our millions to online media reports, watching press conferences streamed live online, tweeting ferociously (replay the tweet history) - and searching for everything we can find out about this long and remarkable day in Australian politics.
As at 2pm today (Thursday, June 24), the fastest rising search term on google.com.au was no surprise:
australian labour party (1st fastest rising - and yep, that's how Aussies are spelling it when we search)It was followed by:
rudd speech (2)Rudd and Gillard are the names on everyone’s lips ... but who are the other personalities involved that we want to know more about:
tim matheison (4)
alister jordan (6)
kirribilli house (8)
quentin bryce (11)
craig emerson (15)
kevin rudd speech (18)
tim matheison (Julia Gillard’s partner) (4)We’re searching to get to know our new Prime Minister. Among the most popular queries today:
alister jordan (Kevin Rudd’s chief of staff) (6)
quentin bryce (Governor General) (11)
craig emerson (Small Business Minister) (15)
mark arbib (Minister for Employment Participation) (56)
wikipedia julia gillardOf the top 100 fastest rising terms in Australia as of 2pm, 90 of them were related to the political situation or to news sites covering the remarkable events.
julia gillard partner
tim mathieson hairdresser
is julia gillard married
julia gillard atheist
julia gillard boyfriend
how old is julia gillard
julia gillard biography
where was julia gillard born
julia gillard photos
julia gillard religion
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Measurement Lab tests Australian broadband
Hanging hanging loading loading... what's up? If you’re having problems accessing a website or getting an online service to work properly - how do you know whether it’s your broadband connection, your computer running slow, or something else?
Today Australia’s Academic and Research Network AARNet has announced a tool called Measurement Lab (M-Lab) to help researchers and Australians better understand the performance of broadband Internet connections.
Do you know how fast your Internet connection is? You can try these tools out at measurementlab.net, test your Internet connection speed and diagnose problems affecting network connectivity.
At Google, we’re big believers in the power of measurement which is why we’ve supported Measurement Lab in other countries and we’re delighted to support this project -- the first in Asia Pacific -- by providing the Australian M-Lab servers jointly with AARNet.
Transparency has always been crucial to the success of the Internet, and, by advancing network research and empowering users with more information, we hope that M-Lab will help sustain a healthy, innovative Internet
Today Australia’s Academic and Research Network AARNet has announced a tool called Measurement Lab (M-Lab) to help researchers and Australians better understand the performance of broadband Internet connections.
Do you know how fast your Internet connection is? You can try these tools out at measurementlab.net, test your Internet connection speed and diagnose problems affecting network connectivity.
At Google, we’re big believers in the power of measurement which is why we’ve supported Measurement Lab in other countries and we’re delighted to support this project -- the first in Asia Pacific -- by providing the Australian M-Lab servers jointly with AARNet.
Transparency has always been crucial to the success of the Internet, and, by advancing network research and empowering users with more information, we hope that M-Lab will help sustain a healthy, innovative Internet
Google Sydney's latest release: Optical Character Recognition in Google Docs
A couple of months ago, my co-worker, Mike, showed up at my desk with a pile of paper, each of the yellowed sheets densely covered with an ancient-looking typewriter font. His wife had recently discovered parts of her family chronicles in the attic, typed up by her grandmother many years ago! Now he was wondering if there was a way for her to continue writing the chronicles in Google Docs.
The papers sat on my desk for a while, but recently, I returned them to Mike with a smile, cheerfully telling him that what started as my 20% project is now ready for everyone to use -- Google Docs now officially supports importing scanned documents. What we launched as an experimental feature for the Documents List Data API last year is now available on the upload page: check the “Convert text from PDF or image files to Google Docs documents”, upload your scanned images (JPEG, GIF, PNG) or PDFs, and Google Docs will extract text and formatting from the scans for you to edit away.
For the technically curious: we’re using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that our friends from Google Books helped us set up. OCR works best with high-resolution images, and not all formatting may be preserved. The original images will be included in the new document to make it easier for you to correct mistakes. Supported languages include English, French, Italian, German and Spanish, with more languages and character sets on their way. We’re looking forward to get feedback from you while we keep improving the feature over the next months.
And Mike’s scanned family chronicles have even been extended by an additional chapter in Google Docs: his wife recently had a baby boy named James!
The papers sat on my desk for a while, but recently, I returned them to Mike with a smile, cheerfully telling him that what started as my 20% project is now ready for everyone to use -- Google Docs now officially supports importing scanned documents. What we launched as an experimental feature for the Documents List Data API last year is now available on the upload page: check the “Convert text from PDF or image files to Google Docs documents”, upload your scanned images (JPEG, GIF, PNG) or PDFs, and Google Docs will extract text and formatting from the scans for you to edit away.
For the technically curious: we’re using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that our friends from Google Books helped us set up. OCR works best with high-resolution images, and not all formatting may be preserved. The original images will be included in the new document to make it easier for you to correct mistakes. Supported languages include English, French, Italian, German and Spanish, with more languages and character sets on their way. We’re looking forward to get feedback from you while we keep improving the feature over the next months.
And Mike’s scanned family chronicles have even been extended by an additional chapter in Google Docs: his wife recently had a baby boy named James!
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Australia's representative in the first ever global Doodle 4 Google competition
15 year-old Gloria Lo's "I love soccer" Google logo is the Australian winner and representative in the global "Doodle 4 Google - I love soccer" competition - the first ever international Doodle 4 Google initiative.
Gloria's winning design is up against international rivals for the chance to be displayed to billions of people on the day of the World Cup final (11 July 2010), as well to win a family holiday to South Africa, the home of this year's FIFA World Cup. You can get behind Gloria and vote for her entry to win the global competition from today (June 21) through to next Monday (June 28).
You may have already seen Gloria's winning entry - titled "Our eye on soccer" - displayed on the Aussie Google homepage on Sunday, June 13 for 24 hours, to coincide with the first Socceroos World Cup match against Germany.
Gloria, from Bexley in NSW, explains the inspiration behind her winning entry as: "Soccer unites soccer fans from all over the world. Our universal gaze is fixed on the ball through a single eye of the world.”
The "Doodle 4 Google - I love soccer" competition invited 4-17 year olds across the globe to support their team and depict their passion for the world game using the Google logo. More than 50,000 votes were received for Australia's ten finalists.
Show your Aussie spirit and vote for Gloria's illustration before next Monday!
Gloria's winning design is up against international rivals for the chance to be displayed to billions of people on the day of the World Cup final (11 July 2010), as well to win a family holiday to South Africa, the home of this year's FIFA World Cup. You can get behind Gloria and vote for her entry to win the global competition from today (June 21) through to next Monday (June 28).
You may have already seen Gloria's winning entry - titled "Our eye on soccer" - displayed on the Aussie Google homepage on Sunday, June 13 for 24 hours, to coincide with the first Socceroos World Cup match against Germany.
Gloria, from Bexley in NSW, explains the inspiration behind her winning entry as: "Soccer unites soccer fans from all over the world. Our universal gaze is fixed on the ball through a single eye of the world.”
The "Doodle 4 Google - I love soccer" competition invited 4-17 year olds across the globe to support their team and depict their passion for the world game using the Google logo. More than 50,000 votes were received for Australia's ten finalists.
Show your Aussie spirit and vote for Gloria's illustration before next Monday!
Time saving tips for the shortest day of the year
As if our days don’t already seem packed enough, today is the shortest day of the year. The sun didn’t rise until 7am and will set promptly at 4:53pm, according to timeanddate.com. To get the most out of the day, we’ve pulled pull together some online shortcuts and other time-saving tips, as well as some of the fastest and shortest records around the world. (OK, OK, we know you don’t need daylight to be online ... but we couldn’t resist sharing some of these). Roll on summer!
Quickest searches:
Looking for World Cup scores?: world cup
Local movie times? : movies sydney
What's that stock at? : goog, sbux or luv
Flight running on time? : qf44
Forecast? : weather melbourne
Friend still awake? : time london
Am I being ripped off? : 1000 baht in AUD
How much butter? : 4 ounces in grams
Quick - what’s 28% of $142 : $39.76
If you’re a math student, plug in an equation : cos(pi/6)
Where’s the closest hairdresser? : hairdresser + postcode
What’s the name of that album? : ‘music:Madonna'
Looking for something from on specific site? : ‘site:ebay.com.au running shoes’
What does that word mean? : define:ubiquitous
Time saving tips:
Quickest searches:
Looking for World Cup scores?: world cup
Local movie times? : movies sydney
What's that stock at? : goog, sbux or luv
Flight running on time? : qf44
Forecast? : weather melbourne
Friend still awake? : time london
Am I being ripped off? : 1000 baht in AUD
How much butter? : 4 ounces in grams
Quick - what’s 28% of $142 : $39.76
If you’re a math student, plug in an equation : cos(pi/6)
Where’s the closest hairdresser? : hairdresser + postcode
What’s the name of that album? : ‘music:Madonna'
Looking for something from on specific site? : ‘site:ebay.com.au running shoes’
What does that word mean? : define:ubiquitous
Time saving tips:
- Fast Morning Make-Up for School or Work
- Greasy hair, but no time to shower? Quick fix for greasy hair!!
- How to Clean a Room in Less Than 4 Minutes
- Top 10 Kitchen Cooking Time Savers - Nutrition by Natalie
- World's Fastest Talker
- Worlds fastest Train: 574.8kmph.
- Usain Bolt beats Gay and sets new Record - from Universal Sports
- Guinness World Record Todd Taylor Fastest Banjo
- World’s shortest runway
- Jimmy Carr's shortest joke in the world
- World's Shortest Escalator
- The Shortest Chess Game
Paint your team pride loud and proud with Picnik
The Socceroos play again this Thursday ... and we’ve been thinking of even more ways to get into the spirit of things.
This time, the Picnik team has put together a set of photo effects inspired by the football fever going on in South Africa and around the world. These new effects make it easy to add digital face paint, soccer-themed stickers, and team flag overlays to your photos and social media profile pics.
This time, the Picnik team has put together a set of photo effects inspired by the football fever going on in South Africa and around the world. These new effects make it easy to add digital face paint, soccer-themed stickers, and team flag overlays to your photos and social media profile pics.
To get started, just go to picnik.com/foootballfever and choose a photo to edit – you can upload from your computer or import one of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, or other photo sites. Then, pick Australia from the pulldown menu, select face paint or another soccer effect, and turn your photo into a fan masterpiece that will show the world your Aussie pride!
Let us suggest ... Google Maps' suggestions
Does this situation sound familiar? You’re running out the door to an appointment and you realise you’ve forgotten to write down the directions ... you race back to the computer to look them up but in the stress of the moment you’re blanking on the name of the street other than that it starts with Oak-something ... and you just can’t remember the rest.
The new suggest feature in Google Maps for Australia is here to help you out, and get you to what you want faster and more accurately by showing search suggestions for the most relevant places, businesses and points of interest as you type. You’ll get the most useful suggestions depending on where you're zoomed into on the map.
For example, if you start typing ‘q’ when you’re zoomed into Canberra, Google Maps will suggest Questacon - maybe a great spot for the upcoming school holidays.
The same search in Sydney will suggest the famous QVB shopping centre.
This feature will also help get you to other Google Maps features faster - for example, typing ‘rea’ will suggest real estate, and selecting that suggestion will take you straight into real estate search mode.
The search suggestions in Google Maps also include additional information, such as the address of the business or the district that a place is in. This extra information helps you find and select the exact business or location you're seeking.
So next time you’re running out the door and know you’re going to ‘Oak’ somewhere ... try letting Google Maps help you out with a few suggestions.
The new suggest feature in Google Maps for Australia is here to help you out, and get you to what you want faster and more accurately by showing search suggestions for the most relevant places, businesses and points of interest as you type. You’ll get the most useful suggestions depending on where you're zoomed into on the map.
For example, if you start typing ‘q’ when you’re zoomed into Canberra, Google Maps will suggest Questacon - maybe a great spot for the upcoming school holidays.
The same search in Sydney will suggest the famous QVB shopping centre.
This feature will also help get you to other Google Maps features faster - for example, typing ‘rea’ will suggest real estate, and selecting that suggestion will take you straight into real estate search mode.
The search suggestions in Google Maps also include additional information, such as the address of the business or the district that a place is in. This extra information helps you find and select the exact business or location you're seeking.
So next time you’re running out the door and know you’re going to ‘Oak’ somewhere ... try letting Google Maps help you out with a few suggestions.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Introducing the Google Display Network
Display advertising is a growing area for advertisers and agencies in Australia and New Zealand. We recently held a Think:Display event in Australia where we showcased innovative campaigns from Australian advertisers. Already 17 of the top 20 Australian advertisers as ranked by Nielsen have run display campaigns with Google and this month we’ve sold out 90% of YouTube homepages. We’re also working to improve our display products with new features and targeting options.
In an effort to make our display offerings clearer to advertisers and agencies, we’ve created a new umbrella name for all of our display properties -- the Google Display Network. This includes all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google:
You’ll see a change in the AdWords interface reflecting this new term, and you’ll see Google Display Network where you might have seen Google Content Network mentioned. We’ve also launched a new website showcasing the sites and benefits available to you on the Google Display Network.
We’re continuing to work hard to make display advertising simpler to create, plan, and measure, more relevant for users, and more accessible for advertisers and publishers of all sizes. Looking forward to even more creativity on display from our local advertisers.
In an effort to make our display offerings clearer to advertisers and agencies, we’ve created a new umbrella name for all of our display properties -- the Google Display Network. This includes all of the sites (apart from search sites), where you can buy ads through Google:
- YouTube
- Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger
- Over one million Web, video, gaming, and mobile display partners
You’ll see a change in the AdWords interface reflecting this new term, and you’ll see Google Display Network where you might have seen Google Content Network mentioned. We’ve also launched a new website showcasing the sites and benefits available to you on the Google Display Network.
We’re continuing to work hard to make display advertising simpler to create, plan, and measure, more relevant for users, and more accessible for advertisers and publishers of all sizes. Looking forward to even more creativity on display from our local advertisers.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Waving the World Cup!
On the Wave team here in Sydney, we have a number of both local Australians and imported Europeans who are incredibly passionate about sports, so we wanted to do something to let people like us use Wave to get excited about the World Cup.
With the help of various Wave APIs and a team of similarly sports-crazy developers in India, we created Google Wave Football Fever. From this site, people can create both prediction waves (important) and party planning waves (vital). Here's what our "Germany v Australia" prediction wave looked like - I didn't do so bad!
There are still a few more Australia games left in the first round, so you've got time to try out Wave Football Fever for predicting their outcomes.
We also have a team member and local, Pat Coleman, who's live-waving various games for fun. You can check out his index of live waves here. You'll notice there's no live wave for Australia v Germany - that's because we were all at Darling Harbour, trying to watch the game along with thousands of other nightowl Australians :-)
Enjoy the World Cup!
With the help of various Wave APIs and a team of similarly sports-crazy developers in India, we created Google Wave Football Fever. From this site, people can create both prediction waves (important) and party planning waves (vital). Here's what our "Germany v Australia" prediction wave looked like - I didn't do so bad!
There are still a few more Australia games left in the first round, so you've got time to try out Wave Football Fever for predicting their outcomes.
We also have a team member and local, Pat Coleman, who's live-waving various games for fun. You can check out his index of live waves here. You'll notice there's no live wave for Australia v Germany - that's because we were all at Darling Harbour, trying to watch the game along with thousands of other nightowl Australians :-)
Enjoy the World Cup!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
YouTube Play: searching with the Guggenheim for the world’s most creative online video
(Editor's note: This is a cross-post from the Official YouTube blog).
Do you ever look at a YouTube video and think, "That's a work of art?" Yep, so do we—and now, so does the Guggenheim.
In five years, YouTube has redefined media culture by changing the way the world creates, distributes and watches video. Online video is exploding not just as a medium, but as an art form, and we’re proud of the originality and innovation that YouTube has fostered among our users. Our community has produced some of the most creative and celebrated works on the Internet, videos that have been viewed by millions of people around the world.
We want to celebrate phenomenal video-makers and recognize the creative potential of the medium. So today we’re collaborating with the Guggenheim Museum to discover the most creative video in the world, and showcase exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of digital media: YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video. This global online initiative is presented in collaboration with HP.
We’re looking for animation, motion graphics, narrative, non-narrative, or documentary work, music videos and entirely new art forms—creations that really challenge the world’s perceptions of what’s possible with video. We want to elevate the debate. This presentation, we hope, will garner some of the finest creative work from every corner of the globe—not only to showcase it on one of the biggest stages online, but also in one of the most iconic artistic venues in the world, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and throughout the Guggenheim network of museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin.
Participants must submit their videos to YouTube Play to enter. The deadline for submission is July 31, 2010, after which the Guggenheim will assemble a shortlist to be evaluated by an international jury of experts from the worlds of art, design, film and video. Up to 20 videos will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin. The presentations will also be viewable to on the YouTube Play brand channel at youtube.com/play.
As we did with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, we hope to build an aspirational place for some of the world’s best artists to showcase their works and talents. For more information about how to enter, go to youtube.com/play.
Post content
Do you ever look at a YouTube video and think, "That's a work of art?" Yep, so do we—and now, so does the Guggenheim.
In five years, YouTube has redefined media culture by changing the way the world creates, distributes and watches video. Online video is exploding not just as a medium, but as an art form, and we’re proud of the originality and innovation that YouTube has fostered among our users. Our community has produced some of the most creative and celebrated works on the Internet, videos that have been viewed by millions of people around the world.
We want to celebrate phenomenal video-makers and recognize the creative potential of the medium. So today we’re collaborating with the Guggenheim Museum to discover the most creative video in the world, and showcase exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of digital media: YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video. This global online initiative is presented in collaboration with HP.
We’re looking for animation, motion graphics, narrative, non-narrative, or documentary work, music videos and entirely new art forms—creations that really challenge the world’s perceptions of what’s possible with video. We want to elevate the debate. This presentation, we hope, will garner some of the finest creative work from every corner of the globe—not only to showcase it on one of the biggest stages online, but also in one of the most iconic artistic venues in the world, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and throughout the Guggenheim network of museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin.
Participants must submit their videos to YouTube Play to enter. The deadline for submission is July 31, 2010, after which the Guggenheim will assemble a shortlist to be evaluated by an international jury of experts from the worlds of art, design, film and video. Up to 20 videos will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin. The presentations will also be viewable to on the YouTube Play brand channel at youtube.com/play.
As we did with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, we hope to build an aspirational place for some of the world’s best artists to showcase their works and talents. For more information about how to enter, go to youtube.com/play.
Post content
Monday, June 14, 2010
DevFest AU: A week of developer goodness @ Google Sydney
Last month we hosted more than 5,000 developers at Google I/O in San Francisco, a huge celebration of where the web is going, covering nearly all of our technologies. It was an amazing and exciting event, but now we want to find a way to bring that experience and excitement to developers here in Australia. So, we're happy to today announce Google DevFest AU, a week-long series of mini-conferences on Google technology with speakers from around the world. It’s happening June 28th-July 2nd in the Google Sydney office.
We'll dedicate each day to a different topic, and you can register for whichever days and topics interest you. We think this will make it easy to connect with like-minded developers, and will encourage more in-depth learning on each topic.
For more information and registration for each day of DevFest AU, follow the links below:
June 28th: Wave
June 29th: Apps
June 30th: Chrome
July 1st: Social
July 2nd: Geo
For many of our international speakers, this is their first time visiting Australia, and they're incredibly excited to meet the Australian developer community and learn what you're doing with our technologies - or what you're thinking of doing.
We hope to see you there!
We'll dedicate each day to a different topic, and you can register for whichever days and topics interest you. We think this will make it easy to connect with like-minded developers, and will encourage more in-depth learning on each topic.
For more information and registration for each day of DevFest AU, follow the links below:
June 28th: Wave
June 29th: Apps
June 30th: Chrome
July 1st: Social
July 2nd: Geo
For many of our international speakers, this is their first time visiting Australia, and they're incredibly excited to meet the Australian developer community and learn what you're doing with our technologies - or what you're thinking of doing.
We hope to see you there!
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Freeze frame!
(Editor's note: This is a cross post from the Official Google Blog)
From iGoogle’s debut in 2005 to our more recent launch of stars in search in March, we’ve enjoyed making your search experience more relevant, useful and fun through personalisation. Today, we’re introducing a new feature that brings a whole new level of personalisation to Google by letting you add a favorite photo or image to the background of the Google homepage. You can choose a photo from your computer, your own Picasa Web Album or a public gallery hosted by Picasa which includes a selection of beautiful photos.
Whether you choose a photo of a loved one, a picture of your favorite vacation destination or even a design you created yourself, Google.com is now yours to customise. For those of you who want to enjoy the clean, simple look of Google as well as your personalised view, we’ve made it easy to switch between your customised search page and classic Google.
We are beginning to roll out this new feature to users in the U.S. over the next few days, so if you don’t see a link in the lower left-hand corner of Google.com now, check back soon. For those of you outside of the U.S., you can expect to see this new feature in the coming days as we roll it out internationally to offer similar, consistent experiences globally.
And if you’ve customised your look with a fun personal photo we’d love to see what your new homepage looks like. Tweet a picture of your page with the hashtag #myGooglepage and share it with us!
We hope you enjoy this fun new feature and that it makes Google search more your own.
From iGoogle’s debut in 2005 to our more recent launch of stars in search in March, we’ve enjoyed making your search experience more relevant, useful and fun through personalisation. Today, we’re introducing a new feature that brings a whole new level of personalisation to Google by letting you add a favorite photo or image to the background of the Google homepage. You can choose a photo from your computer, your own Picasa Web Album or a public gallery hosted by Picasa which includes a selection of beautiful photos.
An example homepage featuring artwork by Jeff Koons, photographed by Sandy Volz
A second example page, featuring artwork by Tom Otterness, photographed by Cesar Perez
Whether you choose a photo of a loved one, a picture of your favorite vacation destination or even a design you created yourself, Google.com is now yours to customise. For those of you who want to enjoy the clean, simple look of Google as well as your personalised view, we’ve made it easy to switch between your customised search page and classic Google.
We are beginning to roll out this new feature to users in the U.S. over the next few days, so if you don’t see a link in the lower left-hand corner of Google.com now, check back soon. For those of you outside of the U.S., you can expect to see this new feature in the coming days as we roll it out internationally to offer similar, consistent experiences globally.
And if you’ve customised your look with a fun personal photo we’d love to see what your new homepage looks like. Tweet a picture of your page with the hashtag #myGooglepage and share it with us!
We hope you enjoy this fun new feature and that it makes Google search more your own.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Sovereign Hill comes to life in one of Australia's biggest 3D mapping projects for Google Earth
Google Earth is a really powerful tool for better understanding our world - both past and present. Google Earth now features historical imagery, allowing you amazing looks back in time, like the German city of Stuttgart, pre- and post-World War II. It can also depict our world today in wonderful, rich detail - like this 3D glimpse of Melbourne via the 3D building layer in Google Earth.
Now ... imagine being able to see in 3D detail what an area looked like more than one hundred years ago? Thanks to a major new 3D building project, you're able to do just that at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, Victoria.
Google Earth is a wonderful way to take a virtual tour of some of the world's best known tourist attractions and historical icons. Turn on the 3D building layer to get a unique view of our best-loved Aussie destinations including:
And international destinations:
The 60-hectare open-air museum recreates what life was like in Ballarat's gold fields in the 1850s. Set on a former goldmining site, Sovereign Hill has more than 120 buildings - all of which have now been digitally mapped on Google Earth. To give you an idea of scale, nearly 2,000 images were taken to detail the 120 replica buildings on the site, making it one of Australia's biggest 3D digital mapping projects.
Google Earth is a wonderful way to take a virtual tour of some of the world's best known tourist attractions and historical icons. Turn on the 3D building layer to get a unique view of our best-loved Aussie destinations including:
And international destinations:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
