As I was sitting on the ferry commuting to Google’s Sydney office this morning, two thoughts occurred to me. First, Australia is beautiful. If you’ve never been here, you really should visit. And second, it’s amazing how productive I can be with just my Android phone and an Internet connection. I was responding to email, reading news articles, and editing documents–just like I do at the office. Only the view was better!
We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android. We’ve brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You’ll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in.
We also updated the interface to make it easier to work with your documents on the go. For example, you can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph or see the whole document at a glance. We also added rich text formatting so you can do things like create a quick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold something important. Watch the new Google Docs app in action:
If you want to hear about the latest Docs news or send us feedback on the new app, visit Google Docs on Google+.
As I was sitting on the ferry commuting to Google’s Sydney office this morning, two thoughts occurred to me. First, Australia is beautiful. If you’ve never been here, you really should visit. And second, it’s amazing how productive I can be with just my Android phone and an Internet connection. I was responding to email, reading news articles, and editing documents—just like I do at the office. Only the view was better!
We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android. We’ve brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You’ll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in.
We also updated the interface to make it easier to work with your documents on the go. For example, you can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph or see the whole document at a glance. We also added rich text formatting so you can do things like create a quick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold something important. Watch the new Google Docs app in action:
If you want to hear about the latest Docs news or send us feedback on the new app, visit Google Docs on Google+.
As I was sitting on the ferry commuting to Google’s Sydney office this morning, two thoughts occurred to me. First, Australia is beautiful. If you’ve never been here, you really should visit. And second, it’s amazing how productive I can be with just my Android phone and an Internet connection. I was responding to email, reading news articles, and editing documents—just like I do at the office. Only the view was better!
We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android. We’ve brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You’ll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in.
We also updated the interface to make it easier to work with your documents on the go. For example, you can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph or see the whole document at a glance. We also added rich text formatting so you can do things like create a quick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold something important. Watch the new Google Docs app in action:
If you want to hear about the latest Docs news or send us feedback on the new app, visit Google Docs on Google+.
As I was sitting on the ferry commuting to Google’s Sydney office this morning, two thoughts occurred to me. First, Australia is beautiful. If you’ve never been here, you really should visit. And second, it’s amazing how productive I can be with just my Android phone and an Internet connection. I was responding to email, reading news articles and editing documents—just like I do at the office. Only the view was better!
We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android. We’ve brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You’ll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in.
We also updated the interface to make it easier to work with your documents on the go. For example, you can pinch to zoom and focus on a specific paragraph or see the whole document at a glance. We also added rich text formatting so you can do things like create a quick bullet list, add color to your documents, or just bold something important. Watch the new Google Docs app in action:
If you want to hear about the latest Docs news or send us feedback on the new app, visit Google Docs on Google+.
Back in October, we released a preview of a brand new version of Google presentations, designed to make it easier to share ideas with others. We’ve been busy polishing the app based on your feedback and today we’re excited to enable the new editor for all new presentations.
We’re also introducing a number of performance improvements and making it easier for you to collaborate by bringing the discussion feature you’ve used in documents to presentations.
With discussions in presentations, you’ll be able to:
Comment on a shape or an entire slide to give context to your discussion.
Send an email notification by adding someone to a comment.
Resolve comments to let collaborators know that they’ve been addressed, and to reduce clutter in your presentation.
Plus, to make it easy to get feedback without giving up control of who can make changes, you can now give others the ability to comment on (but not edit) your presentation.
If you’d like to convert existing presentations to the new version of the editor, create a new presentation and import your slides by selecting Import slides from the File menu. To learn more about how to import your old presentations, check out these instructions.
With discussions and real time collaboration, we hope you’ll love working together in Google presentations. We’re rolling out these changes slowly over the next several hours. If you’d like to give us your feedback live, we’ll be hosting a Hangout tomorrow at 2:30 EST to talk about the latest updates to presentations. Stop by our Google+ page to find out how to participate.
At the end of January, we invited you to choose your favorite YouTube Space Lab experiment ideas from sixty finalist teams, and today we have our winners! More than 100,000 of you cast your votes that combined with the scores from our panel of judges to decide the regional winners for the final stage of the competition. Find out who won below and you can meet them all on the Space Lab Channel.
The six regional winning teams will travel to Washington, D.C., where we’ll announce the two global winners (one team from each age group). These two winners will have their experiments performed 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and live streamed on YouTube as part of a global event celebrating science and space. While in Washington, all the teams will take part in a series of activities to honor their achievements, including the opportunity to experience weightlessness on a ZERO-G flight.
Space Lab invited budding scientists to submit a YouTube video describing an idea for an experiment that could be carried out aboard the ISS. The channel, which serves as a launch pad for discovering great space and science videos on YouTube, has received more than 50 million views worldwide throughout the course of the competition. This week we’re uploading interviews with the winners in their hometowns, so subscribe to the channel to keep up to date with all the latest from here on Earth!
Zahaan Bharmal, YouTube Space Lab lead, recently watched the “ESA Education (English)” playlist.
Posted by Steve Walker, IT Director and Google Apps Product Manager at Trinity Mirror.
Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Steve Walker, IT Director and Google Apps Product Manager at Trinity Mirror. In November Trinity Mirror, one of the UK’s largest media brands, announced its move to Google Apps for Business. Three months on Steve updates us on how the migration has gone so far – and what they’ve learned along the way.
In my last blog in November, I described how Trinity Mirror made the decision to move all its staff to Google Apps for Business. At the time we were part way through our migration and were aiming to complete the move by the end of November. Well, the good news is that we not only migrated all 5,200 email users to Google Apps but completed the project two weeks ahead of schedule.
The project was one of the biggest we’ve undertaken in Trinity Mirror. Previous business transformation projects targeted specific user groups such as Advertising, Editorial or Production; this project touched everyone with an email account, including the CEO, Executive Directors and all our Senior Management Team. I think everyone in the group will agree that the transition from our Lotus Notes / Exchange platforms to Gmail was a huge success and, looking back, I would put that down to a few specific initiatives that we took:
1) We involved our staff by recruiting over 300 “Google Guides”. Their support during the migration process was invaluable, they were our Google evangelists and provided on-the-floor support on the business switchover days. This is a photo of some of the Google Guides in action.
2) No one likes to work across two mail and calendaring systems so we made sure we kept co-existence of Gmail and Notes to a minimum.
3) We took the decision not to migrate legacy email into Gmail because users loved the idea of being able to start fresh in a new email system. We’ve retained their old Notes mailboxes online as well as allowing access to local mail archives.
4) We made sure to provide clear, positive information and support for all staff on what was happening and when. We offered one-to-one and classroom-based training for execs and their admins (many of whom manage multiple calendars for their managers) which worked well.
5) We made good use of our deployment partner. The involvement of a partner (in our case Cloudreach) meant that technical issues could be addressed quickly and additional resource and support could be brought in to supplement the project team as and when required.
Having deployed Gmail with its integrated chat – Google Talk and Google Calendar, the Trinity Mirror project team is now re-grouping as we turn our attention to Google Docs, Sites and app development. I look forward to bringing you news on how we’re doing as we enter this exciting second phase of our programme.
You keep adding and watching more videos, so we’re working to keep adding more ways for you to watch, share and enjoy the channels and videos on YouTube. This week in Release Notes we’ve got a new way to promote your Google+ profile on YouTube, more options in the Annotations Editor, posting to your Channel Feed and more.
Google+ profile on YouTube channel
Want to share your Google+ profile or Google+ Page on your YouTube channel? We’ve added a feature to let you promote your presence on G+. We’re looking for other ways to bring the benefits of Google+ to your YouTube channel, so as always please give us your feedback!
Post videos, playlists to your own feed
You can now share videos and playlists in your Channel Feed by posting a Channel Bulletin. When you’re on your Feed tab you’ll see a box “Post to Feed,” where you can enter a comment and add a link to share a video or a playlist. When you’ve posted the bulletin, it will show up in your Channel Feed with your comment below the video. Viewers who are subscribed to your channel will be notified when you post to your feed in their homepage feed.
Homepage and Channel Feeds
After experiments and lots of your feedback, we’re releasing an update to how events are displayed in the feed. The update focuses on three main changes: (1) the video title is more prominent for upload and sharing events, (2) aggregated events now feature a “+more” button which will bring more attention to the event than the previously smaller notification and (3) adding videos to a playlist has a new cleaner styling.
Before: After:
Annotations
Customizing your videos is easier with our new annotations features. We’ve been adding more options to the Annotations Editor like a new annotation type, a full color palette and a new timeline. We’ve also added annotation styles, which lets you choose a templated design to apply to your videos. You can quickly pick a design for your annotation and apply it your video. Start using these today in the Editor by clicking the arrow next to any upload in the Video Manager.
We would like to share the new features available in the latest release of Google Earth Pro. Version 6.2 delivers a better user experience with improved imagery rendering and enhanced search.
Improved Rendering Previously, the imagery in Google Earth Pro had patchy rendering because it was constructed by combining different satellite images. The improved rendering in Google Earth Pro version 6.2 addresses this patchiness with a new way of rendering imagery that smooths out differences between the separate satellite images. The improved rendering provides higher quality screen captures for Google Earth Pro users, as well as provides seamless base imagery for creating maps using spreadsheet or GIS import.
San Francisco before and after the integration of seamless imagery.
Parcel Search Since June 2010, Google Earth Pro users have had access to the U.S. Parcel Data layer. Now users will be able to search that data layer for specific parcels. In Google Earth Pro version 6.2, users simply have to type the parcel number into the familiar search box to be taken to the location of the parcel in the visualization window and access property information such as the property address, standard use code, and last assessed value. The ability to query by parcel number, instead of having to manually navigate to the parcel location, will save the time of real estate and insurance professionals who frequently use the U.S. Parcel Data layer to remotely survey specific properties.
Real estate and insurance professionals using Google Earth Pro can quickly find specific parcel details by searching the Premium U.S. Parcel Data layer by parcel number.
These new features in conjunction with the other Google Earth Pro offerings, such as advanced measuring tools and the U.S. Demographics and Traffic count data layers, allow users to save time and money when making geographic decisions. Instead of traveling to survey a property, businesses can save time by searching for a parcel in the U.S. Parcel database and remotely measuring and inspecting those properties in just hours. Companies can spruce up their presentations and pamphlets to impress clients by using Google Earth Pro’s high resolution prints (now with seamless imagery). Other businesses use the Google Earth Pro import tool to overlay spreadsheet or GIS data on a map for visual analysis.
We encourage you to look at the release notes for Google Earth Pro version 6.2 (beta). If you’re not a Google Earth Pro user you can sign up for a 7-day free trial to try out the newest version. If you are currently using Google Earth Pro, the newest version is available for download here.
Shoes of Prey, an online retailer that sells custom-made shoes globally, have made significant improvements in their online conversion rates thanks to insights gleaned from their Multi-Channel Funnels reports. Through taking action based on these insights they were able to increase their conversion rate by 40%, increase same-day purchases by 20%, and better understand how to manage their social media strategy.
Head on to the APAC Conversion Room blog to learn how Shoes of Prey achieved these results and more. Part 1: Thanks to the Top Conversions Paths report, Shoes of Prey were able to understand the sequence of channel interactions that led to conversions, and take action to reduce the number of interactions before a purchase is made.
Part 2: The Time Lag report helped them realise how long it typically took visitors to make a purchase from the time they first visited the site. Using this insight, Shoes of Prey were able to put into place marketing initiatives to help reduce the time to purchase.
Part 3: The Assisted Conversions report aided Shoes of Prey in understanding how influential their various marketing channels were either earlier in the sales funnel or as a direct response mechanism. They now have a better understanding of what role social media plays in influencing sales and can now manage their campaigns better.
Posted by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Senior Conversion Specialist, Google Southeast Asia
