Official Google Australia Blog: February 2013

The best of cricket, wherever you go

Monday, February 18, 2013

The summer of cricket is well underway, with millions of people tuning in to watch wrong ‘uns, diving catches and reverse sweeps. Here are a few ways to join the excitement and see what your favourite teams, players, coaches, and pundits have to say.
Catch the action behind the scenes with CricHQ.
This week, some of the world’s best cricketers will be hanging out on Google+, and you can catch the action live on Google+ and YouTube. In the debut hangout, ex Black Caps Captain and cricket legend Stephen Fleming will get up close and personal with ODI stars from New Zealand and England, with good friends Simon Doull, Graeme Swann, Brendon McCullum and a few other surprise guests. Be sure to tune in to see who drops by and join in on the banter. The first hangout will be tonight at 5:30pm AEST.

Here’s an invite from Kiwi all-rounder Scott Styris:

You can watch the England vs. New Zealand Hangout series live on the CriqHq YouTube Channel and RSVP to join the Hangouts on Air:

Join the conversation with The Cricket Club on Google+.
Aussie cricket star Stuart Macgill will be hanging out with mates at The Cricket Club on Google+ as it all unfolds at the crease. You can also stay up to date on your favourite players, catch the latest stats across the sport, and get notified of even more cricket Hangouts from around Google+.

Here’s a preview of what’s to come, from +Stuart Macgill:

You can subscribe to Cric HQ and The Cricket Club on YouTube, and of course, don’t forget the official Cricket Australia channel for interviews, highlights, and more all throughout the year.

Ernesto Soriano III, marketing manager and burgeoning cricket fan, just watched The Baggy Green

Build a Valentine Tribute with Chrome

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Celebration after celebration, year after year - I’m dreadfully outdone in the gift-giving department. On the other hand, my girlfriend Noy, is a born natural.
Christmas and Easter aren’t too bad, with Father’s and Mother’s Day sitting idly by. Valentine’s Day, however, sets me sulking in the darkest corner of my parent’s garage - there’s no present that is the right gift.

Give me a brick and I can throw it at a wall. Give me my memories and I can create a masterpiece.

For Valentine’s Day I’ve done something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m taking Noy back to our magical moment - a place only she and I can call ours. We don’t need to fly halfway across the country and she won’t even need to get out of her chair.

Using Build with Chrome I’ve recreated the moment of our first date. At the time I couldn’t bring much to the table but a physical (and immobile) presence. Our first date was in hospital, where I lay nursing a back injury and awaiting for my Noy to come and visit me for the first time. Our next 10 dates were also in hospital - every day - at 4.35PM where Noy would write me a note on my whiteboard to the left of my bed. I’ve written her my own today.

Your special someone is expecting a gift. Take her back to your magical moment, place it on the map and enjoy it with those you love. Posted by Josh Berg, Building with Chrome this Valentine’s Day

Introducing: Sydney Opera House, Live on YouTube

Monday, February 11, 2013

Sydney Opera House has become one of the world’s most recognisable music icons. Artists from around the world take to the stage each year, and millions fill the Opera House precinct to share in the unique atmosphere. For those not able to make the journey down under to catch a show, never fear. Sydney Opera House will be live streaming your favourite musicians on a new dedicated YouTube Channel: Live at the House.

Last year, nearly a million visitors flocked to YouTube to watch Vivid LIVE, with performances from Amon Tobin, Imogen Heap, and The Temper Trap. Over the next two years, Sydney Opera House will be bringing 20 additional live performances to your computer, mobile or tablet for you to enjoy. The first of these will be Australian sensation Sarah Blasko, live with the Sydney International Orchestra, this coming Monday, 18 February at 9:00 pm AEST:

A replay will be available on YouTube following the live performance. Be sure to subscribe to Live at The House to watch exclusive videos, playlists, interviews and announcements on upcoming artists.

You can also follow Sydney Opera House to keep up to date on new live acts, RSVP to get reminders for each live performance, and even participate in photography events on Google+. Some of your favourite musicians may also be dropping by to take part in intimate hangouts with fans. Here’s how Fat Freddy’s Drop spent some time pre-show at last year’s GRAPHIC festival:

So be sure to tune in to catch all the action from inside The House, to yours.

Ernesto Soriano, YouTube Australia, just watched Google+ Hangout with The Temper Trap

Hey entrepreneurs - get out there and have a go

Thursday, February 7, 2013

‘Having a go’ is one of our most cherished Australian values - right up there with mateship. But it takes on a whole new meaning and importance in the startup world. So often, budding entrepreneurs sit and mull on ideas for months - even years - perfecting them endlessly but never moving into execution. And let’s be honest -- until you actually have a product, you’re not an entrepreneur!

Well, something rather special happened at our most recent Google Sudo event for entrepreneurs last night, in Sydney. I asked my panelists - Mick Liubinskas, Co-founder Pollenizer; Niki Scevak, Co-founder Startmate; and Kim Heras, Co-founder PushStart - for one piece of advice to the budding entrepreneurs in the audience. And their answer? “Just have a go”. Tonight. Go home and launch. In the morning, you’ll be an entrepreneur, and it will feel amazing.

And you know what happened? People did. At last count, there are five new startups in Sydney as of this morning, and five new entrepreneurs born. Congratulations to Winston the Watchdog, Check My Coverage, Motvind, Slidefish, and goTechTalks!. It’s not always easy to have a go - but it’s the only way for your dreams to get to know reality (to paraphrase a discussion from last night).

You can watch the full Google Sudo event below, and circle us on Google+ to find out about upcoming events. If you’ve also launched something after last night, let us know in the comments on our Google+ Page. And for more inspiration, visit Google for Entrepreneurs here.

Posted by Alan Noble, Engineering Director, Google Australia and New Zealand

Enhancing AdWords for a constantly connected world

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Today we’re upgrading AdWords, by rolling out enhanced campaigns. This is a first step to help you more simply and smartly manage your ad campaigns in today’s multi-device world.

Why enhanced campaigns?

People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained. In fact, a recent study from the US found that 90% of multi-device consumers move “sequentially” between several screens in the same day. There’s also a proliferation of new devices - PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphone, hybrid devices, mini-tablets, televisions and more. And there are many more digital screens and devices to come, with the lines between them continuing to blur. For example, as devices converge, consumer behaviours on tablets and desktops are becoming very similar.

This creates great opportunities for businesses, but can also make marketing more complex and time-consuming. For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for [pizza] at 1 p.m. on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for [pizza] at 8 p.m. on a smartphone half a mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator). Signals like location, time of day and the capabilities of the device that people are using have become increasingly important in showing them the right ad.

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to cobble together and compare several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions to do this, the pizza restaurant can easily manage all of this in one single place. Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type, across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns.
Key features

Here’s an overview of some key features.

Powerful marketing tools for the multi-device world

People want search results that are relevant for the context they are in for example – their device, location and the time of day. Enhanced campaigns help you manage your campaigns and budgets for this multi-device world more effectively. With “bid adjustments”, you can manage bids for your ads across devices, locations, time of day and more – all from a single campaign. Example: A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for [coffee] or [breakfast] on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half a mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11 a.m. and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.

Smarter ads optimised for varying user contexts
People on-the-go or near your shop may be looking for different things than someone sitting at their desk. With enhanced campaigns, you’ll show ads across devices with the right ad text, sitelink, app or extension, without having to edit each campaign for every possible combination of devices, location and time of day.

Example: A national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC – all within a single campaign.

Upgrading to enhanced campaigns

Enhanced campaigns will roll out to advertisers as an option over the next few weeks, and we plan to upgrade all campaigns in mid-2013.

Enhanced campaigns are designed to help you succeed in a multi-screen world, but we know that transitioning may involve some initial changes. Here are some resources to help you:
·
Website

Help Center

Upgrade videos and guides

AdWords Community forum

Over the coming weeks we’ll dive into the new features with tips and best practices on the Inside AdWords blog and on our G+ page. We’d love your feedback.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Engineering

Safer Internet Day: How we help you stay secure online

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Technology can sometimes be complicated, but you shouldn’t have to be a computer scientist or security expert to stay safe online. Protecting our users is one of our top priorities at Google. Whether it’s creating easy-to-use tools to help you manage your information online or fighting the bad guys behind the scenes, we’re constantly investing to make Google the best service you can rely on, with security and privacy features that are on 24-7 and working for you.

Last year, we launched Good to Know, our biggest-ever consumer education campaign focused on making the web a safer, more comfortable place. Today, on Safer Internet Day, we’re updating Good to Know to include more tips and advice to help you protect yourself and your family from identity theft, scams and online fraud. You can also learn how to make your computer or mobile device more secure, and get more out of the web—from searching more effectively to making calls from your computer. And you can find out more about how Google works to make you, your device and the whole web safer.

For example, we encrypt the Gmail and Google Search traffic between your computer and Google—this protects your Google activity from being snooped on by others. We also make this protection, known as session-wide SSL encryption, the default when you’re signed into Google Drive. Because outdated software makes your computer more vulnerable to security problems, we built the Chrome browser to auto-update to the latest version every time you start it. It gives you up-to-date security protection without making you do any extra work.

Even if you don’t use Google, we work hard to make the web safer for you. Every day we identify more than 10,000 unsafe websites—and we inform users and other web companies what we’ve found. We show warnings on up to 14 million Google Search results and 300,000 downloads, telling our users that there might be something suspicious going on behind a particular website or link. We share that data with other online companies so they can warn their users.

Today also coincides with research by the Australian-based Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre which shows that when it comes to online safety, teenagers are often parents best teacher. The research, supported by Google, concludes that young people today generally understand the range of risks they might face online, and look at the take active steps they take to minimise them.

Whether you’re 15 or 50, we know staying safe online is important to you—and it is important to us too. Please take some time today to make your passwords stronger and turn on 2-step verification to protect your Google Account. And visit our new Good to Know site to find more tips and resources to help you stay safe online.

Posted by Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering

Insights into the Mobile Aussie Weekend

Friday, February 1, 2013

We already knew that Australians are among the most prolific smartphone users in the world, but we wanted to better understand how people are using search on smartphones to make their daily lives easier -- especially as more and more web activity is taking place more and more on-the-go rather than on-the-desktop.
So, we took a look at the kinds of things that we’re collectively searching for on our smart phones during a given weekend. The findings paint a really interesting picture of how smartphone search has become embedded into our daily lives. In fact, you start to wonder what we ever did without them!

As the infographic below shows, we’re checking the weather on our phones before we’re even out of bed on Saturday morning. Then we get chores out of the way: online banking, and booking travel. Early Saturday afternoons are dedicated to sport on our smartphones just as in our regular lives, and as our stomachs rumble in the evenings, we get out our smartphone to search for restaurants and make bookings.

The late afternoon Sunday shopping expedition on foot is preceded by a mobile search spree for hot deals, and there’s a new Sunday night ritual in Australia; checking our social media profiles from the comfort of the sofa or bed.

A look into the life of an average Aussie over a weekend
While this research shows what many of us search for on our smartphones throughout a given weekend, it doesn’t capture one of the most fascinating aspects of having the full force of Google search in your pocket all the time - something we affectionately call the ‘pub quiz’ phenomenon and noticed way back in 2009. Even more so than on desktop search, the ‘long tail’ of mobile search queries is extraordinarily diverse, as people whip out their smartphones to settle arguments on the spot, look up the definitions of new words, or (heaven forbid) cheat at the pub quiz.

One feature of Google search that you might not know much about is that you can talk naturally into your phone and get a quick answer straight away. For example, if you ask Voice Search something like “do I need an umbrella today?”, the phone will respond to you saying “yes, the forecast for today is 25 degrees, with a chance of storm.” If you’re out and about, using Voice Search will also save you from awkward footpath encounters with fellow pedestrians coming the other way.

To get the most out of search and download your smartphone into a 24/7 personal assistant, download the Google search app from Google Play or iTunes.

Posted by Shane Treeves, Consumer Communications and Public Affairs, Google Australia

Australia Blog

The best of cricket, wherever you go

Build a Valentine Tribute with Chrome

Introducing: Sydney Opera House, Live on YouTube

Hey entrepreneurs - get out there and have a go

Enhancing AdWords for a constantly connected world

Safer Internet Day: How we help you stay secure online

Insights into the Mobile Aussie Weekend

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