Doodle 4 Google: The winner is...

Posted by Ashley Gorringe, Doodle 4 Google Team

We were thrilled on Wednesday to announce the winners of Doodle 4 Google, our initiative for young Australians to draw their own version of the Google logo around the theme of 'My Australia'.

All four age group winners were decided by the Australian public in an online vote over the past month and Dennis Hwang, the original Google Doodler, selected the overall winner from these. Dennis said, "Choosing the successful entry was not easy. I was blown away by the creativity of all the doodles and wide array of Australian imagery which was used."

The national winner was Janelle San Juan, a 12 year old student from The School of the Good Shepherd in Victoria. The title of her drawing was 'A scene of sheer formality' and among other things, incorporated the distinctive beach sheds found at Brighton Beach in Victoria. Janelle's doodle will appear on the Google Australia homepage on Australia Day 2008. Dennis noted: "Her design was both unique and at the same time instantly recognisable as being Australian. The depiction of the sun, the kangaroo sign in the outback, the bathing box at the beach and the people relaxing in the shade of the tree make this the perfect doodle for Australia Day."

Congratulations Janelle! (She also wins $10,000 of technology equipment for her school and a MacBook Pro).


The other age group winners were Clayton Rowlings from Tasmania (Years 1-3), Madeline Spooner from South Australia (Years 7-8) and Angela Jones from South Australia (Years 9-10). Brilliant job by these guys who all win an interactive whiteboard for their schools.

To acknowledge the huge achievement on the part of our 32 finalists, we brought them to Sydney from all over Australia for our grand finale. The culmination of the event was our prizegiving, when Dennis announced the overall winner.

I'm sure many of you are already familiar with the various doodles, but we'll be putting the winners up on our site in the next couple of days. And don't forget to visit the Google Australia homepage on Australia Day next year to see the winning doodle taking centre stage.

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Engineers should not wear suits

Posted by Raul Vera, Engineering Manager - Geo

It's against the laws of nature. If God had wanted engineers to wear suits, he would have given us social skills and motor coordination. I violated this law on Tuesday night, and woe befell me.

Google Maps won the Australian PC Authority Magazine award for Best Web Application (we were co-winners with Facebook). We were naturally thrilled to get this recognition. Our Head of Engineering, Alan Noble and I attended the awards ceremony.

The invite made it clear that this was a gala event, in the Grand Ballroom of the Star City Casino, for which the attire was "Suited and Booted" for men, and "Dressed to Impress" for women. In a fit of conformity, I chose to wear a suit. Once wearing the suit, I couldn't bring myself to take my grotty old backpack, as it really would ruin the look. Bad move.

The awards ceremony was great. The wine hit the spot, the food good, and the people at our table friendly. When the Google Maps award was announced, I went up to accept it and was photographed with the magazine editor, just as I was meant to, then came back and sat down.

So the whole thing was winding down just fine, when I noticed that some of the other award recipients had been given protective boxes to put their heavy, pointy lucite awards into. I looked around for someone distributing the boxes, but the room was emptying. So I picked up the award and my umbrella, and headed out the door. Outside, the issue of PC Authority featuring the award winners was available. So I grabbed one and headed down to the Star City light rail station. I caught the train, put the award, magazine, and umbrella on the seat next to me, and pulled out my book to read. When we reached my station, I plopped the book onto the pile and picked up the lot by basically wrapping it all up in the magazine, then got off the train.

Except the award is heavy, the magazine is slick, and the book was one thing too many. The award slid out the front and fell, pointy end down, onto the train platform, which is made of concrete. Oops. Not so pointy any more. The photo shows the award, with a severely dented corner in front, a rather mangled hole of missing lucite at the back, and grotty scratches on the front right edge.


Why do I blame the suit? Because if I hadn't worn one I would have taken my backpack, and the award would have been safely tucked inside it next to the laptop, not tumbling onto a train platform. Geekiness was conserved, because only a clumsy geek would try to walk while carrying that pile of stuff wrapped in a magazine.

So the suit goes back into the closet until the next funeral.

Ed: Last awards ceremony you get sent to....;)

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Blogging from YouTube

As you videobloggers already know, you can upload your videos directly to Blogger. But for the rest of the video watchers out there, did you know you can just as easily post YouTube videos to your blog?

All you need to do is set up your YouTube account to post videos to your blog using the "Share" button. You'll enter your Blogger information once, and from then on it's one-click sharing from any YouTube video page!



See our help article for full instructions.

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Show off your photos with the new Slideshow

Take a look at our latest tool for your blog: the Slideshow page element. This feature lets you add a slick little slideshow of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Photobucket, or any site that supports Media RSS.

The photos will show up in your blog’s sidebar, gently fading into one another. Your readers will be able to go forward and backward, pause, and click through to the photo’s web page.

You can also make a slideshow of public photos based on a tag or label.

Like all page elements, Slideshow requires that your blog is using Layouts templates. Still need to switch? Read our help article on the topic.

In case you missed it: Want to see everyone’s photos? Watch Blogger Play.

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Great to be on board...

Posted by Karim Temsamani, General Manager, Google Australia and New Zealand

It's clear that the volume of online content is increasing at an incredible rate - Google's core job is to find needles in an ever-growing haystack. So I thought there's no better way to start my time as the new GM of Google Australia and NZ than to contribute to that haystack with a post on our blog.

The online ecosystem in Australia is buoyant at present, and I'm buoyant about its growth in the coming years. As you know, Australians are spending more time online, purchasing products, reading blogs, starting websites, running businesses, and using technology to find and share information.

To match this, Google is investing significantly in our team in Australia, as Australian consumers and businesses navigate the growing online world.

We want to provide you with more of those "aha!" moments - whether it's finding the exact search result you want, finding driving directions and local businesses on Google Maps, getting instantaneous news feeds on your iGoogle page, or collaborating in real time with friends in other countries through Google Docs. Behind the scenes, there's a large team here that is working to ensure that you get access to the latest Google products, and that we continually improve our existing products.

At the same time, we want to continue providing small and large Australian businesses with the opportunity to connect with customers, and use our range of technology and products to grow their businesses.

So as Christmas parties and the festive season in Australia are just starting to kick off, my work is just beginning. It's a thrill to start at Google and I promise to grow that haystack a little more, with more posts here.

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Australians care for humanity….and the election!

Posted by Karina Wells, AdWords Team

In the month of October, Australians had a great interest in humanitarian issues. Searches varied from charities that aim to help women and children all over the world to concern about bushfire and floods. The Australian October Zeitgeist reflected the top fifteen gaining Google search queries for the month of October.

It seems Australians have a strong social conscience, with Unicef coming in as the number one gaining search query. Interest in floods and bushfire was also prevalent with the bushfire season approaching.

The election was playing on peoples minds. Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s website Kevin 07 proved to be of interest, while Parliament house entered the minds of many.

Always a favourite with free home delivery, Krispy Kreme doughnuts were desired by many. While munching on Krispy Kremes, what better to do than watch Evan Almighty or the preview of the Sex and the City movie, or perhaps sample the latest album from alternative rock band 30 seconds to Mars to be released in November.

Upcoming Christmas school holidays brought about interest in Movie World. Although daylight savings got people searching - do we turn our clocks forwards or backwards?

Australians in the market for a new car looked for Toyota Australia for more information, however those after something more compact went for the scooter option instead.

With Christmas on the way and lots of presents to buy, job hunters looked for the Jobs NSW website.

For breaking news and obscure information alike, people around the world search on Google. What follows is a summary of Google Zeitgeist results for the top gainers on Google.com.au in the month of October.

For more information, visit the Google Zeitgeist and Google Trends.

October's top gainers:

Unicef
Scooter
Floods
Jobs NSW
Toyota Australia
Bushfire
30 seconds to Mars
Evan Almighty
Movie World
Daylight savings
Krispy Kreme
Parliament house
Sex and the City movie
Kevin 07
Election

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To-Do List (the book)

Sasha Cagen’s To-Do List blog (which you may recognize as a blog of note) has just been released as a book! Both blog and book are collections of, well, to-do lists, mailed or emailed in by people. Think PostSecret meets Getting Things Done.

Watch the trailer, read the blog, buy the book, and make sure that you have an awesome screen name.

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The Generosity of Bloggers

The results are in from the Blogger Challenge on DonorsChoose.org. Over 100 blogs and their readers helped to raise $420,000 for classroom projects benefitting more than 75,000 students in low-income communities. For more details and a list of some of the top blogs involved, check out the Official Google Blog.

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New from AdSense: video units

AdSense recently introduced a feature called video units, that lets you include relevant YouTube video on your blog, and make money from ads on it. Here’s what they have to say about it:

"We're excited about the launch of video units -- a new way to enrich your blog with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player. Simply embed a snippet of code and have relevant YouTube partner content streamed to your blog. You can choose categories of video to target to your site, select content from individual YouTube partners, or have video automatically targeted to your blog's content. Companion and text overlay ads are relevant and non-intrusive. To further blend the YouTube player into your blog, you can also customize the color scheme and layout as well as choose from three different player sizes."

AdSense Help has some more information about video units. Once you’ve created the code for a video unit, you can easily add it to your blog’s template using an HTML/JavaScript page element.

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