Street View in the Top End

We're always working to include more Australian locations in Street View. Last week, we added many new streets in Darwin, Geelong and remote parts of the Northern Territory.

With more of the Top End now in Street View, I decided to do a bit of research about the Baz Luhrmann movie Australia, and check out some familiar scenes from the movie in Street View and Google Maps.

Of course, with Kakadu now in Street View, the iconic Australia's outback is now on show for all to see:


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(As you may know, the Kimberley region of WA was the actual filming location for many scenes in the movie - I came across this great Google Maps mashup that Tourism WA has made, showing satellite images of where 'Faraway Downs' and other outback locations were filmed).

While we now have large parts of Darwin visible, the real shooting location for Darwin for the movie was the town of Bowen in Queensland. Recognise these shots?

The main pub, the Territory Hotel, in Darwin (aka GrandView Hotel, Bowen):


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Customs House, Bowen where Bryan Brown's character is seen frequently:


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The police station in Darwin (this is a facade on 2 units in Bowen that the Street View cars photographed):


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Lots of Australians are using Street View to check out their holiday destinations before arriving. As 2009 winds down and we enter summer,  I hope you continue to enjoy your Street View exploring (and movie watching)!

Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

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Bringing Maps to our Pacific neighbours

We're pleased to announce the launch of Google Map Maker for 43 new countries and territories, including our Oceania neighbours in Fiji, Palau and Midway. Map Maker now allows people to create complete maps for most of Oceania, from Papua New Guinea to Samoa and Micronesia, bringing the total to 164 countries across the world. 

Map Maker is all about making local data rich, complete and vibrant. Just take a look at how our users transformed the map of Da Lat, Vietnam in this time lapse video.



We hope that one day, people around the world will have access to high quality maps of their home country, whether that be here in Australia or thousands of kilometres away in Vanuatu. If you want to help by sharing your local knowledge about a favourite destination in Oceania (or anywhere else), go to mapmaker.google.com and start mapping.

Posted by Jori Pearsall, Geo Marketing Manager

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The Government is blogging

A few days ago, the Australian Government embarked on an e-government initiative - online policy consultation to "improve the processes for e-democracy in Australia". The Government has announced an online consultation on the future of Australia's digital economy through the Digital Economy Blog.

We think it's great that the Australian Government is taking steps to engage online with all Australians in an open, interactive way. Online consultation and blogging is something that Australian users and businesses have been doing for a while and it's good to see the Government getting in on the act.

We recently posted to the blog in response to the Open Access to Public Sector Information topic, setting out our views on the types of public sector information that should be made available.

In addition, we're pleased that the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy's YouTube channel also showcases some videos of the Minister's addresses to the Digital Economy Forum earlier this year. There's a whole range of politicians using channels like YouTube to communicate with Australians - including the Prime Minister, the Premier of Victoria, the Leader of the Opposition to name just a few.

Check out the Digital Economy Blog and have your say.

Posted by Carolyn Dalton, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs

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Your blog, your data

Today’s release features a brand new graduate from the Blogger in Draft testing ground: Import and Export for Blogger blogs.

The import/export feature opens up a whole new range of portability for your blogs, as well as allows for a few new options in the blog creation process. To get you started, we've rounded up a handful of ideas that can be done with importing and exporting:

• Merge two or more blogs into one. Have a few scattered blogs and want to get a fresh start? Now you can combine comments and posts from multiple blogs into a brand new blog.
• Move individual posts from blog to blog. Cross-publish your posts on multiple blogs, or transfer large batches of posts from one blog to another with a single click.
• Back up your blog to your own storage. It's never a bad idea to create backup copies of your own content, and now you can easily export an archival copy of your blog to your hard drive with a simple tool.
  
• Move your blog somewhere else. Our standard Atom XML export format will open up new blogging channels between providers, and let you take your content with you should you decide to move somewhere else. And of course, if you decide to come back to Blogger, importing your export file will get you back up and running in seconds.

You can access Import and Export from the Blog Tools section on the Settings | Basic tab.

We have also added new importing options to the blog creation process:

For some more detailed info on all of the things you can do with Import and Export, please check out our accompanying help article.

A couple caveats

• Currently we only support importing Blogger blogs. We don't yet support importing from WordPress, Typepad, LiveJournal or any other blogging platforms.
  
• Before importing a blog for the first time, we recommend that you create a new, throwaway blog to import into so you get a sense for how the process works. Once you’re comfortable, import into your public blog.
• If you have enabled a content warning for your blog, then you will have to remove it before your blog can be exported.

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iLike: Add a soundtrack to your blog

Sometimes we stumble across gadgets that are just too cool to keep to ourselves. And such is the case with the slick iLike gadget, which should be a real treat for all of you Blogger audiophiles out there.

iLike brings music to your blog by letting you embed and share playlists that you make yourself. Using their simple interface, you can organize and arrange your tunes, then seamlessly integrate them into your blog's sidebar.


To get started, head on over to the playlist editor and build up your list of tunes from the iLike database. When you are finished, simply click the orange 'Done!' button at the bottom of the page, and you will be taken to a preview of what your playlist will look like on Blogger.

If everything looks good, click the orange 'Add to Blogger' button to go to Blogger's Import Page Element Page (if not already signed in you will be prompted to do so.) Then choose the blog which you want to have the playlist, and click 'Add Widget.'

The iLike gadget will now show up in your blog's page elements editor for you to arrange as you wish. Pretty cool, eh?

Keep in mind though that playlist editor feature of iLike is still technically in beta, so the usual caveats apply. However, if you are feeling extra entrepreneurial you could help out the iLike dev team by answering their quick survey.

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Street View now in New Zealand

Heading to New Zealand over the summer holidays? Planning your trip just got easier with the launch today of Street View in New Zealand.

Covering most of the country, including all major CBDs and many remote wilderness locations, Street View showcases spectacular New Zealand destinations from within Google Maps. Just like Street View in Australia, it allows you to view and navigate 360 degree imagery of New Zealand's streets and towns, and lets you pan and zoom to change your viewpoint.

You can use it to check out restaurants before you make your booking, preview your beach front accommodation, or just enjoy the geography of the country's sub-tropical north or mountainous south.


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New Zealand becomes the seventh country in the world to get Street View - it's also available in Spain, France, Italy, the US, Japan, and of course Australia.

Tourism New Zealand has selected a gallery of Street View images, that highlight some of New Zealand's best tourist attractions and locations to the world, including Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, and the historic Stone Store in Kerikeri. As Tourism NZ chief executive George Hickton puts it, the more that visitors research their holiday before they come, the more enjoyable an experience they have.

If you're heading over the ditch to visit relatives for Christmas, or for a getaway later next year, take a look around with Street View before you leave and really get the most out of your trip.

Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

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Transit directions for Adelaide in Google Maps

Getting from Victoria Square to Upper Sturt Park via public transport in Adelaide just got easier, with the launch of transit directions for the city on Google Maps. Adelaide is the second Australian city to get transit directions on Google Maps, after we announced it was launching in Perth earlier this year.

Using information from Adelaide Metro, you can see public transport directions and timetables for Adelaide in Google Maps.

Want to know where the nearest bus-stop is? Planning a trip a week or two in advance? Figuring out a new commuting schedule? The transit feature on Google Maps lets you to customise your searches by specific date and time, so that you can see what's up and coming, and how to get where you need to be.



I'm looking forward to using the feature when I visit Adelaide for my friends' wedding (hi Trav and Jem!) next year. I can now guarantee I won't be late for the ceremony ...

We want to keep providing Australians with useful local tools that make their lives easier, and we're excited about working with other transit agencies to roll out transit directions on Google Maps in even more Australian cities.

Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

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Improved look for Street View in Australia

Street View in Google Maps has been quite a hit! In fact, when we launched it in August, covering most of the country, searches on Google by Australians for Street View increased by over 5000%.

Lots of Australian businesses are embedding Street View into their websites, and we're hearing great stories of Australians who are using it to find shops and restaurants, places to live, or just explore the country.

Today, thanks to feedback from our users, we've now made Street View even better and easier to use.


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You can read all about the improvements on the LatLong blog here. Or watch the video below where the famous "Pegman" takes you through the streets of Sydney.



Happy exploring!

Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

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My Maps Australia Awards 2008 - Three Days to Go

The 2008 My Maps Australia Awards are soon coming to a close. Over the past month we've been receiving My Maps from across the country highlighting your special knowledge of Australia. Some great examples include:

Photodiary of a Nomad
Big Things of Australia
Brisbane Coffee

Have an idea for a My Map you would like to share with the world? There's still time to enter the 2008 My Maps Australia Awards and receive one of ten "Best My Maps Awards" or the grand prize of a 13" 2.1 GHz Macbook and eternal Australian mapping fame. Entries close this Friday, November 28.

Posted by Jori Pearsall, Product Marketing Manager

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Keep in touch with voice and video chat

Today we're launching a new feature that lets you have free, high-quality voice and video chats with friends and family anywhere in Australia or overseas. Gmail voice and video chat takes place all without leaving the browser -- no more switching to another window or running another program.

Sometimes there's no substitute for speaking to and seeing someone, and in tighter economic times, an online video or voice chat is a cost-effective option. If a smiley face and a 'lol' aren't getting your message across, with a simple click you can now share your real meaning face-to-face over a video connection.



All that's needed is a webcam and small browser plugin, and you can start video chatting with your friends, family, and colleagues in Gmail. If you don't have a webcam, you can simply chat by voice.

To get started, visit this site.

Posted by Ashley Gorringe, Product Marketing Manager

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Reactions: easily engage your readers

One of our goals at Blogger is to make it easy for authors to get feedback on their content; we believe that authors are driven in part by the reactions and criticisms offered by their readers, and that these interactions enhance the quality of blog content. In support of this effort, we're launching Reactions, simple annotations chosen by authors and given by readers.

With Reactions, readers can easily respond with one click, increasing feedback on posts.

Photo by Kevin Steele

To enable Reactions, log in to your dashboard, go to Layout > Page Elements and click the Edit link in the Blog Posts element to open the blog post configuration tool. Then, check the box next to Reactions, edit your reactions as a comma-separated list, and click Save.

Reactions works with Layouts templates, though if your template is heavily customized, you may have to reset your widget templates for Reactions to appear. If you have a Classic template you will need to switch to Layouts to use Reactions.

Of course, Reactions isn't the only way to gather great feedback from readers; we also recently launched the Embedded Comment Form. With both Reactions and better commenting, we aim to make it easier for you to get the response and adoration you deserve.

Try Reactions now! We hope your reaction is <3.

Updated, 2:30 PM: Corrected to say that Reactions is a Layouts-only feature.

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Blogger.com - more like a big truck, less like a series of tubes

Here at Blogger we’re always working to make the site and your blogs faster and more reliable. We want you to think of us as a big truck: able to handle anything you can dump on us.

Tuesday’s election was a good chance to see just how big a truck Blogger actually is, and we’re happy to report that Blogger-hosted blogs, for the most part, held up under the record-setting traffic.

That being said, there were definitely some hiccups (potholes?) along the way. Our favorite political and polling analysis blog, FiveThirtyEight.com, received an order of magnitude more visitors than the next most visited blog. They also received more than 50 times as many comments as the next most commented-on blog. Unfortunately, this traffic caused some publishing delays for Nate and Sean as well as some intermittent slowness on their site.

After we got word of the trouble, we were able to shift some resources around to keep things running fairly smoothly for the rest of the night. Now that traffic has calmed down, our engineers are hard at work tuning and improving Blogger based on the experience.

We’d like to thank bloggers, commenters, and readers for participating in one of the biggest blogging events ever. Your voices validate what we do, and every day we look forward to making Blogger faster and better for you.

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The 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge is on

Online advertising is an increasingly important part of Australian businesses' marketing mix.

In 2008, we launched an Online Marketing Challenge to give students the chance to experiment with the medium and empower small local businesses to harness the power of the web to attract more customers.

The response to last year’s Challenge was so overwhelming that we decided to make this an annual competition. Giving students direct experience of online marketing whilst they are studying is a great way for Universities to provide students with direct practical skills they can use on graduation. Whether they find a job in marketing, accounting or retail, or set up their own business, graduates can all benefit from understanding online marketing.

The 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge is now open. It's a global online marketing competition that is open to any higher education institution, anywhere in the world. To find out more or to register your team, visit the 2009 Challenge website.

1650 different teams across 47 different countries took part in 2008, pitting their wits against one another to further develop and maximise returns for real world local businesses' online marketing strategies.

Using free $200 vouchers to spend on Google AdWords, each student proposes and implements a campaign for their chosen local business, makes tweaks and then final recommendations at the conclusion of a three week competition period.

Full details on 2008’s winning teams and finalists can be seen here.

Last year, a team from the University of Western Australia was the global winner. We're hoping Australia can go back-to-back this year!

Recently, the 2008 Asia Pacific regional winners – from the Australian Graduate School of Management, and two regional finalists – The National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences (Taiwan) and The National Taiwan University – visited Google's headquarters in Sydney for the Regional Finalists' retreat. For many students, it was their first visit to Australia and a chance to compare approaches, discuss strategies with online marketing optimizers at Google and gain some insights prior to the 2009 Challenge.

For us at Google, it was immensely gratifying to meet these students and hear them speak of the enthusiasm and benefit they received from competing. In fact, one of our winners had to leave early for a job interview, and it was fantastic to hear that his Challenge experience is helping him in his quest to find a job!

We hope lots of Australian students from across different academic disciplines will get involved in 2009. Good luck!

Posted by Will Blott, University Programs Manager

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Welcome AOL Journals Users!

As some of you might know, AOL has recently decided to sunset its AOL Journals service. To help Journals users continue to share their thoughts online, Blogger has built a simple migration tool to move an AOL Journal to Blogger. We'd like to welcome our new Blogger users to the community and are looking forward to hearing what they have to say!

We've been hard at work here at Blogger and have added a number of new features in the past few months. If you're a Journals user who wants to explore our features, or even if you're already a Blogger user but you want to see what's new, check out our features page. Over in our user group you can share your blog with others or find new blogs to follow. If you're still hungry for more blogs, the Blogger team regularly posts interesting and noteworthy Blogger-powered blogs at Blogs of Note.

Below are some more resources for new Journals users. Welcome again!

• Take a Tour
• Help Resources
• User Group

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Aussie Scholars visit Grace Hopper Conference

1500 women technologists in one room: this is the 2008 Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing! As one of a number of Google Australia Anita Borg scholars, I was sent to this year’s GHC as part of the scholarship. Held in Keystone, Colorado, nestled in the beautiful Rocky Mountains at an elevation of about 9300 feet (just less than 3000m), GHC participants are urged to drink plenty of water to ward off altitude sickness; but, feeling woozy and out of breath from simply walking up stairs doesn't deter me from jumping headfirst into the networking, technical, and career development sessions!

GHC was unlike any other technical conference that I have been to before. With only a handful of men present (quite the opposite of a typical engineering conference), participants were a range of ages and from different technical backgrounds - be they students, academics or industry professionals (or all of the above!). The sessions covered a wide variety of professional development and technical topics, from petaflop computing to projects helping the developing world. Also, social activities and networking were as integral to the conference schedule as the technical sessions.

Universities and industry, invited to hold stalls at the conference, lined the foyer with information about graduate programs, internships and job opportunities; not to the mention the plethora of freebies including T-shirts, pens, water bottles, notebooks, bags, lip gloss, Rubik's cubes and rubber duckies (holding laptops, no less!). Armed with only a backpack, I ended up having to return a few of the freebies as they just wouldn't fit!

GHC gave me the chance to share experiences and ideas with other Google scholars (from the US, Latin America, and Canada), undergraduate and graduate students, academics and women from the computer technology industry - including Googlers! It was a really motivating experience to be in a room with so many like-minded women who share a passion for technology; from just one of the keynotes I walked away inspired and amazed by how much one woman had achieved with the OLPC project!

My thanks to Google for the scholarship which made my first trip to the US possible, and without which I might not have heard about GHC. I've taken home with me the importance of having mentors and a strong support network, ideas and opportunities for after study (a second PhD!), inspiration for innovative technology that can help change the world, and the knowledge that there is always more than one path to achieve what you really want.



Guest post by Eva Cheng, 2007 Google Australia Anita Borg Scholar, University of Wollongong

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Commenting made easier

Today we’re bringing the embedded comment form out of Blogger in draft and making it easily available to everyone. This feature puts the comment form at the bottom of each post page, below the comments, instead of on the separate, Blogger-styled page.

The embedded comment form is more convenient for your readers because they can use it to post a comment immediately, without clicking over to a different page. It also looks better, since it matches your blog’s style and colors.

If you’re logged in to Blogger with your Google Account, you can also subscribe to comments via email by clicking the “Subscribe” link. Unlike with the full page comment form, you don’t need to post a comment to subscribe.

To enable the embedded comment form for your blog, go to the Settings > Comments page and look for the Comment Form Placement setting. Change it to Embedded below post, save your settings, and go check out a post to see the new form in action.

The embedded comment form works on both Classic and Layouts templates, though if you’re using a heavily-customized Layouts template you may need to reset your widget templates before the embedded comment form will appear.

We think that the embedded comment form is a big improvement, so we’ve made it the default setting for all new blogs. 

Happy commenting!

Update, 10/23: We regret that this feature is being enabled for some existing blogs that didn’t specifically enable it. We are working to undo that, but in the meantime if you see this on your blog and don’t want it, go to Settings > Commenting and change Comment Form Placement to either “Full page” or “Pop-up window.” 

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Publish to your Blogger blog from iGoogle

Today, we’re releasing our Blogger Post Gadget for iGoogle. Now you can edit and publish posts directly from your custom iGoogle homepage, making it even easier to share your thoughts with the world.

To get started, just click that “+ Google” button to have the Blogger Post Gadget added to your iGoogle page.

You can use HTML in the text box, but if you want more rich text editing — for example, to upload a photo — just click “Save Draft” and you’ll get a link to edit the post in the full Blogger post editor.

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My Maps Australia Awards 2008

Local knowledge is a great thing. It can be the difference between an OK visit and a great visit to a particular destination. Today, we launch the My Maps Australia Awards for 2008, and are asking you to share your special knowledge of a corner (or corners) of Australia with the rest of us. 

What is a My Map? It is a personalised version of a Google Map you can create, complete with customised pins, text, pictures, video and more. Many Australians are already using My Maps for invitations, or to share information with friends or the world at large. We have a couple of celebrity guest My Maps created for this initiative to help illustrate some of the things you can do. These include:

Favourite surf beaches in Australia: Mick Fanning, 2007 ASP World Title holder
Famous gardens in Sydney: Jamie Durie, Horticulturalist, landscape designer, TV Host
Best coffee in Melbourne: David Makin, Australian Barista of the Year
Famous grave sites: Helen Harris OAM, Professional historian

Ten winners will receive "Best My Maps Awards" and one of these will win the grand prize of a 13" 2.1 GHz Macbook and eternal Australian mapping fame. They'll be judged on three criteria of creativity, originality and ease of use.

Entries close November 28, so take part and enter your submission now.



Posted by Julian Sonego, Marketing Team

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Happy birthday, Sydney Opera House!

You may have noticed the doodle of the Sydney Opera House on our homepage today. Joern Utzon's famous creation is instantly recognised by millions worldwide as an Australian cultural icon and one of our most famous landmarks.


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It's 35 years today since Queen Elizabeth II opened the iconic building, so we thought we'd send our birthday wishes!


Posted by Michael Fox, AdWords Account Manager

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From across the ditch: YouTube and the NZ election

Last night, more than one million New Zealanders watched the groundbreaking ONE News YouTube Election Debate when it aired on New Zealand's TV1 last night.

New Zealanders got their first chance to see current leaders battle it out head-to-head in their first debate leading up to the November 8 poll.

The ONE News YouTube debate enabled New Zealanders to put their questions to the two party leaders, Prime Minister Helen Clark and Opposition Leader John Key, in the leadup to the 2008 New Zealand election. What made this debate particularly special was that New Zealand citizens were called upon to ask the questions via YouTube and they did so enthusiastically, submitting over 100 questions. The debate marked the first time a head of a national government and the challenger for the top job have appeared in an official live televised debate answering questions posted as video questions through YouTube.

The full-length debate is now accessible worldwide through the YouTube debate homepage. Expat Kiwis can keep up with the New Zealand election happenings with our iGoogle gadget.

13 New Zealanders had their questions put to the candidates during last night's debate, including:

• 16-year-old Carmen McDougal from Pukekohe, who asked what will the parties do to help low and middle-income families to get through the recession.
• Ex-pat Kiwi Adrian Parker, who asked from London what the parties would do to reduce tax rates to bring them in line with Australia and the UK.
• Amberley resident Mike Jowsey, who questioned if climate change was for real and if so, who was causing it.
• Praveen from Auckland, who asked what plans there are to ensure shopkeepers are able to protect themselves from violent crime.

Last night was just one example of how YouTube and online video are changing politics around the world. In the 2007 Australian election, the main Australian political parties all established YouTube channels to engage with voters. Since then, Victorian Premier John Brumby has set up an official YouTube channel and many more of our leaders and politicians are realising the importance of online video and direct engagement.

Posted by Julian Sonego

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A Google Code Jam Story - Aussie Style

There is nothing like starting off the week with a coding competition - especially when the prize one lucky Aussie will be receiving is a trip to Mountain View, California, to compete for a share of $80,000.

Google Code Jam was created as a 20%-time project by a team of Google engineers. The contest aims to bring together the best and the brightest programmers from across the globe to solve complex algorithmic challenges, similar to brainteasers, in a limited amount of time. Coding is the process of converting information into coded values (typically numeric) for the purpose of data storage, management and analysis. The competitors create codes to solve each of the problems.

2008 marks the first year we've held semifinals in this competition, bringing top coders from across the region together to meet and compete. The contestants were selected after a series of online rounds, with each round consisting of a mini-code jam competition, and were given the chance to face off in Sydney as well as in Bangalore, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. 100 finalists will then go to the Googleplex in Mountain View to compete for glory and a cut of the $80,000 in prize money on offer.

The Sydney regional Google Code Jam competition was held last Monday morning at our Sydney offices. The 21 contestants, representing eight countries played a few games of pool to fend off some pre-competition jitters and then got down to competition.

As a spectator in a coder's world, you could almost see the gears turning in their heads. As the competition progressed, the scoreboard, with competitors' nicknames, gave real-time updates. In Sydney we saw 'Microsoft' get on the scoreboard first, then 'snguyen', then 'Patience'. After an hour 'TripleM' made an appearance and continued to fight his way up the scoreboard. After two hours, time was called.

A few minutes later, results were posted. In the end, TripleM - real name, Stephen Merriman - had coded his way to trip to the Googleplex, to compete in the final round. Well done and do us proud!







Posted by Lysandra Sapp, People Programs

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More eye candy for iGoogle

In case you're looking for some more personality to add to your iGoogle page, we've just unveiled a fresh collection of iGoogle artist themes in Australia -- an ongoing project we launched in April for which we invited world-class artists to design dynamic themes for your iGoogle homepage.

The new collection features designs from 28 leading artists from the worlds of fashion and music, such as top fashion designers Anna Sui, BCBGMAXAZRIA, Burberry, Gucci, Havaianas, Jimmy Choo, kate spade, Paul Frank, Vera Wang and many more -- and from musicians like Keith Urban, Radiohead, and Bob Dylan. So depending on what you're interested in, there's lots of great art to choose from to suit your personality, taste or mood.









We hope this new collection of themes gives you more choices so your iGoogle page reflects your personal style. Changing it is easy and requires only a few clicks. If you have a hard time selecting just one, add the sampler theme, which displays a different artist every day.

Stay tuned as we continue to collaborate with more artists from Australia and from around the world.

Posted by Julian Sonego, Consumer Marketing Manager

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Diving into the Great Barrier Reef

Australia is home to many geographical treasures, and the Great Barrier Reef has to be one of my favourites. There's a magnitude, a depth, and a diversity of marine life that just leaves me in awe of this ecosystem that stretches more than 2,500 kilometres along the Queensland coast -- from Bundaberg up to Cape York.

You can now use Google Maps to find and explore the largest reef system in the world. Through close collaboration with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, we now provide map data and updated satellite imagery of the islands, reefs, cays, and rocks in Google Maps.

You can plan holiday travels, scope out your dives, engage your students, and visualise the reef with greater interactivity. Of course you can also overlay your own information on the reef system and share with family, friends, or the world.

It's also my hope that in line with the goals of the International Year of the Reef 2008, the addition of the Great Barrier Reef to Google Maps will help strengthen awareness, improve understanding, and generate action to help conserve our international treasure.

If you're lucky enough to have visited the reef, enjoy reliving your memories. If you've not yet been, happy discovering.



Posted by Raul Vera, Head of Geo Products, Google Australia

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Introducing our 2008 Anita Borg Scholars

On Friday we hosted our annual Anita Borg Scholars' Retreat at our Engineering Centre in Sydney as a way for women to come together and share their experiences as leaders in the field of computer science.

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship started in the United States in 2003 in association with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology to honour the legacy of Anita Borg and her efforts to encourage women to pursue careers in computer science and technology. Australia became the first country outside of the US to launch the scholarship in 2006, and in 2007 we extended the opportunity to students studying in New Zealand.

 

This year we received applications from women at 28 universities throughout Australia and New Zealand, and we're pleased to announce Andrea Schweer, from the University of Waikato and Janina Voigt, from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, as the recipients of $5,000 scholarships for the 2009 academic year.

A big congratulations as well to the twelve 2008 finalists, each of whom will be awarded $1,000:

• Gretel Png (University of Adelaide)
  
• Heather Macbeth (University of Auckland)
  
• Iris Yan (Monash University)
  
• Jenine Beekhuyzen (Griffith University)
  
• Magdalena Stremeski (Swinburne University of Technology)
  
• Miriam Hochwald (University of Queensland
  
• Olena Medelyan (University of Waikato)
  
• Sally Hodson (University of Western Australia)
  
• Sarah Killey (Queensland University of Technology)
  
• Shaoqun Wu (University of Waikato)
  
• Sue Lynn Choy (RMIT University)
  
• Tamara Beames (University of South Australia)

The scholarship recipients and finalists enjoyed their retreat, which included tech talks, workshops, career panels and social activities and provided an opportunity to network with other women in technology-related fields.

One of the scholarship winners, Janina Voigt, told me, "It's been a great experience to meet people with similar views of issues we all face as women in this industry - we're all girls going through the same thing right now. It has also been great to share ideas and participate in the workshops." 

The scholars are studying a wide variety of disciplines and talked openly about their projects, inspiring and learning from each other.

Shaoqun Wu shared how she's creating a system to assist with second language learning.  Having moved to New Zealand from China seven years ago, she understands what it's like to learn a second language first-hand.  Her project has been funded by the New Zealand government, and she hopes to continue developing her career around this area.  During the retreat, she emphasised how important it is that women in IT connect and help one another.  

We also discussed how to encourage other women to enter the field of engineering and computer science.  Sue Lynn Choy, a Ph.D. student in surveying, geomatics and cartography, told me "Studying computer science or other IT-related fields can be a big stepping stone to other things.  The possibilities are only limited by your imagination."

Posted by Will Blott, University Programs, Australia & New Zealand

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Fill 'er up

With rising fuel prices increasingly factoring into our driving decisions, Australians are feeling our fair share of pain at the petrol pump.

To help Australians get the best value for their fuel dollars, Google Australia has partnered with Motormouth to help provide everyone with easily accessible information about petrol prices. We've developed an iGoogle gadget (here) that allows you to find out the price of various fuel types across parts of major metro areas in Australia.

You can quickly see the prices for your area in a list or on Google Maps. Prices are updated twice daily during the week and once on Sundays by Motormouth's scouts who report the prices from service station price boards.

Currently, over 50% of metropolitan service stations are covered, which hopefully include a few near you.

With the daily work of these petrol price scouts now accessible from your personalised iGoogle homepage, we hope this handy tool will go some way to keeping you informed and ensuring that you're not over-paying at the pump (note that prices can change at any time, except in Perth where they're locked for 24 hours).

Of course, the best way to reduce your fuel bill would be to walk, cycle or catch public transport to wherever you're going. Google Maps and, in Perth, Google Transit, can help you with that.

Now go and get the keys to the Cortina so you can move the Camira so Dad can get the Torana out of the driveway and fill up the Commodore. This gadget will pay for itself.



Posted by Julian Sonego, Consumer Marketing Manager

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Blogger Following for All

A few posts ago we let you know about Blogger Following. The feature lets readers publicly subscribe to your blog (so you know who's reading) and adds a Reading List to your Blogger Dashboard so readers can stay updated with the blogs they follow.

Now it's available to all users in English. We'll keep you updated about when we launch it in Blogger's other languages.

To learn more about Following, read the Blogger Buzz Post or the Google Blog Post.

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More information for advertisers about our Content network

Our Australian advertisers often ask: "What kinds of web sites make up the Google content network?"

To help answer this question, we just re-launched the Partners page on the Google content network microsite to include a more comprehensive set of examples of where your ads can appear. The content network is comprised of hundreds of thousands of web sites worldwide, from information and news sites like The Sydney Morning Herald and the New York Times, to wedding sites like I-do.com.au. The revamped Partners page is meant to better demonstrate a small selection of the variety of sites available. Below are some features of the new Partners page:

• Sites are organised by category. This will help you browse sites by categories that represent your target audience, such as finance, entertainment and technology. For example, if you sell rental cars, you might browse through the "Travel" category to see examples of relevant sites. Or, if your target is female, you can try the "female interest" category.
  
  
• Once you find a site that's relevant to your product or service, you can use placement targeting to target your ads to that site directly. We recommend you use the Placement Tool to help you with this. If your campaign is already running on the content network, you can see the sites where your ad has appeared by running a Placement performance report.
  
  
• For those of you targeting users in other countries, a drop-down menu lets you browse sample partner sites in countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
  

Posted by Isis Nair, Google Australia AdSense Team

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Working with Bravehearts

Today is White Balloon Day. An annual event run by Bravehearts, Australia's largest child protection advocacy group, White Balloon Day is a very important event during National Child Protection Week. White Balloon Day’s overarching message is to "Break the Silence on Child Sexual Assault" by raising awareness and by show of balloons, demonstrating community desire for Australian children to be safe.

We've been working with Bravehearts to raise awareness of the day and encourage all Australians to buy special white balloons. We've been doing this by providing Google Grants, so that when Internet users search for relevant terms on Google, "Sponsored Links" for White Balloon Day appear alongside search results.

We also created a special Google Maps "My Map", showing the Mowerthon journey of Claude Harvey, "The Lawnmower Man", as he mowed his way 850kms from the Gold Coast to Sydney to raise funds and awareness for victims of sexual assault for White Balloon Day.

Google Australia and Bravehearts are committed to deepening their ties for White Balloon Day in future years, by using new media and technologies to educate families about how to stay safe online and raise awareness of the tools that empower families to control their activity online.

We share Bravehearts' belief that new technologies and new media are a vital way to educate children and parents about family safety online. We hope to work together to help parents and kids take advantage of tools that help put them in control of their online experiences and make Web surfing safer.

You can check out our Tips for Online Safety and Online Family Safety Guide for helping families stay safe online. These provide quick links to tools like Google SafeSearch and other resources. Google SafeSearch is a tool that allows users to filter unwanted content from their search results. (You can customise your SafeSearch settings by clicking on the 'Search Preferences' link to the right of the search box on Google.com.au).

So please support Bravehearts, buy a white balloon today, and help break the silence.

Posted by Carolyn Dalton, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs, Australia and New Zealand

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New stuff from the Picasa folks

For more than a year, you have been able to view all the photos you've uploaded to your blog in Picasa Web Albums. It's been good -- having a dedicated photo management interface comes in handy when you want to do things like embed Blogger photos elsewhere on the web, order prints, create slideshows, and so on.

Today, Picasa Web Albums has undergone a significant redesign, and is launching a slew of new features to help you better organize and enjoy your photos, including all of your Blogger Photos. Along with a much-refined interface, there's a powerful new 'name tags' feature that helps organize your photo collection based on who's in each picture. For fun, check out the new Explore page, or take a look at the Recent Photos stream (unabashedly inspired by Blogger Play).

Oh, and one more thing: If you use Picasa (the client software) to edit and organize all the photos on your PC, we're happy to report that Picasa's venerable 'BlogThis!' button still sits front-and-center in the next generation of Picasa software, which also launches today as Picasa 3 (beta). If you've never tried it before, now's a great time to start -- Picasa 3 includes plenty of new photo-editing goodies that can make your blog's pictures look better, like a powerful retouch tool, greatly revamped photo-collage and slideshow creators, simple video editing, desktop/web sync, and more. To learn more, swing by the Google Photos blog.

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What's on the Google homepage today?

Posted by Ian Stephenson, CEO, National Trust of South Australia

As a predominantly urbanised nation, we often overlook the enormous contribution made to Australia's growth and progress by our farmers and farming technology.

For some Australians, the best known "Mr Plough" is the one portrayed by Homer in a famous Simpsons episode (the episode refers to a snow-plough). However, in 1876, it was the invention of a quirky and ingenious farming implement in South Australia that had everyone talking. Used throughout the world to this day, the "stump jump plough" revolutionised farming worldwide and is one of this country's greatest inventions.

In the 1800s, much of South Australia's wheat farming land was covered by vast expanses of mallee scrub. This was a particularly difficult obstacle to remove with traditional methods such as an axe. It often made ploughing the land excruciatingly slow and expensive; traditional ploughs would smash into the stump and cease working. The stump jump plough, with hinged mould-boards attached to the plough's frame, was able ride over or "jump" the mallee scrub (or stone, or other obstacle) without stopping - and without damage.

The man credited with the invention by the South Australian Parliament, Richard Bowyer Smith, was born on 2 September 1837 and I'm delighted that Google is honouring his birthday with a special homepage doodle today.

Smith's invention was initially received with scepticism. Many at the Moonta show in 1876 called him a "fool" and a "lunatic". Smith, however, had a vision, believing that his new plough would open up new lands and new prosperity. He was right. His invention unleashed a new wave of innovation. His brother Clarence, and the inventor George Whittaker, among others, created their own versions of the stump jump plough, which helped innumerable farmers in Australia and worldwide to overcome an age-old problem. The stump jump plough is a true example of Australian ingenuity and persistence in the face of a difficult problem.

In 2002, the National Trust of South Australia and BankSA named the stump jump plough as a Heritage Icon of South Australia. It joins other South Australian icons on the list like the Hills Hoist, checkside punt, and the wine cask.

The National Trust of SA aims to raise awareness in the broader community on cultural and natural heritage matters. With over 100 historic buildings, as well as 28 nature reserves under our management, the National Trust is the largest community heritage organisation in South Australia. I'm thrilled that Google, with today's doodle, is bringing Richard Smith's invention to life for the online generation and raising awareness of Australia's heritage icons.

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Google Insights for Search in Australia

You may have read a few interesting articles (here, and here) about a new tool called Google Insights for Search, a new product that allows advertisers and marketers to better understand search behaviour across the globe.

Like Google Trends, you can type in a search term to view search patterns, and we've also included some interesting new features like a geographic heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

We figured it would be great to highlight some Australian-specific insights we've found using Insights for Search.   Hopefully they'll stimulate your own discovery of other interesting online trends in Australia!

As an example, if you perform a basic enquiry, leaving all the default settings and simply type [didgeridoo], this will show you search information from across the world, from 2004 to today. As you might expect, there is a lot of interest in didgeridoos here in Australia. But what you might not expect is the other countries with a large relative interest in didgeridoos, like Austria. If you were in the business of making fine, handcrafted didgeridoos here in Australia, you could build your international business by focusing your online advertising within the most relevant international markets: Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

It's also possible to compare search terms by location, time range and category. With the Categories filter, you can hone in on results based on different categories. For example, you can enter the search query [the vines] and isolate results to the music category, to see interest in the rock band The Vines, rather than the WA resort. If you throw in a few more bands for comparative purposes, it's interesting to see how popularity is changing over time, and that great bands have peaks and troughs (often around album sales or tours)! [The Vines] peaked in early 2004, [Wolfmother] peaked in 2005/2006, but [Crowded House] continues to be consistently popular. It's also interesting to note which in which Australian regions [The Vines] are searched - as a proportion of total searches, they're most popular in Perth. 


Using the "Categories" filter, you can also see the most popular searches for an entire category, such as [basketball], where you can notice the huge spike in interest around the Beijing Olympic Games.

A further use of Insights for Search is to see popular searches and rising queries, from here and abroad. An analysis, for example, of Australian vacation destinations that Germans are searching for, shows that Ayers Rock/Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef are popular destinations, with the Whitsundays and Tasmania rapidly increasing in popularity in the past 18 months.  

Businesses can further use Insights for Search by viewing search trends for over time. The seasonality of searches can be used to target advertising campaigns around events like Fathers Day or Christmas.  Look at the spike in searches for [car stereos] in the lead up to Christmas.

We hope you'll find Google Insights for Search to be an extremely valuable tool. Given the various methods of comparison, the ability to filter by category and visualise heat maps by region, hopefully you'll discover new and engaging information about your products, markets, and advertising!

Posted by Justin Baird, Senior Product Specialist

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Show off your Followers

Would you like to know who enjoys reading your blog? Or stay updated with your favorite blogs right from your Blogger dashboard? You can do those things and more with Blogger’s new Following feature.

By following your blog, your readers tell you and the world that they’re a fan of what you post. Your Dashboard now shows you how many followers each of your blogs has. With a click on the Followers icon, you can browse your followers, see what blogs they write, and read the other blogs they’re following.

Now that you know who your Followers are, you can show them off by adding the Followers gadget to your blog’s sidebar. From the “Layout | Page Elements” tab, click “Add a Gadget” and select “Followers” from the gadgets list. The Followers gadget shows the profile pictures of your followers and gives your readers a “Follow This Blog” link to join up, too.

Your followers can stay updated with your blog with the Reading List that we’ve added to the Blogger Dashboard. The Blogs I’m Following tab automatically shows the latest posts from all the blogs you follow. You can follow any blog from your reading list, even blogs that haven’t added the Followers widget or aren’t hosted on Blogger. Just click the “Add” button and type in the blog’s URL.

If you’re a Google Reader user, you’ll now see a special folder in Reader called “Blogs I’m Following,” full of the subscriptions for all of the blogs you follow. You can follow blogs you’ve subscribed to in Reader, too: From the Reading List on your Blogger Dashboard, click “Add,” then “Import from Google Reader.”

And.... there's more to come! We are also in the process of integrating with Google Friend Connect so you can give your readers more engaging social features.

For more details about what we've launched, check out the help articles here:

• What is Following?


• How do I add the Followers gadget to my blog?


• How do I use the Blogger Reading List?


• Following a Blog Publicly vs. Anonymously

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Updates and Bug Fixes for August 27th

The big news for this release is following, but we’ve snuck a few other fixes in since last time:

• As reported on Blogger Buster (and elsewhere), the 3rd party Add Widget API was broken. It has been fixed.
• The new button style appears clickable in all browers.
• The Blog List widget can show thumbnails specified in Media RSS feeds.
• Atom feeds now include the blog’s description as the <subtitle> element.
  

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Webinars For Those Too Busy For Seminars

Ever sat in a seminar or conference and thought how much better it would be if you could learn all of the material being presented without being physically there?

Well, we've started holding webinars for our advertisers, to provide further information and training in how to make the most of AdWords (Google’s online advertising program), which you can enjoy from the comfort of your own armchair (or, more likely, your desk).

Our first webinar, "Introduction to Optimisation" was held in June, and saw hundreds of advertisers sign up. (Optimisation refers to the ability to make changes to your keywords, ad text and account structure in order to maximise the effectiveness of your online advertising). Advertisers heard from one of our local optimisation experts who presented tips and tricks for making online advertising campaigns perform better. Two of our AdWords team members were also on hand to respond to advertiser questions via chat throughout the webinar.

If you're interested in our upcoming webinars on all sorts of advertising-related topics such as Analytics, AdWords Editor and other AdWords topics, click here for a calendar of events.  

Posted by Jaime Brands, Google AdWords Team

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Updates and Bug Fixes for August 14th

We’ve added a few new features and things in today’s release:

• There’s a new look for the Blogger Dashboard, which we think you’ll find more attractive and functional. If you have a ton of blogs (as we do) try out the “hide” and “show all” links to help manage the list.
• Google Gadgets in your Layouts blog can now set their height automatically (if the gadget author supports it). Read more about adding Google Gadgets to your blog.
• AdSense page elements can now optionally have image ads. We’ve found image ads have a higher click-through rate, so you might get more money if you turn them on. 
  
• We wrote up a Features page to help you keep track of everything you can do with Blogger. Take a look and see if you’ve been missing out on something cool.
• The Flag Blog button in the Blogger navbar now pops up a window for you to tell us why you think the blog violates our terms of service. Flag Blog is always handled exclusively by human reviewers, not the automated spam locking system, so this information will better help them decide what, if any, action should be taken.
  

And also fixed some bugs, including:

• Fixed Moto template header overlap in IE7.
• Blocked the /feedReaderJson URL from web crawlers, to reduce 404s in Webmaster Tools.
• Increased cacheability of CSS and JavaScript throughout Blogger, for faster page loads.
• Button style and layout improvements throughout Blogger.

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Googlers search for the finishing line

Getting up early on Sundays is practically taboo for most Australians. Getting up early on Sunday to jog 14km is almost unheard of. So when the annual Sun Herald City2Surf marathon attracts a crowd of 70,000 enthusiastic participants, it’s quite clear that Sydneysiders are more than happy to break a few rules in the name of charity.

This year our very own team of Googlers and their families took to the start line at 9am, ready to tackle Heartbreak Hill, dodge crowd-pleasers in fancy dress and make it to the finish line without a single stain of yellow Gatorade on their shirts. From Engineering, to Sales and Marketing, there was healthy representation from almost every Google team. Nikolai Pitchforth, Senior Industry Analyst for our Travel team, finished in just under an hour, while others such as myself walked a steady pace, reaching Bondi Beach in double that time.

(You can see the route we all travelled here on Google Maps or with our Street View flipbook video).

So whether you walked, danced, jogged or ran on the day, your participation helped to support many great causes and community projects. Congratulations to all who entered and good luck in your recovery over the next week!

Google Team get ready for a cold start



Left to right: Patrice McCauley, Gabriella Scott, Angela Lawrence



Rob Schonberger secures his spot at the Start Line:

Posted by Shaden Mohamed – Account Strategist, Travel

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