Contribute Gadgets to Blogger

(cross posted from Blogger In Draft)

Calling all Developers! We've just launched several extensions to the Gadget API that will enable developers to build more relevant and engaging gadgets for Blogger.

As you may already know, every Blogger blog is a gadget container. What's more, every blog is an OpenSocial gadget container powered by Friend Connect. This means that as a gadget developer you can leverage social APIs to build engaging tools for bloggers and their audience.

In addition to leveraging social data, gadgets can now access a blog's post and comment feed via new JSON APIs. For example, with this data you could easily build a map gadget that maps the geo-location of posts, or a "Most Commented On" gadget that ranks posts by the number of comments they've received.

Need to be inspired? Recently we asked our users what gadgets they most wanted to see in Blogger. Hundreds responded and here's their wish list.

When you build a gadget for Blogger, it becomes available to millions of active bloggers. Just submit your gadget to us, and within minutes it will surface in the Blogger gadget directory where users can easily browse, configure, and add your gadget to their blog's sidebar.

So now that you know Blogger is a great distribution platform for your gadget, what are you waiting for? Get started building Gadgets for Blogger now.

Important Note: The APIs and documentation are new, so there may be bugs. Let us know by posting to the Blogger Developer Group if you run into problems developing your gadget.

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Get ready kids ... Doodle 4 Google 2009 is here!

One of our favourite Google moments of 2007 was announcing the winner of our 'Doodle 4 Google - My Australia' competition. We were overwhelmed by the positive response from teachers around the country, who took the opportunity to ask their students what it meant to be Australian, and then depict that through art and design - and, of course, by the kids who created such vibrant and original works. Our winner, Janelle San Juan of the School of the Good Shepherd in Victoria had the thrill of seeing her Google doodle on the Google Australia home page on Australia Day last year.

The initiative was so much fun, and received such a great response ... that we're doing it all over again! Today we're super excited to announce Doodle 4 Google 2009. All Australian schools are warmly invited to take part in this project which offers young people the chance to have their artwork viewed not just by their teachers and classmates, but by millions of people all across the Internet.

Google doodles are the special "dressed-up" logos we run on our homepage for holidays and other events, and Doodle 4 Google is an opportunity for one Australian child to have his or her doodle displayed on our Australian homepage for one day in 2010 for everyone to see.

This year's theme is "My wish for Australia", and we really want to tap into not only children's creativity, but also what they hope the future of their country might look like.

Judging the initiative will be renowned artists Ken Done and Anne Geddes, and humanitarian Hugh Evans of the Global Poverty Project.

We kicked off Doodle 4 Google today at Melbourne City Council's ArtPlay centre, where an enthusiastic group of five and six year-olds helped us create a beautiful Google doodle to inspire other kids around the country to take part. The kids helped us draw their visions of Australia's future ... from sunshine and good friends to more trees and sea creatures. We were lucky enough to have Melbourne City Councillor Jennifer Kanis and judge Hugh Evans roll up their sleeves and join in the arty fun, alongside budding artists Van, Isobel and Anushka.






The competition is open to Years 1 - 10 students from registered schools. So teachers, if you want to participate, please register your school by 14 August 2009, and all doodles must be submitted by 4 September 2009. Visit the Doodle 4 Google website for a full listing of all contest rules and requirements. And kids ... get doodling!

Posted by Katharina Friedrich, Marketing Manager

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Victorian Parliament opens up for question time

Today, Premier Brumby has joined the video democracy in the cloud and opened up his YouTube channel for question time. Victorians can submit their questions and vote on the ones they want answered.



One issue that may well attract some questions is online access to public data.

Information is becoming a pervasive and free resource, driving the growth of the digital economy worldwide. And yet very useful, publicly funded, non-confidential public sector information (PSI), such as public transport data, still isn't made available to all. With open access to this information there's immense potential for innovative new products and services to be developed here, promoting great social benefits. Google's Victorian bushfires map is a great example, and was only possible because the Victorian Country Fire Authority had the foresight to put an RSS feed on their site.

At Google we're always interested to hear about Government embracing online communications and information sharing. We were pleased to see that the Victorian Parliament recently released the report on its Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data with a key recommendation that the Victorian Government establish an Information Management Framework (IMF) with open access to Government information at no or marginal cost.

The Victorian Parliament's inquiry into access of this public information is a great step in the right direction.

Posted by Iarla Flynn, Public Policy and Government Affairs

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Johnson Tran at Google for the day

My name is Johnson Tran and I am 9 years and 9 months old. One of my hobbies is playing as an all-rounder in cricket. Another of my hobbies is using the computer. I use the computer for typing my assignments and homework and for entertaining myself when I am feeling bored. The games that I play when amusing myself are: Chess, Solitaire and if I am at my cousin’s place I use the Internet.

Lansvale Public school is a school where there are many cultures, but are thought of as one. I like coming here because if you need help there are always other students available to help. Here the teachers are kind and fun to be with. The school lets us participate in many different activities such as: PSSA, Gillawarna, UNSW Maths and English competitions. Lansvale Public School is located in Chancery St, Canley Vale NSW and its post code is 2166.

3/4/5 Flares got to go to Google because we have the most Hot Spot Magazine reporters and we have the biggest range of ages across three school grades (which is why we are a multi-age and multi-stage class). Jovanni was looking forward to seeing the lolly jars. The class was looking forward to seeing the friendly staff of Google.

Wednesday 24 June. Today is the day we headed off to the Google Sydney office on a five-star bus! We were in for a very exciting day ahead!

3/4/5F heading off to the Google Sydney office.

The first event that occurred was meeting the Google Workers who would be guiding us today. There were Angelina, Vinzena, Ashleigh and Christine. Christine was the organiser of the entire excursion. Guess what?! Christine helped start the Hot Spot Magazine in the year 2008.

We had a little tour of this Googley place. The place is very green as it uses windows, not air conditioning. There is a mini/micro kitchen in which there are lolly jars. There is Tech Stop where everything is about Technology. Brandan had a go at Wii where he was playing Mario Kart. He only got to play for 30 seconds! There is a lady with the best Googley desk. There is also an underwater experience with all the fish and floor tiles with blue blobs made out of some sort of goo.

We had a short snack before the online treasure hunt. For the online treasure hunt you had to use the internet to answer questions such as: Who was the Australian actor that starred in the movie Wolverine? My buddy told me the answer which was Hugh Jackman. Her name was Mel and she was AWESOME!

I never knew that there was a function that could tell you a word in an entirely different language, probably from the other side of the world. We had to use Google Translate to make the word into Estonian. The result was koel and after that we had to change the first letter into C and into a language that I have forgotten. In the end I got a golden ticket to go to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory. NOT! It was for the special surprise that was given out at the end of the day. I wondered what it would be.

Wave is an online messenger where you can communicate with others by typing messages. We were THE FIRST STUDENTS IN THE UNIVERSE TO USE THE ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS TOOL CALLED WAVE! We had to write a creative piece using Wave. Google gave us a selection of different topics to choose from. Some topics were: Ankor Wat, Antarctica or you could make up your own. My story was about a helicopter ride demolishing everything and everyone but Mel and me! The result was 1,000,000 deformed, fat, ugly, obese, beastly aliens! I found Wave very interesting and fun because other people could change your messages after you had clicked done. I found it easy to use.

Johnson speaking about his Wave story.

The last event was an afternoon full of sports. We played Captain Ball which was a game where you had to throw the ball to everyone in your group and the last person in line needs to get the ball and run to the front and do the whole procedure again. Other games were a three-legged race and the egg and spoon race. I found them all fun because it was challenging and it was funny when people kept on falling down when they tried to run in the three-legged race.

You don’t have to just be good at technology to work at Google; they have cooks, engineers and many more jobs there too, I discovered!

Guess what?! Everything was for free for the 3/4/5F students! Thanks Google! We got a Googley goodies bag containing: a Google USB, Google hat, Google T-shirt, Google pen, Google notebook, Google stickers and Google watch. Yes, a Google watch saying YouTube on it! My USB didn’t work at first and then I fixed it unexpectedly.

Lansvale students and Google buddies.

On behalf of 3/4/5 Flares, we thank you for the effort that Google has put in to make this very special day possible. Thank you.



Posted by Johnson Tran, 3/4/5F, Lansvale Public School

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GoogleServe: Think global, act local

Googlers are known for their love of food, technology and, particularly in Sydney, sport. Occasionally we get the chance to share the things we love with others in the community, such as during our annual GoogleServe week. GoogleServe is a chance for Googlers around the world to take a time off from their regular jobs to give back to the community. Each office organises local projects where Googlers can volunteer their time.

This year, our Sydney GoogleServe team organised three events:

Primary School Tech Skills Day
We invited class 3/4/5F from Lansvale Public School, in Sydney's south-west, to visit the Sydney Google office for a day of developing IT skills and games. The 29 students were buddied up with Googlers to complete an online treasure hunt and were taught to use Wave for a collaborate creative writing project. Our visiting class particularly enjoyed the outdoor games afternoon, seeing our pet fish in the "underwater" section of the office, and learning how to communicate with each other online through Wave.

Googlers and Lansvale students unite

Google Grantees Education Session
We hosted eleven organisations who are part of our Google Grants program at the Google offices for educational sessions. The Google Grants program gives non-profit organisations free AdWords advertising in order to reach more people online. The representatives from each organisation received basic AdWords training, an optimisation session with a Google account strategist, and a presentation on how non-profits can make use of YouTube to reach a wide community.

Redfern "The Block" Sports Afternoon
We partnered with World Vision and Redfern Community Centre to host an afternoon with indigenous students in Redfern, specifically those who live in and around an area known as "The Block". The Block is an area of approx 1000sqm that is heavily populated by indigenous Australians and has a history of crime, drug use and violence. Many of the activities offered through the community centre are aimed at supporting local youths, with projects focused on teaching them self respect, self confidence, and leadership. A group of approx 15 Googlers were shown the fantastic work that youth workers are doing with young people in the area, which was then followed by a tour of the surrounding neighbourhood, a game of oz-tag with the locals, and a BBQ. It didn't take long for both groups to agree that a re-match was in order, and we hope to bring the young people across to Pyrmont soon for an office visit and a repeat game of oz-tag!

Oz-tag commences!

If you're looking for ways to volunteer in your community, Go Volunteer can help you find opportunities in your local area.

Posted by Christine Knight, GoogleServe Australia Leadership Team

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Partner Profile: Lijit

Periodically, we profile a Blogger partner that can add functionality to your blog. This week we'd like to spotlight Lijit, a company building "search powered web applications for publishers" (that's you!). Lijit has made adding its "wijit" as easy as could be—just fill in your blog's URL and complete the sign-up wizard, you'll be good to go.

What does Lijit give you? For starters, Lijit provides a nice search tool for your site that will not only search your blog, but search the blogs of your friends, and all of the related sites (Flickr, YouTube, Picasa, del.icio.us bookmarks, etc.) that you and your friends use regularly.

Where Lijit shines is in the stats they gather for you: what are people searching for when they come to your blog? Once they arrive, what do they then look for? Where are they coming from? How has search traffic changed over time?

Best of all, Lijit lets you expose this info via a customizable "wijit" so that your visitors can see where other visitors are coming from and what they are looking for. To see this in action, take a look at Dark UFO's Lost Spoilers site, a Blogger blog focused on unraveling the mysteries surrounding the TV show Lost. The Lost Spoilers wijit shows not only the most recent searches that have brought visitors to the Lost Spoilers site:

It also shows a map of their visitors:

And finally it shows a list of the most recent visitors, their locations, and if they used a search to visit the site, the search term they used:

Interested? Give Lijit a try - just visit their site and you'll have it on your blog in just a few minutes!

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Making Google Maps even more useful with real estate search

Ever since Google Maps launched in Australia in February 2007, we've been committed to adding more and more useful and up-to-date information to make it a truly valuable resource for Australians. From within Google Maps you can now search for a local plumber or chemist; get driving directions to a friend's place; check out the location of a restaurant before making a booking with Street View; view terrain and satellite data for a given area; and even plan travel using public transport in some cities in Australia.

And the pace of innovation around Google Maps hasn't slowed. We recently added Monorail and Light Rail transit information to Google Maps in Sydney; and introduced a pretty neat way of navigating around Street View images that has inspired some of our users to very cool creative endeavours.

Today we're adding a feature to Google Maps in Australia that we think will make Maps an even more invaluable resource to Aussies as they go about their busy lives. Increasingly, people are heading online when looking for a new house to rent or buy, and from today, we're adding the ability to search for properties on Google Maps. We've worked with partners across the real estate industry to provide up-to-date listings, which you can search for directly from the Google Maps search box.

You can check it out by entering a search like 'real estate crows nest' and clicking through to search real estate listings. A marker will appear on the map for every available listing, using our new search results feature, so you can get a really good idea of the distribution of the properties for sale or rent. This also means you can perform a search and see all the properties for sale close to, for example, a local school you're interested in your kids attending. You can click on each marker and each small circle to get more detailed information about the property, including the listing agent's website and contact details.


It's also easy to refine your search further by criteria like bedrooms, bathrooms, garaging and price. And if you decide that Seaforth is more your speed, you can pan the map to another area entirely to see the listings there, and the map will automatically update, without typing anything new.

This isn't the only resource available for your new home search. You can use Street View on Google Maps to check out the neighbourhood before driving to an open home; use driving directions to find out exactly how to get there; and transit information to work out what your new commute might be if you went ahead and moved house.

Check out the video below for more information on how we're making it easy to find real estate listings on Google Maps in Australia. It's part of our commitment to bringing the most useful and relevant information to Google Maps users in Australia, and we'll keep working on this to make it even more useful over time.



Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager

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