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Get a pulse for the posts your readers like most with the +1 counter

As we mentioned in our Connect to Google+ post a few weeks ago, we’ve been hard at work to bring you new ways to grow your blog and engage with your readers using Google+.

Today we’re happy to introduce the +1 counter, which allows you to quickly scan your dashboard to see which posts are most popular on your blog. Each time a reader clicks the +1 button on a post, a +1 gets added to that post's counter and their profile photo and name will appear.

The +1 button is available on all Dynamic Views posts by default, and can be enabled on most other template types by clicking on the Layout tab in your dashboard, clicking Edit in the Blog posts section, and checking the Show Share Buttons box.

If you don't have a Google+ account yet, don't fret. It's easy to join Google+ here.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

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Android Developer Labs Coming to Australia

Our Android Developer Advocates are kicking off 2012 with new events to get out and meet Android developers around the world. First stop: Australia & New Zealand!

Android Developer Labs (ADLs) will be taking place in Melbourne (Tuesday 31 January), Sydney (Friday 3 February) and Auckland (Wednesday 8 February). ADLs are aimed at accomplished Android developers who want to learn the best practices for building truly world-class Android apps. Ideally, developers will enter an ADL with a good app that has already garnered some success, but leave with a great app that will appeal to Android users everywhere.

In these sessions, we’ll cover the following topics:
Latest advances in Ice Cream Sandwich
Utilising cloud services in Android apps
Designing polished and immersive user experiences
Building rich apps for both smartphones and tablets
How do I participate?

Registration is open to everyone, but we will sift through the applications by hand and select the most qualified developers. In choosing attendees, we’re primarily looking for developers who have already released a successful app on Android Market but want to improve its overall quality, fit and finish.

Other prerequisites include a laptop with the Eclipse & Android SDK (API 15) installed and configured, an Android device(s) for debugging and a solid understanding of Android fundamentals (activities, layouts, app life cycle, etc). If you’re selected to attend, you’ll receive an invitation up to 48 hours before the event.

Visit the Android Developer Lab website for more information and submit your application.

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Think fast in the first Think Quarterly of 2012

In the amount of time it takes you to read this blog post, roughly 382 Android phones will be activated, 250,000+ words will be written on Blogger and more than 48 hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube. The world is moving faster than ever before, bringing us instant access and split-second connections to people and information.

Speed is important in technology, but equally essential in business. Consumer expectations are rising as we learn to take speed for granted; today’s email is tomorrow’s snail mail. In our hyper-real-time world, nanoseconds matter—which means we need to question old assumptions. How will we respond to consumer expectations as the demand for instant access to everything intensifies? How will we keep pace in a world that moves at web speed?

The new Speed issue of Think Quarterly explores these questions and more. Don Meij, CEO of Domino’s Pizza in Australia, comments on what it means to be first to market on mobile. Moving fast into mobile has allowed his business to differentiate against a crowd of competitors. By integrating mobile early Don claims that they made a step change in providing the fastest, most convenient ordering process possible.

The current issue also features Bom Kim, CEO and founder of Korean deals site, Coupang, who explains that it’s more about being the best at responding to the market than being the first to do something. Google’s SVP of Engineering Urs Hölzle shares our efforts to speed up the Internet, while Astro Teller, Director of New Products at Google, dreams about the amazing inventions these improvements will unleash.

We hope you enjoy the issue. Let us know what you think.

Posted by James Toepfer, Marketing Manager, Google Australia

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Ask your question in the 2012 Google Science Fair

Are human beings born curious, or can curiosity be nurtured through environment, competition or a good teacher? Everyone’s got a question—that’s ours. But we’re sure you’ve got tons of questions, too. So we’re inviting students around the world to pose their most pressing questions and answer those questions through scientific inquiry as part of our second annual Google Science Fair.

Along with our partners CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, it’s the largest online science competition in the world. Open to students ages 13-18, students (either individually or in teams of up to three people) pose a question, develop a hypothesis and conduct science experiments to test it.

Last year, we received entries that strove to solve a wide variety of needs, from “How can I cure cancer?” to “Can I teach a robot to learn English?” to “Can I build a faster sailboat?” The breadth and depth of these projects was incredibly impressive, and this year we hope to see even more entries from the next generation of brilliant young scientists.

From the entries we will recognise 90 regional finalists before our judges select the top 15 finalists, who will be flown to Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, for the Google Science Fair event on July 23, 2012. At the finals, a panel of distinguished international judges (like Vint Cerf, Sylvia Earle, and Nobel Laureates David Gross and Ada Yonath) will select top winners in each age category (13-14, 15-16, 17-18).

In addition to satisfying your curious mind, your project can also help to win you some pretty cool prizes, like a US$50,000 college scholarship from Google, a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer or an internship at Google or any one of our partners.

We’re also introducing a new category for this year’s competition—the Scientific American Science in Action award which will see the winner earn US$50,000 and a year-long mentorship to make their project a reality. We were so inspired by 2011 finalist Harine Ravichandran’s project, which attempted to solve energy surges in rural villages, that this year we decided to recognise an outstanding project that addresses a social, environmental or health need.

The Google Science Fair will accept submissions until Sunday, April 1 at 11:59 GMT.

Google itself was founded through experimentation and with the Google Science Fair, we hope to inspire scientific exploration among the next generation of scientists and engineers, celebrate scientific talent, create scientific role models and unite students around the world in the quest for learning.

Visit google.com/sciencefair and ask your most burning questions.

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Posted by Cristin Frodella, Google Education Team

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Engage with your readers through threaded commenting

You may have noticed that we’ve rolled out a number of improvements to Blogger recently. The folks over at Technorati referred to it as a “rampage”. Call it what you like, we’re definitely having fun giving Blogger the makeover it’s long deserved, and we appreciate all the positive feedback we received at the recent BlogWorld expo.

If you follow us on our Buzz blog, you’re aware that we publish surveys from time to time. They are one of several methods that we use to collect your feedback about what we can do to make your blogging experience better. A top request on the wishlist is improving Blogger’s commenting system, so we’re happy to announce that we’ve done just that.

Blogger now supports threaded commenting, which means that it is now much easier to differentiate between whether someone is making a general comment on the thread, or responding to another comment on the thread.

What do you have to do to enable this on your blog? Nothing! If you have Blogger’s commenting feature enabled, “Blog Feed” set to “Full”, and are using “Embedded” comments, then you’re ready to start a discussion with your readers. To check, or change your feed settings, select: “Settings > Other >, and then “Full” from the “Allow Blog Feed” dropdown:

To check your current form setting, select: “Settings > Posts and Comments, and select “Embedded” from the “Comment Location” dropdown:

Visit the Blogger Help Center for additional information.

Happy blogging!

Posted by Pat Coleman, Software Engineer

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Blogging Tips

3 Free Tools to Help Keep Your Email Inbox Organized

Posted: 07 Jan 2012 12:30 PM PST

Do you hate looking at your inbox? Is checking your email becoming more of a chore that never seems to be completed? Well, it's a new year, so why not start by taking control of your email inbox once and for all?
If your inbox is out of control and you don't know where to start, or if you just want to start the new year off productively, here are 3 free tools that can help.

ActiveInbox

If your your inbox is totally out of control and can't keep your priorities straight, you really need ActiveInbox. This plugin for Chrome and Firefox works with both Gmail and Google Apps accounts. It lets you turn emails into tasks, snooze messages to read later, and helps you focus on top priorities. Emails can also be organized into project folders and you can even add notes, which will only be visible to you.

The "Previous Conversation Viewer" is also nice because it helps you keep up with all correspondences from a single recipient. ActiveInbox adds a whole new section to your sidebar for better organization of your tasks and messages.

Taskforce

Taskforce is a lot like ActiveInbox in that it lets you convert emails into tasks, but it stops there. Taskforce displays a small collapsible task window at the top of your inbox, so that you can keep up with what needs to be done and what is currently being worked on. You can delay tasks and collaborate with other people right within the task window, but only if the other person is using Taskforce as well.

If that person does not have Taskforce installed, you can still collaborate with them, but it will be done via email. The Taskforce plugin is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari; it works with Gmail and Google Apps accounts.

OtherInbox

I'm a long time user of OtherInbox (for 2 of my email accounts) and love how it automatically organizes your messages into labels. It currently works with Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL mail. Basically, OtherInbox automatically analyzes your incoming mail and then sorts them by priority. The low priority messages are archived and organized into automatically created labels; however, you can create your own labels and it will automatically adapt.

You'll get a daily email digest showing you a summary of all your organized messages. A great addition is the ability to unsubscribe from newsletters just by placing messages in the "OIB/Unsubscribe" folder. OtherInbox will take care of the rest by working with the sender to make sure you're removed from the mailing list or newsletter.
If you'd rather organize your inbox on your own, there's always Gmail filters, which have to be setup manually.
What is your favorite method of organizing your inbox?

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