Thursday, November 19, 2009


Follow your waves on Google Wave

We've received lots of feedback from Wavers that the public waves they read were clogging up their inboxes. Today, we've introduced a new concept to Google Wave--"following" waves. Now, clicking on a public wave no longer causes it to appear (and stay) in your inbox; you have to explicitly choose to "follow" the wave.


Here's how following works: When someone adds you directly to a wave, or if you contribute to a wave, you will automatically be following that wave. When you see a public wave that you would like to get updates on, you can chose to follow it by hitting the follow button in the wave panel toolbar. You can remove these waves from your inbox by hitting the "archive" button, but when there is an update they will pop back in. You can switch between following and unfollowing a wave as much and as often as you like.


Public waves that are in your inbox simply because you opened them at some point in the past will start to leave your inbox as they get updated. You can also manually remove them with the "archive" feature, and they will no longer return. We hope this will help with clearing a backlog of unwanted waves.

Please note that the new "unfollow" feature replaces mute. If you no longer want a wave you are on for any reason (whether you created it, added to it or followed it), to show up in your inbox, use "unfollow". You can still find waves that you are not following by searching for themor if you have organized them into saved searches or folders.

Following is the first step towards a set of new tools for managing waves in your inbox. In the future, there will be more control over what kinds of changes will cause a wave to appear in your inbox, and we will soon introduce better support for groups of wave users. We're also thinking of expanding the following concept to let you follow people, groups, and searches. In the meantime, let us know what you think of following, check out some other ways to organize your inbox and share your own #wavetips on Twitter.

Happy following!

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New in GMail Labs : New robot icon for indicates if your friends are online!

Gmail chat status (those green, orange, and red bubbles) indicates if your friends are online or not. But sometimes my buddies appear green when they're not really "online online" — they just have chat open on their Android phones.

Turn on Green Robot, a new experiment in Gmail Labs, and you'll see a robot icon next to people who are currently using Android phones. In the case below, Shirley is online with Android, Nicolle R. is using regular Gmail chat, and Chris I. is currently away but also on Android. Slatka is not an angry robot — she's online with Android but currently busy.


These icons can help you decide whether to tailor your conversation to the type of device that your chat buddy is using. For example, when you know the guy on the other end is using his Android phone, you may decide to send shorter, more concise chat messages.

When your chat buddies log into Gmail, their presence icons will revert to the traditional red, green, and orange status bubbles. In addition, if your chat buddy happens to be logged into both Gmail and Android chat then the traditional Gmail status icons will be shown. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Saturday, November 14, 2009


New Feature Spotlight: Google Analytics Intelligence

How would you like to have 24-hour a day access to a dedicated assistant who is focused exclusively on your site's analytics? Your assistant would be so diligent and detailed that they wouldn't miss a thing. Sound too good to be true? We're giving you one. Say "Hello" to Analytics Intelligence.

Your new hardworking assistant, Analytics Intelligence, can't replace you or a professional analyst. But, it can find key information for you and your professional analysts -- so that your team can focus on making strategic decisions, instead of sifting through an endless sea of data.

Analytics Intelligence constantly monitors your website's traffic. Anytime something significant happens, it adds an automatic alert in your Intelligence reports. If your bounce rate suddenly jumps on one of your referrals, Analytics Intelligence creates an alert. Of course, it's up to you to go find out that the bounce rate jumped because someone inadvertently changed the landing page. But you might not have noticed that there was a problem that needed fixing if your trusty assistant hadn't alerted you.


Behind Analytics Intelligence is a sophisticated algorithmic intelligence engine that detects any anomalies in your traffic patterns. That means it's smart enough to know the difference between a change that's actually part of a larger trend versus a change that you might need to look into. But, from a user perspective, Analytics Intelligence couldn't be simpler.

Navigate to the Intelligence reports and you'll see three reports -- Daily Alerts, Weekly Alerts, Monthly Alerts. Daily Alerts contains all the alerts that are based on daily data. Weekly Alerts contains alerts based on weekly data. Monthly Alerts contains, you guessed it, alerts based on monthly data.

When you look at your alerts, you'll notice that your trusty assistant has already gone through your historical data and posted alerts. This highlights a key feature of Analytics Intelligence: you don't have to do anything -- alerts automatically get posted to your account.

The best way to come up to speed on Analytics Intelligence is to take a look at the alerts that are being created for your data. You can learn everything you need to know about how to interpret your alerts in this 2-minute video.

You can also instruct your assistant to be on the lookout for specific things that you want to monitor. Let's say you are running a billboard campaign in New York's Times Square. You want to be proactively informed regarding how the campaign is impacting traffic from New York. To do this, go the Manage Intelligence Alerts page,


and set up a custom alert (see the example, below).


You might even want to set up a second alert that checks for decreasing New York traffic, so you can see if the campaign is starting to wind down.

You'll then receive a custom alert, posted in your Daily Alerts, whenever one of these things happens. You can be notified by email as well, so you'll know what's going on even if you're not checking your reports.

If you're ever unsure about how to set up an alert, try starting with one of the templates on the Manage Intelligence Alerts page. Just click Copy, and then modify and rename the alert to fit your needs.



As with automatic alerts, the best way to learn about custom alerts is to try them out on your own data. You can also refer to the articles on Analytics Intelligence in the Google Analytics Help Center.

Sign in to your account to try it out. It's time to meet your new assistant!

Thursday, November 12, 2009


Congratulations to our 2009 Doodle 4 Google winners! | From Google (Australia)

What an amazing day we had at Google's Australia headquarters on Tuesday. Thirty-two talented young artists from every state and territory in Australia flew to join us for a day of celebrating their achievement at being selected as the winners of the 2009 Doodle 4 Google Australia competition, which asked kids to draw a Google doodle showing their 'Wish for Australia'.

From more than 5,500 individual entries, our 32 wonderful winners had first been selected as one of 320 finalists, and then impressed our judges (Ken Done, Anne Geddes, and Hugh Evans) enough to be selected to come to Sydney for a day of Googley fun.

Every one of the young artists impressed us with both their obvious artistic talent, but also their wonderful attitudes and interest and passion for Australia's future. They asked fantastic questions throughout the day, as they learned about the history of the Sydney Opera House in a fun behind-the scenes tour; heard from inspiring humanitarian Hugh Evans about his wish for Australia and the world; and saw first hand the way that Google's original doodler Dennis Hwang creates his iconic artworks.


Nearly 80,000 Australians voted for their favourite Google Doodles over the last few weeks, and we revealed the winners after a jaunty trip down from Google HQ led by gypsy band Kush.


The four national age group winners are:
  • Ferryn Sutantio, Mill Park Heights Primary School, Mill Park VIC (Years 1-3)
  • Jessie Du, Rydalmere East Public School, Ermington NSW (Years 4-6)
  • Darcy McBean, Kormilda College, Katherine NT (Years 7-8)
  • Emilie Tan, St Ursula's College, Toowoomba QLD (Years 9-10)






Then came one of the big moments of the day ... finding out which Google doodle would be seen by millions of people around Australia and the world on Australia Day next year. Dennis Hwang, selected Jessie Du's doodle "Australia Forever" to appear on the page, and he complemented her on the real warmth in her drawing. We can't wait to see it on the homepage next year in all its glory - congratulations Jessie.


To everyone who entered Doodle 4 Google Australia 2009 - thank you for sharing your talent and enthusiasm with us. Doodle 4 Google is one of the highlights of our year, and you guys really made it special for us. Keep doodling!