Shop and travel smarter with Google Maps 6.7 for Android - now with Google Offers and indoor walking directions

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog)



Wherever you are, Google Maps for Android helps you get around and discover new places. Today with the 6.7 release we will help you find offers from nearby businesses in the U.S. -- everything from restaurants, to salons, to city tours. Also, we’ve added indoor walking directions in the U.S. and Japan, plus 360-degree interior photos of businesses, to help you intrepidly make your way indoors and out.



Discover great offers near you

Today, in the U.S. only, we’re launching a way to discover nearby Google Offers in Google Maps for Android. To see great deals near you, tap on “Maps” to open the dropdown menu and then tap on “Offers.” If you see something you like you can click on it to learn more. Some Google Offers can be purchased and saved for later while others are immediately available for free. With free Google Offers, press “Use now” to redeem instantly or “Save for later” for future use. You can also opt-in to receive notifications in the app when there are offers near you.

Explore the great indoors with walking directions and Business Photos.

Since we launched indoor maps in the U.S. and Japan in Google Maps for Android last November, business owners have been adding their floor plans to our maps with Google Maps Floor Plans. Today, we are launching indoor walking directions for participating venues in these countries. This will help you get directions not only to a building’s front door, but also through those doors to the places where you want to go inside.

Get Indoor walking directions in indoor maps (photo: Macy’s San Francisco)

With Google Business Photos you can explore panoramic photos of the inside of a business from the palm of your hand. Now you can get a feel for a restaurant or store inside as well as outside using Street View technologies. To access these 360-degree panoramic views, look for the “See Inside” section on the Place page of select businesses.

See the interior of participating businesses with Business Photos (photo: Toyjoy)

Download Google Maps 6.7 for Android from Google Play, and use it as your trusted guide to help you find and discover places to eat, shop and play! You can also learn more about other great features on the Google Maps YouTube channel.



Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager for Google Maps for Android

Shop and travel smarter with Google Maps 6.7 for Android - now with Google Offers and indoor walking directions

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog)



Wherever you are, Google Maps for Android helps you get around and discover new places. Today with the 6.7 release we will help you find offers from nearby businesses in the U.S. -- everything from restaurants, to salons, to city tours. Also, we’ve added indoor walking directions in the U.S. and Japan, plus 360-degree interior photos of businesses, to help you intrepidly make your way indoors and out.



Discover great offers near you

Today, in the U.S. only, we’re launching a way to discover nearby Google Offers in Google Maps for Android. To see great deals near you, tap on “Maps” to open the dropdown menu and then tap on “Offers.” If you see something you like you can click on it to learn more. Some Google Offers can be purchased and saved for later while others are immediately available for free. With free Google Offers, press “Use now” to redeem instantly or “Save for later” for future use. You can also opt-in to receive notifications in the app when there are offers near you.

Explore the great indoors with walking directions and Business Photos.

Since we launched indoor maps in the U.S. and Japan in Google Maps for Android last November, business owners have been adding their floor plans to our maps with Google Maps Floor Plans. Today, we are launching indoor walking directions for participating venues in these countries. This will help you get directions not only to a building’s front door, but also through those doors to the places where you want to go inside.

Get Indoor walking directions in indoor maps (photo: Macy’s San Francisco)

With Google Business Photos you can explore panoramic photos of the inside of a business from the palm of your hand. Now you can get a feel for a restaurant or store inside as well as outside using Street View technologies. To access these 360-degree panoramic views, look for the “See Inside” section on the Place page of select businesses.

See the interior of participating businesses with Business Photos (photo: Toyjoy)

Download Google Maps 6.7 for Android from Google Play, and use it as your trusted guide to help you find and discover places to eat, shop and play! You can also learn more about other great features on the Google Maps YouTube channel.



Posted by Benjamin Grol, Product Manager for Google Maps for Android

Attend a DFA Training in May

Update: Please note that we have added a MediaVisor classroom training in Los Angeles. See below for details.

There are several opportunities to learn more about DFA in the month of May. Visit the DFA Help Center to register for any webinars as well as our classroom offerings.

Classroom Training

DFA Fundamentals: This full-day course (10am-5pm) is for new DFA users looking to understand the fundamentals of third-party ad serving including best practices for campaign trafficking, serving ads and pulling reports.

• Chicago - May 16
• San Francisco - May 24

DFA Trafficking Lab: Get more practice trafficking campaigns. These sessions cover the basics such as assigning landing pages to creatives, updating campaigns, setting up geo-targeting and using creative rotation.

Class Prerequisite: Attendees should have taken the DFA Fundamentals class in the previous two months or have less than two months trafficking experience.

• Chicago - May 17
• San Francisco - May 25

MediaVisor: Learn more about planning and creating campaigns, advertisers, site placements and IOs as well as how to send RFPs.

• New York - May 10
• Chicago - May 17
• Los Angeles - May 30

Webinar Training

DFA for New Users - May 23
An introduction to the fundamentals of DFA.

MediaVisor Fundamentals - May 15
Learn the basics of MediaVisor, including sending RFPs and creating IOs.

Be sure to check back with us on this blog for next month's training schedule. We look forward to seeing you in class.

Posted by Amanda Gangl, DFA Product Trainer

Looking for search? Find it on Google App Engine

For almost as long as we can remember, full text search has been one of the top feature requests for Google App Engine. Since our talk at Google I/O last year, we’ve been hard at work getting search ready for our developers, and today we’re happy to announce that we are making it available as an Experimental feature.


The Search API, like many other features of Google App Engine, allows you to take advantage of parts of Google’s infrastructure to add full text search to your application. This release includes a host of features including searching specific fields and ranges as well as more advanced features like scoring and snippeting. Whether you want to index products and search price ranges or just match keywords over articles and comments, the Search API is ready for you to test drive.

To help you start integrating search into your application, we’ve created a sample application and walkthrough and documented our known issues. We are extending a limited free quota for testing during our Experimental period.

As always, we’re grateful to all of our trusted testers for their patience and feedback in preparation for this launch, and we look forward to your feedback on the groups. Happy searching (and finding)!


- Posted by the Google App Engine Full Text Search Team

Google+ Hangouts On Air: broadcast your conversation to the world

[Cross posted from the Google Official Blog]



Last year we introduced Hangouts On Air to a limited number of broadcasters, enabling them to go live with friends and fans, for all the world to see. Since then, this small community has grown the feature in lots of creative ways. And they’ve made one thing crystal clear: when groups of passionate individuals can broadcast live, together, the results are truly remarkable:

Today we're excited to launch Hangouts On Air to Google+ users worldwide. So if you have something to say—as an aspiring artist, a global celebrity, or a concerned citizen—you can now go live in front of a global audience. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to:\

• Broadcast publicly. By checking "Enable Hangouts On Air," you can broadcast your live hangout—from the Google+ stream, your YouTube channel or your website—to the entire world.


• See how many viewers you’ve got. During your broadcast, you can look inside the hangout to see how many people are watching live.


• Record and re-share. Once you're off the air, we’ll upload a public recording to your YouTube channel, and to your original Google+ post. This way it's easy to share and discuss your broadcast after it's over.

Of course, launching millions of live stations takes some doing, so we're rolling out Hangouts On Air gradually, over the next few weeks. In the meantime you can save the date for an upcoming hangout...

- CBS This Morning: May 8th at 4:20am PT / 7:20am ET	- Cadbury UK: May 11th at 1:30pm PT / 4:30pm ET
- Conan O’Brien: May 8th at 7:30pm PT / 10:30pm ET	- The Nerdist: May 11th at 3:00pm PT / 6:00pm ET
- CNBC: May 10th at 1:15pm PT / 4:15pm ET	- Jamie Oliver on Food Revolution Day: May 19th at 5:00pm PT / 8:00pm ET
- Global Poverty Project: May 10th at 4:00pm PT / 7:00pm ET	- A special series from The New York Times’ Opinion department

… sign in to Google+ to see what’s live right now, or find inspiration in the many broadcasts that have already aired.

A news van for everyone. KOMU-TV anchor +Sarah Hill invited locals to share live coverage of the recent protests in Montreal; Fox 11 LA anchor +Maria Quiban invites viewers to join her on Good Day LA.	Town halls with today’s leaders. President +Barack Obama, Governor +Mitt Romney, UN Secretary-General +Ban Ki-moon, and many others have connected with citizens via hangout.
Live concerts from your living room. Musical artists like +Suite 709 and +Daria Musk perform live for those inside the hangout, and for everyone else tuning in.	Classes anyone can attend. Chef +Larry Fournillier, Professor +Noah Diffenbaugh, and +FAWN share their cooking, climate change and fashion expertise, respectively, via hangout.
Roundtables about any topic. Photographer +Trey Ratcliff, soccer football enthusiast +Sabotage Times and celebrity trend spotter +Young Hollywood talk about the issues they find interesting.	Face-to-face meetups with all of your favorites. +David Beckham, the +Miami Hurricanes, +Tyra Banks, the +Indianapolis Colts and +Geek & Sundry have all enjoyed meet-and-greets with their fans.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll share with the world.



Posted by Chee Chew, Engineering Director

Google Apps Vault Brings Information Governance to Google Apps in India

Today we’re announcing the availability of Google Apps Vault (Vault) for Google Apps for Business customers in India. Vault is an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution for managing information critical to your business and preserving important data. It can reduce the costs of litigation, regulatory investigation and compliance actions.



Businesses of all sizes need to be prepared for the unexpected. In today’s environment, using Vault to manage, archive and preserve your data can help protect your business. Litigation costs can really take a toll on a business when minor lawsuits can run up to many thousands of dollars, and larger lawsuits can cost even more. Significant litigation costs come from having to search and find relevant data, which is also known as electronic discovery (eDiscovery).



E-discovery can be part of virtually any litigation and requires you to search, find and preserve your electronic information such as email. Vault helps protect your business with easy-to-use search so you can quickly find and preserve data to respond to unexpected customer claims, lawsuits or investigations. With an instant-on functionality and availability of your data a few clicks away, Vault provides access to all of your Gmail and on-the-record chats and can provide significant savings to your business over the traditional costs of litigation and eDiscovery.








Additionally, Vault gives Google Apps customers the extended management and information governance capabilities to proactively archive, retain and preserve Gmail and on-the-record chats. With the ability to search and manage data based on terms, dates, senders, recipients and labels, Vault helps you find the information you need, when you need it. Vault gives management, IT, legal and compliance users a systemized, repeatable and defensible platform that will reduce the costs and risks of doing business. With just a few clicks, the business can access a service designed for security and providing auditable access to critical information.



Vault was built, by a global engineering effort that includes India, on the same modern, 100% web-based architecture as Google Apps. Unlike traditional solutions, it does not require a complex and costly IT environment, and can be deployed in a matter of minutes. Vault brings the security, ease-of-use and reliability of Google Apps to information governance. It can help meet the sophisticated requirements of large organizations and makes these advanced capabilities available to business of all sizes.



Google Apps Vault can be added to your Google Apps account for an additional $5 per user per month starting today, so contact our sales team or a Google Apps reseller if you are interested in signing up for Google Apps and Vault.



We hope that Vault, together with Google Apps, will make a difference to your business and provide the right solution to reducing risk and cost so you can focus on growing your business.




Posted by Jack Halprin, Head of eDiscovery, Google

Advanced WordPress SEO Secrets Part 1

Wordpress by default lacks in both on page and off page search engine optimization, Therefore we here at incomefigure have decided to write a series of articles on advanced wordpress SEO, so you can improve your website's SEO. There are lots of advanced wordpress SEO secrets which are not known to newbie bloggers, which can tweaked to get better search engine results. Before reading this article we would also suggest you to add the Wordpress plugins mentioned in our Post "6 Wordpress Plugins To Improve Your Blogs' Traffic" for best results.

Advanced Wordpress SEO Secrets

1. Use decent permalinks.

Never pressure over what kind, it’s really a issue of individual personal preference, provided that they are not still the  ?page_id=191 kind, it does not seem to issue too much. If they still are, you can use this tool to handle a switchover much more quickly than in the last.

We use the  2012/06/05/postname structure and it performs just excellent, you can create them look more attractive if you want to.

Important Note: Adjusting wordpress permanent links should be one of the first things you should do, if you want to imrpove your Wordpress SEO. 

2. Turn Trackbacks on.

Trackbacks are greatly underused on most WP set ups we see, and when they are used they are  mostly not enhanced.

3. Sidebar -use it.

Blogroll – in contrast to well-known viewpoint (seo mythlore) blogroll backlinks (inbound or outbound) will not “hurt you” but you do need to manage their juice submission by ahead considering,  as in where you weblink and why, but this is a topic all on it’s own we’ll get returning to it in one of the long run content.

4. All-in-One-SEO pack

We recommend two all in one seo pack to you to use. HeadSpace and Seo sniper BUT The Platinum SEO Plugin basically picks up where All-in-One leaves off.

But do ensure:

Title is rewriting is on  %post_title% | %blog_title%

Categories and Archives Noindex /Follow (Tags optional, ours are Noindexed)

5. Dofollow Case by Case

Excellent tool, which allows us granular management over each and every weblink on the website that we can get to the URL of. Generally they are all on (followed) unless we choose to no follow them for any purpose. You just add /dontfollow.

6. Redirection – just ensure it’s on and working.

7. XML Sitemaps - not much to do here, activate it on, build the map, ignore.