Powerful data visualization with Symbols and Heatmaps in the Google Maps API

The Google Maps API provides a robust platform in which you can add geographical context to your data in a variety of ways. Data visualization is therefore one of the elements at the heart of the Maps API, and today we’re introducing two new techniques for visualizing your data in flexible and dynamic ways.



Symbols

At SXSW Interactive in 2011, I attended a session on geotemporal data visualization that made me keen to make it easier for Maps API developers to build visualizations similar to those discussed. For this reason I’m particularly excited to introduce a simple, yet powerful, new concept to the Maps API v3 that we call Symbols.



Unlike the image icons currently used for marking locations on a map, a Symbol is defined as a vector shape. The size, stroke width, color, and opacity of the shape, are all set by the Maps API application and can be dynamically modified. A small number of shapes, such as a circle, are provided by the Maps API, and custom shapes can be expressed as an SVG path.



Symbols open up a wide range of compelling new possibilities for data visualization and visual effects. For example, the below map illustrates the expansion of the Walmart chain of stores between 1962 and 2006:







In addition to using symbols to represent point features you can also decorate polylines with Symbols. One or more symbols, such as an arrowhead, can be placed at fixed positions on the polyline or repeated along the polyline. Because the polyline that has been decorated does not need to be visible, this feature can also be used to created dotted or dashed polylines, and just as the style of the symbols can be dynamically modified, so too can their location on the polyline:

Heatmaps

Developers often ask how they can represent large amounts of data on a map. Improvements in web browser technology have increased the number of markers that can be rendered by a Maps API application, but above a certain threshold the density of markers can overwhelm the user.



An alternative approach is to use a heatmap, and to enable this approach we’re launching support for browser rendering of heatmaps by the Maps API using the new Heatmap Layer. Your Maps API application can define the colour spectrum, intensity range, and behaviour of the heatmap when the map is zoomed. Here’s the Walmart example from above, but this time visualized as a heatmap:

If you have any technical questions about these new features, we recommend engaging with our developer community online, or joining our regular Google Maps API Office Hours. If you’re at I/O come see us in person at Office Hours in the Google Maps developer sandbox. We’d love to to meet you, hear how you’re using the Maps API, and answer any questions you may have!



Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API

Google App Engine 1.7.0 Released at Google I/O

Each release is special in its own way, but this time we can’t help but be extra proud. From San Francisco to Sydney we’ve taken an extra week to pack in some of our most widely requested features and prepare a host of talks and announcements for Google I/O.

We’ll be bringing you more information about this release and the future of Google App Engine platform, as well as some exciting announcements from our I/O YouTube live stream. We’ll also be posting highlights from I/O on our blog and Google+, so tune in here for updates the rest of this week.

Without further ado, here are the highlights from our 1.7.0 release:

App Engine SSL for Custom Domains
Starting today, developers can serve their applications via HTTPS on custom domains. We’re offering both SNI and VIP based SSL, which provide both a low cost and universally supported option, respectively.

Server Name Indication (SNI)

• This allows multiple domains to share the same IP address while still allowing a separate certificate for each domain. SNI is supported by the majority of modern web browsers. SNI is priced at $9/month which includes the serving of 5 certificates.

Virtual IP (VIP):

• A dedicated IP address is assigned to you for use with your applications.  VIP is supported by all SSL/TLS compatible web clients and each VIP can serve a single hostname, wildcard or multi domain certificate.  A VIP will cost $99/month.

Google App Engine’s additional location - the EU
For the past four years, App Engine applications have been served from North America. However, we understand that every ms of latency counts so we’ve turned up an App Engine cluster in the European Union so that our developers with customers primarily in Europe can have confidence that their site will look as fast as they’ve designed it.

Initially, the Google App Engine cluster in the European Union will be limited to Premier Accounts only. If you are interested in signing up for a Premier Account to get access to our European cluster, as well as Premium Support and invoice billing, please contact our sales team at appengine_premier_requests@google.com.

PageSpeed - Making the Google App Engine Powered Web Faster
At Google we’ve had an ongoing commitment to making the web faster and for almost a year the PageSpeed Service team has been enabling websites to optimize their static content for delivery to end users at lightning fast speed. Today we’re making this service available to our HRD applications with just a few clicks. Use of the PageSpeed Service is priced at $0.39 per GB of outgoing bandwidth, in addition to standard App Engine outgoing bandwidth price.

GeoPoint Support in Search
Our Search team deserved a break after releasing the Search API a month and a half ago, but instead they’ve worked hard to announce exciting improvements at Google I/O. You can now store latitude and longitude as a GeoPoint in a GeoField, and search documents by distance from that GeoPoint.

Other Service Updates
Here are some other amazing updates we have this release:

• Blob Migration Tool now Generally Available - Since the deprecation announcement for Master/Slave Datastore (M/S), we’ve been continually improving the experience for apps migrating from M/S to HRD. We’re happy to announce that the Blob Migration tool is now generally available, so you can migrate both your Blobstore and Datastore data in one easy step.


• Application Code Limits Raised from 150MB/version to 1 GB/application - For those of you biting your fingernails every time you update your application, wondering if today will be the day you finally reach the 150MB application version limit, fret not! We’ve updated the application size limit to be 1GB total for all versions of your application. You can check your app’s Admin Console to see the total size of all your application versions. In the future, you’ll be able to purchase more quota to store additional files.


• Logs API Updates - Paid applications will now be able to specify a logs retention time frame of up to 1 year for their application logs, provided that the logs storage size specified is sufficient for that period. Additionally, we’re introducing some Logs API billing changes so that you can pay to read application logs after the first 100MB. Reading from the Logs API will cost $0.12/gigabyte for additional data over the first 100MB.


• Go SDK for Windows - We’ve published an experimental SDK for Windows for the Go runtime.

Don’t think these are all the new features we’ve introduced with 1.7.0; we’ve got so much more than just the highlights above. Make your way to our release notes for Java, Python, and Go straightaway to read about 1.7.0. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it in our Google Group. We and the whole Stack Overflow community for App Engine have been working hard to answer all your technical questions on the App Engine platform.


- Posted by the Google App Engine Team


Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Python is a registered trademark of the Python Software Foundation.

Public transit routing and layer now available in the Google Maps API

Google Maps API now enables developers to add Transit data, including public transit directions, to their maps and apps.



Whether you're planning a trip from your computer or on the spur of the moment from your mobile device, Google Maps helps you find directions in more than 475 regions around the world. Today we're pleased to announce that public transit directions are now available in the Google Maps API.



Public transit has been one of the most requested features by Maps API developers, and you can now use it in both the Google Maps Javascript v3 and the Directions Web Service. It's simple for you to update your apps to also offer routing by public transit in addition to driving, bicycling, and walking. The transit route responses include the number of stops, direction of travel and more. It will also tell you what type of vehicle you will be travelling on. Everything from a typical subway train to a funicular!








To support the launch of routing by public transit we're also adding the Transit Layer to the Maps API. For example if you are a retail chain, the Transit Layer allows you to show all the bus major transit lines that run past each store. The Transit Layer can be displayed by enabling the TransitLayer(), it’s as simple as that!



If you're using a Google Map, you can now use the Directions API web service to add this useful and helpful transit data to your map. As always, if you have any questions about public transit in the Google Maps API, we recommend posting to our sponsored tag on Stack Overflow, or if you’re at Google I/O swing by at the Google Maps Developer Sandbox. Happy commuting!



Posted by Nabil Naghdy, Product Manager, Google Maps API

Introducing the Path to Conversion report

Conversion attribution is the practice advertisers use to give appropriate credit to every impression, interaction or click that helped drive a conversion in a campaign. Instead of the typical “last click wins” model, in which 100% credit is given to that last ad that was clicked on before a conversion, attribution modeling shines a light on the entire path the customer took to get there.

Beyond the “last click wins” approach

There are many reasons why online advertisers have relied on this “last click wins” model. There is a lot of data to sift through, and making sense of it can be a overwhelming. Although only 14% of respondents in a recent survey by Google Analytics in partnership with eConsultancy consider “last click” attribution to be “very effective,” it remains common; most likely because marketers haven't yet found or mastered the right attribution tools. But simply giving all the credit to the final click ignores the contribution of the customer’s previous interactions—whether through search, display or rich media —that led to the final purchase.

At DoubleClick, we provide you with the data needed to properly credit the different channels that led to conversions for your campaigns. First came the Exposure to Conversion Report (E2C), a premium report which lets advertisers view data on up to ten ad interactions leading up to a conversion. Then we released Multi-Channel Funnels in DFA to offer all clients an aggregated view of which channels contribute to and result in conversions.

Expanded insights: The Path to Conversion report

Now, we’re pleased to introduce the Path to Conversion Report. This report, available in new DFA Reporting, makes it easier for you to gain insight into your customer’s journey to a purchase.

For a trial period, the new Path to Conversion report is available to any customer who is already receiving the E2C report.

This new report, currently available to any customer who receives the E2C report, provides similar insights but offers E2C customers significant improvement in a few key areas:

• Easier to use: the data, available in new DFA Reporting is much easier to compile and faster to download.
  
  
• More interactions: the availability of data has greatly expanded. Now you can analyze up to 200 customer interactions (also known as “exposures”) per conversion as compared to a maximum of ten in the E2C report.
  
  
• Custom Floodlight Variables: you can now include custom floodlight variables in the report in order to determine custom conversion details, e.g. order amounts for e-commerce sites or the number of nights booked for travel sites.
  
  
• Enhanced DoubleClick Search integration: Available per interaction: Ad level data including keyword, new DS3 labels and Full DoubleClick Search IDs - for easier optimization.
  
  
• Attribute sales with no clicks: Often you’ll encounter customers who have seen a DoubleClick-served ad from another network, and then went to the advertiser’s site later to buy. Data on these unattributed conversions (aka non-attributed interactions), are now measured in this report.
  
  
• International support: P2C now supports multi-byte characters in Floodlight Custom Variables and in DoubleClick Search Data (keyword, etc).

We invite existing E2C customers to log in to DFA Reporting and try out the Path to Conversion report during this trial period. We’re excited to see how you can leverage this report to take the next step in your attribution modeling efforts.

Posted by Aaron Nelson, Product Manager

Android @ I/O: the playground is open

Last year at Google I/O, we talked about momentum, mobile and more. This year, we’re picking up right where we left off. More than 400 million Android devices have now been activated—up from 100 million last June. And twelve new Android devices are activated every every second—that’s more than 1 million a day. Today, we’re rolling out a new version of Android called Jelly Bean, adding more entertainment to Google Play, and introducing two powerful—yet distinctly different Nexus devices to bring you the best of Google.



Jelly Bean: simple, beautiful and beyond smart

Jelly Bean builds on top of Ice Cream Sandwich. It makes everything smoother, faster and more fluid. For example, notifications are now more dynamic: if you’re late for a meeting or missed a call, you can email or call directly from notifications. The keyboard is smarter and more accurate, and can predict your next word. And voice typing is faster, working even when you don’t have a data connection.



We’ve redesigned search from the ground up in Jelly Bean, with a new user interface and faster, more natural Voice Search. You can type your query or simply ask Google a question. Google can speak back to you, delivering a precise answer, powered by the Knowledge Graph, if it knows one, in addition to a list of search results.



Today’s smart devices still rely on you to do pretty much everything—that is, until now. Google Now is a new feature that gets you just the right information at just the right time. It tells you today’s weather before you start your day, how much traffic to expect before you leave for work, or your favorite team's score as they’re playing. There’s no digging required: cards appear at the moment you need them most.







Starting in mid-July, we’ll start rolling out over-the-air updates to Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Xoom and Nexus S, and we’ll also release Jelly Bean to open source.



Google Play: more entertainment

Google Play is your digital entertainment destination, with more than 600,000 apps and games plus music, movies and books. It’s entirely cloud-based, which means all of your content is always available across all of your devices. Today our store is expanding to include magazines. We’ve been working with leading publishers Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith and more to offer magazines like House Beautiful, Men’s Health, Shape and WIRED.



Now, you can also purchase movies in addition to renting them. And we’re adding television shows on Google Play—in fact, we’re adding thousands of episodes of broadcast and cable TV shows, like "Revenge," "Parks & Recreation" and "Breaking Bad," from some of the top studios, like ABC Studios, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures. You can play back movies and TV shows on all your Android devices, through Google Play on the web, and on YouTube, and soon we’ll bring the experience to Google TV devices.



Movie purchases, TV shows and magazines are available today on play.google.com, and will roll out to Google Play on devices over the coming days.



Nexus 7: powerful, portable and designed for Google Play

All of this great Google Play content comes to life on Nexus 7, a powerful new tablet with a vibrant, 7” 1280x800 HD display. The Tegra-3 chipset, with a quad-core CPU and 12-core GPU, makes everything, including games, extremely fast. And best of all, it’s only 340 grams, lighter than most tablets out there. Nexus 7 was built to bring you the best of Google in the palm of your hand. Hang out with up to 10 friends on Google+ using the front-facing camera, browse the web blazingly fast with Chrome and, of course, crank through your emails with Gmail.







Nexus 7 comes preloaded with some great entertainment, including the movie "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," the book “The Bourne Dominion,” magazines like Condé Nast Traveler and Popular Science, and songs from bands like Coldplay and the Rolling Stones. We’ve also included a $25 credit to purchase your favorite movies, books and more from Google Play, for a limited time. Nexus 7 is available for preorder today from Google Play in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, and starts at $199 in the U.S. It will start shipping mid-July.



Nexus Q: It’s a sphere!

It's great to be able to take your entertainment with you wherever you go, but sometimes you want to ditch the headphones and enjoy music with friends and family. So we’re introducing Nexus Q, which combines the power of Android and Google Play to easily stream music and video in your home—all controlled by an Android phone or tablet. Designed and engineered by Google, Nexus Q is a small sphere that plugs into the best speakers and TV in your house. It’s the first-ever social streaming device—like a cloud-connected jukebox where everyone brings their own music to the party. Available first in the U.S., you can preorder Nexus Q today from Google Play for $299, and it will ship mid-July.







If you own one of the 400 million Android devices out there, you already know that it’s much more than simply a phone or tablet. It’s your connection to the best of Google—all of your stuff and entertainment, everywhere you go. Now you have a new version of Android, more entertainment and a growing portfolio of Nexus devices to choose from—all available in Google Play. The playground is open.



Posted by Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content

Android @ I/O: the playground is open

Last year at Google I/O, we talked about momentum, mobile and more. This year, we’re picking up right where we left off. More than 400 million Android devices have now been activated—up from 100 million last June. And twelve new Android devices are activated every every second—that’s more than 1 million a day. Today, we’re rolling out a new version of Android called Jelly Bean, adding more entertainment to Google Play, and introducing two powerful—yet distinctly different Nexus devices to bring you the best of Google.



Jelly Bean: simple, beautiful and beyond smart

Jelly Bean builds on top of Ice Cream Sandwich. It makes everything smoother, faster and more fluid. For example, notifications are now more dynamic: if you’re late for a meeting or missed a call, you can email or call directly from notifications. The keyboard is smarter and more accurate, and can predict your next word. And voice typing is faster, working even when you don’t have a data connection.



We’ve redesigned search from the ground up in Jelly Bean, with a new user interface and faster, more natural Voice Search. You can type your query or simply ask Google a question. Google can speak back to you, delivering a precise answer, powered by the Knowledge Graph, if it knows one, in addition to a list of search results.



Today’s smart devices still rely on you to do pretty much everything—that is, until now. Google Now is a new feature that gets you just the right information at just the right time. It tells you today’s weather before you start your day, how much traffic to expect before you leave for work, or your favorite team's score as they’re playing. There’s no digging required: cards appear at the moment you need them most.







Starting in mid-July, we’ll start rolling out over-the-air updates to Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Xoom and Nexus S, and we’ll also release Jelly Bean to open source.



Google Play: more entertainment

Google Play is your digital entertainment destination, with more than 600,000 apps and games plus music, movies and books. It’s entirely cloud-based, which means all of your content is always available across all of your devices. Today our store is expanding to include magazines. We’ve been working with leading publishers Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith and more to offer magazines like House Beautiful, Men’s Health, Shape and WIRED.



Now, you can also purchase movies in addition to renting them. And we’re adding television shows on Google Play—in fact, we’re adding thousands of episodes of broadcast and cable TV shows, like "Revenge," "Parks & Recreation" and "Breaking Bad," from some of the top studios, like ABC Studios, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures. You can play back movies and TV shows on all your Android devices, through Google Play on the web, and on YouTube, and soon we’ll bring the experience to Google TV devices.



Movie purchases, TV shows and magazines are available today on play.google.com, and will roll out to Google Play on devices over the coming days.



Nexus 7: powerful, portable and designed for Google Play

All of this great Google Play content comes to life on Nexus 7, a powerful new tablet with a vibrant, 7” 1280x800 HD display. The Tegra-3 chipset, with a quad-core CPU and 12-core GPU, makes everything, including games, extremely fast. And best of all, it’s only 340 grams, lighter than most tablets out there. Nexus 7 was built to bring you the best of Google in the palm of your hand. Hang out with up to 10 friends on Google+ using the front-facing camera, browse the web blazingly fast with Chrome and, of course, crank through your emails with Gmail.







Nexus 7 comes preloaded with some great entertainment, including the movie "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," the book “The Bourne Dominion,” magazines like Condé Nast Traveler and Popular Science, and songs from bands like Coldplay and the Rolling Stones. We’ve also included a $25 credit to purchase your favorite movies, books and more from Google Play, for a limited time. Nexus 7 is available for preorder today from Google Play in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, and starts at $199 in the U.S. It will start shipping mid-July.



Nexus Q: It’s a sphere!

It's great to be able to take your entertainment with you wherever you go, but sometimes you want to ditch the headphones and enjoy music with friends and family. So we’re introducing Nexus Q, which combines the power of Android and Google Play to easily stream music and video in your home—all controlled by an Android phone or tablet. Designed and engineered by Google, Nexus Q is a small sphere that plugs into the best speakers and TV in your house. It’s the first-ever social streaming device—like a cloud-connected jukebox where everyone brings their own music to the party. Available first in the U.S., you can preorder Nexus Q today from Google Play for $299, and it will ship mid-July.







If you own one of the 400 million Android devices out there, you already know that it’s much more than simply a phone or tablet. It’s your connection to the best of Google—all of your stuff and entertainment, everywhere you go. Now you have a new version of Android, more entertainment and a growing portfolio of Nexus devices to choose from—all available in Google Play. The playground is open.



Posted by Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile and Digital Content

Introducing DS Change History

Ever wish you could remember exactly when a change was made in DoubleClick Search (DS) or who made it? Or, perhaps you’d like to investigate an unexpected spike or dip in your campaign performance and link it back to a specific change. Help is now available directly in your DS account. We’ve just launched DS Change History, which enables you to audit what changes were made to your account, when, and by which user.

We’ve integrated DS Change History directly into the Campaigns tab, to allow you to seamlessly switch between analyzing campaign performance and the changes made during that same time.

Imagine you see a huge increase in impressions for a campaign and you’d like to know if there is a specific change that caused this. With one click, you switch from Statistics mode to Change history mode and quickly assess that a colleague accidentally increased the campaign budget from 100 to 1000 dollars. A quick click back into Statistics mode allows you to fix the budget and move on with the rest of your work. (Hint: Use our new filter to selected feature to narrow the scope of your view to the specific data rows you’d like to investigate.)

Let’s look at some of the specifics. With DS Change History, you can:

• See the changes for campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, labels, and bid strategies.


• See when a change was made and when it was trafficked, as well as which system and user made the change. DS Change History will report of changes made through the interface, bulksheets, inbound sync and bid strategies.


• Gain insights into bid strategy changes with a summary of the bid rationale. This will let you know what target the change was intended to hit, how often bids are evaluated and, for target position strategies, details on why a change was made


• Get guidance on how to improve bid strategy performance by discovering where settings like maximum keyword bid inhibits the bid changes

To view a change, navigate to the engine account, advertiser, campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, labels, or bid strategies whose change history you want to see. Once you select your scope, select the Change history link in the right hand corner of the performance summary graph.




After reviewing your changes in the interface, you’re able to download the report for offline analysis, by selecting the download button as you would any other report.

We hope this new workflow makes it even easier to keep track of changes made in DS. For more information on DS Change history, read the relevant articles in our Help Center or contact our support team for more information.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team