Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet, Product Manager

With Google News, you can read what candidates are saying about a given topic. You can even compare what two of them are saying about the same topic. But it's also important to hear candidates deliver their own message themselves, in their own voice.

Today, we're adding another tool to the Google News suite to enable you to find and access political messages straight from the horse's mouth. Using the Google Audio Indexing (GAudi) technology already available on Labs, you can now search for and watch political videos right from the Google News election page.

Starting today, after reading an article about a topic that matters to you, you can quickly find out what the candidates have to say about it and hear them say it. Just enter the topic you're interested in, or the sequence of words you want to find, and we'll search candidates' YouTube channels to return a set of relevant videos. You can filter the results by channel (all candidates, McCain's campaign, Obama's campaign or the presidential debates). When we return a result, we use yellow markers to indicate the exact moments the words you're looking for are uttered. Just hover over the marker to read the transcript of a short audio snippet or click on it to jump to the right moment inside the video. You can also share a given video with your friends (just click on ), in case they don't want to take your word for it. Keep in mind that speech-to-text technology is not perfect yet, and some transcriptions might contain some errors. But we think this tool will serve as a valuable resource as we count down to Election 2008.

Checking for political consistency (or inconsistency) has never been so simple. And as election day nears, keep checking our election-related projects.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google today launched the surprise addition of Gmail video chat to its webmail interface. The feature lets contacts use Google Talk to start a two-way video or audio-only conversation with anyone currently online and can be started in the middle of a text chat. Like dedicated desktop apps, the web version carries a picture-in-picture view and can be stretched out or made full-screen.

The feature is also potentially usable by any other software, Google says: as it uses H.264 video and standard Internet streaming protocols, third-party apps can hook into the Gmail video chat format to use the feature without tying users to a web browser or specific interface.

Using the feature requires a plugin and is currently limited to Macs and Windows PCs, which can download the update today. It should work with any standard webcam recognized by the respective operating system.

The feature signals an increasing move towards live video for Google. While YouTube and nearly all the company's other properties hinge on prerecorded video, the company has begun to use live video for events and with Gmail is now giving users their first live video streaming feature. YouTube has floated the possibility of live video as with services like Qik and Ustream but so far is focusing only on making its existing playback business profitable.

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Posted by Håvard Kvålen, Robert Leland and Amund Tveit, Software Engineers

As we sat in our offices in Trondheim staring off at the fjord -- we're Norwegians, that's what we do -- a thought occurred to us: wouldn't it be nice to make Google News accessible to readers on their iPod Touch or iPhone? The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, we're happy to announce that Google News is now available to iPhone and iPod Touch users in over 30 countries. This means that you'll see a full-fledged version of Google News on these devices, improved Google News results and, where available, relevant YouTube videos embedded with news stories.



There are a few ways to get to Google News using your iPhone or iPod Touch:

• Go to www.google.com, click on the "more" tab and follow the link to Google News
  
• Go to www.google.com and do a search, then click on the News link at the top of the screen
  
• Go directly to Google News at http://news.google.com in your browser
  

We hope you enjoy this new feature. We haven't been able to take our eyes off it yet, not even to look at the fjord!
Link - from Google News Blog
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Posted by Andy Golding, Software Engineer

Often publishers ask us why Google News didn't include one of their articles, or skipped the image associated with an article. In the search for answers, we've noticed that there's a lot of confusion about how we include and rank articles. We'd like to share some of the facts, and debunk the myths.

We've enumerated some of truths and myths below, and invite you to visit the Truths & Myths post on the support group for more extensive followup discussion about your experiences with Google News. User Guides Marcela and Abe will be reading and responding to posts over the next few days. We hope that this post and the corresponding support group thread will help many of you improve your content coverage in Google News.

So without further delay, on to truths and myths:

Having an image next to your article improves your ranking MYTH
While having a good image with your article does improve your chance to get your picture shown, it has no impact on the ranking of the article itself. There are some tips in our help center designed to help us include more of your images in Google News. We encourage you to check those out if you have had problems getting images included in the past.

Updating an article after posting it will create problems with Google News TRUE
Currently, the Google News crawler only visits each article URL once. If you make updates to the article after we've crawled it, they won't be reflected on our site. We hope that soon we'll have the ability to re-crawl your articles to make sure we have the latest version displayed on our site, but for now this is not the case.

Timing the publication of your article improves your article ranking MYTH
Google News is constantly looking for the most recent developments in a story. Making sure we get the latest, breaking news articles is very important. However, whether you publish before, after, or in the midst of when other publishers post articles won't affect your article ranking. Our algorithms take a number of factors into account when choosing the best articles in a cluster. Simply publishing the same story after another publisher won't help. Additionally, our system is set up to detect duplicate content and promote the original source of a story. If we detect that a source is constantly rewriting stories in order to game the system, we will flag the source in our system.

Articles that are just images or video won't be included TRUE
While we will include articles that contain multimedia content, if our crawler cannot find accompanying text content, it won't include the article. The bottom line here is that our crawler is looking for text articles, so if some of your content isn't text-based, it won't be included in Google News. In the meantime, we're working to find ways to add more multimedia content such as our recent integration with video news from YouTube.

There's no way to see why my articles weren't included in Google News MYTH
As you've seen above, there are a number of reasons that your articles may not be included in Google News. To help you analyze your coverage, we have Webmaster Tools for news. If your site is currently included in Google News, you can create an account that will show you errors on specific articles.

Publishing a sitemap helps my rankings MYTH
Creating a sitemap for your news articles helps us find your content; if we can't find your content, we can't rank it. Creating a sitemap does not affect your article rankings; but there are still several reasons that creating a sitemap is a good idea. First, sitemaps give you greater control over which of your articles appear on Google News; they tell us specifically which articles to crawl. Second, sitemaps allow you to specify meta-information about individual articles, such as their publication date, or keywords that help inform which section of Google News the articles should appear in.

Redesigning my site may affect my coverage in Google News TRUE
Our crawler has been carefully tuned to scour the web for news content. If you drastically change the structure of your site or your page layout, the crawler may have trouble navigating the new design. In such cases, the Support team may need to update the crawler so that it can find your new content. When in doubt, check out the section in our publisher help center about changes to your site or contact the Support team.

If I put AdSense on my site, my article rankings will improve MYTH
Using AdSense doesn't have any impact upon our ability to crawl or rank your articles. We try to stay as objective as possible, and giving sites with our ads product a boost, well, that wouldn't be very objective!

We hope this information has been eye-opening, and encourage you to let us know what else you've heard on our Truth & Myths thread.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Project: Direct, YouTube's annual short film competition, is back to offer another talented filmmaker a chance to be discovered!

This year we've partnered with AOL Moviefone and The Sundance Film Festival to bring you this challenge: direct an original short film incorporating three specific props. One must be a red phone and the other two must be chosen from a list of 25 props that have played stand-out roles in some of the most memorable films to emerge from the Sundance Film Festival over the past 25 years. To choose your props, visit www.youtube.com/projectdirect.

Submissions open on November 16 and close at 9PM PST on December 14. A panel of Sundance Film Festival executives will review your film and whittle the competition down to 10 semi-finalists. Then, on December 27, the YouTube community will start voting for the winning film.

If you win, you'll be off to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, where you'll meet with the Festival's Director of Programming and screen your film at a festival event. The top three films will also take home cash prizes and be distributed on DVD to industry executives at the Festival.

While the competition proper is only officially open to entrants in the US, Canada, Brazil, UK, Spain, Italy and France, everyone is welcome to submit and we will feature top films on the YouTube site.

Need some inspiration to get started? Check out last year's three finalists:



Visit the Project: Direct channel to learn more, and take advantage of a rare opportunity to introduce your work to both a global audience and key industry executives.

Good luck,
Sara P.
YouTube Film
Link
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Posted by Josh Cohen, Business Product Manager

If you somehow escaped US electioneering up to this point, you probably won't today, Super Tuesday, when 24 states choose their candidates for the fall election. This will be the largest number of primaries going on at one time in the history of the U.S. electoral system.

Over the last few weeks and months, there has been a massive volume of news coverage, statistics and polls -- and there will be even more today. Our mission is to help organize all of it for you, so you can find what you're looking for. There are a number of ways Google can help you keep track of all the candidates and issues -- from Maps with the latest results, to YouTube videos from voters across the country. You can read all about these initiatives on the Google Blog.

Of course, we want to do our part as well. In addition to all the latest stories from thousands of sources in our new Elections section, we've also put together a gadget that tracks the progress of the candidates in each of the 24 states. Here's an example of how it might look; please note these are not actual results!


In addition to providing up to date information about the results on all the candidates as the polls close, you'll also be able to view this information on Google Maps. You can see the results across the United States, within a particular region, and even as specific as a particular county.

So check it out and let us know what you think.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Posted by Mark Lucovsky, Software Engineer

If you are a web site owner, a blogger, or a professional site designer, take a look at the latest creation from the AJAX Search API team. With just a few clicks, anyone can configure and add a sleek looking Google NewsBar to their site.



The NewsBar is designed with your needs in mind. It can be configured in a horizontal mode where it delivers a continuous stream of news headlines to your site. The vertical mode delivers both news headlines and snippets. The NewsBar is perfect for your topical sites or blogs. For instance, if you are following the Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton race, try this NewsBar.

If you are a professional developer and want to use some of the more advanced features of the NewsBar, there is a complete developer guide that will walk you through all of the options. If you run a blog on Blogger, the NewsBar is already built in. To add it to your blog, just edit your blog's layout, and add the "Newsreel" page element.

A few controls that might complement your use of the NewsBar are, The YouTube VideoBar, The LocalSearch Control for Google Maps, the Slideshow Control, and the Dynamic Feed Control.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Posted by Lucy Zhang, News Engineering Team

One of our goals at Google News is to offer as many different perspectives on the news as possible. That means bringing content from multiple sources together in a way we hope you find to be organized and relevant. Now we're adding video to the mix: we're showing related news videos along with our news articles to give you a broader spectrum of info available. You'll see the prefix "Video" next to story titles, and clicking on these video links will open a video player directly on the page so you can watch the video right there.




Today, viewing news videos or other content types on the web can be a frustrating experience. You often get videos that don't play, sites that require different video player downloads, or have misleading descriptions of the content. That's why we're working with YouTube so you can easily view online videos without any downloads required and regardless of what browser you're using.

For our initial launch, we have included several top news sources such as CBS, Reuters, and a number of local Hearst TV stations. Over the next few months, we'll continue to add new sources as fast as we can. Right now we're just offering this addition in the U.S., the UK, and Ireland; we hope to make it available in other languages and editions soon.

We're excited to add this to your Google News experience, so give it a try and let us know what you think.
Link - from Google News Blog
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From viewing videos on YouTube to screening family events, people love being able to watch something exactly as it happened. And as webcams have become popular, more and more of us are realizing that video is the next best thing to an in-person conversation. Today we're introducing Gmail voice and video chat, which lets you have free voice and video conversations right from within Gmail.

Video chatting from Gmail is as easy as sending an instant message. With our team spread out across Google offices in Sweden and the U.S., it's been really handy in helping us work together. Just click on the new "Video & more" menu in a Gmail chat window and select "Start video chat" or "Start voice chat." You can switch to a full screen view or pop out the chat window and change the size and positioning as you wish. Of course, not everyone has a webcam, but even if you don't, you can still have voice conversations alongside your email and regular chat. Take a look at this short video to see more:



Gmail voice and video chat will be rolled out globally over the next day or so for Macs and PCs. The first time you use this feature, you'll be prompted to download and install a small plugin. To get started, visit http://www.gmail.com/videochat or click on the "Options" menu in a Gmail chat window and choose "Add voice/video chat." Find out more on our Gmail Blog.

Posted by Serge Lachapelle, Product Manager, Stockholm
Link - from Official Google Blog
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Posted by Wei Luo, Tech Lead Manager, Google Earth

I read a lot of news by surfing the Internet, as do many of my colleagues and friends, and I've always dreamed of a way to browse news based on geography. What's happening in Paris today? What are the top headlines in Japan?

In collaboration with The New York Times, we've come up with a solution: The New York Times offers geo-coded news, and Google Earth offers the platform for reading that news in a 3D browser. This is the first time we've endeavored to show news updated in real time, and we're very excited to work with this first-class publication to bring you the latest and greatest news.



To experience this new way of getting your daily dose of news, launch the latest version of Google Earth and make sure the "Geographic Web" folder is turned on. Click on a New York Times placemark and you will see the latest news and features pertaining to that geographic region. Want to see more than just headlines? Click on the "Show this layer" button at the top of the preview bubble and you'll get a list of news articles dating back one month.

Now, fly around Earth and catch up on news of your favorite places. Whether it's your dream vacation destination, a country you are fascinated with, the latest U.S. presidential primary cities or your hometown, just fly and enjoy. You can also try viewing The New York Times layer along with photos from Panoramio, videos from YouTube or any number of other options from the Layers panel to experience the full range and depth of information available to you in Google Earth.

Don't worry about staying on top of things. This layer is updated every 15 minutes to offer the latest headlines for those with a big news appetite.



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