*Google for Non-Profits Newsletter** - September, 2008*
It's back-to-school season here at Google, and we've got a lot of great
stuff for you and some exciting opportunities in this month's newsletter.
Please especially don't miss our non-profit
survey<https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pJhSqSo19URJTAyRBk7igEQ>,
the results of which we will use to make our products even more useful for
non-profits.
--
Non-profit survey - It's not the usual yada yada.
Chrome
Google Map Maker
Knol
Interview with Camron Assadi, Mercy Corps
Google goes to the Amazon
AdWords and Web tools trainings
Free the Airwaves campaign
Google Street View in New Orleans
YouTube captions
Analytics in Google Sites
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Non-profit survey - It's not the usual yada yada.
In the coming months, we will devote more engineering time and resources to
making Google products and technologies more useful specifically for
non-profits. Before we get to work, we need your help finding the features
and improvements that would make the biggest difference for you and your
organization. This is a big opportunity, and we hope to have you involved.
If you have a few minutes to spare, please complete this
survey<https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pJhSqSo19URJTAyRBk7igEQ>and
forward the link on to your other friends and colleagues in the
non-profit community. If you're able to complete it by Friday, September
19th, we'd be much obliged.
Here's the full link to the survey:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pJhSqSo19URJTAyRBk7igEQ
Thanks for helping us be a more effective contributor to all of the great
work that you do.
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Chrome
Chrome <http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html> is Google's new
open source browser, designed for the future of cloud computing and online
applications. What you'll notice is what you won't notice: Chrome is fast.
When a web site misbehaves, Chrome closes just the window or tab containing
that web site -- not the whole browser and all of the Internet applications
you have running. Chrome also doesn't take up a lot of screen real estate
and it's not intrusive with alerts or in the way it handles downloads. Best
of all, Chrome is open source, so anyone can use the code to make it even
better or build their own browser and further stimulate innovation on the
Internet. If you use Gmail or any of the Google Apps within your
organization, this is the browser for you. To learn more about Chrome, click
here <http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html>.
If you have a Windows machine, you can download the
beta<http://www.google.com/chrome>now, and we're hard at work on
versions for Mac and Linux.
Try it, we think you'll like it.
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Google Map Maker
In countries like India, great maps and comprehensive local data are hard to
come by, and traditional mapping approaches are stretched to the limit
because infrastructure and local businesses are evolving at a furious
pace. This
challenge inspired the team in Google India to design and build Google Map
Maker <http://mapmaker.google.com/>, which enables users everywhere to
create rich, deep maps and fresh local data. You can mark your favorite
spots in your city and hometown, add features such as roads, parks and
buildings, tag small businesses to help users find them, and collaborate to
map neighborhoods of interest.
Learn more about Map Maker in this
video<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjoXsot4Xao>,
or click here <http://www.google.com/mapmaker> to try it yourself.
--
Knol
The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth
knowing is on the web, and that goes for much of the knowledge and expertise
of non-profits. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads
and within organizational walls: millions of people know useful things and
billions more could benefit from that knowledge.
Knol <http://knol.google.com/> was built to help experts share their
knowledge with the world. Knols, which are units of knowledge, all have a
unique and transparent author who puts his or her name behind the content,
and readers are invited to collaborate and add information with the author's
approval.
Non-profits know a lot of useful information, and Knol is a great platform
to start sharing that knowledge with the world. Have a
look<http://knol.google.com/>and let us know what you think.
--
Interview with Camron Assadi, Mercy Corps
Camron Assadi, the Deputy Internet Director of Mercy Corps recently sat down
to talk<http://www.netsquared.org/blog/jedsundwall/gfundraising-interview-cam...>to
NetSquared <http://www.netsquared.org/> about how Mercy Corps
employees use Google
Grants <http://www.google.com/grants/> and applications like Gmail to stay
connected with each other and with their stakeholders around the globe.
Here's what he had to say about Google
Apps<http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/npo/index.html>,
which gives you free hosted e-mail, documents, spreadsheets and more:
"We were an early adopter of Google Apps before they released Google Apps
for non-profits. We were also an early adopter of Gmail, hosted e-mail. It's
so great. For an organization like Mercy Corps that is distributed in 35
countries, it takes the IT load off of the headquarters office, and each
office can really manage their own e-mail systems because it makes it so
easy to use."
...and here's what he had to say about Google Grants, which awards
non-profits free advertising on Google.com search results:
"We use that grant quite heavily. Since 2003, there's been three quarters of
a million dollars in advertising value given to us. It's more than a million
visitors over five years. The value of that, besides the dollar amount, is
immense to Mercy Corps. It's probably responsible for half our web traffic.
It is wonderful."
For more from Camron's interview, click
here<http://www.netsquared.org/blog/jedsundwall/gfundraising-interview-cam...>
.
--
Google goes to the Amazon
Several weeks ago, a group of Googlers traveled to Brazil to conduct our
first-ever project in the Amazon. Organized by the Google Earth
Outreach<http://earth.google.com/outreach>team, we went at the special
invitation of Amazon Chief Almir Naramayoga
Surui, who'd invited us down to train his people on using Google Earth,
YouTube, blogs and other Internet tools in order to preserve their history
and culture, protect their rainforest, and create a sustainable future for
their tribe.
This was an unusual request especially because, until recently, the Surui
Indians used stone tools and hunted and fished with bows and arrows.
Continue reading<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/ragogmakan-google-goes-to-amaz...>about
our trip to the Amazon on the Official Google Blog.
--
AdWords and Web tools trainings
Google offers powerful tools to help non-profits attract visitors to their
sites and make their sites more accessible and useful. It's generally pretty
simple to set up and start using products like
AdWords<http://adwords.google.com/>(Google
Grants <http://www.google.com/grants/>), Webmaster
Tools<https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/>and
Analytics <http://www.google.com/analytics/>, but most people need some
extra help to take their use of these tools to the next level (that is,
unless you have time to read the manual).
We want to make sure non-profits can leverage our technologies to their full
capacity, and that's why we've begun offering seminars both online and
in-person for many of our tools. Last month, we teamed up with
TechSoup<http://techsoup.com/>for a webinar
on AdWords <http://googlegrants.blogspot.com/2008/08/webinar-wrap-up.html>,
and before that we did a whole
bunch<http://www.google.com/intl/en/websiteoptimizer/tutorials.html>of
trainings on our web tools (check out the Google
Trifecta <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yKjrdcC8wA> video in particular).
For folks who want to learn AdWords at a more advanced level and are willing
to invest a little bit of money, we've begun a series of five
webinars<http://www.nten.org/events/webinar/2008/09/11/google-grants-series>for
non-profits with
NTEN <http://www.nten.org/>, and we've even started offering in-person
AdWords trainings<http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/08/introducing-adwords-101-201-and-3...>at
the 101, 201 and 301 levels in cities across the U.S.
Where can you find out about more opportunities like these as they come up?
Stay tuned to this newsletter or keep an eye on Google blogs like our
Grants<http://googlegrants.blogspot.com/>,
Webmaster <http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/>, and
Analytics<http://analytics.blogspot.com/>blogs.
--
Free the Airwaves campaign
Google doesn't normally ask its users to sign petitions advocating any
particular cause, but in the case of our Free the Airwaves
campaign<http://www.freetheairwaves.com/>,
the opportunity is too great and the public interest too clear to not ask
everyone to get involved -- especially the non-profit and activist community
that are some of the Internet's biggest advocates and heaviest users.
For quite some time we've been talking
about<http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/05/larry-page-talks-about...>the
enormous potential of the unused airwaves between
broadcast TV channels<http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/12/today-tv-static-tomorr...>("white
spaces") to provide affordable, high-speed wireless Internet
connectivity across the U.S. (and if successful, potentially in other
countries, too), even in hard-to-reach rural areas. Call it "WiFi on
steroids," with much greater capacity and range than current WiFi
technologies and spectrum allow.
In order for this opportunity to become a reality in the U.S., the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) must allow unlicensed use of this "white
space" spectrum. Read more about the Free the Airwaves campaign on our
blog<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/time-to-free-airwaves.html>,
hear activists speak directly
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=houUIkCmP_Q>about the campaign, or
take
action now <http://www.freetheairwaves.com/> at FreeTheAirwaves.com.
--
Street View in New Orleans
Last month, Google launched our popular Street View product in New Orleans,
so you can now get an on-the-ground perspective of New Orleans from any web
browser. At the time of Street View's launch, Lieutenant Governor Mitch
Landrieu of Louisiana shared this
message<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/seeing-new-orleans-through-str...>on
our blog
:
"In this time of recovery and rebuilding, it is important that we share real
images of life in Louisiana and on the Gulf Coast. As you explore the
streets of New Orleans, you will discover a city marked by extremes. You
will see some areas spared the worst of Katrina's fury which have quickly
recovered, and you will find other neighborhoods that remain flattened by
the floodwaters that broke the levees. You will see that our residents call
both FEMA trailers and antebellum mansions home. What you might not see is
the incredible spirit of those who have given themselves to this city."
Read more<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/seeing-new-orleans-through-str...>from
the Lieutenant Governor
or check out Street View in New Orleans <http://tinyurl.com/6bw8k4> for
yourself.
--
YouTube captions
If you're a non-profit organization with global membership, or you have
members who are hearing-impaired, YouTube is making it easier for you to
communicate. A few weeks ago, YouTube launched a new captioning
feature<http://uk.youtube.com/blog?entry=7RN6iHLHX_w>which allows
people who would not otherwise understand the audio track in a
video to follow along. You can add captions to one of your
videos<http://www.youtube.com/my_videos>by uploading a closed caption
file using the "Captions and Subtitles" menu
on the editing page. To add several captions to a video, simply upload
multiple files. If you want to include foreign subtitles in multiple
languages, upload a separate file for each language. There are over 120
languages to choose from and you can add any title you want for each
caption.
To find out more about the new captions feature and view examples of them in
use, read the full blog post here<http://uk.youtube.com/blog?entry=7RN6iHLHX_w>
.
--
Analytics in Google Sites
Google Analytics <http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html> is a free
online service with stats, graphs, and reports about how people use your
site, including what pages on your site are most popular. You can use Google
Analytics with any site you own -- including now Google
Sites<http://sites.google.com/>.
Whether you've set up a Google Site for public use or private internal use,
data about how people are using your site is always helpful for making
improvements.
Check out this Help Center
article<http://sites.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=97459&topic=14998>for
instructions on how to track visitors to your Google Site using
Analytics.
--
That's it for this month's newsletter; did you hear about our
survey<https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pJhSqSo19URJTAyRBk7igEQ>?
As always, please send any suggestions for the newsletter or Google for
Non-Profits site <http://www.google.com/nonprofits> our way.
Thanks for reading.
Galen from the Google for Non-Profits Team
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