BBC's Planet Earth returns as a live simulcast next week -- but not in the US (video)

For fans of HD and / or nature documentaries, the BBC Planet Earth series is the unquestioned champion, and to provide a proper followup the Brits are improving it the only way they know how: doing it live. What the broadcaster calls its "most ambitions global wildlife series ever" will air simultaneously in 140 countries (more on that bit later) starting Sunday May 6th, then every Thursday and Sunday for three weeks. The plan is to track animals in seven different locations around the world in real time as they struggle for survival and broadcast it all in HD. One segment features Top Gear's Richard Hammond following a pride of lions across southern Kenya, while another will track black bears in Minnesota. The bad news? If you're in the US or Canada you're not on that 140 country list and won't be seeing any of this live. We're not sure if there's time to make this a campaign issue in the 2012 presidential election but we figure that, or at least bugging BBC America (while we're on the subject -- where's our global iPlayer?) is worth a try. Check after the break for a press release with all the details on where and when it is airing, as well as a trailer.

Continue reading BBC's Planet Earth returns as a live simulcast next week -- but not in the US (video)

BBC's Planet Earth returns as a live simulcast next week -- but not in the US (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Obama Campaign Ad: Forward (Little green footballs)

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Greylock Deepens Enterprise Experience, Adds Former BladeLogic CEO And BMC President As Venture Partner

Greylock Partners has been long focused on two distinct areas when it comes to venture investments?consumer and enterprise. The last consumer partner hire the firm made was former CEO of Mozilla, John Lilly. And today, the firm is deepening its experience in its enterprise practice with the addition of Dev Ittycheria as Venture Partner in Greylock's Silicon Valley office. At Greylock, Ittycheria will be focusing on investing in enterprise software companies, with a focus on cloud-based services and enabling IT infrastructure. Ittycheria is a long-time enterprise veteran with a history of not only founding successful startups, but also helping lead established companies towards revenue growth. He co-founded BladeLogic, which he led through a successful IPO and eventually a sale to BMC Software in 2008 for $900 million.

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Obama campaign video teases new slogan: 'Forward' (Los Angeles Times)

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Right Back at It (talking-points-memo)

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PSA: Space X streaming test-firing of Falcon 9 at 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT

Today, SpaceX is test-firing the engines of its Falcon 9 rocket in preparation for that oft-delayed May 7th launch for its Dragon capsule. You'll be able to watch the static-fire test from the comfort of your own desk by pointing a browser at the company website (link below) from 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT. If successful, then the rocket will lift-off properly in a week's time, with designs on being the first commercial craft used to resupply the International Space Station.

Continue reading PSA: Space X streaming test-firing of Falcon 9 at 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT

PSA: Space X streaming test-firing of Falcon 9 at 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mobile strategy discussion recap: The Mobile Playbook

In case you missed it, last Wednesday we launched The Mobile Playbook and held a mobile strategy panel via a Hangout on Air on the Think with Google Google+ page.  The panel of leading mobile experts across multiple industries shared their perspectives on the 5 questions explored in The Mobile Playbook that every business should ask to win with mobile.  On our panel we heard from:

• Joao Machado - Director of Mobile, OMD
• Michelle Ogle - Digital Marketing and Affiliate Strategy Manager, Starwood Hotels and Resorts
• Joshua Palau - VP of Digital Sales and Marketing, Comcast
• Amit Shah - Director of Online, Mobile and Social Media, 1-800Flowers.com

Some of the key takeaways from the panel included:

• Insights into how Comcast saw tremendous mobile traffic even before they built out a mobile specific experience
• Tip’s from 1-800Flowers.com’s award-winning mobile website strategy
• Starwood hotels’ insights from their successful hyper local marketing campaigns that explored the unique demands of mobile travelers
• OMD’s perspective on the differences between tablets and smartphones
• Insights from the group about how they have structured their organizations for success in mobile

Check out the highlights from our panel below and visit www.themobileplaybook.com to explore these questions further and see how this panel and others are approaching and winning with mobile.  If you’d like to view the entire panel discussion, you can do so here.

 

Click here to watch highlights from our Hangout on Air with mobile thought leaders

Posted by: Jason Spero, Head of Global Mobile Sales and Strategy

Making Search Ads work for businesses with mobile apps

Mobile search is a powerful channel for businesses to engage with customers that are searching for them or for their application. Last year, we introduced improvements to click-to-download ads, and for publishers, launched Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps. Today we’d like to share several new features that will make it even easier for AdWords advertisers to promote, track and monetize their mobile app. For the first time, businesses can use AdWords mobile search ads as a holistic solution to promote, monetize and track their app downloads.

Promote your app using the new Mobile App extension
All AdWords advertisers will receive the option to use a new Ad Extension - the Mobile App extension; a new way to promote their mobile apps. Not all mobile users searching for a business may know that the business has an app. The Mobile App extension allows advertisers to append a mobile app download link to their search ads. With this extension, advertisers can promote their mobile app to users who may simply be searching for their brand, product or service.

The mobile app extension gives advertisers a new distribution channel for their mobile apps and users a new discovery medium. Beta participants saw a 6% lift in CTR for campaigns using Mobile App extensions, compared to control campaigns.

The new Mobile App Extension found in the “Ad Extensions” tab. Use its new ‘app picker’ function to easily find your company’s app in Google Play Store or iTunes App Store

GrubHub, a web and mobile service that connects diners to restaurants and simplifies online ordering for delivery and pick up, was an early beta tester of the Mobile App extension. In addition to pointing mobile customers searching for food delivery services to their mobile website, they used the mobile app extension to add an additional link to their app download page. Abby Hunt from the GrubHub team explains the importance of reaching customers on mobile: “GrubHub is dedicated to feeding our diners anytime, anywhere - this is why it is important for us to reach our diners on their mobile devices. Hungry people are checking their mobile devices on the way home from work or walking to class, and we need to be where they are.”

GrubHub was an early tester of the Mobile App extension, allowing hungry customers searching for their business the option of accessing information on their mobile site or app via an ad.

Enriching click-to-download ads with more useful app information
Advertisers running campaigns solely focused on promoting and driving downloads of their app will benefit from recent changes that add more useful information to their click-to-download ads. Last year, we added mobile app icons next to the text ad. We’ve now incorporated richer information about your mobile app right in the ad unit itself. When a user searches and your click-to-download ad appears, they’ll be able to see image previews, a description of your app, and when applicable, pricing and rating information.

All this new information in the click-to-download ad is automatically drawn from the Google Play Store and iTunes App Store. We hope that customers will benefit from recent changes that make click-to-download ads more engaging and for users searching on Google.

Quicken Loans Inc., the nation’s largest online home lender and a top five retail lender uses click-to-download ads to promote their Mortgage Calculator App. They’ve seen a rapid increase in the number of customer searching for them on mobile. Greg Broda, Paid Search Partner Manager at Quicken Loans explains: "When it came time to promote the new Quicken Loans Mortgage Calculator app, the decision to utilize Google’s mobile click-to-download ad platform was a no-brainer. The placement has allowed us to share the app with a very targeted and engaged group of users."

Quicken Loans runs click-to-download ads, now complete with app previews and pricing information,  that point users to their app download page.

Track Android app downloads through AdWords
Businesses will now be able to track downloads of their Android app from their AdWords campaigns as an AdWords conversion. This means that when a user downloads a mobile app from the Google Play store via a click-to-download ad or a mobile app extension, we will count their download as a conversion.  For more information on how to set this up, visit this page. 

Monetizing your mobile app with Custom Search Ads for Mobile Apps
We’ve now brought Custom Search Ads to tablet apps via the recent launch of a new AdMob SDK. Tablet and mobile app users will receive ads relevant to what they're searching for inside an app, and businesses running mobile apps will have a new tool to monetize their content and services.

Mobile apps represent a significant opportunity for businesses to reach their customers, and mobile search is an important channel to reach these customers. We’re looking forward to bringing new products in the coming year that will help businesses grow by promoting, tracking, and monetizing their mobile apps with Google.  

Posted by Anurag Agrawal, Product Manager, Mobile Search Ads

MicroStylus Review

For 99.9% of the things you do on your smartphone you don’t really need a stylus. But if you’re as addicted to Draw Something as I am, you may find that a stylus is almost a necessary accessory (say that 3 times fast for bonus points). At least if you want your opponent to be [...]

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Analysis: Obama falls short of meteoric expectations abroad (reuters)

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Who's talking about MADE?

Here's some of what the industry press is saying about UCLan MADE:

Hold the Front Page - University to host masterclasses for journalism entrepreneurs

How-Do.co.uk - UCLan seeks entrepreneurial journalists for startup weekend

Press Gazette - News project to help journalism startups

as well as introducing MADE to the wider conversation about entrepreneurship in journalism:

Saddleworth News founder explains why hyperlocal doesn't pay

"I'm a journalist, not a salesman," writes Jones. "And I found selling ads on Saddleworth News difficult. Despite my site's reach of more than 20,000 unique users per month in an area of only 24,000 people, it was hard to persuade the butcher and the baker of the value of taking an ad: much easier for them to do what they've always done and use the glossy magazines or the daily paper.

These are exactly the sort of problems MADE was set up to deal with. If you're a hyperlocal news site and finding it hard to monetise your content then speak to us.

Android Central Editors' App Picks for April 28, 2012

Jared's off with something called "family" this week, (seriously, who has ever heard of that?), so I'm filling in for him. Anyway, every week the folks at Android Central like to share with y'all, the best darn Android community on the internet, what it is we fancy, app-wise. Jump after the break to see what our selections are, and let us know what you're digging in the comments!

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