Launching the Indie Games Accelerator in Asia - helping gaming startups find success on Google Play

Emerging markets now account for more than 40% of game installs on Google Play. Rapid smartphone adoption in these regions presents a new base of engaged gamers that are looking for high-quality mobile gaming experiences. At Google Play, we are focused on helping local game developers from these markets achieve their full potential and make the most of this opportunity.

Indie Games Accelerator is a new initiative to support top indie game startups from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam who are looking to supercharge their growth on Android. This four-month program is a special edition of Launchpad Accelerator, designed in close collaboration with Google Play, featuring a comprehensive gaming curriculum and mentorship from top mobile gaming experts.

Successful participants will be invited to attend two all-expense-paid gaming bootcamps at the Google Asia-Pacific office in Singapore, where they will receive personalized mentorship from Google teams and industry experts. Additional benefits include Google Cloud Platform credits, invites to exclusive Google and industry events, and more.

Visit the program website to find out more and apply now.

New and improved Blogger mobile apps

Inspiration for a new post can happen at any place and time: on the couch, while shopping, at a game, or in the kitchen. Fortunately, mobile devices enable you to stay connected wherever you are.

With that in mind, we just launched updated apps for both Android and iOS. The updated apps include a visual facelift and other features which make it easier for you to create and share -- wherever your imagination runs wild. Some of the more notable improvements include:

• Landscape support for composing posts
• Sharing to Google+
• Ability to view a scheduled post time
• International support in 30+ languages
• iPad support

We hope you enjoy these improvements, and keep writing great blog content on the go.
Get Blogger in the Play store to get the latest on your Android phone or the App Store for iOS devices.

In AdSense Mobile becomes a core component

We launched AdSense for mobile content before the smartphone revolution when everyone had a flip phone. Our goal was to help pioneering publishers monetize their mobile content. Since then, we’ve seen mobile technology advance and an increasing number of consumers are viewing content from “smarter” mobile devices. To make it easier for publishers to use AdSense to monetize mobile web pages, we've migrated all mobile ad unit sizes, including the mobile banner ad unit, into the core product.

All mobile ad sizes, including the 320x50, will be available through AdSense for content.

The new AdSense ad code automatically formats the ads for the device. We will continue to support high-end ad requests from our AdSense for mobile content product until May 1, 2012. We strongly encourage publishers who have designed mobile web pages for high-end devices to use the new AdSense ad code to avoid disruptions to service. Note that publishers with mobile websites built for WAP browsers should continue to monetize using AdSense for mobile content.


We continue to be committed to helping our AdSense publishers monetize their content as the mobile ecosystem evolves. For more information about AdSense or to learn more about how this transition may impact you, please visit our AdSense Help Center.

Android and Security

The last year has been a phenomenal one for the Android ecosystem. Device activations grew 250% year-on-year, and the total number of app downloads from Android Market topped 11 billion. As the platform continues to grow, we’re focused on bringing you the best new features and innovations - including in security.

Adding a new layer to Android security

Today we’re revealing a service we’ve developed, codenamed Bouncer, which provides automated scanning of Android Market for potentially malicious software without disrupting the user experience of Android Market or requiring developers to go through an application approval process.

The service performs a set of analyses on new applications, applications already in Android Market, and developer accounts. Here’s how it works: once an application is uploaded, the service immediately starts analyzing it for known malware, spyware and trojans. It also looks for behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving, and compares it against previously analyzed apps to detect possible red flags. We actually run every application on Google’s cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior. We also analyze new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back.

Android malware downloads are decreasing
The service has been looking for malicious apps in Market for a while now, and between the first and second halves of 2011, we saw a 40% decrease in the number of potentially-malicious downloads from Android Market. This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise. While it’s not possible to prevent bad people from building malware, the most important measurement is whether those bad applications are being installed from Android Market - and we know the rate is declining significantly.

Android makes malware less potent
In addition to using new services to help prevent malware, we designed Android from the beginning to make mobile malware less disruptive. In the PC model, malware has more potential to misuse your information. We learned from this approach, designing Android for Internet-connected devices. Some of Android’s core security features are:

• Sandboxing: The Android platform uses a technique called “sandboxing” to put virtual walls between applications and other software on the device. So, if you download a malicious application, it can't access data on other parts of your phone and its potential harm is drastically limited.
• Permissions: Android provides a permission system to help you understand the capabilities of the apps you install, and manage your own preferences. That way, if you see a game unnecessarily requests permission to send SMS, for example, you don’t need to install it.
• Malware removal: Android is designed to prevent malware from modifying the platform or hiding from you, so it can be easily removed if your device is affected. Android Market also has the capability of remotely removing malware from your phone or tablet, if required.

No security approach is foolproof, and added scrutiny can often lead to important improvements. Our systems are getting better at detecting and eliminating malware every day, and we continue to invite the community to work with us to keep Android safe.

How to monetize your mobile-friendly website

In our previous blog post we talked about how to create a mobile-friendly website. Now we’d like to show you how to best monetize your mobile site with AdSense Mobile product offerings.

AdSense for Mobile Content
AdSense for mobile content allows publishers to generate earnings from their mobile web pages using targeted Google ads. Below are some key features.

• Contextual targeting ensures ads match the content of your mobile site. 
• Google advertisers bid directly for your mobile inventory. 
• Mobile-specific ad formats are optimized for the small screen.

For mobile websites, AdSense automatically detects the type of phone viewing your site and delivers ads to match. For example, if someone views your site through a high-end smartphone, we'll deliver mobile ads specifically designed for the device’s full HTML browser.

It’s important to note that AdSense for mobile content ad units are meant to be used in mobile websites and not mobile applications - as noted in our policies. If you’re looking for an advertising solution for your mobile application, sign up for AdMob.

Custom Search Ads for Mobile
If you currently use Custom Search Ads for your desktop, we’re happy to let you know that publishers can now also apply to use this feature on mobile sites and apps. Custom Search Ads for Mobile are highly targeted ads that are based on user queries from a mobile website.

These ads typically monetize at a high rate and publishers are able to customize the look and feel of the ads to best integrate with the user experience on the page. The ads can be fixed to the frame or scroll along with the results.

If you're already an AdSense publisher and want to get started with ads on your mobile site, you’ll find the Mobile Content button under the ‘My Ads’ tab. If you're not a publisher yet, sign up.

Gmail for mobile, now sharper and smoother

On the mobile team, we strive to produce web apps which look and feel just like installed apps. In the past few weeks, we’ve released a number of features which make Gmail for mobile look sharper and feel smoother.

Pull down to refresh
You can now pull down to refresh your message list and conversation on all iOS and Playbook devices. To refresh, simply touch the message list, drag downwards and release.



High resolution icons
For those of you using Gmail for mobile on an iPhone 4 Retina display, the icons and graphics are now at a higher resolution, making Gmail for mobile sharper.


Transitions
When you tap on a conversation, tap back to the inbox, go to the menu or go back, the view will slide left or right. This new transition animation is a quick, small indication that makes the view change feel smoother.

Curious web designers often ask us how we implement certain features. In this case, we used a combination of up to eight different CSS3 transitions and Javascript to get things to look just right.

As always, go to mail.google.com on your mobile browser to check out the latest updates to Gmail for mobile and Follow @pakgoogl

A new and improved Gmail gadget for iGoogle

With iGoogle, you can personalize your homepage with the information on the web that’s most useful and relevant to you. You can check email, watch videos, catch up on the latest news, check the weather, and more. One of the most common iGoogle requests we’ve been hearing is to update the iGoogle Gmail gadget. Because the Gmail gadget has to share space with other gadgets on the screen, the Gmail experience can be limited to an area not much larger than the size of a business card. Since we’ve already built an experience optimized for small screens with Gmail for mobile, we decided to adapt the mobile web version for iGoogle and are now rolling out an updated gadget.

A new Android Market for phones, with books and movies

Recently, we’ve been hard at work improving Android Market to give you new ways to find great applications and games, purchase books, and rent movies. Today, we’re releasing a new version of Android Market which makes all of these available on phones (Android 2.2 and higher).

In the U.S., you’ll be able to rent thousands of movies, starting at $1.99, right from Android Market on your phone. With the Videos app, available in Android Market, there’s no more waiting for downloads, syncing, or worrying about storage space. Simply sign into Android Market with your Google account, and you can rent movies from anywhere – the web, or your Android phone or tablet – and start watching instantly. You can also download movies to your device so they’re available for viewing when you don’t have an internet connection.

Also in the U.S., you can now purchase books from Android Market on your phone. Like movie rentals, books are linked to your Google account, so they’re instantly available across all of your devices – computer, phone, or tablet – without the need for wires or downloads.

You’ll be delighted to find we’ve overhauled Android Market to make it faster, easier, and more fun to discover great apps, movies, and books. We’ve created more space to feature some of the most interesting content of the week on the home page. We’ve added more top charts, with newer, more relevant items, and we’ve made it easy to swipe through these charts as you browse the store. We’ve also introduced new collections of great content, like staff picks and Editors’ Choice apps.

The new Android Market will be rolling out in the coming weeks to Android 2.2 and higher phones around the world. You don’t need to do anything - the update is automatic on supported phones. If you’re in the U.S., you’ll also be able to download the Videos app, rent movies, and buy books once you receive the new Android Market.

Your phone is about to get a lot more interesting! Enjoy the new Android Market.

"Mobile"-ize your business with Google Sites

Building on last week’s post on automatic mobile rendering, we’re excited to introduce five new templates to make it easier for businesses to create mobile landing pages. You can also start from scratch with our custom template if you’re feeling creative.

Watch the video below to see how “small” businessman, Bob, transformed his business using Google Sites:

Visit sites.google.com/mobilize to check out the five templates.

Introducing new features to Google mobile search

Our thirst for knowledge extends beyond the time we spend in front of our desktop computers. At Google, we are seeing mobile search grow at an exponential rate, increasing five-fold worldwide in just the past two years - a rate comparable to the early days of desktop Google Search. Today on mobile, we can get whatever information we’re looking for anytime, anywhere.

And I'm not just talking about looking up basic information like the weather or a stock quote, which is what people used to do in the early days of mobile search. As mobile devices have become more powerful and connected to faster networks, smartphone users are doing a surprisingly diverse set of search tasks -- from simple lookups, to tasks that involve multiple complex searches.

Announcing Blogger Mobile Templates

A few months ago we introduced mobile templates to Blogger in Draft. Today, we’re excited to announce that not only will these templates be available to everyone, we’ll be supporting all 27 Template Designer templates. We invite you to make your blog smartphone-friendly by going to the Dashboard > Settings > Email & Mobile tab and enabling the mobile template option.

Blogger mobile templates are mobile-optimized versions of our Template Designer templates. If you are using one of these templates, when you enable the mobile template option your blog will begin rendering using the mobile version of the same variant. Even if you are not using a Template Designer template, or using a heavily-customized version of one, you can still enable this feature to have your blog start rendering in a generic default mobile template that we have created.



Some of our feature highlights:

• Preview: Get a glimpse of how your blog will be displayed by clicking on the Mobile Preview button. You can also see it on your smartphone by scanning the QR-code.
• Automatic redirection: Viewers will see the mobile version of your blog when accessing from smartphones*.
• Template support: We are now supporting all 27 templates. Some gadgets are also supported**.
• Mobile ads: Mobile AdSense ads will be displayed at the top of the post pages and at the bottom of the index page if the blog has an AdSense gadget or in-line blog ads.
• Comments and videos: Viewers on smartphone devices will be able to make comments and watch videos.

We hope you enjoy the mobile templates. As always, we would love to hear from you so please let us know what you think through our feedback form, and stay tuned for future improvements.

*WebKit-based mobile browsers are supported for this launch.
**Supported gadgets/elements in this launch: Header, Blog, Profile, AdSense, Attribution.

What’s New With Blogger

2010 was a big year for Blogger. We cemented ourselves as one of the largest blogging platforms and the sixth largest website in the world, according to Alexa. Blogger users published more than half a billion blog posts, which were read by more than 400 million active readers across the globe. We introduced template designer, real-time stats,comments spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts, and more. And to top it all off, we were dubbed the most reliable blogging service around.

2011 promises to be another exciting year.



To start, we’re kicking things off at SXSW by giving folks a sneak peek at our next-generation user interface. The new design is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also uses Google Web Toolkit, delivering the latest in web technology.

Current post editor

New post editor

Current dashboard

New dashboard

We’ll also be showcasing our new content discovery feature that lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you’re currently reading.

These are just a couple of new features we want to share with you. We look forward to unveiling more throughout 2011!

If you’re in Austin for SXSW, be sure to visit us at the Google booth—or come by and enjoy a drink with us tonight at our annual Blogger bash.

ذارئع:بلاگربز

Mobile editing in 45 languages, printing in spreadsheets

Last year, we launched mobile editing in English and more page sizes in Google documents. We’re excited to announce that we’ve expanded on both of these features this week by adding 44 more mobile editing languages and more print sizes to Google spreadsheets.

Mobile editing now in 45 languages
You can now edit your documents on the go in 45 languages on Android with Froyo (version 2.2) and on iOS devices (version 3.0+) including the iPad. Learn more at mobile.google.com/docs.

More print sizes
Following in the footsteps of last week’s hide gridlines update, there are now eight more print sizesin Google spreadsheets, including tabloid, statement, executive, folio and A3, A5, B4 and B5.

As always, feedback in the comments and on the forums is appreciated.