7/24 The Official Google Blog

Announcing the 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge winners July 23, 2009 at 8:00 pm This year we held the second Google Online Marketing Challenge — a global university competition, launched last year, that gives undergraduate and post-graduate students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Working with their professors, teams receive the equivalent of US$200 to spend on Google AdWords advertising, then work with a local business to devise an effective online marketing campaign. Teams are given three weeks to mastermind the strategy before submitting a campaign report to an international judging panel of professors. This year's Challenge was bigger and better in every way — more teams, more students, more universities and a significant improvement in the quality of campaigns and reports. We're thrilled to report that 2,187 teams took part from across 57 countries, representing a 36% increase in participation from last year. The Challenge continues to develop as one of the world's biggest university competitions. We're excited today to announce the results. Our global winners come from Deakin University, Australia and were taught by Chia Yao Lee. The team of Andrew Kidd, Richard Blakely, Kevin Fung, Clinton Hinze, Katalin Kish and Howard Lien worked with a local kids play center, www.littletigrrs.com.au, to create a well-crafted campaign that highly impressed our judges. Clockwise from top left: Richard Blakely, Chia Yao Lee (professor), Katalin Kish, Kevin Fung, Bardo Fraunholz (professor), Howard Lien, Andrew Kidd, Fiona and Mike (from Little Tigrrs), Clinton Hinze and Mick, The Big Hearted Tiger Team spokesman Andrew Kidd gave us some insight into their winning campaign: "After discussions with the business owners, we decided we needed to conduct three separate campaigns. One would promote the play center to customers outside a 10 kilometre geographic radius, another would attract more mothers' groups to the center, and the third one would attract more party and group event bookings. Visitors to their website more than doubled compared with the same period last year. We knew we had developed a strong campaign — but to win the global competition is outstanding." The team and their professor are off to Mountain View, California for a tour of the Googleplex. To help in their ongoing studies, each team member will also receive an Apple MacBook Pro. There were also three regional winners: for the Americas, the winning team comes from James Madison University in the U.S., while a team from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland won for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In the Asia Pacific region, the winners come from the International College of Management in Sydney, Australia. Here are more details about our winners. We developed the Challenge to benefit everyone involved. We're delighted that thousands of small businesses around the world have seen their online presence improved in just three weeks. Professors tell us that the Challenge has allowed them to deliver a unique, practical teaching and learning exercise. For those students that took part, we hope they have developed some useful online marketing skills which they can use when they graduate and enter the workforce. For anyone interested in competing in the 2010 Challenge, formal registrations will open later this year, but in the meantime you can register your interest. Posted by Lee Hunter, Product Marketing Manager Google Latitude on your iPhone July 23, 2009 at 6:05 pm Earlier this year we announced Google Latitude, a service that lets you and your friends share your locations with each other. You control who gets to see your location and where on the map you appear to others. Today, we're releasing Google Latitude for iPhone and iPod touch, available in the Safari browser. Visit google.com/latitude from your device to start using Latitude. Add a bookmark to your home screen to quickly launch Latitude. Just open Latitude in Safari and tap the + icon > Add to Home Screen > Add. For more details, check out the Google Mobile Blog. Posted by Marc Wilson, Software Engineer It's a bird...it's a plane...it's iGoogle comics themes! July 23, 2009 at 12:14 pm We have always been excited to introduce design flair and whimsy to our user experience, especially on our homepage. Be it through our special holiday logos or special themes for our iGoogle users, we like to open up our homepage as a canvas for artists to express themselves and reach their fans and Google users around the world. Today, I'm particularly excited to announce the new comics themes for iGoogle, just in time for Comic-Con's 40th anniversary. The themes showcase the amazingly diverse world of comics. Browse our gallery (www.google.com/comicsthemes) to choose from nostalgic comic strips like Peanuts, iconic heroes like Batman and Iron Man, or alternative comics greats like Dan Clowes, author of the graphic novel, "Ghost World." The dozens of themes represent talented artists from around the world including Rumiko Takahashi from Japan and Lewis Trondheim of France. To offer his unique perspective as one of the world's most accomplished comics artists, I'm pleased to introduce guest author Jim Lee. In addition to being a recognized industry veteran, he also drew today's beautiful homepage logo incorporating some of DC Comics' most famous characters. During his 20 year career, Jim has worked with DC and Marvel Comics, co-founded Image Comics and also WildStorm Comics – one of our iGoogle themes. His Batman, Superman, X-Men, Iron Man, Fantastic Four and WildC.A.T.s issues have sold millions of copies. Jim is a recipient of the Harvey Award, Golden Panel Award and is widely respected for his contributions as an artist, a creator and a publisher of comics. An artist's POV by Jim Lee Even as the world of comics evolves and embraces a new digital era, it doesn't change the universal, international appeal of the unique art form that is created through the simple marriage of word and picture. I'm excited to have been chosen to help launch this wonderful project. But I'm more elated, both as a professional and as a fan, that so many different types of comics have been chosen to be part of the iGoogle comics themes launch. From the mainstream superhero world of DC that I work in to the mainstays of the newspaper funnies from my childhood, to the Tokyopop manga titles I collect with my teenage daughters to the esoteric and more literary works of Dan Clowes and Gene Yang, two of my favorites; I think the breadth of choices available demonstrates the amazing diversity and the fundamental vitality of the stories comics can tell. Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, and Jim Lee, Comics Creator/Publisher