Top 5 Legal Apps for 2012

Rabu, 18 April 2012 0 komentar

5 Top Android Legal Apps for 2012 - from Lawyer Tech Review. CallTrack is a great app to log telephone calls from billing, as long as you don't mind seeing all of the calls from your spouse in the calendar.

Making the web work for major brands

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In the 1950s, major brand marketers, like movie studios and consumer goods companies, embraced television, helping spark a multi-billion dollar industry—and the beginning of TV’s golden age.

One reason these brands invested in TV was the emergence of new measurement tools, like TV ratings and market research, that helped show which ads were reaching the right audiences and having a positive impact.

Measurability is already at the heart of digital advertising—every second, businesses rely on insights from products like Google Analytics and Google AdWords to help them grow.

But major brands are interested in things like “brand recall” (such as whether consumers remember the name of your cereal), and “brand favorability” (whether they think positively about it), rather than just clicks and online sales. The metrics that the online advertising industry uses today aren’t always equipped to tell that fuller story. Many brands scramble together metrics like clicks, ad impressions, and numerous tools and measurement solutions, trying to make sense of them and—some time later—acting upon the insights they can glean.

The lack of these actionable, truly useful metrics is a key reason that many major brands have been cautious in embracing digital advertising over the past decade, even as high-quality content and millions of users have moved online.

We think that a new generation of measurement solutions will help brands quantify the benefits of investing online and will help to fund the next generation of great online content and services.

Today at the Ad Age Digital Conference we’re introducing the Brand Activate initiative, a new effort to re-imagine online measurement for brand marketers and—crucially—to help brands turn measurement into action, immediately. We're working with the industry and supporting the IAB's Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) coalition on this project.

We believe that the industry’s significant investment in these areas can substantially grow the online advertising pie, help major brands invest for growth, and fund new digital content and services.

Read all the details about this initiative, and the first solutions (Active GRP and Active View) on our Agency blog.

Celebrating the Google Photography Prize Finalists

Senin, 16 April 2012 0 komentar
Back in November we announced the Google Photography Prize 2012, a competition offering student photographers a chance to share their best photographs with the world.

Groundbreaking photographer Ansel Adams once said, “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs,” so we left the themes for submission suitably broad, with 10 categories that combined classic photography genres with online photography trends including “Night,” “Travel,” “Sound/Silence” and “Me.”

We were thrilled by the interest in the contest: nearly 20,000 students from 146 countries took part, of which 100 were shortlisted. You can see these in the gallery on our website.

Our judging panel of seven leading photography experts chose the 10 finalists whose work will be shown in our exhibition in the Saatchi Gallery. Today we’re announcing the finalists: Collin Avery (U.S.), Viktor Johansson (Sweden), Kyrre Lien (Norway), Alexandra Claudia Manta (Romania), Balázs Maté (Hungary), Adi Sason (Israel), Oliver Seary (UK), Dana Stirling (Israel), Sasha Tamarin (Israel), Zhao Yi (China). Here are examples of the finalists' work—you can see their full albums on their Google+ profiles.



If you’re in London, come to the Saatchi Gallery to see the work of our finalists displayed alongside a new exhibition of international photography, Out of Focus, starting April 25. The overall winner of the Google Photography Prize will be announced on April 24, and will go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to a location of their choice with a professional photographer as their mentor.

We hope you enjoy these fantastic photos as much as we did.

Technologists and muckrakers pursuing a more perfect union

Kamis, 12 April 2012 0 komentar
Today, roughly 200 reporters, editors and technologists are gathering at the Googleplex in Mountain View for our first TechRaking summit. Co-hosted with the Center for Investigative Reporting, the oldest nonprofit investigative reporting organization in the United States, this gathering is meant to inspire muckraking by exploring tools that help reporters tell stories with greater interactivity, opportunities for long-form journalism to thrive in new mediums, best practices for verifying information and fact-checking online and much more throughout the course of the day. Think of it as the intersection of science and art when it comes to converting information into knowledge.

Here are a few of the highlights in store:
  • The Center for Investigative Reporting will discuss its new Knight Foundation-funded investigative news channel on YouTube that will be a hub of investigative journalism. Expected to launch in July, the channel will feature videos from major broadcasters and independent producers globally—both nonprofit and for-profit—and is an example of the power of collaborations that can serve the public.
  • The Google Fusion Tables team will discuss tips and tricks for data-driven journalists with Wendy Levy and Jeremy Rue during an afternoon breakout discussion. In another step toward making it easier for people in any industry to discover, manage and visualize data, this morning we announced a new interface for Fusion Tables, which helps you better explore and collaborate on data, includes more visualizations under the “experimental” tab and has a new Fusion Tables API for developers.
  • Richard Gingras, head of news product at Google, is kickstarting the day with a series of questions for journalists, newsrooms and technologists to consider. Mary Himinkool, who leads global entrepreneurship, is delivering a rapid-fire seven-minute look at lessons learned from entrepreneurs around the world, and Brian Rakowski from Chrome is sharing the process involved in rethinking the modern browser.
We wish we could have welcomed an even larger crowd, but for those who weren’t able to join us in person, tune in to the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Google+ page for updates from the day and highlights afterward. At 1:30pm PT we’ll broadcast a Hangout with Krishna Bharat (distinguished research scientist at Google and founder of Google News), Amna Nawaz (Pakistan bureau chief/correspondent at NBC News), Nic Robertson (senior international correspondent at CNN), Sarah Hill (news anchor at KOMU) and Sree Sreenivasan (dean of student affairs and professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism). You can also follow #techraking and participate on Twitter.

TechRaking was born out of a lunchtime conversation at NewsFoo, another unconventional conference focused on moving forward the future of journalism and technology. We look forward to seeing the ideas and outcomes that emerge and develop from today.

David Lerner Associates Fined $2.3 Million for Selling Municipal Bonds & CMOs to Customers at Unfair Prices

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It is alleged that Long Island-based David Lerner Associates, Inc. (DLA) charged excessive markups on municipal bond and collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) transactions over a two-year period. This caused the firm's retail customers to pay unfairly high prices and receive lower yields than they otherwise would have received. DLA has been fined $2.3 million for the markup and related supervisory violations, and ordered the firm to pay restitution of more than $1.4 million, plus interest, to affected customers. The panel also fined DLA's head trader $200,000 and suspended him for six months from the securities industry. The ruling resolves charges brought by FINRA's Department of Enforcement in May 2010.

FINRA Hearing Panel Fines David Lerner Associates $2.3 Million for Selling Municipal Bonds, CMOs to Retail Customers at Unfair Prices, and for Supervisory Violations

Toward a simpler, more beautiful Google

Rabu, 11 April 2012 0 komentar
Update 5:49pm: for our international readers, this post is also available in French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish (Latin America, Spain). - Ed.

More than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+, enjoying new ways to share in Search, Gmail, YouTube and lots of other places. It's still early days, and there’s plenty left to do, but we're more excited than ever to build a seamless social experience, all across Google.

A critical piece of this social layer is a design that grows alongside our aspirations. So today we’re introducing a more functional and flexible version of Google+. We think you’ll find it easier to use and nicer to look at, but most importantly, it accelerates our efforts to create a simpler, more beautiful Google.



Navigation you can make your own
One of the first things you’ll notice is a new way to get around the stream. Instead of static icons at the top, there’s a dynamic ribbon of applications on the left. This approach comes with lots of perks, but some of our favorites include:
  • You can drag apps up or down to create the order you want
  • You can hover over certain apps to reveal a set of quick actions
  • You can show or hide apps by moving them in and out of “More”



Taken together, these powers make it easier to access your favorites, and to adjust your preferences over time. We've also built the ribbon with the future in mind, giving us an obvious (and clutter-free) space for The Next Big Feature, and The Feature After That. So stay tuned.

Conversations you’ll really care about
Once you’ve upgraded to Google+, it’s easy to share with your circles from just about anywhere. We’re dreaming bigger, though. We're aiming for an experience that fuses utility with beauty—one that inspires you to connect with others, and cherish the conversations that unfold. Today’s update is an important step in this direction, including:
  • Full bleed photos and videos that'll make you really proud to post
  • A stream of conversation "cards" that make it easier to scan and join discussions
  • An activity drawer that highlights the community around your content


Simply put, we're hoping to make sharing more awesome by making it more evocative. You know that feeling you get when a piece of art takes your breath away, or when a friend stops by with unexpected gifts? We want sharing to feel like that, every single time.

A new home for hanging out
Google+ Hangouts uses live video to bring people together, and the results range from heartwarming to breathtaking to music-making. Today we're adding a dedicated Hangouts page that creates even more opportunities to connect in person, including:
  • An always-updated list of invitations from the people in your circles
  • Quick access to every public and On Air hangout, for those times when you want to meet someone new, or watch a live broadcast
  • A rotating billboard of popular hangouts, pro tips and other items you don’t want to miss


By highlighting all the hangouts you can join, all over the world, it’s now easier to spend time together—even be there for each other. And with efforts like hangout apps already underway, you can expect more hangouts in more places in the future.

Getting there from here
Today's Google+ update extends beyond navigation, the stream and hangouts. For instance: there's a new Explore page that shows what's interesting and trending across the network. And a new profile with much bigger photos. And a new chat list that puts your friends front and center. And a whole lot more.

We're rolling out all of these improvements over the next few days, so please check back if you don't see them yet. In the meantime, you can visit this overview to learn more.



By focusing on you, the people you care about, and the stuff you’re into, we’re going to continue upgrading all the features you already know and love—from Search and Maps to Gmail and YouTube. With today’s foundational changes we can move even faster—toward a simpler, more beautiful Google.

SEC Freezes Accounts of Six Chinese Citizens and One Offshore Entity Charged with Insider Trading

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It is alleged that six Chinese citizens and Prestige Trade Investments Ltd. reaped more than $9 million by trading in Zhongpin ahead of an announcement of a proposal to take the company private. The seven defendants bought substantial quantities of common stock and call options in Zhongpin between March 14 and March 26. Zhongpin’s stock price jumped 21.8% on March 27 when the company publicly announced that its Chairman and CEO Xianfu Zhu had made a non-binding offer to acquire all of Zhongpin’s outstanding stock at $13.50 a share, a 46% premium over the previous day’s closing price.

As a result, the SEC has obtained a court-ordered freeze of the assets of six Chinese citizens and one British Virgin Islands entity charged with insider trading in Zhongpin Inc., a China-based pork processor whose shares trade in the U.S.

SEC Freezes Accounts of Six Chinese Citizens and One Offshore Entity Charged with Insider Trading