Why I Oughta...

There's a pretty great post up on the Public Sector Blog about "live" search trends.   Go check it out here .  More on trends coming up soon.

Late Friday afternoon, my fifth sports-related went up on the Official Google Blog - this one focused on football.  Entitled "It's Kickoff Time for US Football Searches" , the piece touched on the behavior of football fans all across the country.  I'm just the 'ghost-writer', as this piece is (once again!) signed by someone else.  A few things to note: 1.  I was able to sneak in a Jim Mora "Playoffs?!?!" Easter Egg in the post that links to a video clip. 2.  I also had a link from the post where I referenced the Bears to Denny Green's "The Bears are who we thought they were.  If you wanna crown their asses, then crown 'em!" rant, but that got pulled. 3.  In the draft version, I included a link to this chart below (comparing football to religion) when saying that football was a big deal.  Again, wiser heads prevailed! World Series will likely be the next sports post, but that only gets us to six.  I'd like to find a few

My team announced some big news this week:  we're partnering with Fox News for a GOP Presidential debate on September 22nd. 

People shop at local independent bookstores because there's some emotion involved.  There's a sense of loyalty that comes along with shopping at a place that is less convenient and (often times) more expensive than the faceless behemoth online.  One of the most successful indie bookstores around is Anderson's Bookshop in Downtown Naperville. I worked on a project today called the "Google eBooks Petting Zoo" that was aiming to educate Anderson's customers that they didn't need to *just* buy their physical books at Anderson's and their digital books from folks like Amazon or iTunes.  In fact, you could buy directly from Andersonbookshop.com via Google books.  Pretty neat stuff.  You buy on their site and consume the books on devices you already own.  Have an iPad?  Install the Google eBooks app , go to Anderson's site and start buying books.  Viola!  They'll show up on your ipad. Disclaimer:  I work at Google. You knew that, right?   WGN

I spent the better part of this week in our nation's capitol and with the projects on my plate, it appears that we'll be getting closely acquainted.  I've been to DC only a handful of times and I can start to get used to the place.

Recently, I took the bus from San Francisco to the company headquarters in Mountain View.  This was the bus stop in the morning.  Makes it easy to get up and go to the office, I bet. 

I soooo want one of these in our house now.

My fourth sports-related search trends blog post went up on the Official Google Blog yesterday - just in time for the Mavs victory in game six.  In this piece , we dug in on some professional hoops trends and found some interesting things including how the on-court renaissance that veteran Jason Kidd has under-taken is mirrored online and he's seen a surge as the playoffs wore on.  Have to be happy for him this morning, right?  If the Stanley Cup goes to game seven, I might be able to squeeze in a NHL post all about Lord Stanley's Cup and what a big deal a game seven is for all sports. -------------------------- Here are the live links to all ten of my posts on the Official Google Blog: At the Republican National Convention: Politics in the Cloud and on the Ground  (9/9/08)  Searching for the Next Olympic Host City  (10/1/09)   Searching for the 2010 Stanley Cup  (6/2/10)   Celebrating 10 Years in Chicago ( 12/16/10)   Auto Industry off to a Fast Start in Motown  (1/1

It took me at least five minutes to figure out what was going on with the print edition of the Chicago Tribune this morning.  I saw this kid with the pineapple head and read every one of the surrounding blurbs like 3X just to try to figure out why the image was there. Only then did I realize that it had NOTHING to do with the news, but was an advertisement for Lunchables that became clear when I turned the page.  Kind of a weird monetization strategy for a serious news organization, but - hey - who am I to judge, right?

I was in Ann Arbor this week doing some press outreach with the leader of our office and our landlord about our local office's effort to green-up the office and our building.  This is a pretty unique effort in that we have a VERY supportive and forward-looking landlord/partner in McKinley Properties and their CEO Albert Berriz.  Here's a photo I took of Albert and Fulter - a Googler - as they talk with the Detroit Free Press reporter AND photog (very meta, eh?) in front of the new solar panel installation at the Google office.  It is the largest private solar installation in the state of Michigan (I believe...) The neat part is that *this* project (which includes these panels plus other things like a "live" roof/green roof on another portion of our building, a greenhouse, and a new compost program IS consistent with Google's global approach to these things.  Pretty great to see the implementation at the local level in our regional offices instead of just at HQ in

Guess who's getting her Chromercise in this morning?  Who knew they'd make such great baby wristbands?!?

Now that's how you follow through on an April Fool's Day joke .  These finger bands arrive via first class mail yesterday.

In addition to writing the blog post on the Official Google Blog, I also pitched a local story about tax trends here in Chicago.  The Tribune ran the story late last week ahead of the weekend which talked about how Chicagoans are moving online faster than the rest of the country and being solid Midwesterners, we're much more DIY'ers than the rest of the country.  The top brands don't rank as high locally as they do nationally.  I'm calling that a win for the Midwest. 

It isn't about sports, but still is focused on trends.  Specifically something that millions of Americans are doing today:  filing their taxes.  The Taxman Searcheth was a team effort.  This is my 5th OGB post in just 2011.  I've only penned 4 others in my past 3+ years at the company.  That pace is likely to hold true for the remainder of the year.   As for this post, I worked with one of my teammates in NYC to get the post done.  It is effective because it is relevant and shows in very clear ways some key differences in this year (the late deadline and the fast shift to e-filing/online filing) and a few other interesting things including the fact that more US residents are searching for how to deduct their gambling losses than their charity donations.  Think about that for a second.  I guess one could chalk up the big difference to the fact that in some regards, charitable deductions are much more straight forward.  You just put the amount right in the field for charity.  Bu

With The Masters coming so quickly after the Final Four, my sports-related Official Google Blog posts are coming fast these days.   Just 7 days after I told you guys about the latest Final Four trends , I found a ex-pro golfer at Google to "sign" my latest piece.    This one was fun, but because the trends around the game have been so dominated by Tiger's off-course issues, there were a few problems with hanging our hat on the leading players. As I write this, I'm watching the final holes at Augusta and just as our post posited, there are very talented, but relatively unknown golfers coming on strong to contend for the green jacket. (Hello Jason Day, Adam Scott, and Charl Schwartzel!) One trend that I didn't get into the post was around the Par 3 contest that takes place the Wednesday before the tournament opens.  This year it seems, interest in the Par 3 contest skyrocketed as more golf fans wanted to know more about it.  Perhaps it has something to do with E

We have a few new tools/toys to show off today.  The fine folks at Google have added some new capabilities to all Blogger blogs (that's the platform I use to power this site) including the addition of five new "Dynamic Views".   Those of you reading this should know (and likely do) that I work at Google and am writing this post on my own accord and these views posted here are mine alone and NOT that of my employer.    Now...back to the post: Blogger - as a platform - doesn't get the credit it deserves these days, but the product has come along really nicely and the flexibility it allows for these days is the best among it's peers.  Of note, for all you bloggers (Not capital "B") who are thinking about using the Blogger (capital "B) platform to power your blog, you should find a lot of comfort in the fact that the entire operation has been backed by Google's Data Liberation Front - and you can quickly/easily export your entire set of content

As I've mentioned before , I've taken on the task of penning a series of "sports trends" blog posts at work as one piece of a effort for the company to create a "voice" around major sports events and in the sports-specific media.  Yesterday, on the Official Google Blog, we ran my latest piece on the 2011 Final Four and search trends entitled:  Searching for a Cinderella Story .  As I've done in the past, we looked at search trends around the hot topics of March Madness and the Final Four.  With two good Cinderella stories in VCU and Butler, the search story lines are strong.  One neat point I think we drew out was how hoops crazy the State of Indiana is right now over Butler.  While in every other state Katy Perry trumps just about anything else search-wise, the Bulldogs of Butler have overtaken her this week. The other fun part of this post was including a link to the Werner Ladder Company in the final paragraph about cutting down the nets.  They

A few days ago, my favorite news outlet on the entire web, Slice , put up their Chicago pizza map . Green = recommended.  Yellow = recommended with reservations.  Red = not recommended.  While I'll quibble with the dearth of true Western Suburban or Southwestern Suburban pie joints, I have to love the hard work they put in on this.  Not to mention the mapping product they chose to use! View Pizza - Chicago in a larger map

Pardon the smudgy fingerprints, but look what landed on my desk yesterday.  Site looks pretty good - and blogger knows that I don't want the mobile template and serves up the full site on the Motorola Xoom. 

I spent a part of past week up in Minneapolis where - in addition to reminiscing about my days of selling drywall screws in the Twin Cities - I also spent some time with reporters teaching a "Google 101 for Journalists" at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Like other papers (Hello, Chicago Sun-Times!), the Star Tribune started as two independent Newspapers called the Minneapolis Star and Minneapolis Tribune .  Interestingly enough, their building reflects those independent roots.  Notice the "and". Still not as cool as the Columbus Dispatch sign , though.