About this product: If you have a small business, you’ll love the Google tools that are available at little or no cost. Google Business Solutions All-in-One For Dummies shows you how to use them all! Eight self-contained minibooks cover Google Apps, Google search tools for business, highlighting your business, creating a Web site with Google Sites, Google tools for your site, Google Ads and Analytics, securing business information, and getting noticed with Google Gadgets.
As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a Google AdWords™ gift card worth $25 inside the book, too!
Get e-mail, calendar, online documents and records, and more, free in Google Apps
Provide directions to your business, reviews, access to products and services, and even coupons online with Google Maps and Google Base
Use Google Docs, Checkout, and other tools to give your site all the e-commerce features
Track traffic and get advertisers with Google Ads and Analytics
Choose tools to keep your e-mail, servers, computers, and files safe
Create gadgets that promote your business and add value to your site
Learn the secrets of search engine optimization the Google way
You’ll also find out how to use coupons effectively, how to keep e-mail and instant messaging safer, and how to make the most of Google AdWords. Google Business Solutions All-in-One For Dummies really DOES have it all!
About this product: Google SketchUp simplifies 3-D modelling, is free on the web, and helps you create 3-D models of everything from your garden to a large building. Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual shows you how to make the most of the program's tools and how to apply them to presentations and online sharing. The book introduces you to 3-D modelling, creating and animating a complicated model building, adding realistic material shading, and placing your model in Google Earth.
Using the Push/Pull Tool
If you’ve ever seen those camping tents that spring from flat to fully-formed, you have an idea how SketchUp’s Push/Pull tool works. You start with a flat 2D drawing and you stretch it to whatever length you want. Push/Pull works its magic on any shape that forms a face. In these steps, you use the Push/Pull tool to alter a simple box.
1. Use the Rectangle tool to draw a box, and then click the Iso button or choose Camera-->Standard Views-->Iso. You may even want to use the Orbit tool, to get a good view of three faces of the box, as shown below.
Each edge on the box has two endpoints and a midpoint. To find the midpoint, move the cursor slowly along the edge. The cursor will snap to the midpoint when it gets close and you see a tool tip that says Midpoint.
2. Select the Rectangle tool and move the cursor over the different faces and points of the box. When the cursor is over a face, a tool tip says “On Face.” When the cursor is over an end point or midpoint, the marker at the tip of the pencil changes color and you see appropriate tool tip messages. In the next step, you use an end point and a midpoint to draw a rectangle on the top surface of the box.
3. With the Rectangle tool, click on the front, right corner and then move to the midpoint on the back of the box, as shown below. After you create the rectangle, your box has an edge down the middle that divides it in half. The top of the box now has two separate faces.
Start drawing from the front corner and then stretch the rectangle out to the midpoint on the backside.
4. With the Push/Pull tool (P), click the face on the left and move the mouse forward and backward. As you move the mouse, the model changes shape. When you pull up with the Push/Pull tool, you’re “adding geometry” or “adding volume” to your simple box. When you push it down, you’re “subtracting geometry.”
5. Pull the face up and then click the mouse button. This leaves the face pulled up, and creates a new vertical face in the model.
6. With Push/Pull, push the vertical face back. As you push the face as shown below, you subtract volume from the model, making it smaller.
7. Continue to push the face until you reach the back edge of the box and then click. The face snaps to the back edge and then when you click, the face disappears. Your box looks as it did when you started this exercise.
Pushing a face back shrinks an object, sometimes referred to as “removing geometry” or “reducing its volume.” Pushing this face all the way back until it reaches the opposite face removes it entirely.
There is much to like about this book. The explanations are straightforward, the code is readable, the examples are relevant, and the writing style is approachable.
— Michael J. Ross, Web developer/Slashdot contributor
Until recently, building interactive web-based mapping applications has been a cumbersome affair. This changed when Google released its powerful Maps API. Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax was written to help you take advantage of this technology in your own endeavorswhether you're an enthusiast playing for fun or a professional building for profit. This book covers version 2 of the API, including Google's new Geocoding service.
Authors Jeffrey Sambells, Cameron Turner, and Michael Purvis get rolling with examples that require hardly any code at all, but you'll quickly become acquainted with many facets of the Maps API. They demonstrate powerful methods for simultaneously plotting large data sets, creating your own map overlays, and harvesting and geocoding sets of addresses. You'll see how to set up alternative tile sets and where to access imagery to use for them. The authors even show you how to build your own geocoder from scratch, for those high-volume batch jobs.
As well as providing hands-on examples of real mapping projects, this book supplies a complete reference for the Maps API, along with the relevant aspects of JavaScript, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Visit the authors' website for additional tips and advice.
About this product: Moscow-born Sergey Brin and Midwest-born Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to, in their own words, "change the world" through a powerful search engine that would organize every bit of information on the Web for free. The Google Story takes you deep inside the company's wild ride from an idea that struggled for funding in 1998 to a firm that rakes in billions in profits, making Brin and Page the wealthiest young men in America. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to Google, this fast-moving narrative reveals how an unorthodox management style and culture of innovation enabled a search engine to shake up Madison Avenue and Wall Street, scoop up YouTube, and battle Microsoft at every turn. Not afraid of controversy, Google is expanding in Communist China and quietly working on a searchable genetic database, initiatives that test the founders' guiding mantra: DON'T BE EVIL.
It’s great to have a punchy Web site, but if you aren’t optimizing your search-engine presence, you’re just another company lost in cyberspace.
With Be #1 on Google, you can instantly put your company in the top spot of relevant online searches—and dramatically increase sales. An international expert in search-engine optimization, Jon Smith explains how to draw serious customers—not curious or bored Web surfers—to your site by
Registering with Google
Coming up with the best keywords
Thinking like your customers
Making your site totally accessible
Using metadata to your advantage
Advertising on the Web
Measuring what works, and what doesn’t
Containing 52 techniques in all, each of which can used immediately, Be #1 on Google is the essential guide to winning the battle for first ranking on the world’s most utilized search engine.
About this product: Social phenomena happen, and the historians follow. So it goes with Google, the latest star shooting through the universe of trend-setting businesses. This company has even entered our popular lexicon: as many note, "Google" has moved beyond noun to verb, becoming an action which most tech-savvy citizens at the turn of the twenty-first century recognize and in fact do, on a daily basis. It's this wide societal impact that fascinated authors David Vise and Mark Malseed, who came to the book with well-established reputations in investigative reporting. Vise authored the bestselling The Bureau and the Mole, and Malseed contributed significantly to two Bob Woodward books, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. The kind of voluminous research and behind-the-scenes insight in which both writers specialize, and on which their earlier books rested, comes through in The Google Story.
The strength of the book comes from its command of many small details, and its focus on the human side of the Google story, as opposed to the merely academic one. Some may prefer a dryer, more analytic approach to Google's impact on the Internet, like The Search or books that tilt more heavily towards bits and bytes on the spectrum between technology and business, like The Singularity is Near. Those wanting to understand the motivations and personal growth of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, however, will enjoy this book. Vise and Malseed interviewed over 150 people, including numerous Google employees, Wall Street analysts, Stanford professors, venture capitalists, even Larry Page's Cub Scout leader, and their comprehensiveness shows.
As the narrative unfolds, readers learn how Google grew out of the intellectually fertile and not particularly directed friendship between Page and Brin; how the founders attempted to peddle early versions of their search technology to different Silicon Valley firms for $1 million; how Larry and Sergey celebrated their first investor's check with breakfast at Burger King; how the pair initially housed their company in a Palo Alto office, then eventually moved to a futuristic campus dubbed the "Googleplex"; how the company found its financial footing through keyword-targeted Web ads; how various products like Google News, Froogle, and others were cooked up by an inventive staff; how Brin and Page proved their mettle as tough businessmen through negotiations with AOL Europe and their controversial IPO process, among other instances; and how the company's vision for itself continues to grow, such as geographic expansion to China and cooperation with Craig Venter on the Human Genome Project.
Like the company it profiles, The Google Story is a bit of a wild ride, and fun, too. Its first appendix lists 23 "tips" which readers can use to get more utility out of Google. The second contains the intelligence test which Google Research offers to prospective job applicants, and shows the sometimes zany methods of this most unusual business. Through it all, Vise and Malseed synthesize a variety of fascinating anecdotes and speculation about Google, and readers seeking a first draft of the history of the company will enjoy an easy read. --Peter Han
About this product: To be successful in business you must be able to attract the right clients and persuade them to buy. However, on the internet, people only see what the search engines direct them to and the competition for those top spots is fierce. So how do you ensure that your business is front-and-center when prospects are searching for solutions? The answer is The Findability Formula. The Findability Formula is for anyone who wants to improve results from Internet marketing. The book is specifically written for business owners who are frustrated with a website that is not showing up in search results and not generating business. The Findability Formula will help readers understand how prospects and customers search for products and services on the Internet, and will show them, step-by-step, how to optimize their findability. The book will be a non-technical guide to effectively building and implementing, from the ground up, an Internet search marketing program that gets results. The reader will learn how paid search works, and how paid and organic search can work together to create optimum web visibility and reduce paid search costs over time. The basic message of the book is that there is a formula for findability and for converting prospects to purchasers.
Readers' Benefits from The Findability Formula: * A complete step-by-step approach to search engine marketing applicable to any product or service, The Findability Formula will include easy-to-follow instruction from chapter to chapter as well as launch checklists in the appendix. * The most up-to-date search research and statistics available, including uncommon ways to connect with your online buyer. * Shows the reader how to avoid common search marketing mistakes that cost big money. How to not be bullied and take control of in-house e-commerce department strategies and SEM agencies. * A small company can compete successfully in search with larger, well-established competitors. How to work smarter to get even better search engine "findability". * Maximizes the reader's investment. The reader won't waste money by needlessly paying for "clicks" from customers who have no intention of buying. The investment in this book will be repaid thousands of times over. * Saves time, money and energy in creating in-house search marketing programs and properly tracking results by keyword. Negates the need to hire outside SEM agencies
This interesting guide covers all aspects of Google Earth, the freely downloadable application from Google that allows users to view satellite images from all points of the globe
Aimed at a diverse audience, including casual users who enjoy air shots of locales as well as geographers, real estate professionals, and GPS developers
Includes valuable tips on various customizations that users can add, advice on setting up scavenger hunts, and guidance on using Google Earth to benefit a business
Explains modifying general options, managing the layer and placemark systems, and tackling some of the more technical aspects, such as interfacing with GPS
There are more than 400,000 registered users of Google Earth and the number is still growing
About this product: A self-respecting Google hacker spends hours trolling the Internet for juicy stuff. Firing off search after search, they thrive on the thrill of finding clean, mean, streamlined queries and get a real rush from sharing those queries and trading screenshots of their findings. I know because I've seen it with my own eyes. As the founder of the Google Hacking Database (GHDB) and the Search engine hacking forums at http://johnny.ihackstuff.com, I am constantly amazed at what the Google hacking community comes up with. It turns out the rumors are true-creative Google searches can reveal medical, financial, proprietary and even classified information. Despite government edicts, regulation and protection acts like HIPPA and the constant barking of security watchdogs, this problem still persists. Stuff still makes it out onto the web, and Google hackers snatch it right up. Protect yourself from Google hackers with this new volume of information. -Johnny Long
. Learn Google Searching Basics Explore Google's Web-based Interface, build Google queries, and work with Google URLs. . Use Advanced Operators to Perform Advanced Queries Combine advanced operators and learn about colliding operators and bad search-fu. . Learn the Ways of the Google Hacker See how to use caches for anonymity and review directory listings and traversal techniques. . Review Document Grinding and Database Digging See the ways to use Google to locate documents and then search within the documents to locate information. . Understand Google's Part in an Information Collection Framework Learn the principles of automating searches and the applications of data mining. . Locate Exploits and Finding Targets Locate exploit code and then vulnerable targets. . See Ten Simple Security Searches Learn a few searches that give good results just about every time and are good for a security assessment. . Track Down Web Servers Locate and profile web servers, login portals, network hardware and utilities. . See How Bad Guys Troll for Data Find ways to search for usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and other juicy information. . Hack Google Services Learn more about the AJAX Search API, Calendar, Blogger, Blog Search, and more.
About this product: Site statistics give you raw numbers, but Web analytics crunch those numbers into meaningful metrics you can actually use. Here’s what's new in Google Analytics 2.0, such as cross-segment reporting and drilldown content that enhance analysis. Learn to set up Analytics and choose filters, explore goals and goal-setting, use customizable dashboards and date ranges, and master basic analytics and Web statistics concepts. Examine every aspect of available reports, learn to use those best suited for e-commerce sites, and more.
BONUS: Each copy of Google Analytics 2.0 includes a $25 Google AdWords gift card compliments of Google. With this $25 gift card , you can attract new customers to your website on Google's dime.
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