Google Adsense College

Posted by Peter Birch, Product
Manager

I don't know about you, but with the action and excitement
heating up in the Tour de France, it's hard to keep track of
exactly where everybody is riding. When you're trying to
understand the Herculean effort that these cyclists go through in
stages like L'Alpe d'Huez, or which streets in Paris the
final stage will pass through, 2D maps just aren't as
compelling.

But now you can make sense of it all by flying around the route
yourself. A new KML file available on the href="http://www.letour.fr" >official Tour de France website
lets you see the entire course overlaid on satellite imagery for
Google Earth.

This special Google Earth tour is available in French, German, and
Spanish as well as English. Pick your language on the Le Tour site,
and once you've done that, look for the "Tour on Google
Earth" link in the lefthand navigation under Route. Then you
can see the starts, the finishes, even information on each of the
cities along the way. Just move the KML file into your "My
Places" folder on Google Earth, and follow along day by day.
(Did you know that Huy has the unique privilege of hosting stages
for the Tour de France, the Giro and the Tour of Belgium this year?
We didn't either.)

Be sure to try out the tilt feature to see the truly daunting
magnitude of all of those climbs where riders are battling it out
in this year's wide-open race. "Beyond Category"
climbs? No thanks — we'll stick to the flats and leave those
verticals to the pros!

Tags: , Birch, dont, know, ManagerI, Peter, Posted, product

Posted by Beth Campbell, Product
Marketing Manager

I recently got married and wanted to send out thank-you notes
together with hundreds of photos our guests took using the cameras
we put on the tables. href="http://picasa.google.com/" >Picasa made the process super
easy.

In Picasa, select the folder with your pictures. Click the
"Gift CD" button and follow the instructions to set your
picture size and CD name. To add a nice effect, check the
"Include Slideshow" box — this adds a slideshow
presentation that plays when the CD is launched (way more fun than
a boring list of files). For recipients who might enjoy saving the
photos and viewing them later, check the box to include a copy of
Picasa on the CD (it's only 3.9MB). Click "Burn Disc"
and Picasa creates the CD.

The finishing touch: a customized photo CD cover. Select a picture
and click the "Print" button. Here's what it looks
like:
onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"
href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/cdcover-712292.GIF" >
style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;"
src="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/cdcover-771317.GIF"
border="0" alt="" />
In the top menu, go to to Tools > Options > Printing, select
CD Label Size and click OK. Set CD Label as your layout size and
print.

You're done — and now I'm done with my thank-you
"work." I'm happy to report the photo CDs were a big
hit.

Tags: , Beth, Campbell, ManagerI, Marketing, Posted, product, recently