AdWords Comparison Ads - Credit Card Test in the UK

You may recall that towards the end of 2009, we began testing a new feature called AdWords Comparison Ads. This feature lets users compare multiple relevant offers with ease, and it provides advertisers with a new sophisticated and flexible cost per lead format. Speed is of the essence for many users, so we've made sure that Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second.

The initial test covered mortgage-related queries in the US. Today, we're delighted to announce that the test is being extended to cover credit card-related queries in the UK and that some major issuers have signed up to be part of the initial run.

(click for full size image)

Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google by letting users specify exactly what they're looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side. There are no long forms for users to fill in, and Comparison Ads will not send advertisers any personally identifiable user information (in fact, we don't send any user information at all unless the user explicitly applies for an advertiser's offer).

It's part of our continuing effort to make ads more relevant and useful to our users and to help you, our advertisers, reach the people who are most interested in your products and services.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

What I'm Planning for Paperless Earth Day

A couple folks have asked what I'm planning to do for Paperless Earth Day. Here's the plan.

Our school sits on a pretty big plot of land. Rolling hills, two ponds, trees. Perfect locale for teaching environmental science, actually. Anyhow, both my West Civ and Latin classes have learned about ancient attitudes concerning nature: from the Homeric fury of the sea to the pastoral visions of Horace and from civilizations' first agriculturalists learning to tame the un-tame-able to Egyptians demanding of their Pharaoh the annual flood of the Nile, the history of civilization is the history of humankind's relationship with nature.

And so, we are planning to take a nature walk. And in preparation for our walk, each of our classes will be designing a 'Nature in History' wiki-scrapbook. The plan is to go out there into the great wilderness that is our campus and find bits of nature on our own grounds that lend themselves to telling the story of humankind's 'Nature Story'. Looking for metaphors in the dirt, as it were.

We'll be taking digital photos of what we find and publishing our findings, thinkings, and conversation on our wikis. It's up to the kids then to do with them what they want; the day's findings might form the basis of future projects, or you might see some of the elements of our investigation on the students' West Civ Proj blog.

Looking forward to hearing what all of you are planning for Paperless Earth Day. Hi-tech or Lo-tech, all ideas are welcome on Steve Katz's Paperless PD wiki. Let us know what's up in your neck of the woods.

The A-B-Cs Of Strategic Planning

As most Management Text Books point out, the basic objective of any organization is to perpetuate its existence. Implicit with this objective is that organizations must take proactive steps to make their continued existence a reality.

That said, case studies abound of once viable and profitable organizations that withered and died, seemingly overnight. Of course, many internal and external factors can contribute to an organization's demise, but with all due respect to hindsight, a lack of vision and long-range planning are often attributed as its root causes.

Obviously, all the planning in the world is no guarantee that any organization can survive in perpetuity, yet, Strategic Plans are written to detail an organization’s goals and strategies for their continued viability, usually over a five to ten year period.

Strategic Planning is practiced by all established organizations, regardless of their size or type. Larger profit and non-profit organizations will generally utilize formal planning functions or planning committees for this purpose. But even the smallest organizations will devote time and effort to facilitate some level of long-range planning.

The first step in putting together a comprehensive Strategic Plan is to ask pointed questions that focus on the present state of the organization with an eye towards the future. Be mindful that it is natural and desirable for a lot of "blue sky thinking" to be at play at this stage, but, in the end, the critical questions to be addressed can usually be boiled down to the following three:

1. As an organization, where are we?
2. Where do we want to go?
3. How do we plan on getting there?

Formulating clear and reasoned answers to each of these questions will normally involve the input and collaboration of key individuals or planners from across the organization. It will then fall upon a central planner or coordinator to edit and integrate this input into an organizational perspective and consensus.

It should be noted that the best Strategic Plans are those that strike a good balance between vision and practicality. In other words, it is vision tempered by anticipated internal and external influences. Likewise, the answers to the above questions need to address what is possible now versus what may be possible in the future.

That said, some of the factors to be considered in formulating answers to these questions should include the following:

* Financial resources of the organization
* Business Climate (geographic and regulatory issues)
* Customer demographics
* Product and Service lines (existing and planned)
* Competing organizations
* Marketing strategies
* Technology and Innovation
* Human Resources

The next step involves organizing, refining, and synthesizing the forecasts, opinions, and raw data from the above exercise, and then using this input as the basis for drafting the following elements:

* Mission Statement – Who are we?
* Objectives – What do we want to be?
* Goals - What are our benchmarks?
* Implementation Plan – How will we do this?

Once these elements are drafted and agreed upon, the task of formatting and finalizing the Strategic Plan can begin. The actual packaging of the plan will vary according to organizational style and preference; however, most plans will include the following:

* Executive Summary
* Organizational Description
* Mission and Values Statements
* Goals
* Strategies
* Action Plan
* Appendices

Obviously, this is only a bare bones outline of a typical Strategic Plan and the Strategic Planning Process. For more detailed information, check out the Business Section of your local library or Internet, where you will find many useful desktop and online resources. To help you get started, check out the links below.

Related Links:

http://managementhelp.org/plan_dec/str_plan/writing.htm

http://www.mystrategicplan.com/strategic-planning-tools/how-to-create-a-strategic-plan.shtml

http://allbusiness.com/business-planning-structure/business-plan/2976247-1.html


Jack

Best Practices of a Google Apps Deployment

Are you considering Google Apps for your organization? Would you want to hear about the strategies other organizations have used in deploying Google Apps? Do you want to learn field-tested best practices to accelerate deployment and maximize employee satisfaction?

Then please join us this Thursday, February 25, for a live webcast with Jim Copeland, Dan Kennedy and Marcello Pedersen, Google Apps deployment specialists. Get your questions answered on which best practices will help you succeed.

Join us for this live event:

Geek Out on the Best Practices of a Google Apps Deployment
Thursday, February 25, 2010
11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST / 7:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Because the History Classroom Just Ain't What It Used To Be

No sooner did I ask you all to check out my students' new West Civ blog than Andrew B. Watt delivers a comment that turns our student editor's argument on its head.

Fantastic.

Imagine being 15-years-old and putting your work out there for criticism and argument. And imagine receiving criticism and argument almost immediately from some source -- some real person -- beyond the walls of your classroom. Imagine having to think about that and deal with it. And having to do all that in a public sphere.

This is what learning looks like in the 21st century.

I was talking to @schickbob about it earlier, and he nailed it: "The learning starts when commenters start disagreeing with them".

That's what it's all about.

Authentic experiences. Real blogging. Authentic learning. In public.

And learning that you've got to back up what you say and that there's more than one angle to every story.

We can't just pat kids on the head for making a blog. If we do that, we're gonna end up just as inauthentic as the teachers who patted us on the head for writing crappy poetry and putting together cookie-cutter science fair tri-folds. Rather, we've got to use blogs and the connection to the world that the Internet provides to engage our students in real ways to live up to the potential of their convictions while likewise having the humility and sense of civility to provide a forum for discourse.

Thanks to all of you who have supported us along the way to initiating this project and thanks to those of you today who commented on the posts. We plan to post often and we've got some surprises in store as well.

Our tagline is: "Because history just ain't what it used to be". But it might as well be: "Because the history classroom just ain't what it used to be".