Affordable Living in Nice Low Maintenance Condo New Shopping, Restaurants, Golf Courses and Gulf Beaches

Check out our newest listing in Foley. Please let us know if you have any questions or know someone that may be interested in seeing the home.

Mobile Economy: 44th Fastest Growing Economy

I came across a story today in the Mobile Press Register. According to Bureau of Economic Analysis, the size of Mobile County's economy grew to $13.9 billion in 2006. Controlling for inflation, gross metropolitan product grew 5.6 percent during the year, 44th fastest among the country's 363 metropolitan areas. That was the fastest growth rate among all of Alabama's 12 metropolitan areas. I am not sure why the period reported seems dated (maybe it takes a while to calculate all of the numbers).

Here is the link to the story:
http://blog.al.com/live/2008/09/mobile_economy_grew_56_percent.html

Introducing our 2008 Anita Borg Scholars

On Friday we hosted our annual Anita Borg Scholars' Retreat at our Engineering Centre in Sydney as a way for women to come together and share their experiences as leaders in the field of computer science.

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship started in the United States in 2003 in association with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology to honour the legacy of Anita Borg and her efforts to encourage women to pursue careers in computer science and technology. Australia became the first country outside of the US to launch the scholarship in 2006, and in 2007 we extended the opportunity to students studying in New Zealand.

 

This year we received applications from women at 28 universities throughout Australia and New Zealand, and we're pleased to announce Andrea Schweer, from the University of Waikato and Janina Voigt, from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, as the recipients of $5,000 scholarships for the 2009 academic year.

A big congratulations as well to the twelve 2008 finalists, each of whom will be awarded $1,000:

• Gretel Png (University of Adelaide)
  
• Heather Macbeth (University of Auckland)
  
• Iris Yan (Monash University)
  
• Jenine Beekhuyzen (Griffith University)
  
• Magdalena Stremeski (Swinburne University of Technology)
  
• Miriam Hochwald (University of Queensland
  
• Olena Medelyan (University of Waikato)
  
• Sally Hodson (University of Western Australia)
  
• Sarah Killey (Queensland University of Technology)
  
• Shaoqun Wu (University of Waikato)
  
• Sue Lynn Choy (RMIT University)
  
• Tamara Beames (University of South Australia)

The scholarship recipients and finalists enjoyed their retreat, which included tech talks, workshops, career panels and social activities and provided an opportunity to network with other women in technology-related fields.

One of the scholarship winners, Janina Voigt, told me, "It's been a great experience to meet people with similar views of issues we all face as women in this industry - we're all girls going through the same thing right now. It has also been great to share ideas and participate in the workshops." 

The scholars are studying a wide variety of disciplines and talked openly about their projects, inspiring and learning from each other.

Shaoqun Wu shared how she's creating a system to assist with second language learning.  Having moved to New Zealand from China seven years ago, she understands what it's like to learn a second language first-hand.  Her project has been funded by the New Zealand government, and she hopes to continue developing her career around this area.  During the retreat, she emphasised how important it is that women in IT connect and help one another.  

We also discussed how to encourage other women to enter the field of engineering and computer science.  Sue Lynn Choy, a Ph.D. student in surveying, geomatics and cartography, told me "Studying computer science or other IT-related fields can be a big stepping stone to other things.  The possibilities are only limited by your imagination."

Posted by Will Blott, University Programs, Australia & New Zealand

Open House - Oak Forest 3/2.5 Home with Bonus Room

We are having an open house this Saturday from 12:00 - 3:00 p.m. at our listing located at 2006 Oak Willow Drive in the Oak Forest subdivision. Click below photo to see the flyer. If you get a chance, please drop by and see us. Call if you need directions.

NEW PRICE - LAKEFRONT HOME IN FOLEY

Fill 'er up

With rising fuel prices increasingly factoring into our driving decisions, Australians are feeling our fair share of pain at the petrol pump.

To help Australians get the best value for their fuel dollars, Google Australia has partnered with Motormouth to help provide everyone with easily accessible information about petrol prices. We've developed an iGoogle gadget (here) that allows you to find out the price of various fuel types across parts of major metro areas in Australia.

You can quickly see the prices for your area in a list or on Google Maps. Prices are updated twice daily during the week and once on Sundays by Motormouth's scouts who report the prices from service station price boards.

Currently, over 50% of metropolitan service stations are covered, which hopefully include a few near you.

With the daily work of these petrol price scouts now accessible from your personalised iGoogle homepage, we hope this handy tool will go some way to keeping you informed and ensuring that you're not over-paying at the pump (note that prices can change at any time, except in Perth where they're locked for 24 hours).

Of course, the best way to reduce your fuel bill would be to walk, cycle or catch public transport to wherever you're going. Google Maps and, in Perth, Google Transit, can help you with that.

Now go and get the keys to the Cortina so you can move the Camira so Dad can get the Torana out of the driveway and fill up the Commodore. This gadget will pay for itself.



Posted by Julian Sonego, Consumer Marketing Manager

NEW LISTING IN FOLEY

Check out our latest listing. It is a beautiful Lake Front home near shopping, restaurants, golf courses, and beaches. Let us know if you have any questions.

:: HotBarrieListings Buyers ::

Congratulations to Matt and Jennifer who after a year of being kept up to date with the HotBarrieListings.com service on current listings in the area they wanted to buy stepped up and became first time home buyers! As Hot Barrie Listings buyers they were happy to receive their Costco gift card from me a few days after moving in to their new home. Matt wants to spend the $500 all on steaks for the barbecue and Jennifer is thinking they could use some new kitchen accessories. I'll keep you posted on who wins that contest.

Photos of Alabama Gulf Beaches during Hurricane Ike

Cristy and I were in the Gulf Shores area this morning (Thursday) doing a few Broker Price Opinions. After examining a few properties, we went down to see the surf. We were interested to see the waves that were a result of Hurricane Ike approaching the Texas coast. We were suprised at the heighth and ferocity of the waves. As you can tell from the following side show, the beach was a little bit different than normal. In fact, the 100 yards of beach was under about 2 - 3 feet of water plus the waves. When we took these pictures, Hurricane Ike was about 350 miles due south of Gulf Shores. The photos were taken at 3 locations along the gulf coast of Alabama - The West Beach Public Park, The Gulf Shores Public Beach, and the Pavillion down at the State Park in Orange Beach. The beach was a sight to see. Once the hurricane comes ashore in Texas, our beaches should return to normal. There may be some erosian and if so the beaches will be rebuilt with sand from the gulf.





Channel 5 (WKRG) also had a video/slide show that we have put on the blog.

WKRG.com Video

It is suspected that the same conditions will exist on Friday morning.

Design Interior Living Room Cool Style

If you want to make your living room look as cool style, You have to know about some colors which can create cool situation in the design interior living room cool style. The range of colors for the cool scheme extends beyond the simple blue plus white equation, since a greater range of colors and non colors can be employed, including black and white, and grey and cream, but blue still provides the broadest and most useful color scope.


Some of people they're trying to design or creating a relaxed and harmonious living space, for this purpose they can chose Blues, blue grey, and whites as natural partners because they help to promote a sense of calm and airiness, and provide the cool scheme with strong definition and character. Design interior living room cool style associated with the Swedish style, It is an immensely popular look.


After the scheme color, to design the living room as cool style let's we start with the furniture placement. Furniture's arrangement are should be inviting, not angular and formal. If space allows, create more than one seating area. Try placing a chest across a corner rather than against a wall to soften the angle and make the room feel warmer. You can leave your furniture without any trims or covers.


The distribution of colors and decorative additions in the design interior living room cool style need to be balanced and uncluttered. In the living room especially, where furniture and furnishing fill the room and a mix of colors and pattern scan become overpowering, it is good idea to include elements of broken or lightweight color such as an open style bookcase featuring just a few simple ornaments, or plain white or cream cushion covers.


Design interior living room cool style perform a calm atmosphere at home, relax situation and it's look more space to sitting there. Those people who want to listening and watching movie in the living room, they will feel more comfortable and also enjoy the music sound with home theater.

August 2008 MLS Trends and Statistics

We have posted the latest spreadsheets and charts of the MLS statistics from Baldwin County Association of Realtors and Mobile Area Association of Realtors data.

Please click on following link to view - Mobile Real Estate and Balwin County Real Estate statistics.

Please let us know if you have any questions. We will be happy to analyze your particular neighborhood or a neighborhood that you may consider purchasing a home in.

More information for advertisers about our Content network

Our Australian advertisers often ask: "What kinds of web sites make up the Google content network?"

To help answer this question, we just re-launched the Partners page on the Google content network microsite to include a more comprehensive set of examples of where your ads can appear. The content network is comprised of hundreds of thousands of web sites worldwide, from information and news sites like The Sydney Morning Herald and the New York Times, to wedding sites like I-do.com.au. The revamped Partners page is meant to better demonstrate a small selection of the variety of sites available. Below are some features of the new Partners page:

• Sites are organised by category. This will help you browse sites by categories that represent your target audience, such as finance, entertainment and technology. For example, if you sell rental cars, you might browse through the "Travel" category to see examples of relevant sites. Or, if your target is female, you can try the "female interest" category.
  
  
• Once you find a site that's relevant to your product or service, you can use placement targeting to target your ads to that site directly. We recommend you use the Placement Tool to help you with this. If your campaign is already running on the content network, you can see the sites where your ad has appeared by running a Placement performance report.
  
  
• For those of you targeting users in other countries, a drop-down menu lets you browse sample partner sites in countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
  

Posted by Isis Nair, Google Australia AdSense Team

Working with Bravehearts

Today is White Balloon Day. An annual event run by Bravehearts, Australia's largest child protection advocacy group, White Balloon Day is a very important event during National Child Protection Week. White Balloon Day’s overarching message is to "Break the Silence on Child Sexual Assault" by raising awareness and by show of balloons, demonstrating community desire for Australian children to be safe.

We've been working with Bravehearts to raise awareness of the day and encourage all Australians to buy special white balloons. We've been doing this by providing Google Grants, so that when Internet users search for relevant terms on Google, "Sponsored Links" for White Balloon Day appear alongside search results.

We also created a special Google Maps "My Map", showing the Mowerthon journey of Claude Harvey, "The Lawnmower Man", as he mowed his way 850kms from the Gold Coast to Sydney to raise funds and awareness for victims of sexual assault for White Balloon Day.

Google Australia and Bravehearts are committed to deepening their ties for White Balloon Day in future years, by using new media and technologies to educate families about how to stay safe online and raise awareness of the tools that empower families to control their activity online.

We share Bravehearts' belief that new technologies and new media are a vital way to educate children and parents about family safety online. We hope to work together to help parents and kids take advantage of tools that help put them in control of their online experiences and make Web surfing safer.

You can check out our Tips for Online Safety and Online Family Safety Guide for helping families stay safe online. These provide quick links to tools like Google SafeSearch and other resources. Google SafeSearch is a tool that allows users to filter unwanted content from their search results. (You can customise your SafeSearch settings by clicking on the 'Search Preferences' link to the right of the search box on Google.com.au).

So please support Bravehearts, buy a white balloon today, and help break the silence.

Posted by Carolyn Dalton, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs, Australia and New Zealand

BACK ON MARKET

Our listing in the Miller's Crossing subdivision in Fairhope in Baldwin County is back on the market. This home for sale is a short sale. The seller needs an offer. The home has a very popular floorplan with 4 bedrooms, formal and informal dining areas. It sits on a lovely corner lot within walking distance of popular new Newton School. Great location with nearby access to Highway 98 and Highway 181.

Here is link to view details - 17262 Magellan Boulevard.

Please call us if you have any questions. Thanks.

Design Interior Romantic Living Room

The living room is one of the most important rooms in the house in where your family will spends their time to organizes holidays and parties, receives visitors and relaxes. The style of the design interior living room can be vary, some people they want their living room style as romantic room. Especially for a couple that just married and move to the new house.


However, despite the predilection of many modern designers for the newest styles (modernist style, neo-modern, and techno-art), the design interior living room in classical style will always look stylish, beautiful and cozy. Many women and creative people prefer to create their living rooms in a romantic style.


Ok, Now we will talk about how to design your romantic living room. Of course, al to do is depend on your bugged to buy furniture or other thing that help you to make your living room style look romantic and luxury design.


Start from painting your living room. When you are thinking about romantic living room, surely you will look at color of wall. There are some colors can make your living room style look more romantic design, for example white, pale pink or pink, peach puff, pale goldenrod and magenta. You can chose one of them.


Arrange to buy nice and good design furniture. Create your room with some item such as chair, table, cabinet or cupboard that support to the romantic living room style. There are many good branch of furniture in the world, but take it easy to look at furniture shop near you. It's not only color but also model of furniture design will help you to bring your living room in romantic performance.


When designing a romantic living room, you can use heavy curtains with brushes in combination to easy transparent curtains. Put some accessorize in your living room such as flower, lamp shades, picture on the wall, all the thing that may help you to create your romantic living room.

New Listing in Oak Forest subdivision in West Mobile

What's on the Google homepage today?

Posted by Ian Stephenson, CEO, National Trust of South Australia

As a predominantly urbanised nation, we often overlook the enormous contribution made to Australia's growth and progress by our farmers and farming technology.

For some Australians, the best known "Mr Plough" is the one portrayed by Homer in a famous Simpsons episode (the episode refers to a snow-plough). However, in 1876, it was the invention of a quirky and ingenious farming implement in South Australia that had everyone talking. Used throughout the world to this day, the "stump jump plough" revolutionised farming worldwide and is one of this country's greatest inventions.

In the 1800s, much of South Australia's wheat farming land was covered by vast expanses of mallee scrub. This was a particularly difficult obstacle to remove with traditional methods such as an axe. It often made ploughing the land excruciatingly slow and expensive; traditional ploughs would smash into the stump and cease working. The stump jump plough, with hinged mould-boards attached to the plough's frame, was able ride over or "jump" the mallee scrub (or stone, or other obstacle) without stopping - and without damage.

The man credited with the invention by the South Australian Parliament, Richard Bowyer Smith, was born on 2 September 1837 and I'm delighted that Google is honouring his birthday with a special homepage doodle today.

Smith's invention was initially received with scepticism. Many at the Moonta show in 1876 called him a "fool" and a "lunatic". Smith, however, had a vision, believing that his new plough would open up new lands and new prosperity. He was right. His invention unleashed a new wave of innovation. His brother Clarence, and the inventor George Whittaker, among others, created their own versions of the stump jump plough, which helped innumerable farmers in Australia and worldwide to overcome an age-old problem. The stump jump plough is a true example of Australian ingenuity and persistence in the face of a difficult problem.

In 2002, the National Trust of South Australia and BankSA named the stump jump plough as a Heritage Icon of South Australia. It joins other South Australian icons on the list like the Hills Hoist, checkside punt, and the wine cask.

The National Trust of SA aims to raise awareness in the broader community on cultural and natural heritage matters. With over 100 historic buildings, as well as 28 nature reserves under our management, the National Trust is the largest community heritage organisation in South Australia. I'm thrilled that Google, with today's doodle, is bringing Richard Smith's invention to life for the online generation and raising awareness of Australia's heritage icons.

Google Insights for Search in Australia

You may have read a few interesting articles (here, and here) about a new tool called Google Insights for Search, a new product that allows advertisers and marketers to better understand search behaviour across the globe.

Like Google Trends, you can type in a search term to view search patterns, and we've also included some interesting new features like a geographic heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

We figured it would be great to highlight some Australian-specific insights we've found using Insights for Search.   Hopefully they'll stimulate your own discovery of other interesting online trends in Australia!

As an example, if you perform a basic enquiry, leaving all the default settings and simply type [didgeridoo], this will show you search information from across the world, from 2004 to today. As you might expect, there is a lot of interest in didgeridoos here in Australia. But what you might not expect is the other countries with a large relative interest in didgeridoos, like Austria. If you were in the business of making fine, handcrafted didgeridoos here in Australia, you could build your international business by focusing your online advertising within the most relevant international markets: Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

It's also possible to compare search terms by location, time range and category. With the Categories filter, you can hone in on results based on different categories. For example, you can enter the search query [the vines] and isolate results to the music category, to see interest in the rock band The Vines, rather than the WA resort. If you throw in a few more bands for comparative purposes, it's interesting to see how popularity is changing over time, and that great bands have peaks and troughs (often around album sales or tours)! [The Vines] peaked in early 2004, [Wolfmother] peaked in 2005/2006, but [Crowded House] continues to be consistently popular. It's also interesting to note which in which Australian regions [The Vines] are searched - as a proportion of total searches, they're most popular in Perth. 


Using the "Categories" filter, you can also see the most popular searches for an entire category, such as [basketball], where you can notice the huge spike in interest around the Beijing Olympic Games.

A further use of Insights for Search is to see popular searches and rising queries, from here and abroad. An analysis, for example, of Australian vacation destinations that Germans are searching for, shows that Ayers Rock/Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef are popular destinations, with the Whitsundays and Tasmania rapidly increasing in popularity in the past 18 months.  

Businesses can further use Insights for Search by viewing search trends for over time. The seasonality of searches can be used to target advertising campaigns around events like Fathers Day or Christmas.  Look at the spike in searches for [car stereos] in the lead up to Christmas.

We hope you'll find Google Insights for Search to be an extremely valuable tool. Given the various methods of comparison, the ability to filter by category and visualise heat maps by region, hopefully you'll discover new and engaging information about your products, markets, and advertising!

Posted by Justin Baird, Senior Product Specialist