Google Street View Takes You on a Panoramic Tour of the Grand Canyon

in Google, Photography, Travel | February 5th, 2013

canyon SV_trekker_1_large

With Google’s Street View we can amble through New York City’s High Line Park, around the Nation­al Muse­um of Iraq in Bagh­dad, and down the cob­bled streets of Ouro Pre­to, Brazil. Now we can also take a vir­tu­al hike along the rim of the Grand Canyon, fol­low­ing Google’s cam­eras along the his­toric Bright Angel trail from its start at the south rim all the way down the Black Bridge over the Col­orado Riv­er and on to the Phan­tom Ranch camp­ing area.

It’s a per­fect way to check out the ter­rain before tak­ing off for an Ari­zona vaca­tion.

Unlike views in Google’s ear­li­er Street View maps, the Grand Canyon pho­tos are tak­en along rocky, nar­row trails where no car, snow mobile, or motor­bike could ever go. So how did Google col­lect all of the nec­es­sary images?

The Grand Canyon project is the first to uti­lize Trekker, a back­pack-mount­ed cam­era appa­ra­tus worn by a hik­er that takes a pic­ture every 2.5 sec­onds. Trekker weighs 40 pounds and is oper­at­ed by an Android phone held by the hik­er. It has 15 cam­eras point­ed in dif­fer­ent angles that can be com­bined to cre­ate panoram­ic views.

Fol­low the South Kaibab Trail to Skele­ton Point for majes­tic 360-degree views of the misty blue Canyon. It took three days to cap­ture the main trails of the Canyon’s south rim. Two teams hiked down the Bright Angel Trail, camped at Phan­tom Ranch and hiked out the next day along the South Kaibab Trail. Anoth­er team stayed at the top, col­lect­ing images from the rim and from Mete­or Crater out­side the park.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Stephen Colbert Brings Laughs and Book Tour to Google

in Comedy, Google, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | January 1st, 2013

Stephen Col­bert is one of the most refresh­ing come­di­ans work­ing today. He main­tains his character’s obnox­ious­ness dur­ing his own show, riff­ing and impro­vis­ing dur­ing inter­views with every­one from Bill O’Reilly to Eli­jah Wood, build­ing his char­ac­ter to dead­pan heights even with Jane Fon­da’s tongue in his ear.

But in the hot seat him­self, as an inter­vie­wee on Let­ter­man, Oprah or even with Play­boy mag­a­zine, Col­bert is authen­tic, can­did, fun­ny and a fast-on-his-feet smar­tie. In ear­ly Decem­ber Col­bert vis­it­ed Google’s New York offices and taped an inter­view for At Google Talks. Col­bert fans will want to check out the unedit­ed ver­sion recent­ly post­ed by Google. As a guest, Col­bert is fun­nier than Jon Stew­art and we get an hon­est look at the bright guy behind the buf­foon. The uncut inter­view has its high­lights, includ­ing the point when Colbert’s reac­tion to Eric Schmidt’s sug­ges­tion that The Col­bert Report launch its own YouTube show. His answers to ques­tions from the audi­ence are engag­ing, fun­ny and reveal­ing. It’s won­der­ful to hear the per­son­al sto­ry about the moment he real­ized he want­ed to make peo­ple laugh.

Col­bert was also con­duct­ing busi­ness. The inter­view was part of his book tour to pro­mote Amer­i­ca Again: Re-Becom­ing the Great­ness We Nev­er Weren’t. Below, you can see Col­bert give his comedic pitch for the book. And, if you want to down­load a free audio copy, you can always do so by start­ing a Free 30-Day Tri­al with Audible.com. We have details here.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and at thenifty.blogspot.com. 

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Google Digitizes Ancient Copies of the Ten Commandments and Genesis

in Google, History, Religion | December 21st, 2012

If dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy pos­es any threat to the mar­ket for words print­ed on real paper—and the jury is still out on that one—then it must also be cred­it­ed for expos­ing us to texts from the ancient world.

Last fall we post­ed about how the Israel Muse­um dig­i­tized the Dead Sea Scrolls, near­ly 1,000 texts found on the north­west shore of the Dead Sea in 1946. They are the ear­li­est known sur­viv­ing man­u­scripts from what is called the Hebrew Bible. Dig­i­tiz­ing the texts—most were on parch­ment but some were writ­ten on bronze or papyrus—allows view­ers to zoom in to exam­ine the writ­ing and even the paper fibers of hun­dreds of frag­ments.

Now the Israel Antiq­ui­ties Author­i­ty has expand­ed upon the col­lec­tion. Housed in the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Dig­i­tal Library are the ear­li­est known copies of the Book of Deuteron­o­my (which includes the Ten Com­mand­ments) and Chap­ter One of the Book of Gen­e­sis.

Each scroll frag­ment was scanned using spec­tral imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy that allows for the recov­ery of writ­ing that had fad­ed to near invis­i­bil­i­ty over the years. The boon for schol­ars is clear, but for reg­u­lar folks this archive is bet­ter than a muse­um vis­it. The Leon Levy site is search­able by dis­cov­ery site, con­tent and ancient lan­guage.

Google is mak­ing its mark as a major facil­i­ta­tor of cul­tur­al preser­va­tion. Anoth­er recent project with ties to ancient texts and his­to­ry is Caminos de Sefarad, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Red de Jud­erías de España to cre­ate a dig­i­tal map of Spain’s Jew­ish her­itage.

More than 500 land­marks from the Sefarad—the Sephardic Jews before they were expelled from Spain and Por­tu­gal in 1492—are ful­ly anno­tat­ed with cur­rent pho­tos, text and spe­cial details. Vis­it Rib­a­davia, a once-pros­per­ous city in Spain’s north­west moun­tains, and learn about Jew­ish wed­ding tra­di­tions from the Mid­dle Ages. The Jew­ish Quar­ter of Léon is called the Bar­rio Húme­do (Wet Dis­trict) and is known today for its fine wine and food. Use the time­line to keep your­self ori­ent­ed in chrono­log­i­cal his­to­ry and click Street View to see this vibrant dis­trict as it is today.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Celebrity Statistician Nate Silver Fields Questions from Data Wizards at Google

in Books, Google, Math | December 3rd, 2012

Maybe the biggest win­ner of the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, oth­er than Barack Oba­ma, was Nate Sil­ver, the young sta­tis­ti­cian who runs the 538 blog at the New York Times. As you may recall (it was only a few weeks ago), Sil­ver gave Pres­i­dent Oba­ma rough­ly an 80% — 90% chance of win­ning dur­ing the final days of Octo­ber. The talk­ing heads railed against Sil­ver, call­ing him an “ide­o­logue” and a “joke.” But, just as Sil­ver accu­rate­ly pre­dict­ed the out­come of every Sen­ate race dur­ing the 2008 elec­tion cycle, so did he pret­ty much nail the big race of 2012. He esti­mat­ed Oba­ma would receive 313 elec­toral votes, a touch below the 332 the pres­i­dent actu­al­ly received. Sil­ver was vin­di­cat­ed. It was time to take a vic­to­ry lap … and sell a few books.

In late Sep­tem­ber, Sil­ver shrewd­ly pub­lished a new book, The Sig­nal and the Noise: Why Most Pre­dic­tions Fail but Some Don’t. The book tour even­tu­al­ly, if not inevitably, brought him to Google, where the celebri­ty sta­tis­ti­cian field­ed ques­tions from data-lov­ing Googlers for an hour. A grand old time was had by all.

Free cours­es on Stats and Prob­a­bil­i­ty can be found in the Math sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 550 Free Online Cours­es.

via Giz­mo­do

 

 

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Google Presents an Interactive Visualization of 100,000 Stars

in Astronomy, Google, K-12, Science | November 27th, 2012

Stargaz­ers of all ages will enjoy the lat­est Google exper­i­ment designed for Chrome. One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars is an inter­ac­tive map of space includ­ing the loca­tions of—you guessed it—more than 100,000 stars.

Ren­dered in three dimen­sions, our know­able, mapped galaxy is both stag­ger­ing­ly vast and easy to nav­i­gate. With imagery and data from NASA and the Euro­pean Space Agency, Google’s Chrome Work­shop built a 3D mod­el of our lit­tle cor­ner of the uni­verse.

You can pre­view One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars above. Or you can enter the map, click on the upper left cor­ner, and take a tour of your own. You’ll start just beyond the stars that astronomers have stud­ied and named. Swipe all the way into our own solar sys­tem. The first thing you’ll notice is that Plu­to isn’t includ­ed, invit­ing a new mnemon­ic for the plan­et names (My Very Earnest Moth­er Just Served Us Nec­tarines?). That hazy cloud about a light year from the sun is the Oort Cloud, a mass of comets that’s thought to mark the out­er edge of the sun’s grav­i­ta­tion­al pull.

Swipe out a bit to see 87 rel­a­tive­ly near­by stars. Click on their names to read about them. Sir­ius is the bright­est in the night sky, part­ly because of its own lumi­nos­i­ty but also because it is com­par­a­tive­ly close to Earth. Vega is so well stud­ied that its bright­ness is used as the base­line to clas­si­fy stars accord­ing to their col­or.

Swipe out fur­ther for a galac­tic view of the Milky Way. It appears as a beau­ti­ful illu­mi­nat­ed disc cen­tered around a bright bulge. This shape is called the Galac­tic Plane. Click and drag to tilt the disc this way and that. Total­ing to some 400 bil­lion stars and as many plan­ets, the Milky Way does in fact bulge at its cen­ter, though astronomers think that the true core is real­ly an intense black hole.

Notice the tiny icon to “Tog­gle Spec­tral Index” up in the left cor­ner. On one set­ting, each cloud is pix­i­lat­ed to high­light its col­or (a key iden­ti­fi­er for astronomers).

Here’s where it helps to know a lit­tle about stars and how they form. Stars begin as clouds of most­ly hydro­gen, becom­ing grad­u­al­ly so dense through the process of nuclear fusion that even grav­i­ty can­not make them fly apart.

The amount of light a star gives off is mea­sured as dif­fer­ent col­ors and tem­per­a­tures. “Hot­ter” stars are younger and give off more blue light, and so are indi­cat­ed as blue. “Cool” stars are old­er, give off less blue light, and are indi­cat­ed as red.

By the way, the music behind One Hun­dred Thou­sand Stars is by Sam Hulick, whose music gamers may rec­og­nize  from Mass Effect.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site and her blog, thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Google Revisits the Fall of the Iron Curtain in New Online Exhibition

in Google, History | November 13th, 2012

I like to col­lect sounds while trav­el­ing. A few favorites that come to mind include the whine of scoot­ers buzzing down the streets of Paris, the calm female voice announc­ing the next stop on the Prague Metro and the clink clink of peo­ple chip­ping away chunks of the Berlin Wall.

That was 1990, just a few months after mil­lions of Germans—from both sides of the wall—succeeded in end­ing the East Ger­man regime through street protests.

The Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute cap­tures this amaz­ing peri­od of recent his­to­ry with The Fall of the Iron Cur­tain, a new col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments, videos and pho­tos curat­ed by Niall Fer­gu­son, an emi­nent Har­vard his­to­ri­an.

The 1980s saw the Cold War come to an end with a wave of cit­i­zen protests that swept across Europe. Google’s col­lec­tion includes 13 exhibits that begin with Poland’s Sol­i­dar­i­ty Move­ment but then con­sid­ers the his­to­ry and sig­nif­i­cance of the Berlin Wall.

Google part­nered with major Ger­man and Pol­ish muse­ums to cre­ate the exhibits so the expe­ri­ence is rich with con­text, includ­ing inter­views with his­to­ri­ans and images from the pop­u­lar cul­ture of the time.

Fol­low the riv­et­ing events of Decem­ber 14, 1989 as Roman­ian cit­i­zens crowd­ed Maria Plaza in Timisoara call­ing for lead­ers Nico­lae and Ele­na Ceauces­cu to step down. By evening the crowd filled all of the roads off the plaza and the mil­i­tary opened fire, killing 62 peo­ple. The peri­od of the Ceauces­cu tri­al and exe­cu­tion is brought to life in anoth­er exhib­it with images and inter­views.

The exhibits con­clude with the rapid accel­er­a­tion of events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall itself.

Each exhib­it is rich and com­plete with anec­dotes, includ­ing a diary of life dur­ing Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion.

Speak­ing of col­lect­ing sounds while trav­el­ing, check out the Pink Floyd’s live per­for­mance we brought you of The Wall in east­ern Berlin, a mere eight months after the Wall had come down.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. You can con­tact her and find more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Where Your Web Searches, Emails, and Videos Live: A Tour Inside Google’s Data Centers

in Business, Google, Technology, Web/Tech | October 18th, 2012

So much of what we expe­ri­ence as dig­i­tal is intan­gi­ble. The col­or and tex­ture of the Inter­net exists only for the time we have that par­tic­u­lar site loaded. With just a click of the mouse, the lush­ness dis­ap­pears.

Except that it doesn’t, real­ly.

Back­stage, every email, pho­to, YouTube video and doc­u­ment we share lives in a very real place, which is weird when you think about it. These mas­sive data cen­ters are like vaults of ones and zeros, some of which could wreak hav­oc in the wrong hands but, hon­est­ly, most of which will nev­er mean any­thing again to any­body.

Every time any­one uses a Google prod­uct, for exam­ple, like con­duct­ing a search or look­ing up direc­tions, their com­put­er talks to one of the world’s most pow­er­ful serv­er net­works, which are housed in huge data cen­ters. Very few peo­ple actu­al­ly get to see where Google’s servers live. These data cen­ters are high secu­ri­ty, for good rea­son.

The com­pa­ny recent­ly launched Where the Inter­net Lives, part of a mini cam­paign to pull back the cur­tain on how the web works. They hired a pho­tog­ra­ph­er to cap­ture eight of their data cen­ters on, well, not real­ly film, but you get the pic­ture. Oh, and the data cen­ters aren’t brick and mor­tar either. More like glass and dry­wall and pipes. Lots and lots of pipes.

And like Willie Won­ka and his famous fac­to­ry, Google invit­ed Wired mag­a­zine reporter Stephen Levy to vis­it and write a sto­ry about the pre­vi­ous­ly off-lim­its facil­i­ties.

Take a street view tour of the North Car­oli­na data cen­ter (and see their “secu­ri­ty team” at work). Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Con­nie Zhou’s images are love­ly and the facil­i­ties are beau­ti­ful in an eerie, futur­is­tic way. See how water is used to keep the proces­sors cool, where data is backed up, failed dri­ves destroyed to keep data safe and how work­ers get around.

Google employ­ees get a fair amount of play, with shots of them work­ing to build, main­tain and repair the machines.

It’s a peek behind the scenes, but it’s also mar­ket­ing. And what’s inter­est­ing is that it’s a lot like the auto­mo­bile industry’s mar­ket­ing (think of Saturn’s ads in praise of the assem­bly-line work­er) and cam­paigns by the Big Three to attract auto work­ers in the 1940s. Some of the pho­to cap­tions recall the nos­tal­gic, Utopi­an mes­sag­ing of the post-War era, when effi­cient, mod­ern sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties were sprout­ing up around indus­tri­al cen­ters. This lunch room looks pret­ty nice, and the sauna is right out­side.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her work online at kater­ixwriter

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Google Brings History to Life with 42 New Online Exhibitions

in Google | October 17th, 2012

Ear­li­er this year, Google expand­ed Art Project, a vast col­lec­tion of art­work curat­ed into exhibits by real muse­ums around the world and by reg­u­lar folks like you and me. (See our orig­i­nal post here.) Not much lat­er the Nel­son Man­dela Archive went online, fea­tur­ing rare pho­tos, man­u­scripts and videos relat­ed to the civ­il rights leader. And, more recent­ly we brought you news about Google’s World Won­ders Project, which includes amaz­ing panoram­ic shots of coral reefs pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a major ocean­ic study.

Turns out that these projects were just a taste of what was to come. With 17 dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions as part­ners, Google has built a robust, umbrel­la Cul­tur­al Insti­tute to house 42 new online exhi­bi­tions. Each exhib­it fea­tures, in Google’s words, “a nar­ra­tive which links the archive mate­r­i­al togeth­er to unlock the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, nuances and tales behind these events.” The exhibits also ben­e­fit from an abun­dance of poignant human sto­ries.

The Auschwitz-Birke­neau State Muse­um, for exam­ple, pro­vid­ed mate­ri­als for the exhib­it Trag­ic Love at Auschwitz, which fol­lows the rela­tion­ship between a Jew­ish woman and a Pol­ish man, both pris­on­ers of the Nazis. You can also watch the only exist­ing film images of Anne Frank, part of the thought­ful and touch­ing Anne Frank exhib­it. Or expe­ri­ence an entire­ly dif­fer­ent exhib­it, Years of Dolce Vita, which rev­els in the sen­su­al­i­ty of Ital­ian film from the mid-cen­tu­ry. Cre­at­ed in part­ner­ship with an Ital­ian gov­ern­ment film insti­tute, Google’s exhib­it is a sun­ny romp through the archi­tec­ture, fash­ion and food of post-Cold War Italy.

Oth­er exhibits focus on Steve Biko, The Coro­na­tion of Queen Eliz­a­beth II, and D‑Day. Enter the full col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Releas­es “Course Builder,” an Open Source Plat­form for Build­ing Your Own Big Online Cours­es

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal cul­ture, teach­ing and high­er edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her work online at .

 

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