December 12, 2012

Disaster History, Brought to You By Google

The project, “Memories for the Future,” began with a team from Google Streetview compiling a set of before-and-after panoramas of the region’s street network. Now, with demolition imminent, Google has begun constructing three-dimensional interior maps of dozens of public buildings as well. Like Streetview, they are freely navigable.

[…] The scenes are strange, sad, sometimes beautiful. In Rikuzentataka’s Municipal Kesen Elementary School, flooded by a surge in the Kesen River, children’s toys lie scattered in the rubble. On the first floor of the Rikizentakata City Office, where the carcass of a silver car has come to rest, a purple vase sits boldly on a ledge.

Read more. [Images: GoogleMaps]

12:54pm
(Notes: 74)
  
Filed under: Google Japan Disaster 
October 17, 2012
Google Has a Stormtrooper Guarding Its Data Center

Google Has a Stormtrooper Guarding Its Data Center

4:14pm
(Notes: 416)
  
Filed under: News Tech Google Star Wars These aren't the search results you're looking for 
September 28, 2012
Turning Street View Into Street Art As Google’s Street View cars rumble through our cities and towns, they don’t capture merely the geography of our streets and buildings. They see and record the life there, people going about their days. Those inadvertent portraits are now moving back from the digital realm to our earthly one, in artist Paolo Cirio’s projectStreet Ghosts. Cirio finds images of humans on the streets of Street View and creates life-sized prints of them, and places them back on the spot where they were originally captured, such as in the picture above, taken from a Street View image of Dircksenstrasse in Berlin. As he describes it, his project exposes “the specters of Google’s eternal realm of private, misappropriated data: the bodies of people captured by Google’s Street View cameras, whose ghostly, virtual presence I marked in Street Art fashion at the precise spot in the real world where they were photographed.” Read more. 

Turning Street View Into Street Art

As Google’s Street View cars rumble through our cities and towns, they don’t capture merely the geography of our streets and buildings. They see and record the life there, people going about their days.

Those inadvertent portraits are now moving back from the digital realm to our earthly one, in artist Paolo Cirio’s projectStreet Ghosts.

Cirio finds images of humans on the streets of Street View and creates life-sized prints of them, and places them back on the spot where they were originally captured, such as in the picture above, taken from a Street View image of Dircksenstrasse in Berlin. As he describes it, his project exposes “the specters of Google’s eternal realm of private, misappropriated data: the bodies of people captured by Google’s Street View cameras, whose ghostly, virtual presence I marked in Street Art fashion at the precise spot in the real world where they were photographed.”

Read more. 

4:50pm
(Notes: 617)
  
Filed under: Street art Graffiti Art Google 
August 27, 2012
After Google Improved Maternity Leave, Post-Partum Attrition Dropped by 50% Amid all the handwringing about what technology companies can do to recruit and retain women in their ranks, we don’t hear a lot of solutions. But here’s an obvious thing that tech companies can do: increase the length of maternity leave and pay a full salary for its duration. Read more. [Image: Reuters]

After Google Improved Maternity Leave, Post-Partum Attrition Dropped by 50%

Amid all the handwringing about what technology companies can do to recruit and retain women in their ranks, we don’t hear a lot of solutions. But here’s an obvious thing that tech companies can do: increase the length of maternity leave and pay a full salary for its duration.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

3:51pm
(Notes: 729)
  
Filed under: Women Feminism News Google Pregnancy Parenting 
August 17, 2012
Fewer and Fewer People Want to Know About Computers The above chart shows the search volume for a basket of computer and electronics related terms (e.g. “windows, mac, hp, ipod, google, dell, sony, xbox”). Read more. [Image: Google]

Fewer and Fewer People Want to Know About Computers

The above chart shows the search volume for a basket of computer and electronics related terms (e.g. “windows, mac, hp, ipod, google, dell, sony, xbox”).

Read more. [Image: Google]

12:00pm
(Notes: 57)
  
Filed under: Technology Google Science 
August 14, 2012

Wacky Florida Political Ad Warns of Robot Car Menace

Forget gators, zombies, and escaped pet pythons. The new menace in Florida, if this ad is to be believed, is the driverless cars that terrorize the streets, mowing down slow-moving pedestrians and smashing into things.

The spot is a last-minute attack on Jeff Brandes, a state representative from St. Petersburg running for an open state senate seat in today’s Republican primary. Brandes sponsored Google-backed legislation this year that made Florida the second state in the country to allow driverless cars on its roads. He never imagined it would become a political issue.

I, for one, welcome our new robo-car overlords.

4:41pm
(Notes: 42)
  
Filed under: WTF Politics Google Robot cars Funny Driverless cars 
August 10, 2012
thedailyfeed:  Who will rule your mobile phone? The world’s top tech juggernauts — Apple and Google — are in an intense arms race to decide.  A major offensive to get the edge takes place today: An auction of 1,100 patents owned by photography giant Eastman Kodak Co. Whichever company gets the goods will keep the other from integrating cameras into smartphones and tablets — a big deal since Google’s Android operating system accounts for half of the smartphone market and Apple’s iPhone makes up a third.

thedailyfeed:

 Who will rule your mobile phone? The world’s top tech juggernauts — Apple and Google — are in an intense arms race to decide. 

A major offensive to get the edge takes place today: An auction of 1,100 patents owned by photography giant Eastman Kodak Co. Whichever company gets the goods will keep the other from integrating cameras into smartphones and tablets — a big deal since Google’s Android operating system accounts for half of the smartphone market and Apple’s iPhone makes up a third.

10:23am
(Notes: 261)
  
Filed under: Technology News Google Apple 
August 9, 2012
Google Keeps Paying Deceased Employees’ Families for a Decade Many of the perks Google famously offers its employees are designed to help those employees enjoy a healthier life. Organic food in the cafeteria! On-site gyms! Subsidized massages! Nap rooms! Turns out, though, that the company also wants its employees to enjoy a better death. More specifically: a wealthier death. In an interview with Forbes’s Meghan Casserly, Laszlo Bock — Google’s, Chief People Officer (in non-Google terms: head of HR) — shares a Google benefit that is all too literally out of this world. “This might sound ridiculous,” Bock tells Casserly. “But we’ve announced death benefits at Google.” Yes. It’s like this: Should someone pass away while employed by Google, that person’s surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50 percent of the deceased’s salary. And that spouse or domestic partner will receive that check every year. For the next decade. Read more. [Image: Shutterstock/Viktor Gladkov]

Google Keeps Paying Deceased Employees’ Families for a Decade

Many of the perks Google famously offers its employees are designed to help those employees enjoy a healthier life. Organic food in the cafeteria! On-site gyms! Subsidized massages! Nap rooms!

Turns out, though, that the company also wants its employees to enjoy a better death. More specifically: a wealthier death. In an interview with Forbes’s Meghan Casserly, Laszlo Bock — Google’s, Chief People Officer (in non-Google terms: head of HR) — shares a Google benefit that is all too literally out of this world. “This might sound ridiculous,” Bock tells Casserly. “But we’ve announced death benefits at Google.”

Yes. It’s like this: Should someone pass away while employed by Google, that person’s surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50 percent of the deceased’s salary. And that spouse or domestic partner will receive that check every year. For the next decade.

Read more. [Image: Shutterstock/Viktor Gladkov]

2:05pm
(Notes: 377)
  
Filed under: News Tech Google 
July 17, 2012
Should Marissa Mayer buy Twitter? Alexis Madrigal has six suggestions for Yahoo’s new CEO.

Should Marissa Mayer buy Twitter?

Alexis Madrigal has six suggestions for Yahoo’s new CEO.

11:24am
(Notes: 22)
  
Filed under: Marissa Mayer Google Yahoo CEO 
May 31, 2012
Quiz: Are You a True Tech Geek? Want to know if you’re a real, true tech geek? Not just an appreciator of the smartphone, or a connoisseur of the tablet, or an aficionado of the animated GIF … but a tried-and-true, to-the-core technology nerd? Here’s a pretty good test. It has only one question: Google X is the experimental lab that will soon be bringing Project Glass (street name: Google Goggles) to market. And it would like to extend the technology of those nerdy-chic augmented reality glasses. In an interview with Fast Company, Project Glass product lead Steve Lee mentioned the challenges of creating AR glasses that can fit every user — even people who already wear standard eyeglasses. The down-the-road solution, Lee suggested, could be the manufacture of virtual reality contact lenses. “At this point,” he said, “it seems like a natural evolution.” Here is the test. Is this (A) awesome or (B) horrifying? Read more. [Image: Google]

Quiz: Are You a True Tech Geek?

Want to know if you’re a real, true tech geek? Not just an appreciator of the smartphone, or a connoisseur of the tablet, or an aficionado of the animated GIF … but a tried-and-true, to-the-core technology nerd?

Here’s a pretty good test. It has only one question:

Google X is the experimental lab that will soon be bringing Project Glass (street name: Google Goggles) to market. And it would like to extend the technology of those nerdy-chic augmented reality glasses. In an interview with Fast Company, Project Glass product lead Steve Lee mentioned the challenges of creating AR glasses that can fit every user — even people who already wear standard eyeglasses. The down-the-road solution, Lee suggested, could be the manufacture of virtual reality contact lenses. “At this point,” he said, “it seems like a natural evolution.”

Here is the test. Is this (A) awesome or (B) horrifying?

Read more. [Image: Google]

2:33pm
(Notes: 58)
  
Filed under: Tech Google 
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