Googland

[G] Climate tools for Copenhagen and beyond

Posted: 07 Dec 2009 04:27 AM PST

Official Google Blog: Climate tools for Copenhagen and beyond

Representatives from around the world arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark today to negotiate a successor treaty for the Kyoto Protocol. This 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) has been called the most important conference in a decade.

In fact, in an unprecedented initiative, 56 major newspapers in 45 countries published a shared editorial calling on politicians and negotiators gathering in Copenhagen to strike an ambitious deal on combating climate change. The editorial appeared in 20 languages including Chinese, Russian and Arabic. It asserts that the Copenhagen summit has the power "to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it."

So in honor of this important event, we've built a number of new tools to give delegates — and you at home — easy access to useful information to help visualize and explore data and issues relating to climate change.

In September we launched a series of new Google Earth climate change layers and tours in collaboration with the Danish government. Check out these tours to explore the effects of climate change and get a better understanding of the scenarios that could unfold if we don't stop this environmental threat. The tours were developed together with leading environmental organizations and individuals including The World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace as well as Al Gore, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and others.

Over the past weeks, many of you have already uploaded personal statements of your hopes (and fears) for our planet through YouTube and the Raise Your Voice campaign. Now the search is on for the best video and text questions to be delivered to global leaders and climate activists who will come together in Copenhagen to answer the top-ranked questions from the YouTube channel in a townhall produced by CNN International. Voting with Google Moderator will continue until December 14th.

An Australia-based Googler also recently launched a tool called Show your Vote which puts the supporting voices for a global deal right on a Google Map. This tool can be integrated into any website to help drive the outreach and collect votes, and can already be found on UNFCCC, COP15.dk and WWF Earth Hour.

And if you're in Denmark with us, check out two unique installations powered by Google and YouTube. The first, a giant CO2 CUBE, is an art installation that visualizes one metric ton of carbon dioxide and has YouTube videos streaming on its walls. The second is an interactive Google Earth simulator made up of flat-screen panels and controlled with a free roam Space Navigator 6-axis joystick. (It's cool, trust us.) Welcome to Copenhagen!

Posted by Jonas Vang, Sr. Industry Analyst and Benjamin Kott, Green Business Operations

URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/climate-tools-for-copenhagen-and-beyond.html

[G] Sometimes eight screens are better than one

Posted: 07 Dec 2009 01:16 AM PST

Google LatLong: Sometimes eight screens are better than one

Back in June of 2008, some of my fellow engineers and I got to thinking: how could we recreate the experience of seeing the impressive imagery from our geo products in a more seamless way? We scrounged some spare Linux workstations, and in our 20% time we modified a video player to play sequences of Street View shots in sync across three screens, like the Tour de France flipbooks we created in 2008. It worked! Playing back the panoramas like a flipbook made it feel like we were zooming through the streets of the world.

Next, we started brainstorming about how we could build a case for the screens. One weekend, while we were hanging around the shop and looking for a woodworking project, we started building a sort of gazebo out of 2x4s and plywood to display these screens. Here's what we came up with:

The wood gazebo was a bit awkward to carry around, so Ji Lee, a mechanical engineer on the team, offered to design a steel frame that we could disassemble and take to conferences. We finished it just in time for Google I/O in June of this year.

We wanted to try visualizing other cool geo displays, so in July, Dan Barcay, one of the engineers on the Google Earth team, modified a Google Earth client so that it would synchronize views across multiple computers. The effect was pretty stunning: all of a sudden, flying around in Google Earth really felt like flying, and exploring the ocean trenches was like piloting a submarine. When you splashed through the sea surface you cringed slightly, expecting to get wet. You could even command your own lander down to the Moon or Mars. It was amazing to all of us how much more impressive Google Earth felt when we were surrounded by screens and able to turn our heads to look around (and even walk around). It felt more like a ride than a computer program, something between an observation-deck and a glass-walled spaceship. As a result of this totally seamless, immersive experience, we decided to name it the Liquid Galaxy. With the Liquid Galaxy, we could fly through the Grand Canyon, leap into low-Earth orbit, and come back down to perch on the Great Pyramid of Giza without even breaking a sweat.

It's still a 20% time project for us, but we're excited about the Liquid Galaxy and we're working hard to improve it. And we still love bringing it to conferences so that more people can try it out. We just finished setting up our latest creation at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen.