Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Where in the world are my photos?

Posted: 15 Feb 2011 04:55 PM PST

Google Photos Blog: Where in the world are my photos?

Posted by Ping Chen, Software Engineer

For some of you, many of your memories are based around a place. It could be a cherished family cabin, an iconic landmark or a trip to an exotic locale. In Picasa Web Albums, you can leverage the GPS technology built into many cameras and mobile phones to tag where your images were taken. This makes sharing images of your trip to Yellowstone even more interesting by showing where inside the park they were taken.

Until today, you could manage the visibility of geographical information at the account level - you chose whether to display location information for your entire account. Now, you can control whether or not to include location information for each individual album rather than at the account level. Whenever you add a new album, location information will not display by default. Existing albums will follow your previous selection. You can easily change this setting for existing and new albums by checking or unchecking the box below the map on your album.


This way, you can show your friends the geographical location of the photos in your Yellowstone album, while keeping the location of a favorite beach your secret.

As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Please share your feedback in our forum.
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2011/02/where-in-world-are-my-photos.html

[G] Where in the world are my photos?

Posted: 15 Feb 2011 04:54 PM PST

Google Photos Blog: Where in the world are my photos?

Posted by Ping Chen, Software Engineer

For some of you, many of your memories are based around a place. It could be a cherished family cabin, an iconic landmark or a trip to an exotic locale. In Picasa Web Albums, you can leverage the GPS technology built into many cameras and mobile phones to tag where your images were taken. This makes sharing images of your trip to Yellowstone even more interesting by showing where inside the park they were taken.

Until today, you could manage the visibility of geographical information at the account level - you chose whether to display location information for your entire account. Now, you can control whether or not to include location information for each individual album rather than at the account level. Whenever you add a new album, location information will not display by default. Existing albums will follow your previous selection. You can easily change this setting for existing and new albums by checking or unchecking the box below the map on your album.


This way, you can show your friends the geographical location of the photos in your Yellowstone album, while keeping the location of a favorite beach your secret.

As always, we'd love to hear what you think. Please share your feedback in our forum.
URL: http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2011/02/where-in-world-are-my-photos.html

[G] Search trends: a clue to 2011 Oscar winners?

Posted: 15 Feb 2011 01:22 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Search trends: a clue to 2011 Oscar winners?

Each year, as the Academy Awards bubble to the top of our collective consciousness, we see a major spike in search traffic related to the event. This year, on the day the nominees were announced, four of the top 10 trending search terms in the U.S. were Oscar-related.

After last year's awards ceremony, we provided an in-depth summary of search trends that played out during the broadcast. But could search trends have predicted the winners? To make it easy to explore how the actors, directors and cinematographers are trending in search—and maybe see if that data correlates with the eventual winners—you can explore search data across all award categories on our new Oscar Search Trends website.

John Batelle once described search trends as "a massive database of desires, needs, wants and likes." Looking at Insights for Search data, we were intrigued to find that this "database of intentions" shows consistent search patterns among Best Picture winners for the last three years. Each year, the winning film has shown an upward trend in search volume for at least four weeks, as well as highest regional interest from New York (The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men).


Will that pattern repeat this year? If you apply the same test, this year's most likely candidates for best picture—by search pattern—are The Social Network (trending upward for five weeks) followed by Black Swan and The King's Speech (each trending upward for four weeks). The Fighter, another 2011 Best Picture nominee, saw an upward trend in search volume for five weeks after its release, but highest regional interest was from Massachusetts instead of New York; no film with highest regional interest in Massachusetts has won best picture since The Departed in 2007. Perhaps Boston will take it back in 2011?

We can't say for sure what will happen this year, since searches can only reflect what people are interested in, but it's fun to look for patterns that persist year after year. So before you make any Academy Awards-related bets with your friends this year, be sure to explore the Oscar Search Trends. Choose any award category to see how the nominees were searched over time.

Posted by Niv Efron, Insights for Search team, Google Israel R&D Center
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/search-trends-clue-to-2011-oscar.html

[G] Making sense of science: introducing the Google Science Communication Fellows

Posted: 15 Feb 2011 01:22 PM PST

Official Google Blog: Making sense of science: introducing the Google Science Communication Fellows

(Cross-posted on the Google.org Blog)

In an effort to foster a more open, transparent and accessible scientific dialogue, we've started a new effort aimed at inspiring pioneering use of technology, new media and computational thinking in the communication of science to diverse audiences. Initially, we'll focus on communicating the science on climate change.

We're kicking off this effort by naming 21 Google Science Communication Fellows. These fellows were elected from a pool of applicants of early to mid-career Ph.D. scientists nominated by leaders in climate change research and science-based institutions across the U.S. It was hard to choose just 21 fellows from such an impressive pool of scientists; ultimately, we chose scientists who had the strongest potential to become excellent communicators. That meant previous training in science communication; research in topics related to understanding or managing climate change; and experience experimenting with innovative approaches or technology tools for science communication. This year's fellows are an impressive bunch:
  • Brendan Bohannan, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology, University of Oregon
  • Edward Brook, Professor, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University
  • Julia Cole, Professor, Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona
  • Eugene Cordero, Associate Professor, Meteorology and Climate Science, San Jose University
  • Frank Davis, Professor, Landscape Ecology & Conservation Planning, University of California-Santa Barbara
  • Andrew Dessler, Professor, Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University
  • Noah Diffenbaugh, Assistant Professor, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University
  • Simon Donner, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
  • Nicole Heller, Research Scientist, Climate Central
  • Brian Helmuth, Professor, Biological Sciences, University South Carolina
  • Paul Higgins, Associate Director, Policy Program, American Meteorological Society
  • Jonathan Koomey, Consulting Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University
  • David Lea, Professor, Earth Science, University of California-Santa Barbara
  • Kelly Levin, Senior Research Associate, World Resources Institute
  • David Lobel, Assistant Professor, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University
  • Edwin Maurer, Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, Santa Clara University
  • Susanne Moser, Research Associate, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California-Santa Cruz
  • Matthew Nisbet, Associate Professor, School of Communication, American University
  • Rebecca Shaw, Director of Conservation, The Nature Conservancy, CA Chapter
  • Whendee Silver, Professor, Ecosystem Ecology and Biogeochemistry, University of California-Berkeley
  • Alan Townsend, Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado
At our Mountain View, Calif. headquarters in June, the fellows will participate in a workshop, which will integrate hands-on training and facilitated brainstorming on topics of technology and science communication. Following the workshop, fellows will be given the opportunity to apply for grants to put their ideas into practice. Those with the most impactful projects will be given the opportunity to join a Lindblad Expeditions & National Geographic trip to the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica as a science communicator.

Congratulations to all of the fellows! And we'll keep you posted on more ideas and tools emerging for science communication.

Posted by Dr. Amy Luers, Google.org and Tina Ornduff, Google Education
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/making-sense-of-science-introducing.html
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