Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Add your local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker for the United States

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 01:52 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Add your local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker for the United States

[Cross-posted from the Google Lat Long Blog]

Before Google Map Maker—a product that enables people to add to and update the map for locations around the world—only 15 percent of the world's population had detailed online maps of their neighborhoods. Using Map Maker, people have built out and edited the maps for 183 countries and regions around the world, and now, due to the contributions of citizen cartographers, 30 percent of people have detailed online maps of the places they live.

Map Maker users have mapped entire cities, road networks and universities that were never previously recorded online. These contributions have been incorporated into Google Maps and Google Earth, so the collective expertise of the Map Maker community benefits the millions of people using these products globally.

Today we're opening the map of the United States in Google Map Maker for you to add your expert local knowledge directly. You know your neighborhood or hometown best, and with Google Map Maker you can ensure the places you care about are richly represented on the map. For example, you can fix the name of your local pizza parlor, or add a description of your favorite book store.


You can help make the map complete in other ways as well, such as marking the bike lanes in your town or adding all of the buildings on your university campus so they appear in Google Maps. We've seen incredibly detailed contributions from power users worldwide, including this comprehensive map of IIT Bombay. We're eager to see you add the same level of detail to locations in the United States.

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

To confirm Map Maker user contributions are accurate, each edit will be reviewed. After approval, the edits will appear in Google Maps within minutes—dramatically speeding up the time it takes for online maps to reflect the often-changing physical world. To see examples of what people around the world are adding to Map Maker, you can watch mapping in real-time.

In addition to opening Map Maker for the United States, we've added some new features for users globally. You can now get a street-level perspective on places with Street View imagery directly in Map Maker, see and edit all points of interest, and find exactly what you're looking for with advanced search options such as displaying all railroad tracks.

Browsing all points of interest in downtown Palo Alto, California

To learn more, check out our getting started site, or start mapping now at mapmaker.google.com.

Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Tech Lead and Manik Gupta, Product Manager, Google Map Maker
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/add-your-local-knowledge-to-map-with.html

[G] Add your local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker for the United States

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 12:34 AM PDT

Google LatLong: Add your local knowledge to the map with Google Map Maker for the United States

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

Before Google Map Maker—a product that enables people to add to and update the map for locations around the world—only 15 percent of the world's population had detailed online maps of their neighborhoods. Using Map Maker, people have built out and edited the maps for 183 countries and regions around the world, and now, due to the contributions of citizen cartographers, 30 percent of people have detailed online maps of the places they live.

Map Maker users have mapped entire cities, road networks and universities that were never previously recorded online. These contributions have been incorporated into Google Maps and Google Earth, so the collective expertise of the Map Maker community benefits the millions of people using these products globally.

Today we're opening the map of the United States in Google Map Maker for you to add your expert local knowledge directly. You know your neighborhood or hometown best, and with Google Map Maker you can ensure the places you care about are richly represented on the map. For example, you can fix the name of your local pizza parlor, or add a description of your favorite book store.


You can help make the map complete in other ways as well, such as marking the bike lanes in your town or adding all of the buildings on your university campus so they appear in Google Maps. We've seen incredibly detailed contributions from power users worldwide, including this comprehensive map of IIT Bombay. We're eager to see you add the same level of detail to locations in the United States.

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

To confirm Map Maker user contributions are accurate, each edit will be reviewed. After approval, the edits will appear in Google Maps within minutes—dramatically speeding up the time it takes for online maps to reflect the often-changing physical world. To see examples of what people around the world are adding to Map Maker, you can watch mapping in real-time.

In addition to opening Map Maker for the United States, we've added some new features for users globally. You can now get a street-level perspective on places with Street View imagery directly in Map Maker, see and edit all points of interest, and find exactly what you're looking for with advanced search options such as displaying all railroad tracks.

Browsing all points of interest in downtown Palo Alto, California

To learn more, check out our getting started site, or start mapping now at mapmaker.google.com.

Posted by Lalitesh Katragadda, Tech Lead and Manik Gupta, Product Manager, Google Map Maker
URL: http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2011/04/add-your-local-knowledge-to-map-with.html

[G] Undo certain Gmail actions in your mobile browser

Posted: 18 Apr 2011 04:58 PM PDT

Official Gmail Blog: Undo certain Gmail actions in your mobile browser

Posted by Bryan Logan, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted from the Google Mobile blog)

Sometimes when I'm using Gmail on my phone, I delete a message by mistake or label it incorrectly. Sure I can fish the message out of my Trash or remove the label and apply the correct one, but that takes several steps. Even just a few seconds is usually enough time to catch those annoying mistakes.

Now when you use the Gmail mobile web app, you'll have a small window of opportunity to undo four key actions: archive, delete, add or remove a label, or move a message/conversation.

When you take one of these actions, Gmail displays a yellow bar that recaps what you just did and allows you to undo it:



This bar stays in position even if you move to another screen (e.g. moving to 'Menu' from 'Inbox'). If you don't happen to catch your mistake in time, not to worry: all four actions can still be undone through other means (e.g. you can move a message from Trash back into your Inbox).

Try it out at gmail.com in the browser of your Android or iOS device.
URL: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/undo-certain-gmail-actions-in-your.html

[G] Shepherding the wind

Posted: 18 Apr 2011 04:33 PM PDT

Official Google Blog: Shepherding the wind

We recently invested approximately $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, anticipated to be the largest wind farm in the world. Shepherds Flat is currently under construction near windy Arlington, Ore., and when completed in 2012 will produce 845 MW of energy. That's a lot of wind—enough to power more than 235,000 homes.

This project is exciting to us not only because of its size and scale, but also because it uses advanced technology. This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities. Though the technology has been installed outside the U.S., it's an important, incremental step in lowering the cost of wind energy over the long term in the U.S.

Shepherds Flat will help Oregon continue to be one of the top wind producing states in the nation, while providing significant direct economic benefits to the state. The project will also benefit the region by helping California meet its aggressive renewable energy goals with a cost-effective and clean wind resource. The electricity produced at Shepherds Flat will be sold under long term agreements to Southern California Edison.

The Shepherds Flat Wind Farm under construction with me in the center and my colleagues Arielle Bertman and Matthew Stepka.

We look forward to joining a project with strong experienced partners such as the developer, Caithness Energy, and GE, which is an early investor in Shepherds Flat as well as the turbine manufacturer and operations and maintenance supplier. Our co-investors are Sumitomo Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation, and Tyr Energy, a subsidiary of ITOCHU Corporation, both of which have deep experience in power projects.

This project brings our total invested in clean energy to more than $350 million, including our most recent investments in a German solar photovoltaic plant and in the BrightSource Ivanpah solar power tower—the largest solar energy project in the world. We're excited about helping deliver clean energy to the grid and we hope this latest investment encourages other companies to think about ways they can help accelerate the deployment of more renewable energy. We remain on the lookout for more projects that make business sense and will help all of us take advantage of clean, renewable energy.

Posted by Rick Needham, Director of Green Business Operations
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/shepherding-wind.html

[G] Advertising Age Viral Video Awards

Posted: 18 Apr 2011 11:27 AM PDT

YouTube Blog: Advertising Age Viral Video Awards

Of the most watched YouTube videos in 2010, two of the top 10 were advertisements, showing that more and more advertisers are creating video campaigns that strike a chord with viewers, sending them viral. Advertising Age and Visible Measures take a look at what campaigns are going viral every week as part of their Top 10 Viral Video Ads Charts, but when you look back on 2010, who comes out on top?



Last week, the Ad Age Viral Video Awards selected 10 video ads from across a variety of verticals to receive awards such as the, "Make a Dull Industry Fun" campaign and "Best Brand Jacking of a Global Sporting Event". All of them put theYouTube platform to work in innovative ways and are fantastic examples of how brands can engage viewers. Check out a sampling below, and for the full list of awards, go here.



Best Video-Only Campaign - BlendTec: "Will It Blend?"





Best Viral Mockumentary - Hi-Tec: "Liquid Mountaineering"





Best Video Advertainment - Red Bull: "Way Back Home"





Eric Meyerson, Video Business Marketing Lead, recently watched, "Opening Ceremony Blog - Spike Jonze Presents: Lil Buck and Yo-Yo Ma."





URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/youtube/PKJx/~3/6Bfi03JOdh8/advertising-age-viral-video-awards.html

[G] Happy Tax Day! Now, where did your tax dollars go?

Posted: 18 Apr 2011 07:34 AM PDT

Official Google Blog: Happy Tax Day! Now, where did your tax dollars go?

Like it or not, Americans have a date with the IRS today. In a few hours, our tax forms will have been sent in... yet most of us will still be left wondering, "How will the government spend our money?"

In February, we launched the Data Viz Challenge to answer that very question. The challenge was a five-week competition that asked developers to visualize how our federal income tax dollars are spent. We received more than 40 thought-provoking entries that each take a unique approach to making this data more accessible to taxpayers.

Take a look at the variety of visualizations in this short video:



The entries ranged from quirky and fun to serious and academic. Some were as simple as a receipt, others showed us how many minutes or days we work to cover public spending. One even rendered the data as a cityscape and invited people to climb the towers virtually.

In the end, our jury selected Anil Kandangath's "Where Did My Tax Dollars Go?" as our Grand Prize winner. As the jury noted, his entry is information-rich but elegantly designed, and at no point while interacting with the visualization do you lose the "big picture." Anil's entry is a great example of how data visualization can take boring, complicated, but critically important information and make it accessible to everyone. Congratulations, Anil.


Thank you to all of the entrants and our partners Eyebeam and Whatwepayfor.com for making this possible. We hope these submissions help you better understand where your tax dollars are spent—and even inject a little bit of fun into your tax day this year. Happy filing!

Posted by Jenny Ramaswamy, Google Creative Lab
URL: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/happy-tax-day-now-where-did-your-tax.html
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