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Indoor Google Maps help you make your way through museums
July 10, 2012
In the past, navigating through museums could be an art form in and of itself. But
Google Maps for Android
has got wayfinding inside your favorite museums down to a science. With indoor maps and walking directions for U.S. museums now available on your Android phone or tablet, you can plan your route from exhibit to exhibit, identifying points of interest along the way, including between floors.
Today, we’ve added more than
twenty popular U.S. museums
to our collection of over 10,000 indoor maps that we launched in
November
: the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cincinnati Museum Center, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History and 17
Smithsonian museums
—plus
a zoo
!
"My location" in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City
To access the floor plans, simply open Google Maps on your Android phone or tablet and zoom in on the museum of interest. To find the museum, either search for it by name using the magnifying glass icon or, if you’re already there, use the “
My location
” feature to orient yourself. With the “My location” feature enabled you can even get
indoor walking directions
.
Indoor walking directions in the National Air and Space Museum—Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
More museums are adding their floor plans to Google Maps for Android soon, including the SFMOMA, The Phillips Collection, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. If you’re interested in getting your museum’s floor plan included in Google Maps, visit the
Google Maps Floor Plans tool
.
Along with
the Google Art Projec
t, indoor mapping is one more way we’re working with museums to bring greater access to revered cultural and educational institutions around the world. Tap into the latest version of
Google Maps for Android in Google Play
, and enjoy exploring the art and science of the great indoors.
Posted by Cedric Dupont, Google Maps for Mobile team
(Cross-posted on the
Lat Long blog
)
Big Tent Sendai: Smarter ways to share information in a crisis
July 3, 2012
As we’ve seen in the last decade,
information technology can save lives
in a crisis. But even as data becomes more crucial to rescue efforts, key information like evacuation routes, shelter locations and weather alerts often remains inaccessible to the public. Time is of the essence in the wake of a disaster, and it's critical for emergency information to be available in open standards and formats to enable instant communication among first responders and affected populations.
This was the theme of our first
Big Tent
in Asia, held yesterday in Sendai, Japan. The event brought together tech industry leaders, non-profits, volunteers and government officials to discuss how technology can better assist in preparing for, responding to and rebuilding from disasters. This is an extremely pertinent issue for the Asia-Pacific region, as nearly
70 percent of fatalities
from natural disasters occur here. And with the earthquake and tsunami last year affecting the coastal regions of Northeastern Japan, Sendai was a particularly meaningful location to discuss new ways that technology can aid the efforts of responders to reduce the impact and cost of disasters.
During the panels, the audience heard stories about how two Pakistani volunteers mapped their home country so well through Google MapMaker that the UN’s mapping agency UNOSAT adopted the maps and provided them to aid workers during the Pakistan floods. Sam Johnson, Founder of the Christchurch Student Army and Young New Zealander of the Year, talked about using Facebook to quickly coordinate relief efforts on the ground after the earthquakes in Christchurch in 2010 and 2011. Twitter Japan Country Manager James Kondo talked about Japanese earthquake victims tweeting with the hashtag “stranded” in order to find help. Meanwhile representatives of open source project
Ushahidi
talked of “brainsourcing” reporters on the ground and remote volunteers to keep the world abreast of conditions in disasters such as the
earthquake in Chile
in 2010.
After the panels, conversations and debates, four key themes emerged. First, there is a conflict between traditional closed data architectures and emerging open models—and we need to close the gap between them. Second, we need to find complementary ways to embrace both authoritative data from official sources and crowdsourced data. Third, there’s a universal need for data, but they way it’s shared needs to be tailored to the local environment—for example, Internet-reliant countries vs. SMS-reliant countries. Finally, we were reminded that beyond the data itself, communication and collaboration are key in a crisis. Information isn’t worth anything unless people are taking that information, adapting it, consulting it and getting it to the people who need it.
One of the panels at Big Tent Sendai
Crisis response tools will continue to improve and more people across the globe will own devices to quickly access the information they need. But there are still major challenges we must address. As
Margareta Wahlström
, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction said, we can now get quick warnings and alerts to many populations on their phones, but many who receive the alerts don’t know how to act.
To see clips from Sendai and previous events, visit the
Big Tent YouTube channel
, where you can also join in the debate via comments, get more information on the presenters and see how different communities approach many of the same issues. We’ll hold more Big Tents in Asia soon, so please check back on our
website
to learn more.
Posted by Nigel Snoad, Product Manager, Google.org Crisis Response Team
Celebrate freedom. Support a free and open Internet.
July 3, 2012
On July Fourth, America celebrates its independence.
In the summer of 1776, 13 disenfranchised colonies spoke. It took days for their declaration to be printed and distributed throughout the colonies, and it took weeks for it to be seen across the Atlantic.
Today, such a document could be published and shared with the world in seconds. More than any time in history, more people in more places have the ability to have their voices heard.
Powering these voices are billions of Internet connections around the world—people on their mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. The Internet is a powerful platform that makes it easier for people to speak, to assemble, and to be heard. This is true no matter where freedom is taking root.
Yet we’ve only just begun to see what a free and open Internet can do for people and for the freedom we cherish.
Today we’re sharing a video we made to celebrate our freedom and the tools that support it. Please take a moment to watch it, share it with your friends, and add your voice.
Join us
in supporting a free and open Internet.
Posted by Susan Molinari, Vice President of Public Policy and Government Affairs, Americas
Spring cleaning in summer
July 3, 2012
Technology creates tremendous opportunities to improve people’s lives. But to make the most of them, we need to focus—or we end up doing too much and not having the impact we strive for. So last fall we started a
spring clean
, and since then we’ve closed or combined more than 30 products. Today we’re announcing a few more closures. Here’s a summary of the changes we’ll be making:
The
Google Mini
has been an important part of our Enterprise Search offering since it was first introduced in 2005. It’s had a good run, but beginning July 31 we’re discontinuing the product because its functionality can be better
provided by products
like Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search. We will of course continue to provide technical support to Mini customers for the duration of their contracts, and will reach out to them shortly with more details.
Google Talk Chatback
allowed websites to embed a Google Talk widget so that they could engage with their visitors. It’s now outdated, so we’re turning off Chatback and encouraging websites to use the
Meebo bar
.
Google Video
stopped taking uploads in May 2009. Later this summer we’ll be moving the remaining hosted content to YouTube. Google Video users have until August 20 to migrate, delete or download their content. We’ll then move all remaining Google Video content to YouTube as private videos that users can access in the YouTube video manager. For more details, please see our post on the
YouTube blog
.
On November 1, 2013,
iGoogle
will be retired. We originally launched iGoogle in 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today's web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips. With modern apps that run on platforms like
Chrome
and
Android
, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time, so we’ll be winding it down. Users will have 16 months to adjust or export their data.
We’ll soon be retiring our
Symbian Search App
to focus our efforts on our mobile web search experience. We encourage you to go to
www.google.com
and make it your homepage or bookmark it. Switching from the app to the web experience will enable users to make the most of the web-wide improvements we make for search all the time.
Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Streamlining our services enables us to focus on creating
beautiful technology
that will improve people’s lives.
Posted by Matt Eichner, General Manager, Global Enterprise Search
GoogleServe 2012: More skills-based service
July 2, 2012
This year we celebrated our fifth GoogleServe Global Week of Service—an annual tradition in which Googlers around the world join together in community service projects. Volunteering together helps to revitalize and strengthen our connections with the cities and towns in which we live and work, and also brings us closer together as a global team.
In the past we’ve done hundreds of projects that address local community needs and engage our hearts and hands. This year, inspired by
Billion+ Change
and
Reimagining Service
as well as
industry research
, we focused on incorporating more skills-based projects. Our goal is to use our professional skills to generate more value for the communities we serve and to give Googlers an opportunity to have an even more impactful and fulfilling volunteer experience.
With that in mind, our software engineers developed code to help make math formulas accessible to blind students with
Social Coding 4 Good
; with the
Student Veterans of America
recruiters led resume and interviewing skills workshops with veterans; and with the
Branson Centre
in South Africa sales and business development professionals trained entrepreneurs in online tools to grow and optimize their small businesses.
Overall, more than 5,000 Googlers helped serve their communities across 400+ different projects as part of GoogleServe this year. Here’s a sampling of some of the other projects we participated in:
We led advertising optimization sessions for nonprofits through the
Google Grants
program everywhere from Hamburg to Hyderabad and Sydney to San Francisco.
We held computer literacy classes for community members at the
Dog River Library
in Atlanta, with the
Dublin Simon Community
and the
Crumlin College
in Dublin and with
Cambridge Community Television
in Cambridge.
We taught teenagers how to build and maintain websites with
Fidel
in Tel Aviv, and we conducted arts workshops for youth all over India—with
MAD
in Gurgaon, the
Open Door Foundation
in Bangalore and the
India Literacy Project
in Hyderabad.
We refurbished computers with
FreeGeek
in Portland, with
reBOOT Canada
in Waterloo and with
Goodwill Industries
in Austin.
We trained aspiring entrepreneurs with
Impulsa
in Mexico City and taught self defense and cooking classes for women entrepreneurs with
Kamilini
in Gurgaon, India.
With
HandsOn Bay Area
, we launched a new series of ongoing team-based projects, including software development to improve the
Mountain View Whisman School District
library information system and career development trainings with
Larkin Street Youth Services
.
We developed curriculum to teach physics through pinball at the
Pacific Pinball Museum
in Alameda, Calif. and recorded videos to help inspire girls to pursue science, technology and engineering-related careers with
Techbridge
in Oakland.
See our
Life at Google
page for photos of some of our employees and partners in action. While we do set aside a week to focus on serving the communities in which we work and live, giving back is an ongoing effort here at Google. If you'd like to join us in using your skills for social good, check out
All for Good
, for opportunities to give back in your community year-round.
Posted by Seth Marbin, on behalf of the GoogleServe and Googler Social Responsibility Teams
Our unique approach to research
July 2, 2012
Google started as a
research project
—and research has remained a core part of our culture. But we also do research differently than many other places. To shed more light on Google’s unique approach to research,
Peter Norvig
(Director of Research),
Slav Petrov
(Senior Research Scientist) and I recently published a paper,
“Google’s Hybrid Approach to Research,”
in the July issue of
Communications of the ACM
.
In the paper, we describe our hybrid approach to research, which integrates research and development to maximize our impact on users and the speed at which we make progress.
Our model allows us to work at unparalleled scale and conduct research
in vivo
on real systems with millions of users, rather than on artificial prototypes. This yields not only innovative research results and new technologies, but valuable new capabilities for the company—think of
MapReduce
,
Voice Search
or open source projects such as
Android
and
Chrome
.
Breaking up long-term research projects into shorter-term, measurable components is another aspect of our integrated model. This is not to say our model precludes longer-term objectives, but we try to achieve these in stages. For example,
Google Translate
is a multi-year project characterized by the need for both research and complex systems, but we’ve achieved many small objectives along the way—such as adding languages over time for a current total of 64, developing features like two-step translation functionality, enabling users to make corrections, and consideration of syntactic structure.
Overall, our success in the areas of systems, speech recognition, language translation, machine learning, market algorithms, computer vision and many other areas has stemmed from our hybrid research approach. While there are risks associated with the close integration of research and development activities—namely the concern that research will take a back seat in favor of shorter-term projects—we mitigate those by focusing on the user and empirical data, maintaining a flexible organizational structure, and engaging with the academic community. We have a portfolio of timescales, with some researchers working with engineers to rapidly iterate on existing products, and others working on forward-looking projects that will benefit people in the future.
We hope
“Google’s Hybrid Approach to Research”
helps explain our method. We feel it will bring some clarification and transparency to our approach, and perhaps merit consideration by other technology companies and academic labs that organize research differently.
To learn more about what we do and see see real-time applications of our hybrid research model, add
Research at Google
to your circles on Google+.
Posted by
Alfred Spector
, Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives
The web is working for American businesses
July 2, 2012
The web is where we go to find things—that somewhere special to eat tonight, the directions to guide us there and suggestions for that one-of-a-kind present for the birthday girl.
Ninety-seven percent
of Americans who use the Internet are looking online for local goods and services using their computers and mobile devices.
The growth of our Internet use has naturally helped the ecommerce industry to expand rapidly over the past decade. But the web is also positively impacting brick-and-mortar businesses.
According to Boston Consulting Group
, American consumers who researched products online last year spent almost $2,000 actually purchasing those products offline. That’s almost $500 billion that went directly to main street retail. All in all, it’s clear that the economic impact of the web is huge; the Internet is where business is done and jobs are created.
We’re proud to be part of such a dynamic industry, and we’re committed to helping make the web work for American businesses. Through our search and advertising programs, businesses find customers, publishers earn money from their content and nonprofits solicit donations and volunteers. These tools are how Google makes money, and they’re how millions of other businesses do, too.
In fact, in 2011, Google’s search and advertising tools helped provide $80 billion of economic activity for 1.8 million advertisers, website publishers and nonprofits across the U.S. You can see the state-by-state breakdown on our
economic impact website
.
Take one example:
King Arthur Flour
, a great New England baking company. King Arthur has been a well-known local company since George Washington was President, but has recently used the web to grow into an internationally-renowned baking business. Similarly, Nebraska’s 80 year-old
Oriental Trading Company
shifted some of its catalog-based marketing to the web, and now sells 80 percent of their toys and novelties online. Or consider New Jersey’s
Bornstein Sons
home maintenance and repair contracting business, which was founded 70 years ago and recently began to advertise online. They now get one in four of their new customers from the web.
These are just a few examples out of the hundreds of thousands of businesses who are growing and hiring thanks to the web. And Google is committed to getting even more businesses online. Over the past year, we’ve been traveling the country with our
Get Your Business Online
program, encouraging businesses throughout the U.S. to create free websites and reach more customers. So far, we’ve worked with thousands of businesses to launch their new websites.
It’s a fact that the Internet is creating jobs and helping the American economy grow. And we’re proud to be a part of that process.
Posted by Margo Georgiadis, VP, Americas Sales
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