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Bright ideas for an even better Bay Area
May 22, 2014
Local nonprofit heroes are making a difference in our community, and we want to do more to support them. As part of that mission, we recently launched a
Bay Area Impact Challenge
with a question: working together, what can we do to make the Bay Area an even better place to live?
Provide training and job opportunities for people with disabilities. Match surplus medical supplies with community clinics. Bring mobile showers and toilets to the homeless. These are just a few of the nearly 1,000 thoughtful and creative proposals we received.
A panel of
community advisors
—Honorable Aida Alvarez, Secretary Norman Mineta, Chief Teresa Deloach Reed, Reverend Cecil Williams and Barry Zito—joined Googlers to narrow down the pool to the 10 top finalists. Each project was selected for its community impact, ingenuity, scalability and feasibility.
Now we need your help deciding which projects to support. Which one do you think will make the biggest impact in our community?
Vote now
for the four ideas that inspire you.
Your votes will decide which projects get up and running in a big way—with $500,000 going to each of the top four projects, and $250,000 to the next six. An additional 15 nonprofits that entered the Challenge have already received $100,000 each in support of their work.
Cast
your vote
by 11:59 p.m. PST on June 2, and join us in celebrating the community spirit that makes the Bay Area a great place to call home.
Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org
Google+ Stories and Movies: memories made easier
May 20, 2014
A suitcase full of dirty clothes. A sad-looking house plant. And 437 photos and videos on your phone, tablet and camera. This is the typically messy scene after a vacation. And although we can’t do your laundry (thanks but no thanks), or run your errands (well, maybe
a few
), we’d still like to help. Enter Google+ Stories, which can automatically weave your photos, videos and the places you visited into a beautiful travelogue.
No more sifting through photos for your best shots, racking your brain for the sights you saw, or letting your videos collect virtual dust. We’ll just gift you a story after you get home. This way you can relive your favorite moments, share them with others, and remember why you traveled in the first place.
Stories will be available this week on Android and the web, with iOS coming soon. In the meantime you can browse my story below (click to start), or explore a few others by paraglider
Tom de Dorlodot
, DJ
Steve Aoki
and Allrecipes photographer
Angela Sackett
.
When it’s less about travel, and more about today's events (like a birthday party, or baby’s first steps),
Google+ Movies
can produce a highlight reel of your photos and videos automatically—including effects, transitions and a soundtrack. Today we’re bringing Movies to Android, iOS and the web, so lots more people will receive these video vignettes.
A movie of my daughter’s first bike ride, created automatically by Google+
To get started with Stories and Movies, simply
back up
your photos and videos to Google+. And that’s it.
Auto Awesome
will get to work in the background, and you’ll get notified when a story or movie is ready.
In fact: if your photo library is already online, you may already have stories waiting for you. So look for the new app in
Google Play
, view the full list of improvements
on Google+
, and enjoy your walks down memory lane.
Posted by
+Anil Sabharwal
, Director of Product Management
Bringing the Rubik's Cube to the next generation of problem solvers
May 19, 2014
As a designer, it's always humbling when you encounter a perfect piece of design. Good design attracts our attention with its beauty, doesn’t need a user manual, is universally understood by anyone in the world, and is simple without sacrificing functionality.
In 1974, the world gave us one such piece of perfect design—the
Rubik's Cube
. Budapest-based educator and inventor Ernő Rubik created the puzzle originally to help his students better understand spatial geometry. Released to the public in the 1980s, it quickly became an international obsession, bigger than hairspray and breakdancing combined. But the Rubik’s Cube is more than just a toy; it’s a puzzle waiting to be solved and a question waiting to be answered. Over the past 40 years, the cube has puzzled, frustrated, and fascinated so many of us, and has helped spark an interest in math and problem solving in millions of kids. That’s part of why so many of us at Google
love the cube
, and why we're so excited to celebrate its 40th birthday this year.
As everyone knows (right??), there are
519 quintillion permutations
for the Rubik’s cube, so May 19 seemed like a fine day to celebrate its 40th anniversary. To kick things off, we’re using some of our favorite web technologies (HTML5 and Three.js among others) to bring the cube to the world in the form of
one of our most technically ambitious doodles yet
. You can twist and turn it by dragging along its sides, but with full respect to all the speedcubers out there, we’ve included keyboard shortcuts:
Using the same technology that’s behind the doodle, we built
Chrome Cube Lab
, a series of Chrome Experiments by designers and technologists that reinterpret Rubik’s puzzle with the full power of the web. Create your own music with experiments
808Cube
and
SynthCube
; make a custom, shareable cube of your own photos and GIFs with
ImageCube
; or send a scrambly message with the
Type Cube
. You can visit some of these experiments at the Liberty Science Center’s
Beyond Rubik’s Cube
exhibition, and if you'd like to explore the cube even further, consider
borrowing the cube’s source code
to build an experiment of your own.
We hope you enjoy getting to know the cube from a few new angles.
Posted by Richard The, Designer and a child of the ‘80s, Creative Lab New York
Through the Google lens: search trends May 9-15
May 16, 2014
Search is often the first place we turn when something unexpected or unusual happens. This week is no exception, as people looked for news on a celebrity smackdown, an interspecies showdown and everything in between.
When the news is news
A newsroom shuffle at the New York Times put the Grey Lady at the top of headlines around the country. Wednesday, it was announced that
Jill Abramson
, who served as executive editor since 2011 and was the first woman in that position, would be replaced by Dean Baquet (himself a “first”—no African-American has held the job before now). Searchers scrambled to find information on the story behind the story.
The Finals countdown
Basketball continues to be in the search spotlight as the NBA Finals approach. After a crazy, up-and-down, roller-coaster first round, the second round went more according to plan. Now we’re rewarded with matchups of the top two seeds in each conference finals, leading people to do some searching for the
Spurs
,
Thunder
,
Heat
and
Pacers
. While those teams are preparing for their next opponent, some teams are already making changes to prepare for next year; the Golden State Warriors announced a new coach,
Steve Kerr
, a former player with five championships under his belt. Searchers looked for information on [steve kerr rings] and [steve kerr bulls] (he won three of those rings in Chicago), as well as [steve kerr knicks]—rumor has it that Kerr turned down an offer to coach that team.
What a wonderful web
Legions of loyal cat people felt vindicated this week when a video of a family’s “hero cat” saving a four-year-old boy from a dog attack went viral. Not only were there hundreds of thousands of searches for [
cat saves boy from dog
], but the video now has more than 9 million views on YouTube. I personally vouch that it’s worth your time.
In other viral news,
Macaulay Culkin
was photographed wearing a T-shirt showing my own favorite famous person Ryan Gosling wearing a T-shirt of Macaulay Culkin back in his “Home Alone” days. People rushed to the web to see the photos, as well as create their own
recursive
images. As the
A.V. Club says
: great job, Internet!
Bey it ain’t so
An elevator surveillance video released by TMZ and showing Solange Knowles in a physical altercation with brother-in-law Jay-Z inspired a frenzy of speculation and
search activity
—and you could say it added one more problem to Jay’s list. Monday’s top trending topic—with more than 5 million searches!—was [
tmz
], and searches for terms like [solange attacks jay], [jay z fight] and [solange fight] were through the roof. Call it a testament to Bey and Jay’s status as celebrity royalty.
Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog Editor, who searched this week for [what to see in valdez ak] and [cite news wikipedia]
Hop on board—and go almost anywhere—with public transit on Google Maps
May 14, 2014
More than 70 percent of the world’s population doesn’t own a car
1
—a surprising fact for anyone who’s sat for what seems like hours on end in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Millions of people rely on public transit to get around. That’s why, since 2007, we’ve worked to include public transit routes and schedules in Google Maps. In fact, buses, trains, trams and subways included in Google Maps travel 200 million kilometers every day—that’s the equivalent of driving every single road in the world three times!
2
Today, Google Maps is helping you get around on public transit even more easily with these additions:
We’ve added
every single transit route
in
Great Britain
to Google Maps—making it easier to get anywhere from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
On the other side of the globe,
Vancouverites
looking for sun can now get real-time updates on whether a bus to Kits is faster than one to Third Beach.
In
Chicago
, Cubs fans can now zip to and from Wrigley Field, armed with the real-time information they need to hop on a bus and avoid congestion on Lake Shore Drive.
And finally, just in time for the games, we’ve
recently added
transit information for every host city in
Brazil
. Can you say “GOOOAAALLLLL?!”
Our transit data spans six continents, 64 countries and more than 15,000 towns and cities worldwide. And we’re not done yet: Google Maps will continue to improve—serving people the information they need to get around town when and where they need it.
Posted by David Tattersall, Product Manager, Public Transit
1
This estimate is based on the most recent
World Bank data
on the number of passenger cars per 1,000 people throughout 100 countries and territories. Passenger cars refer to road motor vehicles, other than two-wheelers, intended for the carriage of passengers and designed to seat no more than nine people (including the driver).
2
CIA World Factbook
Speak and learn with Spell Up, our latest Chrome Experiment
May 13, 2014
As a student growing up in France, I was always looking for ways to improve my English, often with a heavy French-to-English dictionary in tow. Since then, technology has opened up a world of new educational opportunities, from simple searches to
Google Translate
(and our backpacks have gotten a lot lighter). But it can be hard to find time and the means to practice a new language. So when the Web Speech API made it
possible to speak to our phones, tablets and computers
, I got curious about whether this technology could help people learn a language more easily.
That’s the idea behind
Spell Up
, a new word game and Chrome Experiment that helps you improve your English using your voice—and a modern browser, of course. It’s like a virtual spelling bee, with a twist.
We worked with game designers and teachers to make Spell Up both fun and educational. The goal of the game is to correctly spell the words you hear and stack them to build the highest word tower you can—letter by letter, word by word. The higher the tower gets, the more difficult the word challenges: You’ll be asked to pronounce words correctly, solve word jumbles and guess mystery words. You can earn bonuses and coins to level up faster.
Spell Up works best in Chrome on your
computer
and on
Android phones and tablets
. (It also works on iPhones and iPads, but you’ll need to type rather than talk.) Whether you’re just learning English or you’re already a pro,
check it out
! And if you’re a teacher, we encourage you to try it out in your classroom.
Posted by Xavier Barrade, Creative Lead and Polyglot, Creative Lab London
Through the Google lens: search trends May 2-8
May 9, 2014
Here’s our look back at the stories and searches that made this week, from lightsabers to Lewinsky.
Mint juleps and margaritas
This past week people across the country celebrated several long-held traditions and some newer ones. With the 140th “Run for the Roses” on Saturday, there were more than 2 million searches on the subject of the Kentucky Derby, including research on [kentucky derby time] and [kentucky derby horses]. (We’re partial to
derby fashion
.) Then, on Sunday, nerds everywhere celebrated what’s come to be known as “Star Wars Day,” thus named because the date lends itself to the pun “May the Fourth be with you.” According to search data at least, the unofficial holiday has been
getting bigger every year
. And finally, Monday’s Cinco de Mayo inspired lots of
pranks
, jokes, and more than a few people looking up the
history
of the holiday.
Red carpet moments and capital celebs
At this week’s
Met Gala
, the annual fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Beyonce and
Blake Lively
turned heads and inspired searches. And though searchers were interested in the White House Correspondents Dinner, it was old, not new, Beltway gossip that dominated this week. In a “Vanity Fair” essay,
Monica Lewinsky
broke a 10-year media silence to talk about life since the affair that made her a household name. Search interest in Lewinsky subsequently jumped to the
highest point ever
since 2004 (the time period for which data is available) as people looked for more information on the original story as well as [lewinsky now].
On the issues
The phrase “Bring Back our Girls” became a rallying cry to raise awareness about a group of nearly 300 school girls abducted in Nigeria in April. A number of leaders, including Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, have raised their voices in support of the campaign.
On a completely different viral note, Jimmy Kimmel hit the streets asking people “what is gluten?” This
now viral YouTube video
has left many people laughing at the responses, as well as looking up the definition of gluten, and related issues such as celiac disease, for themselves.
Giving thanks to teachers and moms
We hope you took time to
thank a teacher
for Teacher Appreciation Week. More than a hundred thousand searches on the topic indicate that people around the country were showing their gratitude. And finally,
Mother’s Day
is this Sunday, and many people were looking up gifts—from more traditional treats like flower deliveries and chocolate-covered berries, to creative DIY ideas and even poems. For those of you whose moms are teachers as well (like mine), this is an even better time to show them you care.
Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog Editor, who searched this week for [rolf and daughters nashville] and [how tall is prince]
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