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Dive into Ocean Week at Camp Google
July 13, 2015
Today is the start of Camp Google—an online summer camp built to spark and satisfy kids’ curiosities, with four weeks of live adventures for students ages 7-10. This post comes to us from Sylvia Earle, marine biologist and Explorer-in-Residence at National Geographic and the host of the first week of Camp Google. Tune in to Sylvia’s
live event at 12 p.m. PT
today
. -Ed.
The ocean first got my attention during a family visit to a New Jersey beach when I was three years old—a wave knocked me over! At age 12, a move to the Florida coast made the ocean my backyard, and I loved the abundance of life there—every day I encountered new creatures like starfish, sponges, horseshoe crabs, seaweed, and a wondrous array of small fish that I’d never seen before. I knew from then on that when I grew up I would be a scientist so I could keep exploring, no matter what.
Now I get to share my love for the ocean with a new generation of adventurers as part of Camp Google, a new online camp for curious kids, starting. During each of the four weeks of Camp Google, kids 7-10 can explore different subjects by joining live adventures—from the depths of the Atlantic to the top of one of the world’s most active volcanoes—and doing fun science projects. Today at 12 p.m. PT, National Geographic diver Erika Bergman and I will take kids on the first adventure—a
live dive
in the Atlantic Ocean. We’ll head to the northernmost part of Florida Reef Tract, the most extensive living coral reef system in North America. Whether it be the Hammerhead Reef or shipwrecks like the Jay Scutti, it will be exciting to see what we’ll find down there!
After the dive, kids can get hands-on with a range of activities to help them understand the science behind what they’ve seen underwater. The activities are designed by the Google engineers who map the oceans with Google Earth, and can be done with simple household supplies. For example, we’ll
learn about buoyancy
and how things float in the ocean in an experiment with eggs, water and salt, and we’ll explore how dolphins use sounds to see underwater by
building a sonar system
. As kids complete these projects, they’ll earn camp badges to celebrate the new skills they learned, like conquering echolocation (not bad for summer vacation!). The activities are designed for kids to do on their own, in groups with their friends, or with their families.
Following Ocean Week, kids can jump into Space Week with a NASA astronaut and
VSauce
where they will help cook up space food and learn how astronauts eat in space. After that, they’ll head to Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park with a National Park Ranger and
Derek Muller
to learn more about how volcanoes form. And camp ends in style with Music Week, where kids can jam alongside
Zendaya
to learn about why music makes us want to bust a move. We hosts can't wait to explore with you this summer, wherever you might be!
The ocean is vast and a lot of it is unexplored—every time I dive into the ocean there’s the possibility of finding something new. I’m excited to share this spirit of discovery with kids everywhere this summer. I hope through our dive and the rest of Camp Google, we can inspire kids to continue asking questions... and get out there to find answers.
Update
July 15:
We heard that some of you weren't able to see the live stream—sorry about the rocky waters. But you can now catch the video at
http://goo.gl/7pJJUv
. After you've heard from Sylvia and Erika, you can learn a bit more about buoyancy and try to
make things float yourself
!
Posted by Sylvia Earle, your first host of Camp Google
(Cross-posted on the
Google for Education Blog
)
Through the Google lens: Search trends July 3-9
July 10, 2015
This week people had the goal of searching for info on the U.S. victory in the Women’s World Cup, as well as a hat trick of technical difficulties at three major organizations. Let’s kick off the trending topics on Google this week:
Victory for the U.S. women
The U.S. Women’s National team claimed a 5-2 victory over Japan in the final of the World Cup this week, and took home a slew of searches along with their trophy. In fact, U.S. search interest in the final match surpassed interest in Game 6 of this year’s NBA Finals! Keeper
Hope Solo
and forward
Alex Morgan
topped the trends charts on Sunday with more than 1 million and 500,000+ searches, respectively. But people were also interested in
midfielder Carli Lloyd
, who scored a hat trick in the final, including one goal from midfield that sent searches for “carli lloyd goal” spiking more than 1,000 percent. The team was honored with a
ticker-tape parade
in New York City today.
Ground to a halt
Wednesday, a slew of technical issues caused trouble across the U.S., starting with United Airlines. A network outage grounded planes for more than an hour, affecting
almost 5,000 flights
, and frustrated travelers turned to Google to learn more, making the airline the top searched term on Wednesday with
more than 1 million searches
. Meanwhile, trading was suspended for hours at the New York Stock Exchange after a software glitch. Top questions during the outage included “How many times has the NYSE closed?” and “When was the last time the NYSE suspended trading?” Completing the triumvirate of tech troubles, the Wall Street Journal’s website crashed this week as well. The (sort of?) good news is that the three incidents seem to be unrelated to each other—or to hackers.
From plane delays to train delays: In the U.K. Thursday, a strike by London Underground workers caused the first complete shutdown of the Tube in over a decade. As Londoners trudged home or crowded into buses, searchers asked “How much do tube drivers earn?” The strike was over a failed agreement about pay and a new “night Tube” service scheduled to start running in September.
Comic-Con
The annual Comic-Con International started yesterday, bringing comic, superhero and sci-fi fans together in San Diego, Calif. for a long weekend of panels, events and other celebrations of all things (proud) nerd. The top Comic-Con topics this week include “Doctor Who” and the new “Black Ops III: Zombies” video game, but there are
movie trailers and TV show previews
to appeal to even the least geeky among us. A new clip from the final installment in the “Hunger Games” movie franchise drew
50,000+ searches
, while the new trailer for the live-action
“Goosebumps” movie
coming next year has already garnered
more than 6 million views
on YouTube.
Posted by Emily Wood, Managing Editor, who searched for [flights from sf to rome]
Google Earth turns 10 today
June 29, 2015
When Google Earth was
first introduced
10 years ago, it immediately stole my heart. Beyond the freedom to fly anywhere in the world, I was captivated by the ability to paint and visualize geographic data on this incredible global canvas.
Drawn to datasets backed by
real
human
stories
, I started making my own maps with
KML
a few weeks after Earth’s release in 2005. For my master’s degree, I used Google Earth to build a
virtual representation
of a high-tech biological
research reserve
.
Vint Cerf
saw my work, which eventually led to a job on the
Google Earth Outreach
team, turning my passion for telling stories with maps into a career.
2005 was the beginning of Google Earth’s evolution, as well. In August of that year,
Hurricane Katrina
showed us how useful mapping tools like Earth could be for
crisis response efforts
. Rescue workers compared before and after Satellite imagery in Google Earth to better locate where people were stranded. And in the years after, with more than 2 billion downloads by people in nearly every country in the world, Earth has enabled people to discover
new coral reefs
, journey to the
Moon
and into
deep space
, find
long-lost parents
,
clear landmines
and
much more
.
Google Earth images of Gulfport, Mississippi's shoreline before and after Hurricane Katrina
The ability to empower groups as diverse as
school children
and
NASA scientists
to learn more about the world is what I love about Google Earth. It has the potential to make the planet a far more connected place, if you take the time to explore, discover and share what you learn. So to celebrate how far Google Earth has come and our leap into the next 10 years, we’ve created a few new ways to help you better see places from around (and above) the world.
Voyager
The world is a big place, and it can be hard to know where to begin your virtual journey. Now you can jump straight to the newest and most interesting imagery around the globe with a new layer, Voyager, available in desktop versions of Google Earth.
Different imagery types in Voyager are shown by color
In this first edition of
Voyager
, you’ll find five sections to explore:
Street View:
highlights from Street View, including the Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon
Earth View:
striking landscapes around the globe as seen from space (more below)
3D cities:
a showcase of cities and towns available in photorealistic 3D (
don’t forget to tilt!
)
Satellite imagery updates:
a map of our most recently published satellite imagery
Highlight tour:
with thousands of
Voyager
locations to choose from, take a quick tour of a few to whet your appetite
The Kemgon Gompa—available in the Street View layer—is a Buddhist monastery in Lukla, Nepal
Earth View
Looking at our planet from above is not only a reminder of how interdependent our human and natural ecosystems are—it also lays bare the Earth’s staggering and often surreal beauty.
The Hammar Marshes of Iran are an uncharacteristic yet beautiful wetland feature in the otherwise arid climate
Earth View is library of some of the most striking and enigmatic landscapes available in Google Earth. It started as a 20 percent project last year by a few Googlers who enjoyed scouring satellite imagery for these gems. These images soon made their way onto Android phones, Chromecast and Chromebooks as a distinctive kind of wallpaper.
Islands surrounding Cuba seen in the Earth View
Chrome Extension
For Earth's 10th birthday, we're expanding the Earth View collection to 1,500 landscapes from every continent and ocean and making it accessible to even more people. The new imagery is available with an updated version of our
Chrome extension
and a new
web gallery
. Download high-resolution wallpapers for your mobile and desktop devices, or better yet, print them up for your walls!
The coastline near Ningaloo, Australia in the new Earth View
web gallery
Thank you for the last 10 years exploring your world with Google Earth. We hope
Voyager
and
Earth View
will unlock a new perspective on our planet. We look forward to seeing what the next decade brings!
Posted by Sean Askay, Engineering Manager, Google Earth
Through the Google lens: Search trends June 19-25
June 26, 2015
From eagerly-awaited U.S. Supreme Court rulings, to the ongoing debate over the Confederate flag, here’s a look at some of the topics that got people searching this week.
#LoveWins
Whether the query was “
marriage equality
,” “
fourteenth amendment
,” or “love wins,” searches related to today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that same-sex couples nationwide have a right to marry are
spiking
, with more than 2 million searches for the term “gay marriage” alone. Interest goes beyond the U.S., with “What countries allow same-sex marriage?” and “where is gay marriage legal?” among the top questions.
While today’s “
thunderbolt
” ruling is capturing most of the attention around SCOTUS, searches for the court have in fact been big all week. Yesterday, news that the Court had upheld a key portion of the
Affordable Care Act
was met with a 200,000+ search spike, and renewed questions like “How does Obamacare work?” and “Why do Republicans dislike Obamacare?”
Confederate flag
We noted last week that searches related to the
Confederate flag
increased sharply following the tragic shooting in Charleston, S.C.; and this week, interest in the flag reached an all-time high. Searches were most concentrated in
South Carolina
, where Governor Nikki Haley has called for the flag’s removal from the state Capitol, followed by Alabama, where Governor Robert Bentley ordered the flag’s removal from the Capitol grounds. But searches have been popular throughout the South as people ask questions like “Is the confederate flag racist” and “How many states fly the Confederate flag?” As companies pulled Confederate flag merchandise from their sites and stores, the search terms “confederate for sale” spiked
more than 1,000 percent
.
Rising stars
Thursday’s 2015 N.B.A. Draft also attracted
more than 2 million searches
this week and half of the top 20 searches yesterday, with queries for first pick
Karl-Anthony Towns
spiking more than 1,000 percent. Looks like Minnesota Timberwolves fans had done their research ahead of the selection; Towns was the
most-searched prospect in the state
ahead of the draft. Other breakout names of the week included actor
Tom Holland
, who saw 500,000+ searches after he was cast as Spider-Man for the next film in the Marvel franchise. Holland’s home country of the U.K. topped the list of countries looking for details, but Spidey searches from people in the Philippines to the Netherlands show the global popularity of this character, even two years before the movie’s
2017 release
.
Posted by Abbi Tatton, who searched this week for [how do you pronounce Obergefell]
A power plant for the Internet: our newest data center in Alabama
June 24, 2015
Every time you check your Gmail, search on Google for a nearby restaurant, or watch a YouTube video, a server whirs to life in one of our data centers. Data centers are the engines of the Internet, bringing the power of the web to millions of people around the world. And as millions more people come online, our data centers are growing, too.
We’ve recently expanded our data centers in
Iowa
,
Georgia
,
Singapore
and
Belgium
. And today we’re announcing
a new data center
in Alabama—our 14th site globally.
This time, we’re doing something we’ve never done before: we’ll be building on the grounds of the
Widows Creek coal power plant
in Jackson County, which has been scheduled for shutdown. Data centers need a lot of infrastructure to run 24/7, and there’s a lot of potential in redeveloping large industrial sites like former coal power plants. Decades of investment shouldn’t go to waste just because a site has closed; we can repurpose existing electric and other infrastructure to make sure our data centers are reliably serving our users around the world.
At Widows Creek, we can use the plants’ many electric transmission lines to bring in lots of renewable energy to power our new data center. Thanks to an arrangement with Tennessee Valley Authority, our electric utility, we’ll be able to scout new renewable energy projects and work with TVA to bring the power onto their electrical grid. Ultimately, this contributes to our goal of being powered by 100% renewable energy.
In 2010, we were one of the first companies outside of the utility industry to
buy large amounts of renewable energy
. Since then, we’ve become the largest corporate renewable energy purchaser in the world (in fact we’ve bought the equivalent of over
1.5 percent of the installed wind power capacity in the U.S.
). We're glad to see this trend is
catching on
among other companies.
Of course, the cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use. Our Alabama data center will incorporate our state-of-the-art energy efficiency technologies. We’ve built our own
super-efficient servers
, invented
more efficient ways to cool our data centers
, and even used advanced
machine learning
to squeeze more out of every watt of power we consume. Compared to five years ago, we now get 3.5 times the computing power out of the same amount of energy.
Since the 1960s, Widows Creek has generated power for the region—now the site will be used to power Internet services and bring information to people around the world. We expect to begin construction early next year and look forward to bringing a Google data center to Alabama.
Posted by Patrick Gammons, Senior Manager, Data Center Energy and Location Strategy
Vertical Street View of the world’s most iconic rock wall: Yosemite’s El Capitan
June 24, 2015
Today we’re launching our first-ever vertical Street View collection, giving you the opportunity to
climb 3,000 feet up the world’s most famous rock wall: Yosemite’s El Capitan
. To bring you this new imagery, we partnered with legendary climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell. Read more about the project from Tommy Caldwell, who completed the world’s hardest climb in Yosemite in January of 2015.
-Ed.
“That is awesome. I definitely have to be a part of that.”
Maybe it was the sheer exhaustion from being in the middle of a
19-day climb of the Dawn Wall
, but when the guys at Google Maps and
Yosemite National Park
asked if I wanted to help them with their
first-ever vertical Street View collection of El Capitan in Yosemite
, I didn’t hesitate. Yosemite has been such an important part of my life that telling the story of El Capitan through Street View was right up my alley—especially when it meant working with the Google engineers to figure out some absurd challenges.
Climbing is all about flirting with the impossible and pushing the boundaries of what you think you can be done. Capturing
Street View imagery 3,000 feet up El Capitan
proved to be an extension of that, especially when you take a camera meant for the inside of a restaurant and mount it thousands of feet up the world’s most iconic rock wall.
Brett Lowell and Corey Rich capturing Street View of
Alex Honnold on the King Swing
Doing anything thousands of feet high on a sheer granite face is complicated, but everyone up there had spent years of their lives on a rope and knew exactly what they were doing. After some testing, we used
our tried-and-true climbing gear
like
cams
and ropes to make sure the camera wouldn’t fall to the ground in the middle of our Street View collection.
Once we figured out how to keep the camera on El Cap, we created two sets of vertical Street View. First, we collected Street View of legendary Yosemite climbers—and my good friends—
Lynn Hill
and
Alex Honnold
in iconic spots up the sheer vertical face.
Lynn Hill, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell camp out 1,140 feet up El Capitan
Lynn Hill’s ascent of El Capitan changed the paradigm of climbing, and she had an extraordinary effect on my climbing career. I’ll never forget when she became the first person, man or woman, to free-climb (using only her hands and feet)
“The Nose”
back in 1993. Now, you can see her navigate these epic moves— like climbing sideways on tiny holds of the
Jardine Traverse
, inventing a “Houdini” maneuver on the
Changing Corners
and traversing under the
Great Roof
.
Lynn’s epic ascent up El Cap is now in Street View
Any story of El Capitan had to include my good friend Alex Honnold. He holds the speed record for climbing the Nose at 2 hours and 23 minutes - most people take 3-5 days. His unwavering confidence in himself is contagious; when I’m with him, I feel like the mountain has shrunk to half its size. As you make your way around Yosemite in Street View, you’ll see Alex doing what he does best: chimneying up the “
Texas Flake,
” racing up the
bolt ladder
, or getting dinner ready in the
solar-powered van
he calls home.
Just a normal day on on the Texas Flake for Alex Honnold
You’ll also see a glimpse of
yours truly on the Dawn Wall
. I spent some of my rest days during my January climb of the Dawn Wall testing out the Street View technology the Google team had sent me that month. El Cap is an intimidating environment for experimentation, but years of setting ropes proved pretty helpful in figuring out
how to get the equipment rigged and ready to collect Street View
.
Tommy Caldwell climbing the sheer face of the Dawn Wall
Then, we really put Alex to work to collect the second set of Street View: the entire vertical route of “The Nose” on El Capitan. One of the few people that could do this efficiently and quickly, Alex took the camera and pretty much ran 3,000 feet up with photographer partner Brett Lowell. Now, anyone can get the beta (climbing speak for insider advice) before they
climb the entire route
.
Alex Honnold and Brett Lowell climbed 3,000 feet to get the entire route in Google Maps
Lynn, Alex and I also helped create
a new Yosemite Treks page
, where you can take a tour up El Cap and learn more about climbing, from what a “hand jam” is to why we wear such tiny shoes. And as a father, I’m excited kids will learn more about Yosemite when Google brings students to the park through NatureBridge later this year as a part of this project. Plus, its pretty awesome that students who can’t make it to Yosemite yet will be able to go on a virtual reality field trip to the Park with
Google Expeditions
.
Hear the legendary Lynn Hill explain describe the gear she uses as she starts up El Cap
Yosemite’s driven so much of my life that I’m excited to be able to share it with the world through my eyes. These 360-degree panoramic images are the closest thing I’ve ever witnessed to actually being thousands of feet up a vertical rock face—better than any video or photo. But my hope is that this new imagery will inspire you to get out there and see Yosemite for yourself… whether you travel up a rock wall or just down the trail.
Tommy Caldwell, Lynn Hill, and Alex Honnold hanging out in Yosemite
Posted by Tommy Caldwell
Music for everything you do
June 23, 2015
Need some music right now to make whatever you’re doing better? Even if you’re not already a
Google Play Music
subscriber, we’ve got you covered. Google Play Music now has a free, ad-supported version in the U.S., giving you a new way to find just the right music—and giving artists another way to earn revenue. In less time than it takes you to read this sentence, you could be exercising with
Drop-a-Beat Workout
, cooling off with
Poolside Chic
, or spending quality time with
Songs To Raise Your Kids To
.
At any moment in your day, Google Play Music has whatever you need music for—from working, to working out, to working it on the dance floor—and gives you curated radio stations to make whatever you’re doing better. Our team of music experts, including the
folks who created Songza
, crafts each station song by song so you don’t have to. If you’re looking for something specific, you can browse our curated stations by genre, mood, decade or activity, or you can search for your favorite artist, album or song to instantly create a station of similar music.
We hope you’ll enjoy it so much that you’ll consider
subscribing to Google Play Music
to play without ads, take your music offline, create your own playlists, and listen to any of the 30 million songs in our library on any device and as much as you’d like. You’ll also get ad-free, offline and background features for music videos on YouTube. And with or without a subscription, you can store and play up to 50,000 songs from your own collection for free.
To help you get started, check out the top 10 most popular activities on Google Play Music, each of which offers several radio stations to choose from based on what you like:
Brand New Music
Driving
Working Out
Boosting Your Energy
Having Friends Over
Having Fun at Work
Entering Beast Mode
Waking Up Happy
Unwinding
Bedtime
The new free, ad-supported version of Google Play Music is launching first in the U.S. It’s available on the
web
today, and is rolling out this week to
Android
and
iOS
. And while you’re checking it all out, we’ll be catching up on our
Blogged 50
.
Posted by Elias Roman, Product Manager
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