The Text Tool: enabling your photos to speak for themselves
September 22nd, 2008 | by Picasa Team | published in Google Photos (Picasa)
Posted by Tara Morrison, Software QA EngineerIn addition to some of the other cool new features in Picasa 3, we’re excited to announce that you can now add text to your photos. You may have already spent time captioning your photo collection, but now, …
Dynamic URLs vs. static URLs
September 22nd, 2008 | by Maile Ohye | published in Google Webmaster Central
Chatting with webmasters often reveals widespread beliefs that might have been accurate in the past, but are not necessarily up-to-date any more. This was the case when we recently talked to a couple of friends about the structure of a URL. One friend …
The dreaded bibliography
September 22nd, 2008 | by Google Docs | published in Google Docs
Throughout my school days, one huge headache when writing a paper was that dreaded and extremely tedious bibliography. As a way for students, teachers, and professors to ease into the school year, we decided to create four bibliography templates repres…
Event this Wednesday: Larry Page to push for white spaces on Capitol Hill
September 22nd, 2008 | by Google Public Policy Blog | published in Google Public Policy
Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media CounselEarlier this year Google co-founder Larry Page was in our nation’s capital to talk about Google’s vision of “wi-fi on steroids.” At an event sponsored by the New America Foundation, he expla…
Hacking Zurich
September 22nd, 2008 | by Leslie Hawthorn | published in Google Open Source
By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source TeamMany things wonderful and Open Source are happening in Zurich, Switzerland these days. Most recently, Joël Fisler of the OLAT (Online Learning and Training) project wrote in to let us know about the meetup held …
Congratulations to Paul Alan Freshney!
September 22nd, 2008 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop API
A new gadget by Paul Alan Freshney is featured on the Inside Google Desktop blog. See the post Featured gadget: Periodic Table.Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer (Google Desktop Team)
September 22nd, 2008 | by Kathy Walrath [GD Team] | published in Google Desktop
Name: Periodic Table for Google DesktopAuthor: Paul Alan FreshneyDescription: Detailed information on every elementMore information | Download gadgetEach week this blog features a recently added Google Desktop gadget that looks promising. If you’d like…
September 22nd, 2008 | by DeWitt Clinton | published in Google Code
By Venu Vemula, Google Book Search TeamSince I joined Google, I’ve been working on Book Search, our project to help users discover what’s inside all the world’s books.Today we are happy to include the developer community in this historic effort with th…
September 22nd, 2008 | by Inside Google Book Search | published in Google Books
Posted by Alex Diaz, Product Manager, Google Book SearchToday, we’re taking a big step towards bringing more books, across more sites, to more people online.We’re launching a set of free tools that allow retailers, publishers, and anyone with a web sit…
September 22nd, 2008 | by Brandon Bilinski | published in Google Code
Posted by Guillaume Poncin, Google Book Search TeamTo complement today’s launch of the Embedded Viewer API, we are happy to announce a new Google Data API for Google Book Search.The Book Search Data API lets your application perform full-text searches …
September 22nd, 2008 | by DeWitt Clinton | published in Google Code
By Alyssa England, Google Developer ProgramsWe are excited to open registration for one last Google Developer Day this year, to be held on November 2 in Tel Aviv, Israel.At this Google Developer Day, developers will learn about the latest with our…
Geo Education’s Alaska Trip Diary – Day 5
September 21st, 2008 | by Kate | published in Google Earth
Nome
After a short flight from Kotzebue, we landed in Nome in pleasant weather and caught a cab to our hotel. Our cab driver wistfully mentioned that he had just arrived home from Fairbanks, where he had played his last round of golf for the year. A university vehicle awaited us at the hotel and we discovered that our cab driver is also the mechanic who had just serviced our borrowed rig. He is an example of a phenomenon quite common in small Alaskan towns, where many people display numerous talents and fill a variety of roles within their communities.
We had another great school experience at Nome Beltz Jr-Sr High School. As with our earlier school visits, we saw quite a few hands go up when students were asked if they had used Google Earth before, but then the students were amazed to discover so many new layers and features they hadn’t known about. During the lessons, it was so great to see the light bulbs go on when students realized that they can even go beyond exploring these layers and can create and view their own content in Google Earth. That’s what this is all about – helping students have an “aha” moment.
After school, we met with faculty and staff to share information and discuss classroom activities and school projects. Some teachers had already come up with ideas for geo-based projects and lesson plans, and although we were at the tail-end of an extremely busy week, I was suddenly re-energized by the conversation.
We were lucky enough to be offered a quick tour – and an opportunity for the school to use their new GigaPan. All of the principals have been so generous with their time! We piled into a school van and saw the sites, with commentary from the school’s director of technology and the principal at the wheel. We drove up to the top of Anvil Mountain on a rugged gravel road. This mountain was the site of a White Alice communications station during the Cold War. Nome is only 160 miles from Siberia and the Anvil White Alice was designed to detect planes or missiles coming from Russia. The site has been cleaned up, but at the request of the people of Nome, the shells of the towers still remain.
We continued up the road and set up the GigaPan to take a panoramic view of the fall tundra, old gold dredges, and the waters of Norton Sound. The undulating hills of red and gold were gorgeous to behold – take a look for yourself by panning around and zooming in on this image:
Farther along on our impromptu tour, we were on the lookout for musk-oxen, but unfortunately, none revealed themselves to us. Back in town, we saw monuments to the past in the statues of the “Three Lucky Swedes” and the renovated St. Joseph’s church. Nome is a city rich in history and the students are well aware of it. When asked what they would like others to know or see about Nome, I heard such responses as, “the golden beaches” and “the Iditarod.” I can’t wait to see how these students use their new found skills with Google Earth and Maps to share their stories of Nome with the rest of the world!
Posted by Katie Kennedy, University of Alaska Geography Program
London Geo Developer Meet-up
September 21st, 2008 | by Mano Marks | published in Google Maps
Posted by Mano Marks, Geo APIs Team
Last Monday, 15 of us met in the Google Victoria offices for the first London Google Geo Developer Meet-up. The primary goal was to allow people to meet each other, and we certainly achieved that. A good time was ha…
Geo Education’s Alaska Trip Diary – Day 4
September 20th, 2008 | by Kate | published in Google Earth
Kotzebue: guns, drugs and helicopters Now that’s an attention-getter! What kind of crazed situation did the Google Geo Education group get itself involved in? I’ll get there soon enough, but first let me spend some time providing the back-story. Kot…
Using WebViews
September 19th, 2008 | by Mike Cleron | published in Google Android
I’ve written a small application called WebViewDemo that shows how you can add web content to your application. You can find it in the apps-for-android project. This application demonstrates how you can embed a WebView into an activity and also how you…