Tag: google

A new feature launched few days back allows users to scroll back through historic images and see how familiar views changed through time

Google’s Street View service now allows users to scroll back through time to see how certain views appeared in the past.

Since it was launched in 2007 Street View has allowed people to see images taken by special camera cars on roads and paths around the country. These images are periodically updated as and when the cars pass back over a previously covered area. But from today users will be able to scroll back through historic images taken from any point.

^{This image from Kyoto shows trees in blossom and in autumn}

In a post on the official Google blog, Google Street View product manager Vinay Shet said: “If you’ve ever dreamt of being a time traveller like Doc Brown, now’s your chance.

“Starting today, you can travel to the past to see how a place has changed over the years by exploring Street View imagery in Google Maps for desktop. We’ve gathered historical imagery from past Street View collections dating back to 2007 to create this digital time capsule of the world.

“Now with Street View, you can see a landmark’s growth from the ground up, like the Freedom Tower in New York city or the 2014 World Cup stadium in Fortaleza, Brazil.

^{Street View now shows construction phases of One World Trade Center}

“This new feature can also serve as a digital timeline of recent history, like the reconstruction after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Onagawa, Japan. You can even experience different seasons and see what it would be like to cruise Italian roadways in both summer and winter.”

When using Street View people will see a clock icon which, when clicked, allows them to scroll back through historic images. The oldest currently available date back to the service’s launch in 2007, but in future all data will be kept and help to gradually build up an extensive archive.

 

Source – https://www.google.co.in/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetview/

 

 

#1  Why Android is named after desserts and sweets?

Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean and recently KitKat- why do Google name Android versions after desserts and sweets? Google doesn’t want to explain why, but Randall Sarafa, a Google spokesman said, “It’s kind of like an internal team thing, and we prefer to be a little bit – how should I say – a bit inscrutable in the matter, I’ll say.” “The obvious thing is that, yeah, the Android platform releases, they go by dessert names and by alphabetical order for the most part,” he added.

To celebrate new version release of Android, a giant mock-up of the dessert that matches the codename is usually delivered to the Google Campus and put on display. You can see the mockups of all the Android versions placed together in the campuses; there is a mockup of KitKat Android too between them.

#2  Google Doodle

The first Google Doodle, which is when the Google logo is altered on the site’s homepage, was in celebration Burning Man festival in 1998.

In May 2012, Google unveiled its first interactive Google Doodle to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the arcade game Pac-Man, in association with Namco. Searchers play Pac-Man within their browser by clicking the ‘Insert Coin’ button. The game got viral with the users; so that Google made it a permanent site after the Doodle had been removed.

Later the same year, Google unveiled its first animated Google Doodle to mark John Lennon’s 70th birthday with a short clip of his song ‘Imagine’. A similar Doodle was launched, using a clip of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ song, to mark Freddie Mercury’s 65th birthday in September 2011.

 

#3 Google’s green data centers

 

Inside the Council Bluffs, Lowa data center there is over 115,000 square feet of space. There are 9 more such data centers owned by Google. These data centers are basic to run Google’s internet services like Google Search, Google+, Gmail, its cloud services and others.

At the Georgia data center, Google built an evaporative cooling system, which uses both outside air and chilled sprayed water to cool servers. Google in its blog post said that this evaporative cooling process commonly uses “hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day.”

To counter such a huge waste of water, Google has turned to chilly outside air and even seawater for greener ways to cool its data centers. The search giant has also tapped into recycled waste water to cool a data center in Douglas County, Georgia. It’s the first time Google has used recycled waste water for a data center in the U.S. and the system was financed by Google and owned by the local water authority.

 

#4 “I’m feeling lucky”

Google’s first official tweet was the words “I’m feeling lucky” in binary.

The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which bypasses the results page to take users directly to the first result of their search, has been estimated to cost Google around $100m in lost ad revenue every year.

 

#5 Google’s Slogan

Its mission statement from the outset is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, and its unofficial slogan is “Don’t be evil”.

 

#6 Google data

Google’s search index is more 100 million gigabytes in size. It would take 100,000 one-terabyte personal drives to contain the same amount of data.