The Google numbers are in, and the empire went from 32.2 billion to 37.9 billion since the beginning of last year. The latest infographic on the subject shows us just where Google made it’s money and which keywords were the most popular.
In what’s got to be one of the smartest print ad campaigns I’ve seen in a while, HBO’s hit show “Game of Thrones” was advertised in Monday’s New York Times using an innovative technique that makes you do a double-take. With the new season starting this month, I bet we’re about to see even more similar stunts advertising the show on various other platforms. How long did it take before you got it?
“I need all images of my girlfriend taken down online and I need the attached images to be the only thing that shows up when you Google her name. If I overnight you check can you have this done by tomorrow?”
Evan Doney, a grad student in Matthew Leevy's biological imaging facility at the University of Notre Dame, has published a method for creating a 3D printed, life-size, accurate skeleton of a living animal by converting a CT scan of the animal to a printable file. They produced a detailed HOWTO as well, which, unfortunately, is paywalled.
The idea to print skeletons from CT scans came from Evan Doney, an engineering student working in the lab of Matthew Leevy, who runs the biological imaging facility at the University of Notre Dame. ”At first I didn’t really know what the killer app would be, I just knew it would be really cool,” Leevy said. But he began to see new possibilities after striking up a conversation with an ear, nose, and throat specialist during an office visit for a sinus problem. “I actually got out my computer and showed him some slides, and by the end of it we were collaborating.”
Doney used several freeware programs to convert data from CT scans into a format that could be read by a 3-D printer. As a proof of principle, he and colleagues printed a rat skeleton in white plastic and printed a removable set of lungs in green or purple. They also printed out a rabbit skull.
I have a 3D print of my femur in bronze and stainless steel, courtesy of my wife and her raid on my MRIs. Sounds like you get an even better shapefile from a CT scan, if you don't mind receiving the radiation equivalent of 800 X-rays.
Patents don’t always become reality, but they—such as Google’s latest camera settings patent— are certainly an interesting look into the possible future.
As reported by Engadget, a new Google patent filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office describes a method of using GPS technology to auto-adjust a camera’s settings. The GPS would gather data for local climate and tune the camera’s white balance and saturation, for instance, to match the weather.
Disclosed herein is a method for capturing an image using an image capture device equipped with a processor. The method includes receiving an electromagnetic signal transmitted from a remote station, determining a location of the image capture device based on the received electromagnetic signal, establishing communication over a network between the image capture device and a remote server, transmitting a request to the remote server for weather information pertaining to the determined location; receiving the weather information, determining an ambient lighting value based on the weather information, capturing an image using the image capture device, and processing the captured image using the determined ambient lighting value.
Photographers can fine-tune their own settings now, obviously, but Google’s patent is an interesting spin on GPS and camera settings. Marrying the two functions together would certainly create new, appealing technology for snapping beautiful images in rain or shine and on the fly.
But, try not to get too excited about seeing this feature in upcoming Androids, because patents don’t always come to fruition.
Google has begun its yearly unveiling of April Fool’s Day jokes with some clever new ideas that probably come up in strategy meetings throughout the year.
Google Nose. Searching a query on Google and clicking the ‘Nose Beta’ button can only find this ‘service’. The service isn’t real of course, but you can read about its features on Nose’s homepage. Funniest bit?
Don’t ask, don’t smell: For when you’re wary of your query – SafeSearch included.
More Google jokes are on the way…
A video posted on YouTube earlier claimed that YouTube was an 8-year contest to find the best video in the world and the site would close forever at midnight tonight.
Another joke included the unveiling of Google Treasure Maps. It’s a service by Google to help you find treasure in cities.
Next up is Gmail Blue. The ‘new’ Gmail adds a blue tint to the Gmail web app. You can view the full promo video below. Is this a dig at Microsoft Blue?
Google SCHMICK is another fun Maps joke based out of Australia. SCHMICK allows you to view your home on Google Maps Street View and ‘decorate’ your house with themes. Here is the sample picture:
Google+ received an April Fools update of its own, titled ‘Google+ Photos +Emotion‘. The update allows you to add emoticons to photos to express people’s feelings in the picture. The photo from Erik Murphy’s Google+ showing Google+ Photos +Emotion is available below.
Google also announced Google Wallet Mobile ATM today, a device that lets users get cash ATM-style from their smartphone. According to Google, the mobile ATM device “easily attaches to most smartphones and dispenses money instantly and effortlessly– forever ending your search for the nearest bank or ATM.”
While the ATM joke is clearly not as good as some of the others, it’s certainly interesting to see how far Google goes with April Fool’s Day.
Do you like AMC’s The Walking Dead? If so, you’ll definitely like Google’s Levity Algorithm in Google Apps. The Internet Giant introduced it today, said it’s “carefully tuned to help you spice up even the most boring of work days,” and even made an ad starring Steven Yeun to announce the algorithm joke.
Google has long allowed users to look up what terms and searches are hot and trending, but now it features Cold Trends. The new section offers example trends with less than 500 searches each, such as: “Y2K,” “Pogs Hologram Slammer,” and “Macarena Step-by-Step.”
Google Fiber revolutionized the Internet and now it is bringing a whole new meaning to mobile web. Google introduced “Google Fiber to the Pole” today, and it’s literally a connectivity box affixed to Fiber-toting poles that provides “ubiquitous gigabit connectivity to Fiberhoods across Kansas City.” The ad below depicts some Fiber users camping outside and taking advantage of Google’s latest April Fool’s Day product:
We’ll be sure to update as more April Fools Day jokes appear. Feel free to add any others in the comments.
“This act of looking down at my phone is one of the reasons behind Glass. We questioned whether you should be walking around looking down. That was the vision behind Glass and that’s why we created this form factor. (…) When we made this we thought, ‘Can we make something that frees your hands and frees your eyes.’ That’s why we put the display up high and out of your line of sight so you can make eye contact with people. The sound conducts through the bones in your cranium to free up your ears. If you want to hear it better you cover up your ears, which is surprising. Our original vision at Google was eventually to get rid of the search query and you’d just get the information you need when you need it. Fifteen years later this is first form factor that delivers on that vision. The project has lasted just over 2 years. We’ve learned lot.”
Google updated Chrome last month with a Web Speech API in over 30 languages that allows developers to integrate speech-recognition features into their Web apps, and now the company has launched a silent movie-era Chrome experiment, called “The Peanut Gallery”, that looks to showcase the month-old API.
Last month, the Web Speech API brought voice recognition to Chrome users in more than 30 languages. We thought it would be fun to demonstrate this new technology by using an old one: silent film. The Peanut Gallery lets you add intertitles to old black-and-white movie clips just by talking out loud while you watch them. Create a film and share it with friends, so they can bring out their inner screenwriters too.
To begin experimenting: Go to Peanutgalleryfilms.com, select a clip from one of the many classic silent film choices, such as “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, and allow access to a mic. Once finished getting started, the clip will play and users can finally add intertitles with their own speech.
Google just released note-taking and organization app Google Keep on the Play Store.
Google Keep is available starting Wednesday for Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich and above, but Keep users can also access, edit, and create their notes on the Web via Google Drive.
Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all…it’s rarely where you need it when you need it. To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.
Google Keep clearly includes some Evernote-esque functionality, as 9to5Google reported previously, but it notably also auto-transcribes voice memos that are easy to search and find. What’s more: If users finish with a note, they can apply Gmail-like actions such as archive or delete.
Google mentioned that Keep also has a widget, so Android users can have the service “front and center all the time,” and there’s even a lock screen widget for devices running Android 4.2 and up.
According to Alexa, YouTube is the third-most popular website in the world. According to YouTube, it just reached 1 billion unique monthly users for the first time in history. Some of the accomplishments YouTube is boasting on its blog include the fact that 1 in 2 people on the Internet view YouTube and viewership is roughly Super Bowl audiences. The full happy-go-lucky list of truly how big 1 billion really is is posted on the blog and available below.
What does a billion people tuning into YouTube look like?
Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.
Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences.
If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India.
PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!
Note: YouTube is trailing Facebook in the Billion-User Club by just a few months.