Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Join the Arabic Web Days movement
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Cross-posted with the
Official Google Blog
Arabic content on the web represents just 3 percent of the total digital content online—yet Arabic speakers make up more than 5 percent of the global population. To help build a vibrant Arabic web, we’ve created Arabic Web Days, an initiative in the Middle East and North Africa focused on boosting the amount of Arabic content online. (
Note
: the video below is in Arabic only.)
For the next 30 days, we’re holding a series of online and offline events along with our partners Vinelab, Wamda, Yamli and Taghreedat, as well as Twitter, Wikipedia, TED, Soundcloud, and regional organizations Al Arabiya, TwoFour54 and Qatar Foundation’s Qatari Computing Research Institute. Here’s how you can get involved:
Participate in a series of
Hangouts on Google+
to get tips and tricks from industry experts on contributing Arabic content to the web—through online journalism, YouTube videos, Wikipedia editing, translation of English content, SEO and more
Join the
YouTube Tweet Up
in Doha, Qatar on December 15 to learn how to create viral Arabic videos and make money through YouTube
Participate in the region's
first Arabic infographics competition
with Tajseed
Volunteer to be part of a
TED initiative to create quality Arabic digital content
via Arabic subtitling during a kick-off event with TED, twofour54 and Taghreedat in Abu Dhabi on December 4
Sign up for
developer training at g|days
in Jordan on December 5-6 and Egypt on December 9-10 to learn about Arabic localization, webmaster tools, SEO and YouTube for Business
Learn about the Egyptian Ministry of Education’s
educational channels on YouTube
which include different curricula from first to twelfth grade, as well as e-Lessons via video and Google+ Hangouts.
Celebrate 12/12/12 as
National Arabic Web Day
Connect
with us: add the Arabic Web Days
badge
to your site, upload a video to
youtube.com/arabicwebdays
, visit our website:
www.arabicwebdays.com
and follow us on
Google+
and
Twitter
(in Arabic)
To get more details and to sign up for any of the above events, visit Arabic Web Days on
Google+
or see the
Arabia Blog
. Until then, let’s go Arabic!
Posted by Maha Abouelenein, Head of Communications, Middle East and North Africa
Rebuilding an illustrious ancestor to modern computing
Friday, November 16, 2012
As any traveller knows, photos are no match for the vividness of a physical encounter. The same is true for historians of computing. It’s only once you’ve seen something in reality -- be it the great
computing Colossus
, or the
Great Pyramid
-- that you fully appreciate the mastery of its creators. Unfortunately, few relics remain from the early days of computing, which is why we are so happy to support those striving to bring them back to operational life.
One such worthy project is the EDSAC rebuild, currently being championed by the
Computer Conservation Society
. Earlier this year Google provided funding to support the reconstruction work. Since then much progress has been made, which you can learn about on the
project’s new website
.
EDSAC holds an important place in computing history. While not the world’s first stored program computer (beaten by the prototype
Manchester Baby
), EDSAC heralded a cultural shift in computing.
From the moment it became operational
in May 1949, EDSAC was put to work by Cambridge University researchers, helping solve problems in many scientific fields -- far beyond the military and code-breaking tasks to which computing had previously been dedicated.
EDSAC was the world’s first computer to
use subroutines
(originally charmingly called “Wheeler jumps” after their creator), which remain a key part of modern programming. EDSAC also served as the prototype for
LEO, the world’s first business computer
, and was the foundation for the
world’s first computer science diploma course
at Cambridge University.
EDSAC is
remembered fondly
by those who worked with it. We look forward to its reincarnation providing fresh insight into a remarkable period of British computing history.
Posted by Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations
Explore the stellar neighborhood with your browser
Friday, November 16, 2012
Visualising the exact location of every star in the galaxy is a problem of, well, galactic proportions. With over 200 billion stars, capturing every detail of the Milky Way currently defies scientists and laptops alike. However, using imagery and data from publicly available datasets, including from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), we were recently able to take one small step in that direction by plotting the location of the stars closest to our sun.
The result is a new Chrome Experiment called
100,000 Stars
that visualises the stellar neighborhood. Using your mouse or trackpad, you can zoom in and out to explore our galaxy. Zooming in reveals the names of the most prominent stars close to our sun – click each name to learn more about it and see a digital rendition.
Zooming in further shows the relative location of the Oort cloud, the planetary orbits, and finally the Sun. Zooming out gives you some context for where we are in the Milky Way, although please keep in mind this view is an artist’s rendition. Click the tour button in the upper left for a quick trip to some of the coolest perspectives in the galaxy.
The experiment makes use of Google Chrome’s support for
WebGL
,
CSS3D
, and
Web Audio
. Music was generously provided by
Sam Hulick
, who video game fans may recognize as a composer for the popular space adventure series, Mass Effect.
As you explore this experiment, we hope you share our wonder for how large the galaxy really is. It’s incredible to think that this mist of 100,000 measurable stars is a tiny fraction of the sextillions of stars in the broader universe.
Posted by Aaron Koblin, Creative Lab
The Power of Beautiful Data
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Some 90% of the data in the world today has been created in just the last two years, according to the web site
Visualizing.org.
We are producing more data than ever before — 2.5 quintillion bytes every day — and we're generating entirely new types of data from sources like social media, sensor networks, electronic trading, and smart grids.
This past weekend, more than 1000 computer science and design students, from Bangalore to Beirut, and Sydney to Santiago, attempted to make sense of some of this vast sea of data. The
Visualizing Global Marathon
encouraged students to display data in useful and beautiful ways. In addition to working together via an online dashboard, the students received inspiring sessions from data experts via
Google hangouts
.
Contestants are competing in three categories: building
early warning disease tools
,
improving transportation networks
, and offering insights into the
US election
from social media.
For a taste of the entries, take a look below. The first graph visualises diseases in countries located around the Equator.
This graph breaks down the spread of disease by country.
Winners will be announced on December 5. Some $15,000 worth of prizes will be distributed.
Posted by Laura Scott, EMEA External Relations
Indoor Google Maps launches in Belgium
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
We’ve all been there: your online map has delivered you safely to your destination but once you enter the building itself, you get lost in an unfamiliar world. Whether you’re trying to find an exhibit within the tangled passages of a museum, looking for your gate at the airport, or seeking a place to grab a coffee before your train leaves the station, you often have to rely on a freestanding map with a ‘You Are Here’ sign, or a friendly employee to guide you.
But at Google we’re trying to fix this. Starting today, Google Maps users in Belgium can enjoy a fast and convenient way to navigate indoors in places such as retail stores, museums, galleries and train stations as we introduce accurate floor plans of many locations.
We’ve initially got indoor maps for over 60 locations such as
BOZAR
,
The Centre for Fine Arts
, the
National Basilica of the Sacred Heart
and the Universities of
Louvain-la-Neuve
,
Ghent
and
Brussels
and also included are a number of churches and university campuses (see here for a selected
list
).
For Android users who have updated to the latest version of Google Maps, detailed floor plans will automatically appear when you’re viewing the map and zoomed in on a building where indoor maps are available. In many locations the familiar blue dot indicates your location within several meters, and when you move up or down a level in a building with multiple floors, the interface will automatically update to display which floor you’re on.
This launch is part of our focus on our European users - our indoor maps are available in many locations across the
UK,
France,
Switzerland,
Denmark
and
Sweden
and we’re continuing to expand our coverage quickly.
Posted by Cedric Dupont, Product Manager, Google Maps
Transparency Report: government requests on the rise
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Cross-posted with the
Official Google Blog
We think it’s important to shine a light on how government actions could affect our users. When we first launched the
Transparency Report
in early 2010, there wasn’t much data out there about how governments sometimes hamper the free flow of information on the web. So we took our first step toward greater transparency by disclosing the number of government requests we received. At the time, we weren’t sure how things would look beyond that first snapshot, so we pledged to release numbers twice a year. Today we’re updating the Transparency Report with data about government requests from January to June 2012.
This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise. As you can see from the graph below, government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report. In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts.
The number of government requests to remove content from our services was largely flat from 2009 to 2011. But it’s spiked in this reporting period. In the first half of 2012, there were 1,791 requests from government officials around the world to remove 17,746 pieces of content.
You can see the country-by-country trends for requests to hand over
user data
and to
remove content
from our services in the Transparency Report itself, but in aggregate around the world, the numbers continue to go up.
As always, we continue to improve the Transparency Report with each data release. Like before, we’re including
annotations
for this time period with interesting facts. We’re also
showing new bar graphs
with data in addition to tables to better display content removal trends over time. We’ve now translated the entire Transparency Report into 40 languages, and we’ve expanded our FAQ—including one that explains how we sometimes
receive falsified court orders
asking us to remove content. We do our best to verify the legitimacy of the documents we receive, and if we determine that any are fake, we don’t comply.
The information we disclose is only an isolated sliver showing how governments interact with the Internet, since for the most part we don’t know what requests are made of other technology or telecommunications companies. But we’re heartened that in the past year, more companies like
Dropbox
,
LinkedIn
,
Sonic.net
and
Twitter
have begun to share their statistics too. Our hope is that over time, more data will bolster public debate about how we can best keep the Internet free and open.
Posted by Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst
Google Play music arrives in Europe
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Music lovers rejoice! There’s now an even easier way to manage and listen to your music. Today
music on Google Play
is live in the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.
Google Play lets you store 20,000 songs from your existing music collection in a personal library in the cloud, so you can access it from all your devices. In addition, our new matching feature streamlines the process of uploading your music, so it will be added to your library even more quickly. Both of these we offer free of charge.
You can also buy new music from your favourite artists and build out your collection. We’ll automatically sync your entire music library—both purchases and uploads— so you can listen across all your devices. No need to worry about cables, file transfers or running out of storage space. Even listen when you’re offline - simply “pin” the playlists and albums you want and they’ll be available on your Android device. And for any song you’ve purchased on Google Play, you can share a free full listen with your friends on Google+.
We’ve partnered with all the major record labels and thousands of indie labels to sell their music in Google Play. And if you’re a talented, unsigned or independent musician looking for your big break, check out the
Google Play artist hub
, a great way to sell your music directly to fans.
Check out Google Play today. It will be music to your ears.
Posted by Paul Joyce, product manager for Google Play
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