Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Online exhibitions made easy with Google Open Gallery
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Do you run a small gallery and would like people to be able to dive into the
hidden depths of your artworks
with a powerful zoom? Perhaps you’ve been busy tidying your loft/attic and discovered a treasure trove of photos that can tell an amazing story, like
Dean Putney who unearthed a huge archive
of photos taken by his Grandfather, a German officer during World War I. Or are you an artist like
Vitor Rolim
from Brazil, and want to show the evolution of your work but are not sure you have the technical expertise?
Help is now at hand with
Google Open Gallery
, which launches today. For the past few years, we've worked with museums around the world to make their collections available on the
Google Cultural Institute
. Now, we’ve opened up the technologies behind this project so that anyone with cultural content can publish it, creating exhibitions that tell engaging stories on their own website. Take a look at how the
Belgian Comic Strip Center
used the Google Open Gallery to tell the story of their iconic Art Nouveau building—the Waucquez Warehouse—through a quirky mix of comic-style drawings, photographs, sketches and first hand experiences.
Google Open Gallery helps you to create a beautiful experience for people to view your collection, at the click of a button. We’ll host your content and give you access to our technology at no cost to you or your organisation. It’s pretty simple—just upload images, add video, Street View imagery and text, interweaving your story among the images to create an exhibition that will truly engage your visitors. The
Fort Collins Museum of Discovery
matches archive photos with modern day Street View imagery. Berndnaut Smilde is a contemporary artist living and working in Amsterdam, famous for creating stunning clouds as part of his Nimbus series. There’s plenty to inspire the budding artist in you with these 45 new Google Open Gallery creations from around the world so why not get exploring!
It’s not just online that we’ve been busy. Today, we officially opened the
Lab at the Cultural Institute
a physical space within our Google Paris office where the worlds of culture and technology are brought together to discuss, debate and explore new ideas. It’s also where we don our white coats and test out things like 3D scanners, million pixel cameras, interactive screens and more, working with museums to try them out inside their spaces to get their feedback.
We’ll be adding new features to Google Open Gallery and more technologies to the Lab as time goes by and will have plenty more to tell you in the coming months so watch this space!
Posted by Robert Tansley, Google Open Gallery Product Manager & Laurent Gaveau, Head of The Lab at the Cultural Institute
Streaming the Nobel Prize Awards
Friday, December 6, 2013
Since 1901, the
Nobel Prize
has marked the ultimate achievement in physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, literature and peace. This year, we’re happy to announce that the The Nobel Foundation is live streaming on
YouTube
many of the key events during Nobel week.
Starting tomorrow at 1 p.m. Stockholm time, this years’s Nobel medicine winners
James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof
will lecture on their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells. At 5:30 p.m. the Nobel Lecture in Literature
Alice Munro
will appear in a pre-recorded video conversation with the Laureate: "Alice Munro: In her own words".
On Sunday morning at 9 a.m.,
physics prize winners François Englert and Peter W. Higgs
will appear. They were honored "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles." After physics, tune into hear the chemistry and economics winners.
Monday will be marked by a conversation with Nobel Laureates on the future of energy.
The ceremonies culminate on December 10 with the
Nobel Peace Prize
Award in Oslo at 1.00 p.m. and the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, at 4.30 p.m. from the Stockholm Concert Hall. This year’s prize went to to
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
"for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons".
Make sure to tune in to
http://www.youtube.com/thenobelprize
and join the conversation on
google.com/+NobelPrize
.
Posted by Farshad Shadloo, Communications Manager, Stockholm
Culture on the web: the surprising rise of the new voices
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Like many industries, the Internet has upended the world of news and culture. While it has undermined some traditional business models, media consultancy
Oliver & Ohlbaum
published two new studies that we commissioned this week showing that the net is powering the rise of exciting new voices and small players. YouTube stars are building fame online before securing a record deal or a film contract. Newshounds now discover, share, and comment on stories on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
In the first study,
Different media, different roles, different expectations: the nature of news consumption in the digital age
, Oliver & Ohlbaum set out to answer the question of how the Internet affects access to and consumption of news. Are readers consuming more news than they did in the age of ink? From more or fewer sources? After surveying data from the UK and Germany, the researchers found:
A new generation of news junkies is emerging:
On average, all UK adults consulted an average of 2.7 news sources per week, while online readers visit almost twice as many - 5.2 news websites.
Readers are expanding their horizons, consulting a wide array of sources:
In both the UK and Germany, readers now spend only 5-20% of their news-time on their favorite newspaper. Instead, they consume news from, on average, eight other sources.
Readers are encountering a broad range of views:
Even where consuming user generated ‘less trustworthy’ sources, 47% say this is to encounter views different from their own.
Established media retain significant influence:
Television remains considered the most authoritative media source and big brands continue to earn greater trust, audience attention, and influence on consumer opinion than other sources.
A second study,
The Internet and the creative industries: measuring growth within a changing sector ecology
, examines current approaches to measuring the ‘creative sector’; and the impact of the internet on the role of independent artists and small businesses in the business of culture. Drawing on case studies from the UK, France and Sweden, the research finds that the Internet has increased the numbers of creative sector SMEs and 'sole traders.'
In the music industry of twenty years ago, for example, a single record label hired lawyers, accountants, cafeteria workers. Today, many of these roles are distributed among small businesses and independent players. A band might be discovered on YouTube, hire professionals on an hourly basis to handle contracts, self-publish and self-market.
Until now, most research has failed to take into account this structural shift toward ‘unorganized content producers,’ suggesting that they fail to capture a great deal of activity. See below.
What is needed, the researchers conclude, is a new way of measuring the culture industry. Specifically, this new measurement must identify and measure the contribution of SMEs and sole traders. Only when we have reliable statistics can we truly understand the Internet’s impact on the business of news and culture.
Posted by Simon Morrison, Public Policy and Government Relations Manager
Campus London powers UK tech boom
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
It’s been 20 short months since
Campus London
opened its doors to East London’s entrepreneur community, time enough to report some initial results, and time enough to realize that our biggest expectations have been surpassed. In a new report released yesterday, we reported that Campus has more than 22,000 members, hailing from more than 60 countries. Campus has hosted over 1,100 events for more than 70,000 visitors in 2013, including 1,000 mentoring sessions, in which Google employees volunteer their time to advise early-stage companies, through the
Google office hours programme
.
Full details of the survey can be found at
www.campuslondon.com/research
. Highlights include:
Campus is creating job
s: We estimate that at least 576 jobs have been created within the Campus community.
Campus startups are raising serious funding
: Campus members have raised at least £34m in the 12 months to October 2013.
Campus is promoting gender equality
: Campus is helping to address the gender imbalance in the tech startup industry. The presence of women at Campus continues to grow, now at 22% of residents and 20% of the overall member base - compared to the 9% industry average. Campus for Mums
and
Women at Campus
are moving the needle.
Campus continues to attract new entrepreneurs:
Campus is increasingly popular as a place to interact with the local startup community. 78% of survey respondents have been working at Campus for less than 6 months. Campus membership has grown almost 300% since January 2013 (8,000 to 22,500).
Campus members are upbeat:
The outlook of startups at Campus remains very positive with 84% reporting a positive outlook.
We're proud of the role Campus is playing in building this ecosystem, and eager to continue to grow London as one of the world's most exciting technology centres.
Posted by Eze Vidra, Head of Campus London and Google For Entrepreneurs Europe.
Google learns to speak French and German
Friday, November 29, 2013
“How many calories are there in a banana?”
From now on, you can speak such queries into a phone or tablet and receive a quick response — eighty-nine calories in English,
quatre-vingt-neuf
if you ask in French, or
neunundachtzig kalorien
in German. We’ve been on tour in recent weeks throughout Europe, from London to Paris and Hamburg, with our Google House, demonstrating our vision of the connected present. The star of the show was our most advanced
Voice Search
, which just has arrived in the UK, France and Germany.
In the kitchen, Voice Search can help you find just the right recipe — even if your hands are covered in flour. By talking to their smart device, our chefs in the Google House searched for recipes, asked for weight and temperature conversions, which we will speak right back, and even set a countdown timer on their device to remind them to take their lemon madeleines out of the oven.
Jamie and Ben from
Sorted Food
, YouTube’s largest cooking channel in Europe, showed us how Voice Search can help around the kitchen
We can also provide smart reminders, where you can asked to be notified when you're near the location for that particular task, such as
“Remind me to pick up sugar next time I’m at Sainsburys.”
In the living room, voice can help you discover music, videos, photos, movies and other services, while the teen’s bedroom we showed how school kids could use use Voice Search to help with homework tasks —
“Show me paintings by Picasso”
pulls up a carousel of
Pablo Picasso’s
works right on the search page which can easily be scrolled through.
Google can help kids and adults alike with quick and easy answers
What makes the Voice Search extra-special is its ability to understand the context of a question. For example:
Ask
“How old is David Beckham?”
and then follow up with the question
“And who is his wife?”
, and Google knows you mean
David Beckham’s wife
.
Ask “
What is the weather like in Liverpool?,”
you can follow-up with “
How long does it take to drive there?”
This makes searching by voice like a real-life conversation. Fast and accurate voice recognition technology — available on Android and on the Google Search app on iPhone — enables us to understand exactly what you’re saying and provide speedy responses by tapping the microphone icon. For example,
“Is British Airways flight 248 on time?”
The words appear as you speak, you get your answer immediately and—if it’s short and quick, like the status and departure time of your flight—we tell you the answer aloud.
By the time a guest was ready to leave Google House, he or she was encouraged to ask a simple question:
“How do I get home?”
We came up with the answer — and could even tell you when you need to leave depending on the traffic on your route.
Posted by Michael Valvo, Head of Product Communications, London
Visiting the Vatican’s ancient catacombs
Thursday, November 28, 2013
They date back almost 2000 years, to the roots of the Christianity, and are dug deep into the ground by the Romans. Now, thanks to Google Maps, anyone can take a
virtual visit
of the early Christian burial sites in the ancient
Priscilla
catacombs and
Dino Compagni
catacombs.
View Larger Map
Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi
, president of the Pontifical Commission of Culture and of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, which oversaw the catacombs restoration, first suggested the project to us in 2011. During the inauguration of the revamped museum of the Catacombs of Priscilla, the Cardinal said our project closed “the gap” between “two extremes, remote antiquity and today’s contemporary world.”
What our ancestors created is astounding. Restorers uncovered vivid late fourth-century frescoes depicting Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and Saints Peter and Paul accompanying Christians into the afterlife. Jesus’ face resembles portraits of the Emperor Constantine, who legalized Christian worship in 313. Users of Google Maps can now click the “see-inside” option for the catacombs, which allows them to move virtually through the narrow corridors tunneled out of soft tufa stone, and to see high-resolution images of the interiors from practically every angle.
View Larger Map
The artwork has spurred a fascinating debate. One fresco features a group of women celebrating a banquet and another shows a woman, dressed in robe and praying. Advocates for the ordination of women say it bolsters their assertions that women served as priests in the early church. But Fabrizio Bisconti, the superintendent of the Vatican's sacred archaeology commission, has said the women weren't celebrating Mass.
Whatever the truth, we are happy to contribute to art and culture. As this exciting project demonstrates, the Internet provides an extraordinary resource to make masterpieces available all around the world, or even under-earth!
Posted by Giorgia Abeltino, Google Senior Policy Counsel, Rome
Boosting the UK's creative and cultural industries
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
What can a 22 year old on YouTube teach the the
Royal Shakespeare Company
about entertaining audiences? Quite a lot, it turns out, when the YouTubers are stars like
Danisnotonfire
, who has had a 90% growth in traffic in the last year, or
Michael Stevens
, who is fast approaching 500 million views for his channel
VSauce
.
More than 300 British leaders from the arts, creative and cultural sector packed our Central St. Giles office in London to learn from each other - and from some of the new YouTube upstarts - how best to reach and entertain a global audience online. Together with us, the
Arts Council
,
Creative England
,
Culture24
and the
European Creative Industries Alliance
organized the
two day celebration
. On the the first day, we focused on access to finance, and on the second, seizing online opportunities.
Two recurring big themes emerged:
Personality
- Art galleries and museums must engage online in a way that has authenticity, character and even intimacy. One great example was from
Whitechapel Gallery
, where young people at the gallery have set up their own blog,
Duchamp and Sons
, and
twitter feed
to talk about arts and their gallery in their own voice
Collaboration
- The
British Postal Museum
and
Imperial War Museum
explained how our own
Cultural Institute
online exhibitions has helped them not only reach new audiences but enabled collaboration with other institutions.
Every seat was taken for the two-day celebration
All too often, content industries have rushed to blame the Internet for hurting culture. It certainly is bringing change - but as this event shows, it also presents great opportunities for both traditional and new players.
Posted by Theo Bertram, Policy Manager, Google UK
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