Europe Blog
Our views on the Internet and society
Supporting New Europe’s digital advances
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
They threw off the shackles of communism. Now they are grabbing the reigns of the technology revolution. Together with Financial Times, International Visegrad Fund and Res Publica, we announced the
New Europe 100
list of innovators from Central and Eastern Europe who are leveraging new technologies to transform the region in business, media, culture, science and politics.
In announcing the project, the Financial Times noted: “central and eastern Europe say the combination of a high level of mathematical education, low overheads and a globalised, westernised young generation makes for a heady and successful mix.” We agree. The New Europe 100 winners show that this former communist region is fast moving away from its old traditional manufacturing industries. They range from “a Hungarian doctor who has created a medical advice website driven by social media, a team of Polish students who have built an award-winning robot that could operate on Mars, and a Slovak inventor of a flying car. “
Check out the whole list at
http://ne100.org/
and read more about the project and its laureates in the newest
Visegrad Insight.
Follow it on Twitter
@NewEurope100
and tag as #NE100 elsewhere.
The FT correctly notes that the the region still must overcome obstacles. Research and development activities is about one per cent of the region’s gross domestic product, according to McKinsey, the consultancy - half the rate in the western EU, and even behind 1.5 per cent in the Bric economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Our hope that the New Europe 100 project will help raise the profile of the region’s innovators. Recognition from being included on the list will, we believe, bring the initiatives attention, investor interest - and perhaps even potential business partnerships.
Posted by Agata Waclawaik-Wejman, Head of Public Policy, Central Europe
Remembering Irish participation in World War I
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Earlier this year in our Dublin headquarters, we hosted the
launch
of an
online tool
to search the names and biographies of up to 50,000 Irish soldiers who died fighting in the British army during World War I. Today, we travelled with Irish Minister for Arts, Heritage and Gaeltecht
Heather Humphries
to the site of the Ypres battlefield in Belgium and took two important new steps to increase the project’s impact.
The
In Flanders Fields Museum
in Ypres has joined our Google Cultural Institute and posted an
online exhibition
about Irish World War I commemoration.
The new Cultural Institute Irish World War I exhibit
We also are joining with the Irish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in creating a new fellowship program to send students from Dublin on internships to Ypres. During its research, the museum discovered that the records were neither fully correct nor complete. So far, the museum has checked 11,060 out of the 49,000 names. Irish students will now come to Belgium to verify and update information on the rest of the list.
Today's presentation in Ypres
Minister Humphreys, right, discovers the new Cultural Insititute exhibtion
This is a big day in Flanders. Belgium is commemorating the centenary of the Battle of Ypres. The Allies stopped the German advance in the battle, and the two sides settled into four years of deadly, protracted trench warfare, with Ypres the site of some of the war’s bitterest and most brutal struggles. A total of 83 countries are participating in the commemorations, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
For some, the Irish role in these hostilities has been controversial because the soldiers fought in the British army, but returned to a changed Ireland following the 1916 uprising. At the project’s Dublin launch, then Irish Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Eamon Gilmore T.D., hosted Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. All three spoke movingly about how the project should help heal wounds.
Our idea is to engage the public and increase knowledge about these casualties. If you find an ancestor or locate a long-lost relative in the list send, documents, pictures, letters or any other relevant information, email namenlijst@ieper.be. The information will be verified and added to the website.
Other organizations provided invaluable assistance to make this project come to life. The Irish genealogical history and heritage company
Eneclann
contributed important images and research. And the Irish Embassy in Belgium led by Ambassador Éamonn Mac Aodha played a crucial role in promoting and facilitating. Google is proud to play a part in this exciting project helping to make sure that the memory of the names of those who died in World War 1 remain alive.
Posted by William Echikson, Head of Community Relations, Europe
Supporting a new home for Poland’s rich Jewish history
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
For 1000 years, Poland was home to the world’s largest Jewish population and the centre of Jewish religious, cultural and political thought. The
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
, whose core exhibition opens in Warsaw on October 28, highlights this rich history.
We took our StreetView technology inside the museum, which is housed in an award-winning new building directly opposite the memorial to the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising. We are happy to invite you to the first Museum View launch in Poland, available all around the world on the Google Cultural Institute. Enjoy a walk through the corridors.
View Larger Map
The online exhibit "
How to make a museum
" published by POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews invites you to discover the story of the creation of the museum, from the original idea in 1993 to the inauguration in 2014. You will go behind the scenes of this monumental project and learn about the process of gathering support in Poland and abroad, raising funds, organizing an international architectural competition, preparing the Core Exhibition, and developing the educational and cultural program.
The evening opening event will be live-streamed on YouTube from 7 to 9 p.m. on October 28. Watch it on the
museum’s channel
. The event, open to the public, will feature concerts by clarinetist David Krakauer and trumpeter Tomasz Stańko as well as a play directed by Andrzej Strzelecki based on Julian Tuwim’s poem „My Żydzi polscy” (“Us Polish Jews”).
The new museum represents an important step in reviving the memory of Poland’s rich, millenium long Jewish history. Developed by an international team of historians, museum experts and Jewish Studies scholars, it shows how Jews both prospered and suffered. As the Economist recently wrote, the exhibit “restores some balance” to the often one-sided debate that often focuses on the community’s destruction in World War II. We’re glad that Google tools can help get across this important message.
Posted by Piotr Zalewski, Communications and Public Affairs Manager, Warsaw
Advisory Council on Right to be Forgotten in Brussels
Monday, October 27, 2014
Since September,
the Advisory Council to Google on the Right to be Forgotten
has held public meetings in Madrid, Rome, Paris, Warsaw, London and Berlin. Council members have heard views on how to implement the European Court’s ruling from more than 45 national experts, as well as from members of the public. On Tuesday 4 November, the Council makes its final stop in Brussels.
A limited number of seats are available for members of the public at the Brussels meeting, and
online registration
is now open (
members of the press, please register here
).
As at each previous meeting, the Council will listen to statements from invited experts, ask questions of the experts and discuss matters of law, technology, and ethics. The public portion of the meeting will last around four hours, with a short intermission. The whole meeting will also be live-streamed on the
Advisory Council’s website
.
During the event, members of the audience can submit questions to the Council and invited experts. The Council also invites members of the public to share their thoughts on the Right to be Forgotten via the form at
google.com/advisorycouncil
- all contributions will be read. Individuals or organizations with subject matter expertise can submit attachments such as research papers at
google.com/advisorycouncil/comments
on an ongoing basis.
After the Brussels meeting, Council members will meet privately to deliberate before putting together their report, which will be published in early 2015.
We look forward to seeing you in Brussels.
Posted by Betsy Masiello, Google Secretariat to the Advisory Council
Street View arrives in Luxembourg
Friday, October 24, 2014
Luxembourg is the heart of Europe and boasts an above average number of beautiful sites, from the medieval
Grund neighborhood
in the capital to the ridges of the
Moselle River
and the sparkling modern
Kirchberg center
for European Union buildings. And now, thanks to Street View in Google Maps anyone, anywhere can visit these sites from their desktop computer or mobile device.
Viewers can access images taken at street level in two ways, either by dragging the "Pegman" character, located at the bottom right of the map, onto a place highlighted in blue, or by clicking a spot on the map and selecting Street View in the top left of the display window that pops up.
Street View offers myriad benefits. Check what looks like a restaurant before going there; find a place to park the car before you leave the house to go shopping; arrange a meeting point in an unfamiliar location; or help your kids bring their geography studies to life! If you are interested in buying a home, you can explore the area with a few clicks of a mouse; people in wheelchairs can figure out whether places have sufficient access before making a trip.
Street View is all about making Google Maps more useful, comprehensive and interesting for people, and we’re delighted people can now discover all that Luxembourg has to offer.
Posted by Ulf Spitzer, Street View program manager at Google
Teaming up with Oxford University on Artificial Intelligence
Thursday, October 23, 2014
It is a really exciting time for Artificial Intelligence research these days, and progress is being made on many fronts including image recognition and natural language understanding. Today we are delighted to announce a partnership with Oxford University to accelerate Google’s research efforts in these areas.
The Oxford skyline. Credit
Oxford University Images
Google DeepMind
will be working with two of Oxford’s cutting edge Artificial Intelligence research teams. Prof Nando de Freitas, Prof Phil Blunsom, Dr Edward Grefenstette and Dr Karl Moritz Hermann, who teamed up earlier this year to co-found
Dark Blue Labs
, are four world leading experts in the use of deep learning for natural language understanding. They will be spearheading efforts to enable machines to better understand what users are saying to them.
Also joining the DeepMind team will be Dr Karen Simonyan, Max Jaderberg and Prof Andrew Zisserman, one of the world’s foremost experts on computer vision systems, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the only person to have been awarded the prestigious
Marr Prize
three times. As co-founders of
Vision Factory
, their aim was to improve visual recognition systems using deep learning. Dr Simonyan and Prof Zisserman developed one of the winning systems at the recent 2014 ImageNet competition, which is regarded as the most competitive and prestigious image recognition contest in the world.
Google DeepMind has hired all seven founders of these startups with the three professors holding joint appointments at Oxford University where they will continue to spend part of their time. These exciting partnerships underline how committed Google DeepMind is to supporting the development of UK academia and the growth of strong scientific research labs.
As a part of the collaboration, Google DeepMind will be making a substantial contribution to establish a research partnership with the Computer Science Department and the Engineering Department at Oxford University, which will include a program of student internships and a series of joint lectures and workshops to share knowledge and expertise.
We are thrilled to welcome these extremely talented machine learning researchers to the Google DeepMind team and are excited about the potential impact of the advances their research will bring.
Posted by Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind and Vice President of Engineering at Google
Launching youtube.com/government 101
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
When the
French Foreign Ministry
wanted to engage with citizens, it chose to launch a special YouTube channel. From live streams of
award ceremonies
, to
press conferences
on important issues and
Hangouts
with constituents, YouTube has become an important platform where citizens engage with their governments around the world and elected officials. The Foreign Ministry uploads on average more than one video each day.
In order to help government officials get a better idea of what YouTube can do, we are launching
youtube.com/government101
, a one-stop shop where government officials can learn how to get the most out of YouTube as a communication tool.
The site offers a broad range of YouTube advice, from the basics of creating a channel to in-depth guidance on features like live streaming, annotations, playlists and more. We’ve also featured case studies from government offices around the world that are using YouTube in innovative ways.
If you're a government official, whether you are looking for an answer to a quick question or need a full training on YouTube best practices, we hope this resource will help you engage in a rich dialogue with your constituents and increase transparency within your community.
Posted by Brandon Feldman, YouTube News & Politics
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