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Student Blog
Brought to you from your @GoogleStudents friends. From pre-university to PhD (and beyond), we got you.
Get your campus featured in Street View on Google Maps
October 16, 2009
From the comfort of your own dorm room, Street View on Google Maps lets you scope out a restaurant before heading out there for a date (oh look, there's a
flower shop next door
)
or preview
your spring break hotel to be sure it meets your strict requirements (oh look, the
beach is right across the street
).
But wouldn't it be nice if you could see more places in Street View? Places like hiking or biking trails, sports stadiums, and maybe even your university campus!
Freshmen could easily study what all the campus buildings look like, and your family could get a better sense of your new home. Think back to when you were applying to schools - wouldn't it have been handy to be able to virtually tour college campuses? Or better yet, picture how nice a Street View walk down memory lane will be after you graduate and start to feels pangs of nostalgia for college life.
Good news: you can now nominate your campus to be photographed for Street View on Google Maps. We've created the Street View trike, a mechanical masterpiece made of 3 bicycle wheels and a mounted Street View camera, to take pictures of places like university campuses that cannot be reached by car. Visit
www.google.com/trike
to nominate your school for a visit from the Street View trike.
To get an idea of what Street View pictures taken by the trike look like, you can check out
San Diego State University
, the first university included in Google Maps:
View Larger Map
So far we've taken the trike to a few other campuses, including the
University of Pennsylvania
and
Penn State
,
but all of you have a chance to nominate your school to be included next. Of course, we'll make sure to work directly with the administration at your school to get the necessary permissions and approvals before coming on campus - and, as with all Street View imagery, we'll blur identifiable faces.
We're also accepting nominations in 5 other categories for where to send the Street View trike next:
Parks & Trails
Pedestrian Malls
(e.g., outdoor shopping areas, boardwalks)
Theme Parks & Zoos
Landmarks
Sports Venues (e.g., golf courses, racing tracks, stadium grounds)
Head to
www.google.com/trike
by October 28 to submit your nomination. After we comb through the submissions and pick out the finalists, you will have the opportunity to vote on
a winner from each category for the Street View trike to visit. May the best campus win!
Blog Action Day
October 15, 2009
Today – October 15 – is known as
Blog Action Day
, an annual event that unites bloggers across the globe by posting about the same topic on the same day to help bring awareness to a certain issue. This year, the discussion is about Climate Change and we hope you'll check out the
Official Google Blog
to learn more about some of the steps we take as a company to address this important issue.
If you have blogs of your own, we also encourage you to post your own thoughts about the climate crisis and maybe some of the steps you're taking to contribute to change.
Posted by the Google for Students Blog team
Introducing Google Building Maker
October 13, 2009
Ever found yourself being an armchair tourist looking at 3D buildings of your home town in Google Earth? Have you ever wanted to highlight that famous building in your city or on your campus, but not really been sure where to start?
Building Maker helps you put buildings on the 3D map.
Today we launched
Google Building Maker
, a fun and simple (and crazy addictive, it turns out) online tool for creating buildings for
Google Earth
. Basically, you pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes – both of which we provide.
When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.
Check out this video to see Building Maker in action:
For now, you can choose to make buildings in any of about 50 cities. We'll keep adding more cities, but don't feel left out if we don't have your hometown yet — modeling in a place you've never been is a fantastic way to discover more about it.
Simply, make sure you have the latest version of
Google Earth
installed on your computer. If you're on a Mac, you will need to download the
Google Earth plug-in
directly.
Building Maker is free and available in 14 languages. Go to
www.google.com/buildingmaker
to join the worldwide mapping community. Have fun!
Posted by Mark Limber, Product Manager and Matt Simpson, User Experience Designer
Driving the Solar System with Google
October 12, 2009
[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Stephen Savage join us here again. Stephen is Arizona State University's
Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab IT Manager of the Archaeological Research Institute at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. You might remember his previous posts about
Exploring exploplanets using Google Earth's API
or his work on the
Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land
.]
For years, astronauts and rocket scientists at NASA and JPL have had all the fun. Billions of people on Earth have seen pictures of Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt driving their "dune buggy" on the Moon. Billions more have seen pictures of NASA's Mars landers, Spirit and Opportunity. We've all wished we could be the ones to take these incredible toys out for a spin on the Red Planet or the Moon.
Now, thanks to Google, you can do the next best thing -- you can drive a virtual rover model on Google's Mars or Moon (or a skateboard on Earth), and experience the real topography of these places. We at ASU developed a
"Drive the Solar System" website
where you can explore how the power of Google Mars, Google Moon and Google Earth has been brought to the web. You can put your rover or skateboard down anyplace on Mars, the Moon or Earth and drive it anywhere you want to go. Explore the Apollo landing sites or Olympus Mons, the largest volcanic cone in the solar system. Drive down the Valles Marinaris, the canyon on Mars that dwarfs Arizona's Grand Canyon, or kick-flip your skateboard down the Amazon. And that's not all. You can visit all the other planets and the largest moons in the Solar System too.
But you can do more than drive or look at these strange new worlds -- you can also look at these places in depth with detailed information about each place you can visit included.
So if you've ever wanted to be an astronaut, visit
http://gaialab.asu.edu/
SolarSystem
and see what you've been missing!
Posted by Stephen Savage, Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab IT Manager, Archaeological Research Institute, School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University
Announcing our 2009 Google AISES Scholars!
October 9, 2009
Google and the
American Indian Science and Engineering Society
are proud to announce our second class of Google AISES Scholars. Please join us in congratulating our nine 2009 Google AISES Scholars!
Bryan Bailey, University of Maryland
Vanessa Benally, Fort Lewis College
Alexander Brown, University of New Mexico
Corinne Cameron, University of Alaska Anchorage
Russell Harjo, Northeastern State
Kasra Manavi, Texas A&M
Alicia Montoya, University of New Mexico
Bryan Parker II, University of Texas at Dallas
Michael McGahey,
Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute
Google AISES scholars will each receive a USD $10,000 academic scholarship for the 2009-2010 academic year and are invited to attend the annual Google Scholars' Retreat at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California in 2010. The retreat is a time
for Google to recognize the students’
hard work and achievements, and to provide the scholars with an opportunity to meet computing
professionals and network with other scholars.
We hope this program will encourage students to continue to achieve great things in their studies and inspire them to become role models and leaders in science and technology.
To learn more about Google's scholarship opportunities, please visit
www.google.com/jobs/
scho
larships
.
Posted by Meghan O'Farrell, Talent & Outreach Programs Specialist
Googlers Beta - 2009 Edition!
October 8, 2009
We are relaunching our
Googlers Beta Series
and bringing you the unique stories and experiences of Google interns. Our first post for the season comes from Asit Mishra, a Google Summer Intern and PhD student from Penn State University, who will share with you his experience as a Software Engineer (SWE) Intern in our Seattle office.
A
sit's Story:
Think about the 100+ tools that Google has launched, the billions who query our search engine everyday, and the 10,000+ crazy (in a good way) software engineers working at Google; there is a plethora of jobs that our
server platform
ma
chines must serve each day. Our machines serve a diverse set of workloads, and
managing
and makin
g sense of these workloads is a big challenge. But learning the behavior of these workloads can help us, among many other things, to make better scheduling decisions, to better project our machine growth, and to customize our cells to handle the
jobs
better.
During my internship, I worked on a very interesting, and in my opinion, high-impact project where I modeled the workload of Google's machines.
I used a variety of tools, including time-series modeling, clustering and statistical methods to capture the workload signatures. After months of brainstorming with my mentor (Joseph Hellerstein) and the cluster management team, I was at a point where I could categorize the workloads into smaller groups. This gave us an opportunity to investigate the workload behavior at a macro-level and makes the analysis simpler.
Aside from the free food, massages and the rock-band set-up, I found the "Google-culture" to be really amazing. It is not very different from the culture one would see at a university or research lab. The openness and the helping attitude of Googlers, here, helped me a lot in my work. Between the numerous brainstorming sessions with my mentor and the cluster management team and the two trips down to Mountain View to dig-deep into our findings, these experiences have gone a long way in shaping the outcome of my project and enhancing my overall understanding of Computer Science. For me, it's been one of the most productive and enriching experiences within a 3-month span.
I had never seen terabytes worth of data before coming here! Once, my mentor told me that here at Google people don't worry about storing megabytes or gigabytes of data; if it's terabytes it a slight concern and if it's petabytes - that's where you actually start thinking.
A note from Joseph Hellerstein, Asit's host: We had great fun with Asit during the summer, and it was very productive. Asit's work is impacting how Google does cluster scheduling and capacity planning. Also, we submitted a paper to ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review. Oh, and we got some really cool jackets for our work with the Google Cluster Management Team.
Want more information on internships at Google?
Visit
http://www.google.com/jobs/intern
for more information. You can also learn more about the exciting research going on at Google by
visiting
http://research.google.com/
.
YouTube EDU goes international - a global classroom for all
October 7, 2009
Universities from the Europe and Israel have now joined
YouTube EDU
. The site now provides over 45,000 videos from over 20 top universities in nine countries with academic lectures, public talks and college life from universities including
Cambridge University
,
The Open University,
(UK),
INSEAD
,
(France),
Bocconi University
(Italy),
Open University of Catalonia
, (Spain)
University of Gronigen
(The Netherlands),
Moscow State University
(Russia)
- in addition to the 200 US universities already on the site.
The international version now includes a drop-down menu to filter content based on language of choice. For example, select French and find content from
HEC in Paris
and also the French-Canadian
University of Montreal
, or set to 'All' to browse videos in all languages. The
Directory
also enables subjects to be browsed - e.g. select 'Business', 'Engineering' or 'Literature' to see content available. Although this feature is currently only available for English at the moment, we are looking to roll-out to languages as more universities join.
Now, go learn something!
Posted by Anna De Paula Hanika on behalf of the YouTube EDU team
Just released: new version of Google SketchUp
October 1, 2009
Students, educators and fans of SketchUp, rejoice: we just released
Google SketchUp Pro 7.1
! This new version is available as a free upgrade to your existing student, instructor or lab license. If you're new to SketchUp 3D modeling software, Google offers
great pricing
for the education community. Students pay just $49 for a year-long Pro license, lab licenses are between $15-$30 per seat, depending whether you choose a 1, 2 or 3 year license; and, instructors can get themselves a Pro license at no charge. Learn more on our Education program on the
SketchUp website
.
SketchUp Pro 7.1 has been our most quickly adopted update because it adds a bunch of new features while providing enhanced performance and fixes for a lot of known issues. Of particular interest for Education is the new feature called Get Photo Texture, which allows you to quickly model buildings using Google Maps Street View imagery.
A popular K-12 activity guides students through the
process of modeling a local building
(such as their school building) using Google Earth and Google SketchUp. With the release of 7.1, the activity gets even more compelling because students can immediately access Street View imagery to apply to their model. Students can also access and edit existing buildings in the Google 3D Warehouse using the new "Nearby Buildings" feature.
For industrial design, mechanical design and architecture/landscape courses, LayOut 2.1 is bundled with the release. LayOut 2.1 improves on its rich 2D presentation features by adding Dimensioning. Now any of models can be annotated or dimensioned directly in LayOut without having to go back to the original model. Scaled printing, simple construction documentation, woodworking and even site planning is a snap. That's right, you heard the pun, the new dimensioning allows you to snap and measure from points in the embedded model!
All users will see faster performance when it comes to large, complex or heavily textured models. Google SketchUp Pro 7.1 continues the tradition of SketchUp's rich feature set, intuitive interface and our commitment to offering great pricing for Educators and Students. Learn more on our
SketchUp website for Education
.
Posted by James Therrien, Google SketchUp Team
Day in the life of a Docs student
September 24, 2009
(Cross-posted on the
Google Docs blog
)
The Google Docs team is getting ready for back to school. We've been doing our homework this summer to make your school year go a little smoother. Today we're launching a
handful of features
that will benefit both students and teachers. Speaking from experience, as students ourselves, we know that these features will come in handy on any given day. Check out the schedule below to see how.
Time
Schedule
9:00am
Spanish Literature [Bldg200-253]
Writing essays about Gabriel García Márquez is hard enough in English; try it in Spanish. At least now I can make sure I'm on the right track by defining and translating Spanish words.
Like any research essay, I have to
double space
the document and cite my sources. I use footnotes to cite sources. They are automatically numbered so I don't have to keep track of them and they sit in the margins for easy reference. As of today, I can even print footnotes as endnotes, consolidated on separate pages at the end of my document.
10:00am
Gym break
I keep track of my daily workout progress using a variety of Docs
templates
. Today I'll be using the Runner's Log:
11:00am
Hiking Club [Student Union]
T
h
e
o
ther club officers and I make sure that we cover all important topics by collaborating on an agenda outline before each weekly meeting. As the secretary, I also take notes on the outline so I like being able to customize how the list is formatted.
The officers also work together to make sure our website is up to date. With
Google Sites
we can each edit the site when necessary without learning html. My favorite feature is the ability to embed maps, documents, and calendars directly into a page.
12:00pm
Lunch
I keep up to date on the go by viewing and editing my docs on a
mobile phone
.
1:00pm
Probabilistic Systems Analysis Lecture [Bldg32-123]
This class moves pretty fast. My friends and I sit near each other and take notes on a single Google Doc to make sure we don't miss a thing. With the new equation editor feature, it's much easier to read and understand each others' equation notations.
And whenever I walk into class a little late, I can just do a revision comparison of our shared notes document to see exactly what I've missed.
2:00pm
Solid State Chemistry Tutorial [Bldg5-320]
In order to lead this tutorial, I often put together some slides beforehand and share them with my students. Now that Google Docs Presentations supports subscripts and superscripts, it's even easier to make and edit these slides.
Want to try out these features in your routine? Find some more detailed information about the features
here
.
Posted by:
Rita Chen and Stephanie Vezich, Google Docs Summer Interns
Creating your digital resume
September 22, 2009
Over on the
Docs Blog
, Dr. Helen Barrett - a retired teacher educator and independent researcher - has written up some good tips about using "E-Portfolios" as a sort of digital resume, and how you can use Google tools to help you create your own.
If you're interested in learning more, check out
this example
and stop by the
Docs Blog
to read more about how you can use Google Sites and Docs - among other online tools - to build your own virtual portfolio.
Posted by Peter Harbison, Google Docs Marketing Manager
Current Google Scholarship Opportunities for Students in Computer Science
September 16, 2009
We are are pleased to announce the launch of 3 scholarship opportunities for students in Computer Science: Google SHPE Conference Travel Scholarship
(new!)
, Google Lime Scholarship for Students with Disabilities and the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship (U.S. and Canada).
Google SHPE Conference Travel Scholarship
Deadline to apply: September 30, 2009
Google Lime Scholarship for Students with Disabilities
Deadline to apply: December 15, 2009
Google Anita Borg Scholarship (U.S. and Canada)
Deadline to apply: February 1, 2010
To Apply
To apply for these scholarship opportunities, please visit our
Online Application
for Google Scholarships & Awards Programs.
If you are a f
irst time user, y
ou will need to register and create a profile, as well as a user-name and password. If you are a
lready registered, please log-in to your account t
o complete your application.
Read the
application instructions
or visit the
FAQ page
f
or more information.
Posted by Meghan O'Farrell, Talent & Outreach Programs
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