Arte-non-Vi

Tag: Google

  • A Google Green

    A Google Green

    Tipping points are not always obvious, this one may be.

    Two announcements this week, juxtaposed. Infrastructure Victoria’s 30-Year Strategy and Google’s move on renewable energy in 2017.

    Technology companies now account for about 2% of total Global Carbon emissions, that rivals the aviation industry. Let’s not even consider the amount of fresh water they require, that’s another article…

    Consider that in 2015,  Google bought 5.7 terawatt hours (TWh) of renewable electricity, a little less than the 7.6TWh generated by all of the UK’s solar panels that year. The majority of the power comes from windfarms in the US. [Source: The Guardian]

    Google’s data centres and the offices for its 60,000 staff will be powered entirely by renewable energy from next year, in what the company has called a “landmark moment”.

    Google is already the world’s biggest corporate buyer of renewable electricity, last year buying 44% of its power from wind and solar farms. Now it will be 100%, and an executive said it would not rule out investing in nuclear power in the future, too.

    Url Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure for google said recently:

    I’m thrilled to announce that in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations — including both our data centers and offices. This is a huge milestone. We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy. That’s bigger than many large utilities and more than twice as much as the 1.21 gigawatts it took to send Marty McFly back in time.

     

    US Corporate Energy Purchase
    [Source: Environment Google 2016 ]

    He points out a simple business imperative:

    The science tells us that tackling climate change is an urgent global priority. We believe the private sector, in partnership with policy leaders, must take bold steps and that we can do so in a way that leads to growth and opportunity. And we have a responsibility to do so — to our users and the environment.

     

    Links

  • 63 Not out.

    Vale - Phil Hughes

  • Project Wing

    Project Wing is a Google[x] project that is developing a delivery system that uses self-flying vehicles. As part of their research, they built a vehicle and traveled to Queensland for some test flights.

    Interesting tech but…..

    Yes, the obligatory comments will come……

  • Loon – Balloon-powered Internet

    Google - LOON
    Source: Google Project LOON

    Google is developing plans to use a network of huge balloons to provide internet to the two-thirds of the world currently without web access.

    Project Loon balloons float in the stratosphere, twice as high as airplanes and the weather. They are carried around the Earth by winds and they can be steered by rising or descending to an altitude with winds moving in the desired direction. People connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal bounces from balloon to balloon, then to the global Internet back on Earth. [Source: Google]

    According to ABC News Australia, the experiment, codenamed Project Loon, was trialled on Saturday at Christchurch, on New Zealand’s South Island. Scientists floated 30 helium-filled balloons around 20 kilometres into the stratosphere, carrying antennae linked to ground base stations.

    Wi-fi signals were beamed from another part of New Zealand to the 15-metre-diameter balloons, and then to the homes of about 50 trial participants. Google says the participants were then able to successfully link to the internet. [Source: ABC]

    Very innovative stuff. Let’s hope we can find similar solutions to access to potable water, medicines and education.

    Links:

     

  • The Story of Send

    Google has posted an interesting [and fun] run-down of the energy pathway of an email through a well crafted online animation/cartoon.

    The environmental impact on growing data centres is very real and the question of sustainability is a strategic and governance challenge that cannot be ignored. The context of the current debate about carbon-pricing and mechanisms for capture and/or attenuation of future impacts is very real for these global companies.

    The Story of Send

    Links:

  • New 3D perspective from Google

    New 3D Perspective in Maps API for Flash.

    Google has released a new “3D” perspective “mode” for Google Maps applications based on Flash. This gives a 3D-like experience to the 2D Google Maps (without the 3D terrain or 3D models from the Google Earth API). You can tilt and rotate the map and “fly” around Google Maps. One advantage to this is that Flash is pretty ubiquitous in nearly every browser, and requires less memory and graphics overhead compared to the GE plugin.

    The interface for the new mode borrows from the GE plugin – so it should be familiar to anyone who uses the GE API applications. One thing I immediately missed for the Maps version is the middle-mouse button option to “tilt” your view. Anyway, in the post, Google lists several examples created by Maps API developers using the new 3D perspective. Here’s one of the examples:

    By Frank Taylor of Google Earth Blog. [Google Earth Blog]

  • Google Business Dashboard

    Announcing the new Google Local Business Center Dashboard.

    As a Google Analytics user, chances are you know the value of good data on traffic to your website. More data means you can make better-informed decisions about how to drive traffic to your site and to your brick-and-mortar locations. But your website is just a part of your entire web presence.

    Users of Google Maps and Google Search, for example, may also be interacting with your local listing on Google. While Google Analytics is fantastic for measuring traffic to your site, there has previously been no way to measure how customers interact with other elements of your web presence. That is, until today. The Google Maps team has just launched a new dashboard in its free Local Business Center (www.google.com/lbc) that will provide you with information on how users interact with your local listing on Google Maps and Google Search.
    This new dashboard provides detailed metrics on traffic to local listings on Google Maps — helping you understand, for example, how many times your listing appears in Google.com or Google Maps local search results, what search queries lead users to your listing, and what zip codes customers come from when they search for directions to your location. This is the first time this kind of data has ever been made available to business owners, and we think you’ll find it highly useful.
    If you’re interested in learning more, head over to the Official Google Blog for a more-detailed overview or the Lat Long blog for a walk-through of the dashboard’s features.

     



    Posted by Laura     Melahn, Google Maps Team

    By sgtonkin@gmail.com (Sebastian Tonkin). [Google Analytics Blog]

  • Flights in Google Layers

    Interact: Watch 24 Brilliant Hours of U.S. Flights.

    Artist Aaron Koblin layers flight patterns on a Google map representing air traffic across the United States over a 24-hour period. The map illustrates flight paths using color and animation for all the aircraft the FAA tracked on August 12, 2008.

    [Wired Top Stories]

  • Just very Cool – U2 Spyplane caught by Google…

    I remember when a Pilot named Gary Powers became world news, along with his very very very secretive spy-plane.

    Now in 2009, we can just spot a spy plane from our home computer….

    Bill

    U2 in Flight in Google Earth
    Sometimes the satellite images Google acquires happen to capture some really unique sight. This one is really awesome for those of us who try to find planes captured in flight in Google Earth: A U-2 Spyplane flying over Kuwait! This one was found by plane aficionado ‘Delta102‘ of the Google Earth Community. He’s found many other planes in Google Earth, but this is one of the best. NOTE: the orange colored ‘shadow’ to the upper left is actually an artifact of the satellite cameras which is caused by the plane’s motion. You see this in GE with planes and cars (the further away, the faster the object).

    Other unique planes captured in flight:

    By Frank Taylor of Google Earth Blog. [Google Earth Blog]