Climb Virtually Up “El Capitan,” Yosemite’s Iconic Rock Wall, With Google Street View

in Google, Travel | June 25th, 2015

Google has used its Street View tech­nol­o­gy to let you take vir­tu­al tours of some far-flung places — places like Shackleton’s Antarc­tic, Mt. Ever­est and oth­er high moun­tain peaks, The Ama­zon Riv­er, and The Grand Canyon. Now you can add to the list, El Cap­i­tan, the icon­ic rock wall in the mid­dle of Yosemite Nation­al Park.

Yes­ter­day, Google’s offi­cial blog declared, “Today we’re launch­ing our first-ever ver­ti­cal Street View col­lec­tion, giv­ing you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to climb 3,000 feet up the world’s most famous rock wall: Yosemite’s El Cap­i­tan. To bring you this new imagery, we part­nered with leg­endary climbers Lynn Hill, Alex Hon­nold and Tom­my Cald­well.” Above, you can see this trio in action, talk­ing about what makes El Cap a mec­ca for rock climbers every­where.

To cre­ate this Street View of El Cap­i­tan, Hill, Hon­nold and Cald­well worked with Google engi­neers to fig­ure out how to haul a cam­era up this sheer rock face. And what you ulti­mate­ly get are some amaz­ing 360-degree panoram­ic images. Accord­ing to Cald­well, these “are the clos­est thing I’ve ever wit­nessed to actu­al­ly being thou­sands of feet up a ver­ti­cal rock face—better than any video or pho­to.” Which, hat­ing heights, is good enough for me.

via Google Blog

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Do Not Track: Interactive Film Series Reveals the Personal Information You’re Giving Away on the Web

in Google, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | May 1st, 2015

If Face­book knows every­thing about you, it’s because you hand­ed it the keys to your king­dom.  You post­ed a pho­to, liked a favorite child­hood TV show, and will­ing­ly vol­un­teered your birth­day. In oth­er words, you hand­ed it all the data it needs to annoy you with tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.

(In my case, it’s an ancient secret that helped a mid­dle aged mom shave 5 inch­es off her waist­line. Let me save you a click: acai berries.)

Film­mak­er Brett Gay­lor (a “lefty Cana­di­an dad who reads sci­ence fic­tion) seeks to set the record straight regard­ing the web economy’s impact on per­son­al pri­va­cy.

Watch­ing his inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary web series, Do Not Track, you’ll inevitably arrive at a cross­roads where you must decide whether or not to share your per­son­al infor­ma­tion. No big­gie, right? It’s what hap­pens every time you con­sent to “log in with Face­book.”

Every time you choose this con­ve­nience, you’re allow­ing Google and oth­er big time track­ers to stick a har­poon (aka cook­ie) in your side. Swim all you want, lit­tle fishy. You’re not exact­ly get­ting away, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re logged in with a mobile device with a com­pul­sion to reveal your where­abouts.

You say you have noth­ing to hide? Bul­ly for you! What you may not have con­sid­ered is the impact your dig­i­tal easy-breezi­ness has on friends. Your net­work. And vice ver­sa. Tag away!

In this are­na, every “like”—from an acquaintance’s recent­ly launched organ­ic skin­care line to Star Trek—helps track­ers build a sur­pris­ing­ly accu­rate por­trait, one that can be used to deter­mine how insur­able you are, how wor­thy of a loan. Gen­der and age aren’t the only fac­tors that mat­ter here. So does your demon­strat­ed extra­ver­sion, your degree of open­ness.

(Ha ha, and you thought it cost you noth­ing to “like” that acquaintance’s smelly straw­ber­ry-scent­ed mois­tur­iz­er!)

To get the most out of Do Not Track, you’ll want to sup­ply its pro­duc­ers with your email address on your first vis­it. It’s a lit­tle counter-intu­itive, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, but doing so will pro­vide you with a unique con­fig­u­ra­tion that promis­es to lift the veil on what the track­ers know about you.

What does it say about me that I couldn’t get my Face­book log-in to work? How dis­ap­point­ing that this fail­ure meant I would be view­ing results tai­lored to Episode 3’s star, Ger­man jour­nal­ist Richard Gut­jahr?

(Your pro­file… says that your age is 42 and your gen­der is male. But the real gold mine is your Face­book data over time. By ana­lyz­ing the at least 129 things you have liked on Face­book, we have used our advanced algo­rithm tech­niques to assess your per­son­al­i­ty and have found you scored high­est in Open­ness which indi­cates you are cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and adven­tur­ous. Our per­son­al­i­ty eval­u­a­tion sys­tem uses Psy­cho-demo­graph­ic trait pre­dic­tions pow­ered by the Apply Mag­ic Sauce API devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Psy­cho­met­rics Cen­tre.)

I think the take­away is that I am not too on top of my pri­va­cy set­tings. And why would I be? I’m an extro­vert with noth­ing to hide, except my spend­ing habits, brows­ing his­to­ry, race, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus…

Should we take a tip from our high school brethren, who evade the scruti­ny of col­lege admis­sions coun­selors by adopt­ing some ridicu­lous, evoca­tive pseu­do­nym? Expect upcom­ing episodes of Do Not Track to help us nav­i­gate these and oth­er dig­i­tal issues.

Tune in to Do Not Track here. You can find episodes 1, 2 and 3 cur­rent­ly online. Episodes 4–6 will roll out between May 12 and June 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Internet’s Own Boy: New Doc­u­men­tary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

A Threat to Inter­net Free­dom: Film­mak­er Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er Explains Why Net Neu­tral­i­ty Mat­ters

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Ayun Hal­l­i­day an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine invites you to look into her very soul @AyunHalliday

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Take a Virtual Tour of Robben Island Where Nelson Mandela and Other Apartheid Opponents Were Jailed

in Google, History | April 30th, 2015

Ted Mills recent­ly told you all about the Google-pow­ered vir­tu­al tour of Abbey Road Stu­dios. What should­n’t go with­out men­tion is the new, Google-pow­ered vir­tu­al tour of Robben Island — “the island where Nel­son Man­dela and many of South Africa’s free­dom fight­ers were impris­oned dur­ing their quest for equal­i­ty.” Along with over 3,000 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, Nel­son Man­dela spent 18 years impris­oned here, much of the time con­fined to a 8 x 7 foot prison cell. (Don’t for­get Man­dela also spent anoth­er nine years in Pollsmoor Prison and Vic­tor Ver­ster Prison.)

All of the Robben Island tours are con­duct­ed by ex-pris­on­ers. On the new vir­tu­al tour, you will encounter Vusum­si Mcon­go (see above), a mem­ber of the anti-Apartheid move­ment who was jailed on Robben Island from 1978 to 1990.

You can start the tour of the max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison and UNESCO World Her­itage Site here.

via Google

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Take a Virtual Tour of Abbey Road Studios, Courtesy of the New Google Site “Inside Abbey Road”

in Google, Music | April 16th, 2015

Once again, Google qui­et­ly drops a nifty piece of inter­ac­tive web­bery and acts like it ain’t no big deal.

Google’s new web site, Inside Abbey Road, lets view­ers walk inside Abbey Road Stu­dios, check out the famous record­ing stu­dio (home to most of the Bea­t­les’ songs, birth­place of Dark Side of the Moon, Radiohead’s The Bends, Kanye West­’s Late Reg­is­tra­tion, the list goes on) inspect the rooms, and watch inter­views and mini-docs. It also match­es up icon­ic pho­tos (includ­ing the one shot out­side of the famous cross­walk) with the stu­dio today. The site is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Google and the stu­dio to cel­e­brate over 80 years of music his­to­ry.

Inside Abbey Road

Abbey Road exist­ed before the Fab Four and Cliff Richard, of course, and the new site includes footage of com­pos­er Sir Edward Elgar open­ing the stu­dio in 1931 and con­duct­ing a record­ing of “Land of Hope and Glo­ry.”

There’s plen­ty of mod­ern footage too, from Kylie Minogue and Rob­bie Williams to Take That and Sig­ur Rós. You have to poke around a lit­tle bit to find every­thing, but the site includes a map in case you get lost.

abbey road beatles

You can also have a go at mix­ing a four-track record­ing in the con­trol booth, fool around on the J37 tape deck that was the height of tech dur­ing the time of Sgt. Pep­per, and try to find the rumored echo cham­ber. (Trust me, it’s there.)

abbey road board

If you want to take a break out­side and watch a real-time ver­sion of this dig­i­tal loca­tion, there’s always the Abbey Road traf­fic cam, where you watch a whole bunch of tourists try to get their Bea­t­les on with­out get­ting hit by an irate lor­ry dri­ver.

Take your vir­tu­al tour of Abbey Road here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCartney’s Con­cep­tu­al Draw­ings For the Abbey Road Cov­er and Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour Film

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road: Paul McCart­ney Revis­its The Bea­t­les’ Fabled Record­ing Stu­dio

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

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Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

in Art, Google, Museums, Travel | March 22nd, 2015

circling

Cir­cling Birdies by Cheko, Grana­da Spain

Since last we wrote, Google Street Art has dou­bled its online archive by adding some 5,000 images, bring­ing the tal­ly to 10,000, with coor­di­nates pin­point­ing exact loca­tions on all five con­ti­nents (though as of this writ­ing, things are a bit thin on the ground in Africa). Giv­en the tem­po­ral real­i­ties of out­door, guer­ril­la art, pil­grims may arrive to find a blank can­vas where graf­fi­ti once flour­ished. (RIP New York City’s 5 Pointz, the “Insti­tute of High­er Burn­ing.”)

A major aim of the project is vir­tu­al preser­va­tion. As with per­for­mance art, doc­u­men­ta­tion is key. Not all of the work can be attrib­uted, but click on an image to see what is known. Guid­ed tours to neigh­bor­hoods rich with street art allow arm­chair trav­el­ers to expe­ri­ence the work, and inter­views with the artists dis­pel any num­ber of stereo­types.

Cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions like Turkey’s Pera Muse­um and Hong Kong’s Art Research Insti­tute, and street art projects based in such hubs as Rome, Paris, Syd­ney, and Bangkok, have pulled togeth­er offi­cial col­lec­tions of pho­tos and videos, but you can play cura­tor too.

It’s easy to add images to a col­lec­tion of your own mak­ing that can be shared with the pub­lic at large or saved for pri­vate inspi­ra­tion. Care­ful, you could lose hours…it’s like Pin­ter­est for peo­ple who grav­i­tate toward spray paint and rub­bish strewn vacant lots over ging­ham wrapped Mason jars.

It’s been a long and bru­tal win­ter here on the east coast, so for my first for­ay, I prowled for Signs of Spring. One of my first hits was “Cir­cling Birdies” by Cheko, above. Locat­ed in Grana­da, Spain, it’s one of the exist­ing works Google has turned into a GIF with some light, log­i­cal ani­ma­tion.

Behold a bit of what typ­ing “flower,” “baby ani­mals,” “plants,” and “trees” into a search box can yield! You can enter Google Street Art here.

Child With Windmill

Artist: Wal­ter Ker­shaw
Lon­don UK

Thrashbird

Artists: Thrash­bird and Renee Gagnon
Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia.

Baby Chick

Artist: unknown
Rochester, NY

Screen Shot 2015-03-19 at 11.07.58 PM

Icy and Sot
Rochester NY

Freedom Fighter

Artist: Kristy San­doval
Los Ange­les, CA

Natureza Viva

Artists: Regg and Violant
Alfragide Por­tu­gal

Beetle

Artist: Klit
Alfragide, Por­tu­gal
A giant col­or­ful bee­tle tries to fly between the ceil­ing and the floor of this park­ing lot. His wings seem filled with flower petals. So, the “Liv­ing Nature” project brought a set of huge insects that car­ry a note of liv­ing spir­it to the space.

Deep Blue

Artist: Rai Cruz
Mani­la, Philip­pines

Nagel
Artist: Chris­ti­aan Nagel
Lon­don, Eng­land

Untitled Rome
Artist: Lady Aiko
Rome, Italy

Parsa

Artist: Andrew Ken­tish
Nepal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour the World’s Street Art with Google Street Art

Obey the Giant: Short Film Presents the True Sto­ry of Shep­ard Fairey’s First Act of Street Art

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Google Makes Available 750 Icons for Designers & Developers: All Open Source 

in Google, Web/Tech | October 21st, 2014

google icons

If you’re a design­er or devel­op­er, Kottke.org thought you’d might like to know: “As part of their Mate­r­i­al Design visu­al lan­guage, Google has open-sourced a pack­age of 750 icons. More info here.”

Over at Github, you can view a live pre­view of the icons or down­load the icon pack now.

Our friends at Boing­Bo­ing add, “They’re licensed CC-BY-SA and designed for use in mobile apps and oth­er inter­ac­tive stuff.” Use them well.

 

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Tour the World’s Street Art with Google Street Art

in Art, Google, Travel | July 14th, 2014

By far the most enjoy­able part of our recent fam­i­ly trip to Lon­don was the after­noon my young son and I spent in Shored­itch, grop­ing our way to No Brow, a comics shop I had noticed on an ear­ly morn­ing stroll with our host­ess. Our route was evi­dence that I had for­got­ten the coor­di­nates, the street name, the name of the shop… Even­tu­al­ly, I real­ized we were lost, and that is where the real fun began, as we retraced our steps using street art as bread crumbs.

Ah right, there’s  that rooftop mush­room instal­la­tion!

And there’s that Stik fig­ure…

After a while, a FedEx man took pity on us, ruin­ing our fun by steer­ing us toward the prop­er address..

I’m not sure I could ever dupli­cate our trail, but I enjoy try­ing with Google Street Art. Arm­chair trav­el­ers can use it to project them­selves to the heart of ephemer­al, pos­si­bly ille­gal exhi­bi­tions all over the globe,.

Bogotá... Paris... New York’s leg­endary 5 Pointz, before the land­lord clutched and white­washed the entire thing in the dead of night. Each up close pho­to bears a high­ly infor­ma­tion­al cap­tion, much more than you’d find in the street itself. Think of it as an after-the-fact dig­i­tal muse­um. It’s appro­pri­ate, giv­en the ephemer­al nature of the work. An online pres­ence is its best shot at preser­va­tion.

Those of us with some­thing to con­tribute can add to the record with a user gallery or by tag­ging our pho­tos with #Stree­tArtist.

Enter Google Street Art here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Obey the Giant: Short Film Presents the True Sto­ry of Shep­ard Fairey’s First Act of Street Art

Banksy Cre­ates a Tiny Repli­ca of The Great Sphinx Of Giza In Queens

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How British Codebreakers Built the First Electronic Computer

in Google, History, Technology, Video - Arts & Culture | April 23rd, 2014

It was only a mat­ter of time before the folks at Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute wan­dered down the road in Moun­tain View to vis­it the Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um. Togeth­er they’ve tak­en on a slim lit­tle sub­ject, Rev­o­lu­tion: The First 2000 Years of Com­put­ing

Unlike the best Cul­tur­al Insti­tute exhibits (the fall of the Iron Cur­tain and the daz­zling array of oth­er art and his­to­ry col­lec­tions come to mind) this one doesn’t do enough to lever­age video to bring the mate­r­i­al to life. It’s a breezy lit­tle tour from the hum­ble (but effec­tive) aba­cus to punched cards, mag­net­ic discs and the dawn of minia­tur­iza­tion and net­work­ing.

But noth­ing about how the Inter­net devel­oped, lead­ing to the Web and, now, the Inter­net of Every­thing?

I’ll admit that I learned a few things. I hadn’t heard of the design-for­ward Cray 1 super­com­put­er with its round tow­er (to min­i­mize wire lengths) and bench to dis­crete­ly hide pow­er sup­plies. The Xerox Alto came with con­sumer friend­ly fea­tures includ­ing a mouse, email and the capac­i­ty to print exact­ly what was on the screen. The unfor­tu­nate acronym for this asset wasWYSI­WYG (What You See Is What You Get).

I had also nev­er heard about the Utah teapot, a pic­ture of a gleam­ing white ceram­ic urn used for 20 years as the bench­mark for real­is­tic light, shade and col­or in com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed images.

“>http://youtu.be/amRQ-xfCuR4

More inter­est­ing, and up to the Cul­tur­al Institute’s stan­dards, is the exhib­it built in part­ner­ship with the Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing in Buck­ing­hamshire, Eng­land. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of his­to­ry, focus­ing on Hitler’s efforts to encrypt mes­sages dur­ing the war and stump the Allied forces. He com­mis­sioned con­struc­tion of a super-sophis­ti­cat­ed machine (not Enig­ma, if you’re think­ing of that). The machine was called Lorenz and it took encryp­tion to an entire­ly new lev­el.

“>http://youtu.be/knXWMjIA59c

British lin­guists and oth­ers labored to man­u­al­ly deci­pher the mes­sages. Attempts to speed the process led to devel­op­ment of Colos­sus, the world’s first elec­tron­ic comuter. The project was kept secret by the British gov­ern­ment until 1975.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter.

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