Building The Eiffel Tower: Three Google Exhibitions Revisit the Birth of the Great Parisian Monument

in Architecture, Google, History, Technology | July 19th, 2013

eiffeltower

One of the most stun­ning views a trav­el­er can have in Paris is to round a cor­ner and see the mas­sive four-legged base of the Eif­fel Tow­er. One of the beau­ti­ful things about Eiffel’s tow­er is that it is so colos­sal and yet so airy and del­i­cate.

The view from the top is also amaz­ing (though truth be told the views from Notre Dame and Sacré-Coeur may be bet­ter because they include the Eif­fel Tow­er too)—so much so that Google pho­tog­ra­phers hoist­ed their panoram­ic Street View cam­era into the tow­er and record­ed breath­tak­ing views from the three main lev­els.

The day Google showed up was a typ­i­cal­ly over­cast Paris day. The sky is even a lit­tle threat­en­ing. After so much gaz­ing out at the city, you might want to dip into a café for un petit café crème.

But keep your lap­top with you. The Street View exhib­it is one of three that Google now offers about the tow­er. Google’s Cul­tur­al Insti­tute col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Eif­fel Tow­er Oper­at­ing Com­pa­ny to cre­ate three addi­tion­al exhibits: The Birth of the Eif­fel Tow­er, the tower’s con­struc­tion, and anoth­er about its inau­gu­ra­tion and ear­ly vis­i­tors.

One of the coolest pieces of archival mate­r­i­al is a record­ing of tow­er engi­neer Gus­tave Eiffel’s voice made by Thomas Edi­son, who was a big fan of the tow­er.

Built to dis­play France’s engi­neer­ing prowess at the cen­te­nary of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, the tower’s con­struc­tion is amaz­ing to con­tem­plate. Four men were need­ed to install one riv­et: one to heat it up, anoth­er to hold it in place, a third to shape the head and a fourth to beat it with a sledge­ham­mer. A total of 2,500,000 riv­ets were used to hold the tow­er togeth­er.

For a much old­er view of the ride up the tower’s ele­va­tor, check out this film by the Lumière broth­ers, made the year the tow­er opened in 1898.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Climb Three of the World’s High­est Peaks on Google Street View

Google Street View Takes You on a Panoram­ic Tour of the Grand Canyon

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix. Learn more about her work by vis­it­ing .

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Google Wants to Provide Internet Access to Remote Parts of the World with Solar-Powered Balloons

in Google, Technology | June 17th, 2013

Per­haps you live in a devel­oped nation, or a pock­et of a devel­op­ing nation, where inter­net access is a rel­a­tive­ly cheap com­mod­i­ty. Count your­self lucky. Right now, 5 bil­lion peo­ple — or two thirds of the world’s pop­u­la­tion — lack access to an afford­able and reli­able Inter­net con­nec­tion. Which means they lack access to crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion — med­ical infor­ma­tion that can save lives; sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion that can improve farm­ing; tech­ni­cal infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to build a mod­ern econ­o­my; and edu­ca­tion­al resources that can cul­ti­vate young minds.

With Project Loon, Google is launch­ing an auda­cious exper­i­ment that will hope­ful­ly make a dent in this seri­ous prob­lem. The exper­i­ment involves putting a fleet of high-alti­tude bal­loons into the air. Pow­ered sole­ly by the wind and the sun, the bal­loons will fly high into the stratos­phere, well above where com­mer­cial planes fly, and they’ll beam Inter­net access back to the ground “at speeds sim­i­lar to today’s 3G net­works or faster,” claims Google’s main blog. (The clip below explains the gist of the tech­nol­o­gy.) Right now, they’re run­ning a small scale test in New Zealand (in Christchurch and Can­ter­bury, to be exact) and you can mon­i­tor the progress over at Project Loon’s Google Plus page. In the mean­time, we’ll keep our fin­gers crossed and hope the entire world can soon enjoy our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es, not to men­tion the oth­er ran­dom curiosi­ties found on the web.

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Google Reveals the Evolution of Our Planet in Timelapse Motion

in Google | May 10th, 2013

Columbia_400Yes­ter­day Google released a trove of time­lapse images that offers, it believes, “the most com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of our chang­ing plan­et ever made avail­able to the pub­lic.” Fea­tur­ing a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry of images tak­en from space by NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, the repos­i­to­ry lets you wit­ness the retreat of glac­i­ers (see above), the defor­esta­tion of wide swathes of rain­for­est, the growth of sprawl­ing cities, and the build­ing of huge arti­fi­cial islands, all hap­pen­ing in time­lapse motion.

To cre­ate its Time­lapse web­site, Google “sift­ed through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 ter­abytes of data—to find the high­est-qual­i­ty pix­els … for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth.” They then used this data to cre­ate com­pos­ite images for each year, all view­able in brows­able HTML5 ani­ma­tion. Some strik­ing images have also been post­ed on Google+.

via Google

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Har­vard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Envi­ron­ment Profs

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Celebrate Saul Bass’ 93rd Birthday with an Animated Google Doodle

in Design, Google | May 8th, 2013

When it comes to title design, no one did it bet­ter than Saul Bass (1920–1996). Dur­ing his long career in Hol­ly­wood, Bass designed sequences for Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Gold­en Arm, Scorsese’s Good­fel­las and Cape Fear, Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus, and sev­er­al clas­sic films by Alfred Hitch­cock. And that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. (You can delve into Bass’ oth­er cre­ative work via the links below.)

Today, Google is cel­e­brat­ing what would have been Bass’ 93rd birth­day with an ani­mat­ed doo­dle (above). Accord­ing to Metafil­ter, the doo­dle “pays homage to Bass’ visu­al work on Psy­cho, The Man With The Gold­en Arm, Spar­ta­cus, West Side Sto­ry,Ver­ti­go, North by North­west, Anato­my of a Mur­der, and Around the World in 80 Days.” It’s also set to Dave Brubeck­’s 1961 tune, “Unsquare Dance.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Learn to Draw, and Cre­ate Beau­ty Even If Nobody Else Cares

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

Saul Bass Gives Ma Bell a Com­plete Makeover, 1969

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Climb Three of the World’s Highest Peaks on Google Street View

in Google, Photography, Travel | March 24th, 2013

Google Peak

What’s sur­pris­ing about Ever­est Base Camp is the col­or. It’s a flinty, gray place lit­tered with shards of Himalayan sand­stone and shale. Here and there appears a vivid green pool of alpine water. And then there’s the red, blue and green prayer flags hung by Himalayans to blow bless­ings in the wind.

Google Street View’s lat­est project, the World’s High­est Peaks, takes us to Ever­est and two oth­er moun­tains includ­ed in the Sev­en Summits—the high­est moun­tains on each of the sev­en con­ti­nents.

Teams of moun­taineers tot­ed dig­i­tal cam­eras on treks to the top of each moun­tain and inte­grat­ed their images into Google maps so we can trek along with them from the com­fort of our lap­tops, iPhones or Android devices. Like Google Street View’s Ocean gallery, the moun­tain images bring us to places we may nev­er see with our own eyes.

It’s easy to imag­ine the dry, cold cli­mate at Camp Col­era, where hik­ers wait for the weath­er to per­mit a climb of Aconagua, the high­est moun­tain in the Andes. The views of Tan­za­nia from Arrow Glac­i­er are breath­tak­ing. Hik­ers camp here before mak­ing the treach­er­ous ascent to Uhu­ru—the “rooftop of Africa” and the sum­mit of Mt. Kil­i­man­jaro.

One of the things Google does real­ly well is cre­ate gal­leries of images that are the kind we might take our­selves, not fil­tered-lens pro­fes­sion­al shots that belong on cal­en­dars. We see moun­taineers rest­ing and hang­ing out at the frosty Casa de Piedra, on the way up to Aconagua, hik­ers pic­nick­ing at Lemosho Glades as they switch from jeep to foot on the climb up Kil­i­man­jaro, and the weird, aban­doned diesel bar­rels that serve as shel­ter for folks climb­ing Mount Elbrus in Rus­sia.

As usu­al, Google lets us in on the process of col­lect­ing all these images with a fun blog writ­ten by the pho­tog­ra­phers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Google Street View Takes You on a Panoram­ic Tour of the Grand Canyon

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Google Launches a New “Art Talks” Series: Tune in Tonight

in Art, Education, Google | March 6th, 2013

google art project

Today at 8 p.m. EST Google Art Project will launch a new series, Art Talks. Like Google’s oth­er Hang­outs on Air, Art Talks will con­vene some of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple of our time.

Each month Art Talks will fea­ture a con­ver­sa­tion with cura­tors, muse­um direc­tors, his­to­ri­ans, or edu­ca­tors from world-renowned cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, who “will reveal the hid­den sto­ries behind par­tic­u­lar works, exam­ine the cura­tion process and pro­vide insights into par­tic­u­lar mas­ter­pieces or artists.”

For today’s talk Deb­o­rah Howes, direc­tor of dig­i­tal learn­ing at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, will mod­er­ate a pan­el of artists and stu­dents for a dis­cus­sion about how to teach art online. To post a ques­tion for the group, vis­it the Google event page.

The talk will be broad­cast live at 8 p.m. EST. After­wards it’ll be avail­able on Google Art Project’s YouTube chan­nel.

Lat­er this month Car­o­line Camp­bell and Arni­ka Schmidt from the Nation­al Gallery will dis­cuss depic­tions of the female nude. In April, a pan­el will exam­ine the gigapex­il project based on Bruegel’s “Tow­er of Babel.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Vis­it the Pra­do Art Col­lec­tion with Google Earth

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Google Street View Takes You on a Panoramic Tour of the Grand Canyon

in Google, Photography, Travel | February 5th, 2013

canyon SV_trekker_1_large

With Google’s Street View we can amble through New York City’s High Line Park, around the Nation­al Muse­um of Iraq in Bagh­dad, and down the cob­bled streets of Ouro Pre­to, Brazil. Now we can also take a vir­tu­al hike along the rim of the Grand Canyon, fol­low­ing Google’s cam­eras along the his­toric Bright Angel trail from its start at the south rim all the way down the Black Bridge over the Col­orado Riv­er and on to the Phan­tom Ranch camp­ing area.

It’s a per­fect way to check out the ter­rain before tak­ing off for an Ari­zona vaca­tion.

Unlike views in Google’s ear­li­er Street View maps, the Grand Canyon pho­tos are tak­en along rocky, nar­row trails where no car, snow mobile, or motor­bike could ever go. So how did Google col­lect all of the nec­es­sary images?

The Grand Canyon project is the first to uti­lize Trekker, a back­pack-mount­ed cam­era appa­ra­tus worn by a hik­er that takes a pic­ture every 2.5 sec­onds. Trekker weighs 40 pounds and is oper­at­ed by an Android phone held by the hik­er. It has 15 cam­eras point­ed in dif­fer­ent angles that can be com­bined to cre­ate panoram­ic views.

Fol­low the South Kaibab Trail to Skele­ton Point for majes­tic 360-degree views of the misty blue Canyon. It took three days to cap­ture the main trails of the Canyon’s south rim. Two teams hiked down the Bright Angel Trail, camped at Phan­tom Ranch and hiked out the next day along the South Kaibab Trail. Anoth­er team stayed at the top, col­lect­ing images from the rim and from Mete­or Crater out­side the park.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Stephen Colbert Brings Laughs and Book Tour to Google

in Comedy, Google, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | January 1st, 2013

Stephen Col­bert is one of the most refresh­ing come­di­ans work­ing today. He main­tains his character’s obnox­ious­ness dur­ing his own show, riff­ing and impro­vis­ing dur­ing inter­views with every­one from Bill O’Reilly to Eli­jah Wood, build­ing his char­ac­ter to dead­pan heights even with Jane Fon­da’s tongue in his ear.

But in the hot seat him­self, as an inter­vie­wee on Let­ter­man, Oprah or even with Play­boy mag­a­zine, Col­bert is authen­tic, can­did, fun­ny and a fast-on-his-feet smar­tie. In ear­ly Decem­ber Col­bert vis­it­ed Google’s New York offices and taped an inter­view for At Google Talks. Col­bert fans will want to check out the unedit­ed ver­sion recent­ly post­ed by Google. As a guest, Col­bert is fun­nier than Jon Stew­art and we get an hon­est look at the bright guy behind the buf­foon. The uncut inter­view has its high­lights, includ­ing the point when Colbert’s reac­tion to Eric Schmidt’s sug­ges­tion that The Col­bert Report launch its own YouTube show. His answers to ques­tions from the audi­ence are engag­ing, fun­ny and reveal­ing. It’s won­der­ful to hear the per­son­al sto­ry about the moment he real­ized he want­ed to make peo­ple laugh.

Col­bert was also con­duct­ing busi­ness. The inter­view was part of his book tour to pro­mote Amer­i­ca Again: Re-Becom­ing the Great­ness We Nev­er Weren’t. Below, you can see Col­bert give his comedic pitch for the book. And, if you want to down­load a free audio copy, you can always do so by start­ing a Free 30-Day Tri­al with Audible.com. We have details here.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and at thenifty.blogspot.com. 

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