Student Window

[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

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Driving the Solar System with Google

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

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Introducing Google Building Maker

It’s always tough to bid farewell to summer and hit the books again, but for a few million students this back-to-school season, things are looking up. As of t his fall, over five million students at thousands of schools in more than 145 countries have ” gone Google ” and are actively using Google Apps Education Edition on campus. Since this time last year the number of students using Google Apps on campus has increased by 400% . Because more schools sign up for Apps everyday, we wanted to celebrate the start of the 2009 school year by launching a new site that shows off some of these schools, provides product tips and tricks, introduces a community discussion forum and more. A snapshot of some of the thousands of schools going Google this Fall. Every location in green indicates Apps users. When you visit the site , you’ll also find an interactive map packed with interesting trivia. For example, in addition to the 70,000 students using Apps at Temple University, their 5,000 staff and faculty were given a choice between Gmail and alternative vendor, and over 90% chose to go Google. Or when Kent State first deployed, they saw more than 700 students migrating each hour. And a single admin at Montana State successfully deployed over 30,000 accounts in less than 90 days. Or as we learned in the recent webinar from another school on the map — Notre Dame — they saved $1.5 million by switching to Apps. You can hear their full story in this video: We hope more schools will continue to go Google and bring Apps to their campuses in an effort to improve communication and collaboration while cutting costs and resources. In the meantime, check out our site and find out what Apps has done for other schools and what Apps can do for your school — and if you’re already a part of the movement, add yourself to the map ! Posted by Jason Cook and Miriam Schneider, Apps Education Edition team

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Five million students going back to school are "Going Google"

In the spirit of graduation season, we’ve been doing a series of posts every Friday throughout the summer that provide tips for graduating seniors. Check them out here . With summer soon coming to a close, we want to leave those of you who’ve recently started a new job with one last tip: Go Google . If you love using Google products in your personal (or school) life, why not help your company (or future company) go Google? Check out this video for inspiration, then find out more and spread the word . For more Apps news To get updates and news on all the Apps products, check out the Google Apps Blog. Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Grad tip: Go Google at work

In the spirit of graduation season, we’re doing a series of posts every Friday throughout the summer that provide tips for graduating seniors, so stay tuned for more! Tasks just graduated from Gmail Labs this week, and it’s a useful feature that can help you keep track of the many things you probably need to get done as you’re getting your post-college life set up — from meeting project due dates at your new job to remembering you and your roommates’ list of groceries for the week. You can create separate lists for groceries, errands, work, etc., and you can assign dates and add notes to each task. You can even turn a Gmail message into a task. To get started with your first list, just click “Tasks” under the “Contacts” link above your Gmail chat list. And since Gmail isn’t the only place where you need access to your check lists, Tasks is also available on mobile phones (so you can get stuff done on the go), in Google Calendar , and you can even add Tasks to iGoogle . Watch this video to see Tasks in action: For more Apps news Did you know that Gmail and Google Calendar are just two of several products in Google Apps? To get updates and news on all the Apps products, check out the Google Apps Blog ! Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps team

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Grad tip: Check off your to-do’s with Tasks

Happy Friday! To help celebrate the weekend, here’s the next video from our weekly “App to School” series. This week we’re hearing from a computer information systems major who uses Docs to manage schedule changes at work and Calendar to stay organized across various platforms and devices: If you have a story to share about interesting and productive ways you’re using Google Apps on campus, please upload your video as a response to any of ours – which you can see by visiting our playlist . And if you’re not using Apps on campus yet, check out some of the things you can do by visiting www.google.com/apps/students . Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Team

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On campus with Docs and Calendar

Want a challenge? Want to go to Cannes? Under 29? Enjoy going a full weekend without sleep? We have something for you. Every year young creative minds from all over the world compete in 48 hour film contests where – if they make the best advert in the given time – they win a trip to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival to represent their countries at the Young Lions competition. This year we’re sending two of you. You will need to make an ad in 48 hours – we’ll release the brief for the ad at the beginning of this period – and once submitted, you’ll get two weeks to get the ad as many views, ratings and votes on the channel as possible. Then, sit tight. The two best entrants as picked by our expert panel will win an all-expense-paid trip to the Festival to make up Team YouTube at the Cannes Lions. For now, go to the channel , subscribe to receive updates, and await further instruction. Brief released Friday May 15th, at midnight GMT. You’ll have until midnight Sunday May 17th to get the ad uploaded and submitted to the contest. The Young Lions competition is a prestigious but frantic week of creativity where the teams of two from all over the world compete in timed challenges to create ads for different briefs, in between training sessions from industry luminaries. An inherent part of the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, one of the world’s premiere advertising festivals, it’s an ideal place for any young creative person to get exposure and open doors for their career. Good luck. Posted by Stephanie Hollywood, University Programmes

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Make an ad in 48 hours to make your name at Cannes Lions Advertising Festival

(For the full story, please visit the Official Google Blog & Google Research Blog ) We started the Google Fellowship Program this year to support graduate students in their quest to discover and achieve great things. Our goal was to find the best and brightest PhD students and award them a unique fellowship that highlights their contributions to research and supports them through their graduate studies. After careful review, we are proud to announce the 2009 Google Fellowship recipients: Roxana Geambasu, Google Fellowship in Cloud Computing ( University of Washington ) Michael Piatek, Google Fellowship in Computer Networking ( University of Washington ) David Sontag, Google Fellowship in Machine Learning ( Massachusetts Institute of Technology ) Ali Farhadi, Google Fellowship in Computer Vision Image Interpretation ( University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ) Nicholas Chen, Google Fellowship in Human-Computer Interaction ( University of Maryland ) Siddhartha Sen, Google Fellowship in Fault Tolerant Computing ( Princeton University ) Ryan Peterson, Google Fellowship in Distributed Systems ( Cornell University ) Eric Gilbert, Google Fellowship in Social Computing ( University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ) Micha Elsner, Google Fellowship in Natural Language Processing ( Brown University ) Subhransu Maji, Google Fellowship in Computer Vision Object Recognition ( University of California, Berkeley ) Nicolas Lambert, Google Fellowship in Market Algorithms ( Stanford University ) Han Liu, Google Fellowship in Statistics ( Carnegie Mellon University ) Lixia Liu, Google Fellowship in Compiler Technology ( Purdue University ) The Google Fellowship will provide these students with funding to cover their tuition and expenses, plus an Android-powered phone and a Google mentor. Our sincere congratulations to all of them! We’re already looking forward to our sophomore year in 2010. You should expect to see a broader program covering more areas of research, more schools, and more geographies. We can’t wait. Posted by Leslie Yeh Johnson, Google University Relations

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Congratulations to the 2009 Google Fellowship recipients