Updates to Street View in Australia

Today we're excited to announce that updated Street View imagery of Australian towns and cities is live in Google Maps.



Places around Australia are now available in higher quality to help you plan your visits and show off your favourite places to friends.

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House

Salamanca Place, Hobart

We plan to recommence our driving operations in Australia later this year, collecting new imagery from across Australia. You’ll be able to follow where our cars are operating, can read about our commitment to privacy in our blog post about the Privacy Impact Assessment for Street View activities in Australia and learn more about privacy on the Street View website.



We’re excited to publish this newer, higher quality imagery and hope you enjoy using it to explore and share Australia with your friends.



Posted by Andrew Foster, Product Manager.

How on (Google) Earth did they do that?

Recently we’ve been seeing some really diverse uses of Google Earth by Aussies. Originally started back in 2005, Earth continues to fascinate and inspire people’s creativity more than ever and we thought we’d share a few examples that have caught our eye.

Heron Island lagoon. Image downloaded from Google Earth 13 Oct. 2010. Image date 2 Aug. 2006. Image copyright 2011 DigitalGlobe and via here.



Marine conservation and preservation

Recently, researchers in Sydney have demonstrated that Google Earth can be used as a scientific tool for discovery. Dr Elizabeth Madin and her colleagues at the University of Technology are using Google Earth satellite images to understand study vegetation patterns to learn more about how small fish and urchins hide from reef predators on Heron Island. As Madin says, "To our knowledge, this is the first time anyone has used freely-available Google Earth images to identify these features, and then actually tested them on the ground to confirm that we're seeing exactly what we think we're seeing from the satellite images”. Studying reefs from Google Earth offers great perspective: scientists have even discovered new reefs in the process!



Google Earth screenshots of some of Professor Kennedy’s finds, via here.



Archaeological Innovation: Discovering treasures from the comfort of your desktop

One of the difficulties of research and discovery in the field of archaeology is the problem of access: it’s not only expensive to travel, but often politically difficult or dangerous to do so.

Professor David Kennedy from the University of Western Australia, is using Google Earth imagery to identify stone-built archaeological sites across Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Kennedy says that aerial reconnaissance is the single most powerful tool for locating and mapping archaeological sites as it can reveal sites that aren’t visible from the ground, just by observing different soil colourations or how vegetation changes. Whether it’s finding an Afghan fortress or a meteorite crater, Google Earth enables a lot of freedom to explore and discover, right from your desktop.







Understanding our own country better

Google Earth allows you to overlay photos and information to satellite pictures, too, as a way of searching and discovering new information visually. For example, Tourism Tasmania have enabled a map of Tasmania on their site using Google Earth, which allows tourists and travellers to get information on everything from visitor information centres, to car hire facilities, tours, accommodation and attractions.



Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, and 3D buildings -- and from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can create and save your own “flyovers” and map out your data. (Try it yourself here).



Google Earth isn’t just helping with new discoveries; it’s helping many scientists and non-profit organisations create powerful visualisations of the data that’s important to their cause. The visualisations they create help them collaborate better within their teams and get the word out to the public about what they’re working on.



We’d love to hear any stories you might have about using Google Earth - leave a comment below or contact us on our Twitter account at @googledownunder.



Posted by Kate Mason, Google Communications.

Doodle 4 Google 2011 is open! Your Future Australia doodle

Today I’m so excited to announce that we’re running our third Doodle 4 Google in Australia. We’re inviting school students in years 1-10 to sharpen their pencils, use their imagination and artistic talent to create a Google doodle depicting their vision for “My Future Australia”. The winning doodle will be shown on the Google homepage for a day for millions of Australians to enjoy.

Since 1998, when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate they were going to the Burning Man Festival in Nevada, USA, Google’s team of doodlers has been creating doodles to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous writers and scientists.

This year, we’re really thrilled to have judges who are incredibly passionate about children’s art and education. Judging the initiative will be National Portrait Gallery Curator Joanna Gilmour, renowned artist Del Kathryn Barton, and from Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, CEO, Jack Manning Bancroft. These judges will select finalists across four age groups: Grades 1-3; Grade 4-6; Grades 7-8, and Grades 9-10, whose doodles will be shown online and hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. We’ll ask the public to vote on their favourite doodles from each age group and the winners will receive fantastic technology prizes for themselves and their schools, including laptops, interactive whiteboards and $10,000 worth of technology for the National winner’s school. Google’s original doodler, webmaster Dennis Hwang, will select the overall national winner to be shown on the homepage.

During July, we’re sending out information packs to every Australian school. To take part, please register your school by 26 August, and all doodles must be submitted by 23 September. Please visit the Doodle 4 Google website for a full listing of all the contest rules and information.

Posted by Lucinda Barlow, Head of Marketing, Google Australia and New Zealand

Googlers Don their Hoodies in Support of AIME

Today Googlers are wearing their AIME hoodies to support National Hoodie Day - an initiative of the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience. This day is supporting AIME to help more Indigenous kids to finish school at the same rate as every Australian child.

Over a special lunch which was hosted by guest chef Matt Kemp, Googlers gathered together to learn more about indigenous history and culture and to send messages of support to our AIME friends and students. Googlers were excited to hear that of the 1, 250 indigenous high school students who went through the AIME programme last year 100% completed Year 12 with a further 38% heading to university! Conversations were started which focussed on the way forward and how we can help fuel the belief that a successful Australia will have as a part of it a strong indigenous voice and participation.



You can see more about National Hoodie Day here:





Posted by Leticia Lentini, Non-Profits Lead.

Want to win an Anita Borg Scholarship?

Dr. Anita Borg devoted her life to revolutionising the way we think about technology and dismantling the barriers that keep women and minorities from entering the computing and technology fields. In honour of Anita's vision, we established the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in 2004, awarding scholarships to women who share her passion for technology. Once again, Google is proud to announce the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship in Australia and New Zealand.



Scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of candidates’ academic background and demonstrated leadership. A group of female undergraduate and graduate student finalists will be chosen from the applicant pool. Each scholar recipient will receive a $5,000 AUD scholarship towards the following academic year. In addition all finalists and scholarship recipients will be invited to an expenses-paid networking retreat to be held at Google’s Sydney Engineering centre.

Who can apply?

Applicants must satisfy all of the following criteria to be eligible:

• Be a female student at an Australian or New Zealand university who has completed one or more years of a Bachelors degree with at least one year of study remaining, whether as part of a Bachelors or postgraduate degree.
• Be enrolled in full-time undergraduate or postgraduate study at an university or equivalent tertiary institution (please see FAQ for details) in Australia or New Zealand for the following year.
• Be studying Computer Science, Software Engineering, Informatics, or a closely related technical field.

Citizens, permanent residents, and international students are eligible to apply. Past applicants and finalists are also encouraged to re-apply. If you have any questions, please email anitaborgscholarsanz@google.com.



For further information on this scholarship and how to apply, check out www.google.com.au/anitaborg .

Deadline to apply: July 31st, 2011.



Thank you for your support and good luck to applicants!

Girl Geek Dinner at Google: Pink Optional

This is a guest post by Kellie Scott, Geek Girl Dinner Organiser, Sydney.



Last week, we held our quarterly Girl Geek Dinner at Google. These dinners were first started in London in 2005 by the original Girl Geek, Sarah Blow. As a software engineer, Sarah was sick of everyone at tech events assuming that she wasn’t an engineer; after brainstorming on the train home one night, Girl Geek Dinners was born. These dinners are an opportunity for women who are passionate about tech to meet each other, hear about new ideas and generally to geek out together.

Aside from everyone receiving a “I'm a woman in tech. That doesn't mean everything has to be pink” sticker, which was a big hit, we enjoyed a tasty sit-down dinner with drinks, fun icebreaker games and as always, interesting talks. The event held together by the brilliant MC skills of Amaya “that goth chick that works at Google” Booker.

The keynote speaker was Mary Gardiner talking about her work for newly-founded non-profit organisation The Ada Initiative which supports women in open technology and culture. Mary’s talk engaged the audience with some surprising statistics about the participation of women in open source communities and she discussed why it is important to increase the proportion of women in open technology and culture, before focusing on the Ada Initiative’s plans for addressing the problem. For more information, and to find out how getting women involved can change the culture of the open source community, check out her talk on the Ada Initiative website.



After dinner, we moved into our lightning talks section - talks of (roughly) five minutes each, on a variety of topics. The first talk by Kirsti Rawstron discussed gender streaming and the way it is affected by course costs. Googler Alice Boxhall followed, with a general introduction to website accessibility. Alice demonstrated a couple of websites through ChromeVox to show how hard it can be for a blind person to navigate the web. To wrap up, Googler Katie Bell spoke about the National Computer Science Summer School, and Girls Programming Network, demonstrating that it does pay to get girls into programming from a younger age. All of the talks are available here.

Girl Geek Dinner continues to grow here in Australia with other groups in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, and Perth. Our next Girl Geek Dinner will be held on Thursday 8th September. For more information please sign up here and follow us on Twitter here: @GGDSydney.