How to move Ramses II

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Sherif Iskander, Business Manager, Egypt</span><br /><br />As a teen in Cairo, I grew up knowing the area called Ramses Square. At that time the statue of Ramses II could be seen from miles away and was one of the city center's attractions. Over the years the king became surrounded by fly-overs, steel walkways and an underground station. <br /><br />It got to the point where you really had to know where the statue was to see it. A year ago scaffolding appeared around the statue and rumors abounded that the statue was suffering from the pollution and was being restored. The rumors turned out false -- the granite statue was going to be RELOCATED. What?! How?! Just getting the statue out of the labyrinth of bridges and walkways would be a feat of engineering.<br /><br />Turns out some smart engineers work for the transportation contractor: they used <a href="http://earth.google.com">Google Earth</a> to plan the route, made the decision to move the 3200+ year-old statue -- and will do so this Friday, August 25, 2006. Walkways, cables, fences and road dividers are being brought down to make way! Trials and tests have been done to ensure the roads can handle the load, and now Ramses II will embark on what is most probably his last journey. Seeing is believing, so I got together with the Earth team and came up with this <a href="http://services.google.com/earth/kmz/ramses_move.kmz">KML overlay showing the complete route of the journey</a> from downtown Cairo to the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) out by the Pyramids.

How to move Ramses II

Posted by Sherif Iskander, Business Manager, Egypt As a teen in Cairo, I grew up knowing the area called Ramses Square. At that time the sta...

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Coalition against child pornography

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel</span><br /><br />Previously, I've <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/protecting-children-online.html">shared</a> with you Google's commitment to protecting children online. As part of these efforts, we've joined two recently-formed industry initiatives to combat child pornography and child exploitation on the Internet. No group can keep the Internet safe by itself. We're excited about the promise of collaborating with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and other companies to advance this important mission. <br /><br />Here's the <a href="http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/NewsEventServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2629">NCMEC release</a> announcing our participation in the Technology Coalition and the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography.

Coalition against child pornography

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel Previously, I've shared with you Google's commitment to protecting children online...

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Worldcon beckons

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Tom Galloway, Technical Writer</span><br /><br />In response to our attending the <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/stardate-081706.html">Star Trek convention in Las Vegas</a> last week, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch <a href="http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060815-211746">commented</a>, "Of course, going to WorldCon in LA (ahem, actually Anaheim in beautiful Orange County) later this month would be nice." <br /><br />Wouldn't it, though? After all, in addition to Scotty and Spock, many Googlers have been influenced by Isaac Asimov's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Calvin">Dr. Susan Calvin</a>, Robert Heinlein's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycroft_Holmes_%28computer%29">HOLMES-IV</a> (a.k.a. Mike/Mycroft/Michelle), Arthur C. Clarke's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL9000">HAL 9000</a>, and Douglas Adams' <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_the_paranoid_android">Marvin the Paranoid Android</a>, and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy">Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy</a> itself, as well as many other science fiction characters, stories, and novels both classic and recent.<br /><br />So we are in fact throwing a party at this week's World Science Fiction Convention, <a href="http://www.laconiv.org">LACon IV</a> -- on Wednesday evening, in the main party area on the fifth floor of the Anaheim Hilton. Convention attendees are welcome to drop by to talk with Googlers from the Mountain View and Santa Monica offices and see some things that I'm sure <span style="font-style:italic;">Serenity</span>'s engineer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaylee_Frye"> Kaylee Frye</a> would consider worthy of a "Shiny!"<br /><br />If you think Google might be a good fit for you, stop by the party or head over to <a href="http://www.google.com/jobs">our jobs site.</a>

Worldcon beckons

Posted by Tom Galloway, Technical Writer In response to our attending the Star Trek convention in Las Vegas last week, Danny Sullivan of Se...

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Exploring the scholarly neighborhood

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Luiz Barroso, Distinguished Engineer</span><br /><br />Searching for scientific articles on <a title="http://scholar.google.com/" href="http://scholar.google.com/">Google Scholar</a> works especially well when I can find the search terms that are specific enough to narrow down to the subject I'm interested in and yet general enough to not miss relevant articles. When authors use different terminology to refer to the same thing --- which often happens when a field is very young -- this can be less effective. In fact, I've found cases where the seminal paper for a topic does not even use the key terms that are later used to describe it. For example, <a title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash">John Nash's </a>papers that helped define the area of game theory don't refer to the area as <span style="font-style: italic;">game theory</span>.<br /><br />Now there's an additional way to find related work in Google Scholar, which should be helpful in such situations. For every Google Scholar search result, we try to automatically determine which articles in our repository are most closely related to it. You can see a list of these articles by clicking the "Related Articles" link that appears next to each result. The list of related articles is ranked primarily by how similar these articles are to the original result, but also takes into account the relevance of each paper. To go back to the game theory example, clicking on the <a title="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=related:PPbrwfKFzsMJ:scholar.google.com/" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=related:PPbrwfKFzsMJ:scholar.google.com/">Related Articles</a> link for the first result for <a title="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=game+theory" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=game+theory">game theory</a> enables users to discover several of Nash's seminal articles.<br /><br />Finding sets of related papers and books is often a great way for novices to get acquainted with a topic. However, we've found that even experts can sometimes be surprised to discover related work in their area of expertise. <br /><br />Think of it as a way to hop from one giant's shoulder to the next!

Exploring the scholarly neighborhood

Posted by Luiz Barroso, Distinguished Engineer Searching for scientific articles on Google Scholar works especially well when I can find ...

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School's in

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Dror Shimshowitz, Product Marketing Manager</span><br /><br />Getting ready for the new school year? There's a back-to-school shopping offer at <a href="http://www.google.com/checkout/backtoschool.html">Google Checkout</a>.

School's in

Posted by Dror Shimshowitz, Product Marketing Manager Getting ready for the new school year? There's a back-to-school shopping offer at ...

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The multilingual Desktop

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Mendel Chuang, Product Marketing Manager</span><br /><br />No matter what language you speak, you shouldn't have to hunt around for stuff on your computer. That's why there's <a href="http://desktop.google.com">Google Desktop 4</a>, now out of beta in -- count 'em -- 26 languages (hello, Romanian), plus a Japanese beta version.<br /><br />Thanks also to everyone who submitted a gadget for the contest. We'll announce the winners on September 5th. Read more about this on the <a href="http://googledesktop.blogspot.com/2006/08/personalizing-desktops-everywhere.html"> Google Desktop Blog</a>.

The multilingual Desktop

Posted by Mendel Chuang, Product Marketing Manager No matter what language you speak, you shouldn't have to hunt around for stuff on you...

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Stardate 0817.06

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Tom Galloway, Technical Writer</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Starbase 24 Commander's personal log.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I find myself looking forward to my upcoming trip to Earth, specifically Las Vegas...</span><br /><br />Did you ever realize that among many other things, Star Trek predicted blogs? Think about it -- all those "Captain's log" and "personal log" entries that Kirk would make. He was definitely a blogger. And of course the communicator-inspired cell phone design. And the crew was constantly asking the ship's computer for information...sort of like Google.<br /><br />Of course, Scotty and Spock, the engineer and the scientist, certainly were childhood inspirations to many Googlers. Now we've (somewhat) grown up, and often work on things that seem right out of the show: Being able to ask a computer to research a topic and present <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=star+trek&btnG=Google+Search">relevant results</a>. Putting maps, both human-drawn and photos taken from space, on a <a href="http://www.google.com/gmm/tour.html">personal communicator</a> (OK, cell phone). <a href="http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=scifi&tags=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;uq=&ctyp=&scoring=d">Creating 3-D structures and objects</a> and putting them in a shared warehouse for everyone to use (we're still working on making them into solid holograms for a Holodeck). And I'm convinced we've got replicators that restock the snacks in our micro-kitchens.<br /><br />So it all stands to reason that we're hosting a booth at the <a href="http://www.creationent.com/cal/stlv.htm">5th annual Official Star Trek Convention</a> (which celebrates 40 years of the whole enterprise) in Las Vegas. It starts today and runs through Sunday. If you're at the con, please stop by for demos of some of our latest product releases, including a few new ones, often with a particular sci-fi spin. We're also looking for <a href="http://www.google.com/jobs/">applicants</a> to "Google Academy," so please speak up if you'd like to work here. After all -- <a href="http://www.google.com/trekfan">today is a good day to code.</a>

Stardate 0817.06

Posted by Tom Galloway, Technical Writer Starbase 24 Commander's personal log. I find myself looking forward to my upcoming trip to Eart...

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