Find and compare local businesses

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Ronojoy Chakrabarti, Product Manager</span><br /><br />Many people come to Google.com to navigate the web, but are you aware that you can use it to navigate the real world as well? Over the past few months, we've been hard at work making it easier to find and compare local businesses and services right from the standard web results page. Here's what we've come up with:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4U7SLJXfO3O-sirDONS2EyD6dczJBxe21dlH-dULMiElcNGAxOoi98VAqPCqTwgLDL078JXgqC0VT4aRtBDofTWz6uQqLa0fPTkUcYBygbEaI59RLLCoU22g2bGQHd-Y-jEEdkX0GRf6a/s1600-h/LOCALONEBOX_new.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5025595742053174722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4U7SLJXfO3O-sirDONS2EyD6dczJBxe21dlH-dULMiElcNGAxOoi98VAqPCqTwgLDL078JXgqC0VT4aRtBDofTWz6uQqLa0fPTkUcYBygbEaI59RLLCoU22g2bGQHd-Y-jEEdkX0GRf6a/s320/LOCALONEBOX_new.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" /></a> From now on, you'll see this every time you search for a place, business, or other local information. In addition to providing the basic contact information and map locations for several choices at the top of the page, we also show ratings and provide one-click access to reviews on the search results page so that you can make more informed decisions about where you want to go.<br /><br />Here are a few specific examples of how you can use Google to search and compare local businesses and services.<p></p> <ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="">Find the location of and driving directions to the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B2GGGL_enUS176&q=1600+Amphitheatre+Parkway+Mountain+View+CA&btnG=Search" target="_blank">Googleplex</a> (or any specific address).</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">Find and compare <a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2GGGL_enUS176&q=Mexican+restaurants+in+Pasadena%2C+CA">Mexican restaurants</a> in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Pasadena</st1:city>, <st1:state st="on">CA</st1:state></st1:place> </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">Get directions to and read reviews about a <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B2GGGL_enUS176&q=Fat+heads+Pittsburgh%2C+PA&btnG=Search" target="_blank">local eatery</a> in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Pittsburgh</st1:city></st1:place>.</li><li class="MsoNormal" style="">Find <a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B2GGGL_enUS176&q=movies+Toronto" target="_blank">movie showtimes </a>for films that are playing in your neighborhood.</li></ul> We're really excited to offer this easier access to qualitative information about local spots. We find the reviews and ratings generated by others in the know to be quite useful when we want to head to a restaurant, catch a movie, or stay at a hotel -- and we hope you will too.

Find and compare local businesses

Posted by Ronojoy Chakrabarti, Product Manager Many people come to Google.com to navigate the web, but are you aware that you can use it to ...

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SMS on orkut

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Pedram Keyani, Software Engineer</span><br /><br />While <a href="http://www.orkut.com/About.aspx">orkut</a> users love having an online social network, we understand that a good deal of your social life happens offline. We wanted orkut to enrich the offline social life of its members, so we thought we could either give you computers with really long cords or we could bring orkut to the device you carry around in your pocket: the mobile phone. Thus the idea for an orkut SMS service was born.<br /><br />With orkut's new SMS feature, you can <a href="http://help.orkut.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=10322">scrap</a> your friends, look up their contact information and receive scrap notifications. Now you can send scraps from the bus, bar or bathroom, and your friends can get notified of those scraps when on bicycle, beach or bed. Along with the standard orkut features, we've included a few hidden goodies for the adventurous to find.<br /><br />This week, orkut SMS will become available to orkut members in Brazil who use Claro as their mobile service provider. When the feature becomes available to you, a message will be displayed when you sign in to your account. We hope to expand soon to other mobile service providers in Brazil and around the globe.<br /><br />So next time you want to scrap your friend Sergio about a party, just text message orkut with "scrap Sergio it's party time man!"

SMS on orkut

Posted by Pedram Keyani, Software Engineer While orkut users love having an online social network, we understand that a good deal of your s...

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New sunrise layer on Google Earth

<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF8c2jb_vvKcxVBQVrrOPPd9jYeBnmzB4vCZJwdUPuvobNZOIVqENaVkck3BRsKcJx5AzEP_EOLcZHjsPm-89qmvzv9JdqFbir6Me2-q6FBSJlw8zzz_02FDQaeQDY8-x5BRgUPe5jCIQ/s1600-h/SUNRISEEARTH017+high-res.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5025535545812280322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF8c2jb_vvKcxVBQVrrOPPd9jYeBnmzB4vCZJwdUPuvobNZOIVqENaVkck3BRsKcJx5AzEP_EOLcZHjsPm-89qmvzv9JdqFbir6Me2-q6FBSJlw8zzz_02FDQaeQDY8-x5BRgUPe5jCIQ/s200/SUNRISEEARTH017+high-res.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><span class="byline-author">Posted by Clint Stinchcomb, EVP & GM, HDTV & New Media, Discovery Networks U.S.</span><br /><br />Many of us aren't lucky enough to experience one of nature's most glorious sights—the beauty of the sunrise—every day, let alone on demand. That is, until today. Now there's a <a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a> layer that brings the sun's ascent right to your computer screen, and Google Earth aficionados can also see video vignettes drawn from Discovery HD Theater's "<a href="http://dhd.discovery.com/convergence/sunriseearth/sunriseearth.html">Sunrise Earth</a>" program.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU5Gfd0JQo_hGB39kOuNJtzBWtkyXIGclJwqNM2tEMhuUfiBRW2E0wwV7ggWD_uoPW_N5Zlxn76Oim6HpXia_a5rCdlkS_xbTWnvz8ThXX4wX0_srgD-DJFZrvaqkUBoFRlhF1hQxEanc/s1600-h/Sunrise+Earth+-+Google+Earth.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5025534918747055090" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU5Gfd0JQo_hGB39kOuNJtzBWtkyXIGclJwqNM2tEMhuUfiBRW2E0wwV7ggWD_uoPW_N5Zlxn76Oim6HpXia_a5rCdlkS_xbTWnvz8ThXX4wX0_srgD-DJFZrvaqkUBoFRlhF1hQxEanc/s320/Sunrise+Earth+-+Google+Earth.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 220px; height: 237px;" /></a><br /><br />To view the videos, open Google Earth and select the Sunrise Earth layer under Discovery Networks. Follow the links in the pop-up window to experience the sights and sounds of one of nature's most beautiful phenomena. Watch dawn rise over Stonehenge, Mayan pyramids, and Buddhist temples as it has for thousands of years. See the Katmai Bears emerge from their seven-month slumber to greet a new day. Witness the sun's light bringing life to natural habitats around the world, from the forests of Costa Rica and the coast of New England, to the foothills of Turkey and the glaciers of Alaska.<br /><br />Whether you catch Sunrise Earth on Discovery HD Theater or via Google Earth, you'll see the world in a whole new light.

New sunrise layer on Google Earth

Posted by Clint Stinchcomb, EVP & GM, HDTV & New Media, Discovery Networks U.S. Many of us aren't lucky enough to experience one...

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Fun with robotics

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Glenn Trewitt and Albert Bodenhamer, Software Engineers</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgojE2WSXr1r5w3z1-YpEza4A_CfvZSDayGlhwGR1qyNbo6KtP6lplfR9_KhG95b2yV8CSAN-NPZciO92uwjSbSILVcr3fZd3ArsbFXg7BWI9NLl2pulM644e2sRdmqHtoAmfbGfsHM3C9K/s1600-h/Lego+trophy.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5024386253492817314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgojE2WSXr1r5w3z1-YpEza4A_CfvZSDayGlhwGR1qyNbo6KtP6lplfR9_KhG95b2yV8CSAN-NPZciO92uwjSbSILVcr3fZd3ArsbFXg7BWI9NLl2pulM644e2sRdmqHtoAmfbGfsHM3C9K/s320/Lego+trophy.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a><br /><br />We believe that getting kids interested in science, computers, and technology early on is very important, so we were honored last weekend to receive the "FIRST LEGO<span style="font-size:85%;">^®</span> League Outreach" award at the Northern California FLL championship tournament. <a href="http://www.usfirst.org/what/fll/">FLL</a> is a program encouraging fourth- to eighth-grade kids to study science and technology. Each fall, student teams (who compete at the local, national and international level) build autonomous LEGO<span style="font-size:85%;">^®</span> robots to tackle a set of challenge missions -- and finish as many as they can in 2-½ minutes! This year's challenge: called<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span><a href="http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=21380">Nano Quest</a>.<br /><br />We hosted a couple of FLL meetings and put on our own Google Qualifying Tournament (beta) in December. We loved hosting these events -- they are a great way to reach out to the community, and putting on the tournament was <span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;">fun</span>! We had a couple of dozen Google volunteers, several FLL volunteers, and 16 student teams -- about 150 people in all. (The winning team from our Northern California region will go on to the <a href="http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=13390">World FLL Festival</a> -- 104 teams from 38 countries -- to be held in April in Atlanta.)<br /><br />So we thought that was that, until next season. Neither we or our partners at <a href="http://www.playingatlearning.org/">Playing@Learning</a> (who coordinate regional FLL events in Northern California, along with the <a href="http://www.norcalvex.org/">FIRST Vex Challenge</a>, a more ambitious program for high school students) expected what happened next: other Silicon Valley companies took notice, and are now planning to get involved. That's a great kind of viral marketing -- the more outreach, the better.<br /><br />FLL teams form between May and September, with qualifying tournaments in late November or early December. So if you're between 9 and 14, and robotics and a LEGO<span style="font-size:85%;">^®</span>challenge sound like a lot of fun -- there's bound to be <a href="http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=40">a competition for you. </a>

Fun with robotics

Posted by Glenn Trewitt and Albert Bodenhamer, Software Engineers We believe that getting kids interested in science, computers, and technol...

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Controlling how search engines access and index your website

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Dan Crow, Product Manager</span><br /><br />I'm often asked about how Google and search engines work. One key question is: how does Google know what parts of a website the site owner wants to have show up in search results? Can publishers specify that some parts of the site should be private and non-searchable? The good news is that those who publish on the web have a lot of control over which pages should appear in search results.<br /><br />The key is a simple file called <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> that has been an industry standard for many years. It lets a site owner control how search engines access their web site. With <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> you can control access at multiple levels -- the entire site, through individual directories, pages of a specific type, down to individual pages. Effective use of <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> gives you a lot of control over how your site is searched, but its not always obvious how to achieve exactly what you want. This is the first of a series of posts on how to use <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> to control access to your content.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What does robots.txt do?</span><br /><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">The web is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you might think it's a lot of work maintaining your website, but that's just peanuts to the whole web.</span> (with profound apologies to Douglas Adams)</blockquote>Search engines like Google read through all this information and create an index of it. The index allows a search engine to take a query from users and show all the pages on the web that match it.<br /><br />In order to do this Google has a set of computers that continually crawl the web. They have a list of all the websites that Google knows about and read all the pages on each of those sites. Together these machines are known as the Googlebot. In general you want Googlebot to access your site so your web pages can be found by people searching on Google.<br /><br />However, you may have a few pages on your site you don't want in Google's index. For example, you might have a directory that contains internal logs, or you may have news articles that require payment to access. You can exclude pages from Google's crawler by creating a text file called <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> and placing it in the root directory. The <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> file contains a list of the pages that search engines shouldn't access. Creating a <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> is straightforward and it allows you a sophisticated level of control over how search engines can access your web site.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fine-grained control</span><br />In addition to the <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> file -- which allows you to concisely specify instructions for a large number of files on your web site -- you can use the robots <span style="font-family:Courier New;">META</span> tag for fine-grain control over individual pages on your site. To implement this, simply add specific <span style="font-family:Courier New;">META</span> tags to HTML pages to control how each individual page is indexed. Together, <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> and <span style="font-family:Courier New;">META</span> tags give you the flexibility to express complex access policies relatively easily.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A simple example</span><br />Here is a simple example of a <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span> file.<br /><blockquote><pre>User-Agent: Googlebot<br />Disallow: /logs/</pre></blockquote>The <span style="font-family:Courier New;">User-Agent</span> line specifies that the next section is a set of instructions just for the Googlebot. All the major search engines read and obey the instructions you put in <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span>, and you can specify different rules for different search engines if you want to. The <span style="font-family:Courier New;">Disallow</span> line tells Googlebot not to access files in the <span style="font-family:Courier New;">logs </span> sub-directory of your site. The contents of the pages you put into the <span style="font-family:Courier New;">logs</span> directory will not show up in Google search results.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Preventing access to a file</span><br />If you have a news article on your site that is only accessible by registered users, you'll want it excluded from Google's results. To do this, simply add a <span style="font-family:Courier New;">META</span> tag into the html file, so it starts something like:<blockquote><pre><html><br /><head><br /><meta name="googlebot" content="noindex"><br />...</pre></blockquote>This stops Google from indexing this file. <span style="font-family:Courier New;">META</span> tags are particularly useful if you have permission to edit the individual files but not the site-wide <span style="font-family:Courier New;">robots.txt</span>. They also allow you to specify complex access-control policies on a page-by-page basis.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Learn more</span><br />You can find out more about robots.txt at <a href="http://www.robotstxt.org/" target="_blank">http://www.robotstxt.org</a> and at <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8843" title="Google's Webmaster help center,">Google's Webmaster help center,</a><span class="q"> which contains lots of helpful information, including:<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span> <p></p> <p> <span class="q"></span> </p> <ul><li> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40362">How to create a robots.txt file</a> </li><li> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40364">Descriptions of each user-agent that Google uses</a> </li><li> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40367">How to use pattern matching</a> </li><li> <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40368">How often we recrawl your robots.txt file</a> </li></ul> We've also done several posts in our <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/" title="webmaster blog">webmaster blog</a> about robots.txt that you may find useful, such as:<br /><ul><li> <a href="http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2006/02/using-robotstxt-file.html" title="Using robots.txt files">Using robots.txt files</a> </li><li> <a href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/08/all-about-googlebot.html" title="All about Googlebot">All about Googlebot</a> </li></ul> <span class="q"></span> <div style="direction: ltr;"> There is also a useful list of the bots used by the major search engines: <a href="http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/active/html/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.robotstxt.org/wc<wbr>/active/html/index.html</a> </div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Next time...</span><br />Coming soon: a post detailing the use of robots and metatags, and another on specific examples for common cases.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Update: </span>Added a sentence to paragraph 9 on access-control policies.

Controlling how search engines access and index your website

Posted by Dan Crow, Product Manager I'm often asked about how Google and search engines work. One key question is: how does Google know ...

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New life for network equipment

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior VP, Operations</span><br /><br />We take the Internet for granted throughout the U.S. and the westernized world; these days we expect to be "always on." But in large parts of the globe, this isn't yet so.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.nsrc.org/" title="Network Startup Resource Center">Network Startup Resource Center</a> (NSRC), a non-profit organization based at the <a href="http://www.uoregon.edu/" title="University of Oregon">University of Oregon</a>, is working to change that, by bringing potential recipients of computing and networking hardware together with potential donors. By coordinating these donations, the NSRC undertakes projects to connect Internet-neglected areas in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, the Caribbean and elsewhere--and they've done so since 1992. (Read about their <a href="http://www.nsrc.org/about.html" title="NSRC About">accomplishments</a>.)<br /><br />Over the years they've found that the most difficult--and most useful--equipment to obtain <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0gLX2ueqEyS11QmrSMfNonkogId-gZnHCTik8JtTWgcEh7iIjR37fvzM8WIVq5qw1hdCmjq7Wiltth_1EV3x7NeANOt2ZbKlQTSVs-kPFBZiFsRxIln1DjU3Gb7U3Dfxcq4QPuAaXmFs/s1600-h/Picture1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5020774059168588722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0gLX2ueqEyS11QmrSMfNonkogId-gZnHCTik8JtTWgcEh7iIjR37fvzM8WIVq5qw1hdCmjq7Wiltth_1EV3x7NeANOt2ZbKlQTSVs-kPFBZiFsRxIln1DjU3Gb7U3Dfxcq4QPuAaXmFs/s200/Picture1.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;">is routers, switches and wireless equipment. In many cases, a single, relatively inexpensive piece of hardware is the critical factor preventing a network from becoming operational, but in developing areas, networking hardware can be difficult or prohibitively expensive to obtain. We're pleased to <a href="http://www.nsrc.org/sponsors/" title="support">support</a> the NSRC by donating our decommissioned networking hardware. Thus far, we've heard that some of our retired switches have been sent to universities across Africa and in Guyana and Thailand. More will be shipping out in the coming months to universities and research institutes in, among others, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Afghanistan and Vietnam.<br /><br />If your company would like to give financial assistance or hardware, or if you want to look into volunteering, please <a href="http://www.nsrc.org/#contact" title="get in touch">get in touch</a>. It will truly help connect the world. </span>

New life for network equipment

Posted by Urs Hoelzle, Senior VP, Operations We take the Internet for granted throughout the U.S. and the westernized world; these days we e...

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Show us your university campus in 3D

<span class="byline-author">Posted by Allyson McDuffie, Google SketchUp Education Program Coordinator</span><br /><br />Today the <a href="http://contest.sketchup.com/entry.php">Build Your Campus in 3D Competition</a> begins. This spring, you and your (presumably equally artistic) friends can honor your campus turf as you hone your 3D design skills just by modeling your school's campus buildings in <a href="http://www.sketchup.com/">Google SketchUp</a>, geo-reference them in <a href="http://earth.google.com/">Google Earth</a>, and submit them through the <a href="http://contest.sketchup.com/entry.php">competition website</a> to earn lasting online glory. And the winners get a visit to Google, all expenses paid.<br /><br />You're eligible if you're a higher education student in the U. S. or Canada. You can team up with other students, or take the project on yourself. (To do the best work possible, we suggest you have a faculty advisor.) The deadline for entries is June 1, and the winning entries will be posted to the <a href="http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/">3D Warehouse</a> by July 10.<br /><br />We’re pretty jazzed that our panel of judges includes Bobby Brooks from <a href="http://corporate.disney.go.com/careers/who_imagineering.html">Walt Disney Imagineering</a>, Ken Harsha from <a href="http://www.ea.com/">Electronic Arts</a>, Janet Martin from <a href="http://www.commartsdesign.com/">Communication Arts Inc.</a> Paul Seletsky from <a href="http://www.som.com/opener.cfm">Skidmore, Owings & Merrill</a>, Gary Smith from <a href="http://www.gis-help.com/">Green Mountain Geographics LTD</a>, and Ken M Tse from <a href="http://www.hksinc.com/">HKS Architects, Inc.</a><br /><br />We hope to see your stomping grounds soon.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmSW74GcpUdOLWQLifVqV5sVFefplMZy9Ht8OyFSFTMTpIiV46QYRQpk8iaC8BUb4Hm0NKVO7UkWHdVbjHpydjpZNIAA1rulpMBA9PnlnT36o5nzyx1W-MBSZAm1apCsix90bUn37naq2O/s1600-h/Sketchup_campus.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5023713150513155474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmSW74GcpUdOLWQLifVqV5sVFefplMZy9Ht8OyFSFTMTpIiV46QYRQpk8iaC8BUb4Hm0NKVO7UkWHdVbjHpydjpZNIAA1rulpMBA9PnlnT36o5nzyx1W-MBSZAm1apCsix90bUn37naq2O/s320/Sketchup_campus.jpg" style="cursor: pointer;" /></a>

Show us your university campus in 3D

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, Google SketchUp Education Program Coordinator Today the Build Your Campus in 3D Competition begins. This spring...

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