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, 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 Google SketchUp, geo-reference them in Google Earth, and submit them through the competition website to earn lasting online glory. And the winners get a visit to Google, all expenses paid.

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 3D Warehouse by July 10.

We’re pretty jazzed that our panel of judges includes Bobby Brooks from Walt Disney Imagineering, Ken Harsha from Electronic Arts, Janet Martin from Communication Arts Inc. Paul Seletsky from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Gary Smith from Green Mountain Geographics LTD, and Ken M Tse from HKS Architects, Inc.

We hope to see your stomping grounds soon.

A look ahead at Google Video and YouTube

Posted by Salar Kamangar, Vice President, Product Management

In November, we officially closed our acquisition of YouTube, and since then we've received a number of questions about what will happen next. The summary is that Google Video and YouTube will continue to play to their respective strengths. But here's a bit more detail:

Google's strength -- and its history -- is grounded in search and in innovating technologies to make more information more available and accessible. YouTube, meanwhile, excels at being a leading content destination with a dynamic community of users who create, watch and share videos worldwide.

Google search results already include links to content that's hosted on YouTube. Starting today, YouTube video results will appear in the Google Video search index: when you click on YouTube thumbnails, you will be taken to YouTube.com to experience the videos. Over time, Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where you can search for the world's online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted.

This is part of Google's overall goal to give you the highest quality search results possible. For example, some users who do a Google search for Martin Luther King, Jr. may want to find websites about him. Others may want to see images of him. And others may want to watch video footage...

YouTube, as we've stated previously, will remain an independent subsidiary of Google, and will continue to operate separately. Google will support YouTube by providing access to search and monetization platforms and, when/where YouTube launches internationally, to international resources. YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and the rest of the YouTube team will continue to innovate exciting new ways for people to "broadcast themselves."

Earlier this week, we announced one example of innovation in monetization and distribution with a new AdSense video test. We'll be working with a wide set of content providers, grouping together high quality video content from providers with high quality ads and offering them as playlists which publishers can select from and display on their AdSense sites. (There's more about the test on the AdSense blog.)

Today represents just the first step in our plan to bring you a comprehensive video search and content platform. We'll provide ongoing updates as they unfold.

Korean Singer / Actress U;Nee (1981 - 2007)

South Korean pop singer and actress Heo Yun was found dead in her apartment Sunday morning (Jan 21), an apparent suicide, local police announced. Police said the 25-year-old singer was found by her grandmother hanged in her Incheon apartment.

Heo, who went by the stage names U;Nee and Lee Hye-ryeon, was about to release her third album, 'Honey,' on the Synnara Music label later this month. She made her debut as an actress in 1996 in a television drama, and her first album was released in 2003.

Looking back on her career, Heo was known for her sexually provocative image throughout her short music career. Due to declining music industry in Korea, her record label decided that album sales alone was not enough to produce profit, and chose to market her as a sexy singer.

Heo, who was soft-spoken and reserved in real life, found this difficult to bear.

Let's get together

Posted by Griff Hazen, Software Engineer

Online groups have become a great tool for managing and sharing activities and ideas for a defined group of people. Back in October we introduced a new version of Google Groups (in beta) in the hopes that it would help people work together better. We received tons of feedback, and today we're dropping the "beta" and unveiling a number of new features in more than a dozen languages. If you're already in a Google Group, you'll be transitioned automatically, and if you're new to a group, welcome!

Now you can customize the look of your group, create and edit web pages, upload and share files (including photos), and view member profiles. And for your discussions, there's no need to struggle to follow interrupted conversations, as Google Groups now includes the same style of organization that Gmail users love. Take a tour to learn more.

And if you're wondering how you might use a group, how about:

• coordinating your class reunion (or make it private for a family reunion)
• learning about Greenhouse Hydroponics and participate in discussions
• finding the group you're looking for, or create one of your own
  

We hope you enjoy Google Groups; we really enjoy working on it, and it's been very rewarding to see all the useful things you and so many others have done with it.

Our New York speaker series

Posted by Marcus Mitchell, Engineering Director, Google New York

Google New York is sponsoring a speaker series that will bring technology industry leaders in to our offices to share their unique perspectives. Speakers will come from Google and beyond to cover topics ranging from the history of software development to the future of the Internet. With this series, we hope to create a collegial atmosphere where members of the technical community can learn from and get to know one another.

To start the year off, you're invited to a talk called "Physics, Speed, and Imprecision: What Works and What Doesn't in Software, and Why," given by our very own Adam Bosworth on Monday, January 29th.

Over beer and wine, Adam will discuss why machine learning and natural language seem to work today when they didn't in the 90s, and why Ajax is successful now when it wasn't earlier. The reasons lie in the realm of physics and customer psychology, particularly in our need for speed and limited tolerance for imprecision.

Please join us, but registration is limited, so hurry.

Vivian Hsu

Sexy and Beautiful Taiwanese: Vivian Hsu

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