This new Google Chrome ad that showcases the incredible rendering speed has been making the rounds all week, but I just noticed it’s been updated with some detailed technical information on how they made it. Recorded with the Phantom v640 High Speed Camera at full-HD (capable of 2700fps), they had to get creative with the monitor to capture any image.
Chrome sends the rendered page to the video card buffer all at once, which is why allrecipes.com appears at once, and not with the text first and images second. Chrome actually paints the page from top to bottom, but to eliminate a shadow from the driver board, we had to flip the monitor upside down and set the system preferences in Windows to rotate everything 180 degrees, resulting in the page appearing to render from bottom to top.
Note that these tests are only of Rendering Speed, so they use locally cached versions of the pages shown.
Google has just rolled out a new feature for Google Maps users that appeals specifically to fans (And users) of Google Earth. Now in the upper right next to the usual “Maps” and “Satellite” views, there is an “Earth” view button that loads in the 3D terrain data and any available buildings to render it all in 3D glory. It does require installation of the Google Earth Plugin (an external download that requires administrative priveledges, doh) but the results support all the features you’ve come to love of Maps and Earth.
So if you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who use Maps worldwide, you can now explore the world in luxuriantly-detailed, data-rich 3D imagery and terrain from Google Earth. If you’ve already downloaded the Google Earth Plugin, you should be able to see Earth view in Maps right away. Otherwise, you can just install the Plugin to enjoy a Maps experience that includes angled Earth views, 3D buildings, smooth panning and zooming and a great introductory showcase of places to visit and things to see.
Google has created a new politically-motivated interactive mashup that shows the quantity of takedown notices and user information requests from various world governments. This includes takedown notices for sites like Youtube, and access information for various websites and users. While still in development, it’s pretty easy to see that the US is second only to Brazil in data requests.
Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products. The map shows the number of requests that we received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, with certain limitations.
We know these numbers are imperfect and may not provide a complete picture of these government requests. For example, a single request may ask for the removal of more than one URL or for the disclosure of information for multiple users. See the FAQ for more information.
As one of Google’s “April’s Fools Pranks”, they’ve enabled Anaglyphics Red-Cyan stereo on Google Street View. Simply load up street view as you normally would, and you’ll see a new icon there to enable it.
In reality, it looks like they’re just duplicating and shifting the existing image a bit, it doesn’t really add much depth. Also, they leave the existing colors in the image with can create some distracting effects. But it’s a fun little trick, and worth playing with if you have some anaglyphic glasses lying around.
Sufferers of March Madness may be able to temporarily alleviate their symptoms by firing up Google Earth and checkout out the newly added Sketchup models of 14 of the arenas.
Here at the SketchUp office, we gathered 14 models of the arenas and added them to a Featured Collection. These models are located all over the country, and largely created by users like you. Especially cool is the model of the Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City, where you can fly inside and see the interior of the model! Both the Edward Jones Dome and the HSBC Arena are great examples of high quality photo-texturing, and the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis was created using Google Building Maker.
People have been trying for a long time now to bring 3-D to the world wide web. We have had VRML and Web3D, but nothing really seems to have taken off. CNet has posted an article in Google’s attempt to bring 3-D to the web. As always, there are some problems that need to be overcome.
One hurdle, though, is that WebGL uses the Khronos Group’s OpenGL graphics interface standard, but not all video cards have OpenGL support. Google hopes to sidestep this issue with a new open-source projet that translates the OpenGL commands into the related dialect more common on Windows computers, Microsoft’s Direct3D. The project is called ANGLE, short for Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine,…
You can also find out more about ANGLE on the Chromium blog.
whatdoyousuggest.net is a new way of searching for information on the web. The web site takes an input query, and displays the results from Google Suggest in a tree form. For example, if you enter a search item into the entry field, and it gives you options on where you can go from there. For example, I entered the term “books” which then brought up several options. I chose “online” and more options appear. In many ways, this search engine has the feel of Web Seer. From the search engine site itself:
What Do You Suggest takes a seed from you (or gives you something random) then guides you on a journey through language and the collective lives of Google users.
Using data from Google to make suggetions on where you might like to go next, What Do You Suggest is an experimental and interactive environment designed to explore how we use language and search on the internet.
Google has expanded their ‘public data search feature’ they announced a while back with several new datasources, and connected it with a new interactive visualization tool they call the ‘Public Data Explorer’.
With a handful of data providers, there are already billions of possible charts to explore. We currently provide data from the same three providers currently available in our search feature: the World Bank, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, we've added five new data providers: the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. We're excited that all around the world new data providers are deciding to make their information freely available on the Internet, enabling innovators to create interesting applications, mash up the data in new ways and discover profound meaning behind the numbers.
One such visualization is this “Life Expectancy vs Fertility” visualization.
The folks at Pingdom have put together an infographic on The Internet Google. It is a pretty massive set of facts and numbers that have been acquired, so take a look at it.
And let’s face it, Google is a pretty interesting company. In fact, we think it’s so interesting that we put together this infographic with a ton of facts and figures about Google. We’ve been digging through Google’s SEC filings, news articles and the trusty old Wikipedia to get plenty of interesting data to include.
Wired’s Geekdad has a collection of 20 fun and geeky images captured by satellite and visible in everyone’s favorite map viewer Google Maps. Ranging from air force bases and the GooglePlex itself to crop designs and herds of animals, it’s a great collection.
Space is full of images that make a geek’s heart flutter. But how about when we point those cameras back down at us on Earth?
Google Earth has created a treasure trove of geeky images. Here are some of my favorites
Hit his site for pictures and links directly to the map locations.
Google has created a new politically-motivated interactive mashup that shows the quantity of takedown notices and user information requests from various world governments. This includes takedown notices for sites like Youtube, and access information for various websites and users. While still in development, it’s pretty easy to see that the US is second only to Brazil in data requests.
As one of Google’s “April’s Fools Pranks”, they’ve enabled Anaglyphics Red-Cyan stereo on Google Street View. Simply load up street view as you normally would, and you’ll see a new icon there to enable it.
Sufferers of March Madness may be able to temporarily alleviate their symptoms by firing up Google Earth and checkout out the newly added Sketchup models of 14 of the arenas.
Google has expanded their ‘public data search feature’ they announced a while back with several new datasources, and connected it with a new interactive visualization tool they call the ‘Public Data Explorer’.
Wired’s Geekdad has a collection of 20 fun and geeky images captured by satellite and visible in everyone’s favorite map viewer Google Maps. Ranging from air force bases and the GooglePlex itself to crop designs and herds of animals, it’s a great collection.
VizWorld.com 
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