Google has been hiring a group of individuals on one year contracts to help the Glass explorers with their upcoming Glasswear we’ve learned. The employees would be based in New York or San Francisco but travel to events throughout the US and eventually overseas. These people will also be manning the retail presence that Google hopes to have in New York, San Francisco and possibly LA by the end of the year.
Google just announced Google I/O 2013 would kick off in 162 days from May 15 to May 17 at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco. Google is not accepting registrations yet, but it will announce more details in February.
It might only be December, but Google I/O 2013 is set and is just 162 days away! We’ll be returning to Moscone Center West in San Francisco on May 15-17, 2013, and sharing the experience beyond via Google Developers Live and I/O Extended viewing parties. We’ll announce registration details in February 2013. Read more
Google is sponsoring an upcoming hackathon by Hattery Labs that is awarding two grand prizes to innovators using Google Maps API.
The “Reroute/sf” hackathon runs from Oct. 19 to Oct. 21 at The Hattery, according to its Facebook page, and it aims to “improve transportation in San Francisco with technological innovation, and work with the City to make it real.” The three-day event essentially invites engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs to “make San Francisco a better place.”
The hackathon will host three challenges, i.e., “Collect the right data,” “Plan a trip anywhere – on-time,” “See what’s broken and watch it get fixed,” while senior representatives from the City of San Francisco and the technology community will determine who wins the following four prizes:
Best Innovation using Google Maps API | $7,500 Grant
Runner-up Innovation using Google Maps API | $2,500 Grant
Best Public Transit Innovation | $500 Clipper Card credit
Best Collaboration | 3 free General Assembly classes per team member
Aside from Google, the Hattery, the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, Waze, Google Maps, and the General Assembly sponsor the hackathon. The Hattery is a collection of experts ranging from designers and engineers to investors and brand marketers, and some of their most notable collaborative work under Hattery Labs includes giving people clean water and helping Haitians rebuild schools through WellDone and Haiti School Project, respectively.
Google’s map offerings build in the human intelligence on the front end, and that’s what allows its computers to tell you the best route from San Francisco to Boston.
In an exclusive story by the Senior Editor at The Atlantic, Alexis C. Madrigal, Google for the first time gives us a look at “Ground Truth”. It is a project described by Madrigal as a secretive, complex internal map that contains data, such as “no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions,” necessary to help users navigate through Google Maps:
I was slated to meet with Gupta and the engineering ringleader on his team, former NASA engineer Michael Weiss-Malik, who’d spent his 20 percent time working on Google Mars, and Nick Volmar, an “operator” who actually massages map data.
“So you want to make a map,” Weiss-Malik tells me as we sit down in front of a massive monitor. “There are a couple of steps. You acquire data through partners. You do a bunch of engineering on that data to get it into the right format and conflate it with other sources of data, and then you do a bunch of operations, which is what this tool is about, to hand massage the data. And out the other end pops something that is higher quality than the sum of its parts.”
Describing Ground Truth to be an elaborate internal Map Maker of sorts, perhaps the most interesting aspect of the story is just how much human input goes into making the Google Maps experience accurate. In the story, Madrigal noted the Ground Truth Geo team aims to address most of the fixable problems reported by users (thousands daily) within minutes: Read more
We encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. And this month Googlers, Gayglers (gay Googlers), and their families and friends took this spirit to the streets in Pride parades and celebrations around the globe. In Sao Paulo, a group of 50 marched as a Google contingent for the first time ever. In San Francisco, more than 1,000 Googlers and allies marched (nearly doubling the number of people we had in 2011!). In New York, more than 700 of our friends and colleagues took over 5th Avenue marching alongside our double-decker Pride bus. And this weekend in Singapore, we’re sponsoring the Pink Dot celebration for the second consecutive year.
Reyes further revealed action-based plans to celebrate World Pride in London this year. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company will host a ”Legalise Love” Conference at Google London, with hopes to ”eliminate homophobia” and “decriminalize homosexuality.”
Google also significantly increased coverage of transgender health care for its U.S. employees. Transgender-inclusive benefits, such as “transitioning procedures and treatment in accordance with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care,” now receive a lifetime maximum coverage of $75,000.
“Next month we’ll carry the energy of Pride into our fourth annual company Diversity & Inclusion celebration, the Sum of Google. The Sum is an opportunity to celebrate and engage in a discussion about diversity and inclusion across our offices around the world,” Reyes concluded.
