Fridaygram: Google Maps Views, preventing blackouts, astronomical photos

By +Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

This week we launched Google Maps Views, a site where you can see and share photo spheres of your favorite places. You can enjoy photo spheres of beautiful and amazing locations, such as the Northwest Territories, Canada and Masvingo, Zimbabwe.

Photo Spheres displayed on the Views site include a handy “View on Google Maps” link, which enables you to see the photo sphere’s location displayed on a large map. And because Views is a community site, we encourage you to contribute your own photo spheres, which you can create using an Android phone or DSLR camera.

Our phones and cameras run on batteries, but it’s hard to get by without electric power in the wall. Power system engineers have studied the massive U.S. power blackout of 2003 and are working to prevent similar failures from happening again. Their primary tool is using phasor measurement units to monitor the interconnected power grid. These devices give early warning when something isn’t right, such as when a generating plant starts to fail. This gives operators time to take action before cascading problems can cause catastrophic failures, as in 2003. So your local power might be out, but at least it won’t knock out the lights for the next 10 cities down the road.

Finally, if you want to contemplate what’s beyond the bounds of Earth, take a look at some of the amazing photos submitted in the 2013 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. If you really love astronomy photos, you can see all 13,000 photos sent in since 2008. That should give you something to look at while you take a break from coding this weekend.


We’ll share anything nerdy here on Fridaygram. For example, if astronomy photos aren’t your thing, visit these simple animated GIFs that show how machines work. You might get inspired to build something of your own!

Fridaygram: startup moms, ape memories, persistent projects

By +Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

Sometimes you have a baby and a startup at the same time. For times like those, Google’s Campus Tel Aviv recently held Campus for Moms, a startup course designed to be friendly to babies and moms taking care of them. The nine-week course included technical topics like the evolution of cloud computing, legal information, financial advice, and more. The classroom was filled with bean bags and mats so that moms and babies could hang out together during sessions.

Graduates finished up by presenting their ideas to potential investors and class leaders. And during the course of the nine-week class session, four participants announced new launches: their babies were born.

Human babies build memories as they learn and grow, but what about other primates? A recent study provides evidence that chimps and orangutans can remember things for longer and more precisely than previously thought. Researchers found that both species could instantly recall an event (finding a particular tool) that took place three years earlier. The animals could also distinguish events that took place two weeks prior. Could ape startups be next?

Finally – and we really do mean finally – the pitch drop experiment at Trinity College Dublin has come to a successful conclusion. After nearly 70 years of trying, the project now has video proof that tar pitch sometimes behaves like a liquid and, given enough time and the right conditions, will form drops that fall from the main body. The experiment started in 1944, and now it’s done. Hooray!


This weekend, why not start a multi-decade experiment of your own? Maybe we can even feature it on some future edition of Fridaygram, if it still exists when your own pitch-drop moment happens.

Fridaygram: Maker Camp, perfect mirror, space hygiene

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

Maker Camp is an online summer camp created for teens who want to make gadgets, software and other cool stuff. Anyone can join Maker Camp, and it’s free. The folks at Maker Camp post a new project each weekday morning, and each afternoon there’s a Hangout with experts who show how they make things. Plus, there are Hangout “field trips” to places like NASA Ames Research Center.



The makers of Maker Camp say they want to embrace not only the spirit of DIY (do it yourself), but also DIT (do it together), and their online community and Hangouts are designed to do just that. Maker Camp started earlier this week and runs for 6 weeks. You can participate any day by visiting the Maker Camp page on Google+ and joining the Maker Camp Google+ Community.

Speaking of great projects, researchers have long been trying to create a mirror that reflects all the light that reaches it without absorbing any – a so-called perfect mirror. Recently, scientists at MIT were studying photonic crystals when they discovered a way to get the crystal to reflect all the light from a specific frequency of red light shined on it. This discovery could lead to more efficient lasers and yet-unknown advances.

Finally, we turn (as we often do on Fridaygram) to space, where amazing things happen, but so do mundane things, like astronauts having to wash their hair. This can be especially problematic if you have long hair and you’re aboard the International Space Station, like Astronaut Karen Nyberg. In this video, Astronaut Nyberg shows how she washes her long hair in zero gravity, where you have to keep track of the water lest it float away from you.


Here’s an idea: future astronauts could look at themselves in perfect mirrors when they wash their hair. That’s just the kind of out-of-the-box thinking you’ll get here on Fridaygram, where we try to provide a respite from your week of coding by offering some fun nerdy stuff.

Fridaygram: Street View in the sky, robot carp, restored shuttlecraft

By +Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

This week we launched Street View images showing what it’s like inside (and outside) the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. We love taking Street View places it’s never been, and now we’ve added two firsts: the first collection in the Arab World, and the first one to feature a skyscraper.



As if it’s not enough to visit the 163rd floor of the world’s tallest building, or ride an elevator traveling at 22 mph, we thought it would be fun to send our Street View camera outside the 73rd floor in a maintenance unit for a breathtaking view of the surrounding cityscape. So don’t miss that view, as long as you’re OK with heights.

We go from high above the Earth to under the sea for news of the world’s first robot carp. A team of scientists in Singapore studied these freshwater fish and designed an autonomous underwater exploration vehicle. They plan to use this robofish to study tight spaces in underwater places, such as pipelines or the lost city of Atlantis. The researchers used cameras to record carp doing their thing, then created a mathematical model of carp movements to trigger actuators in their robot.

Finally, let’s journey beyond even the Burj Khalifa, out into (pretend) space, where the Galileo Shuttlecraft served Captain Kirk and the crew of the U. S. S. Enterprise in the original Star Trek universe. This prop was originally considered too expensive for the production company to build, so Federation personnel had to make their way to and from planets by transporter instead. But the craft was eventually built and appeared midway through the first season, in 1967 (or stardate 2821.5, if you prefer). In the years since then, the ship has deteriorated. But now Star Trek fans and a shipwright are restoring the Galileo to its original glory, to be enjoyed by fans everywhere. Magnifico!


Whether on the surface of the Earth, way down below the ocean, or in space, Fridaygram is always your ticket to fun nerdy stuff. Speaking of space (and Star Trek), it looks like Voyager 1 has still not left the solar system, although it has entered a previously unknown area, far out there. This weekend, go and explore something new on your own!

Fridaygram: Loon balloons, black holes, browser games

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

This week we announced Project Loon, a cool and kind of crazy project that launches Internet-connected balloons and shares their connection with people below on Earth. These are not your typical birthday balloons: they’re 15 meters wide, and they rise to an altitude of 20 km, where winds carry them around the world. Software computes where the balloons should go to provide the best network coverage, and the balloons are then steered and moved as necessary.



Sailing along in the stratosphere is an essential aspect of Project Loon. The stratosphere is far above general air traffic and weather, so Loon balloons don’t have to worry about that. On the other hand, the environment is not friendly, with thin atmosphere and -50°C temperatures. But because the balloons are designed for these conditions, they can survive happily.

Moving further away from Earth, all the way to deep space, astronomers have found 26 new black holes right here in the neighborhood, in the Andromeda galaxy next door. Scientists using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory detected the black holes by observing telltale bursts of X-rays as the black holes ingested the outer atmosphere of ordinary stars. And this is just the start: there are likely thousands more black holes in Andromeda. So if Internet balloons ever make to Andromeda, we now know some places to avoid.

Finally, if you’re looking for something fun to do this weekend, you can spend time with a trio of nifty Chrome Experiment games released over the past couple of weeks: Roll It is a classic boardwalk game with the modern twist of using your mobile device as a controller, Racer builds a race track and soundtrack from several mobile devices put together, and Cube Slam lets you play an old-school arcade game over the Internet with friends (and if you have no friends, you can play against a virtual bear). Have fun!


From distant galaxies to ursine videogame opponents, Fridaygram rolls wide and deep. We cover fun stuff that isn’t always directly related to writing code, just in case you need an end-of-week break. If you’re having too much fun with our trio of games and you want to learn something instead, you can read about how we built each of them: Roll It, Racer, Cube Slam.

Fridaygram: supporting nonprofits, yawning dogs, Easter egg in space

Scott

Maya

By Maya Amoils, Google.org, and Scott Knaster, Developer Relations

Throughout this month, we’ve asked developers around the world to sign up for Be Mindful in May, a one-month meditation campaign that challenges participants to learn about meditation while simultaneously dedicating their efforts to a global cause: providing clean water to people in developing nations. So far the campaign has raised over $75,000 AUD for this important issue, and the Google Developers team has raised $1700 AUD.

The money raised through Be Mindful in May will go to charity:water, an organization that’s helping to bring clean, safe drinking water to the nearly 1 billion people who struggle every day without it.

To help support nonprofits like charity:water, last month we released the One Today mobile app as a limited pilot in the US. One Today introduces users to new projects each day across a wide range of issues, and enables users to donate $1 to the cause. One Today users can amplify their impact by matching their friends’ donations. If you’re in the US, you can join the One Today pilot by requesting an invite.

From making a difference in the world to wacky science, studies suggest that dogs yawn in response to humans. And not only that: further research shows that sometimes, dogs yawn in empathy with humans yawning, while other times, dogs yawn because they’re feeling stress, as when they’re listening to their owners. Much more research involving yawning dogs and people will be necessary to fully sort this out.

Finally, if you’re previewing the new Google Maps, you might be interested in this cool Easter egg. And if you’re not on the new Google Maps, you can request an invite. It’s really nice, and might even keep you from yawning.


Fridaygrams provide a chance for us to focus on fun and interesting stuff that’s not necessarily related to writing code. Sometimes we even get to feature inspiring content, like this week’s information about helping nonprofits.

Maya Amoils is a member of the Google.org marketing team where she works on a number of the team's charitable giving initiatives. Maya holds a BA in Science Technology & Society from Stanford University. Outside of work, you can find her biking around the Bay Area or making playlists on Spotify.

Scott Knaster is the editor of Google Developers Blog. He likes family time, technology, and watching the San Francisco Giants win baseball games.

Fridaygram: Galapagos images, smart dog, timely entanglement

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

On Fridaygram we love to celebrate amazing new Street View images. This week we announced new panoramic views of the Galapagos Islands, collected with with the Street View Trekker in partnership with the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) and the Galapagos National Parks Directorate (GNPD). These images will go live on Google Maps later this year, but you can see a preview below and on the Official Google Blog.

The Maps team’s 10-day adventure included lots of interaction with local wildlife, but didn’t take place entirely on land. The team worked with the Catlin Seaview Survey to collect underwater ocean images too. And in addition to being beautiful and fun, these pictures have a practical use: they act as a visual record that can be compared to changes observed in the future.

Speaking of wildlife, do you have a smart dog? And does your smart dog know 1000+ words, plus have a basic comprehension of grammar? Meet Chaser, a 9-year-old border collie who has been taught to recognize the names of 1000 objects, as well as the meaning of some verbs and prepositions. In tests, Chaser correctly (most of the time) responded to commands such as “take ball to Frisbee”, or even “to Frisbee take ball”. If only our friends and family were that helpful.

Finally, there’s some typically mind-blowing news from the world of quantum physics. We already know that quantum particles can share a connection called entanglement, which allows one particle to reflect the state of another no matter how far apart they are. Now an experimental discovery shows that particles can be entangled even if they don’t exist at the same time. We agree with experimenter Jeremy O'Brien of the University of Bristol, who said “It’s really cool”.


Fridaygram is about randomly cool and nerdy stories that we hope will amuse you and possibly inspire your weekend. Around here we’re still feeling the Google I/O afterglow, so we’re going to recommend you spend some time this weekend watching some of the many session videos from I/O. If that’s not your thing, maybe you’d like this brief but inspiring video that kicked off the conference.

Fridaygram: Transparency Report, billions of bugs, calming doodle

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

The Google Transparency Report is designed to point out government censorship, requests to Google for data, and other details about our information services. The newest report, just out this week, shows that government requests for content removal have reached a new high level, with more than 2200 requests received in the second half of last year.

Government removal requests are probably the best known part of the Transparency Report, but there’s plenty of other fascinating and useful data. For example, you can see information about removal requests for specific URLs from copyright owners, or read about the legal process that takes place when a government organization or court requests information about a user. You can learn a lot by spending some time with the Transparency Report.

If you’re on the U. S. East Coast this spring and summer, you won’t need a report to tell you that massive numbers of cicadas are emerging from their underground homes to breed, fill the skies, annoy countless humans, last a few weeks, then die (and annoy even more humans who have to clean them up). This year’s bunch are Magicicada septendecim, or periodical cicadas with a 17-year life cycle. So we can look forward to a similar event in 2030.

Finally, if you haven’t already played with the Earth Day Doodle from last Monday, consider taking a few minutes this weekend to enjoy it. You might find yourself mesmerized by the tranquil scene (cicadas not included).


Fridaygram is mostly about fun and informative stuff that’s not related to development, but we seriously want to congratulate Googlers Peter Norvig and Arun Majumdar on their election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Arun runs Google’s energy strategy as vice president of energy, and Peter is our director of research, although he’s also known for his whimsical take on presentations and technology.

Fridaygram: fiber marches on, your brain on music, Earth from orbit

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

Just about two years ago, we said that Kansas City would be the first place to get very high speed Internet access from the Google Fiber project. This week we announced that Austin, Texas will be the next location for Google Fiber. Like Kansas City, customers in Austin will be able to get gigabit Internet and Google Fiber TV service. Many schools, hospitals, and other public buildings in Austin will get gigabit Internet at no charge.



If you live in Austin or Kansas City, and you want to find out more, take a look at the Google Fiber website. Or maybe you’ll want to plan to move to one of those cities.

Speaking of moving, the next time you’re moved by music, you might be interested to know what’s going on in your brain. Recent research shows that when people like a new song, the nucleus accumbens becomes active, while other parts of the brain work on pattern-matching and emotional connections. The more complex the activity among these various brain regions, the more the brain's owner likes a song, according to the research. Scientists are hoping to use this work to learn more about how we process all kinds of sounds, not just cool new tunes.

Finally, take some time this weekend to watch this amazing NASA video of Earth from orbit. It’s part of NASA’s Earth month, which includes a bunch of other images of our favorite planet that are also fun to look at. It’s sure to light up your brain.


With all its interplanetary travel, it’s nice of NASA to have a month just for us earthlings. And here on the blog, we’re happy to have Fridaygrams, which allow us to depart temporarily from developer world and just feature some random, nerdy, science-y stuff instead.

Fridaygram: April foolery, ripping planets, and dream readers

By Ashleigh Rentz, Google Developers Blog Editor Emerita

With all of this week’s developer news, it’s easy to forget that Monday was April Fools’ day. As usual, Googlers channeled their playful spirits into creative new “features” for many of our products.  Did you spot them all?  Wikipedia has a recap list, featuring Google Trends’ “Cold Searches” (discover new unique things that nobody else is into!) and Google Analytics’ export support for even more external media options.

After we stopped fooling around, space.com got serious and shared this animated sequence of what astronomers have observed happening to a massive gas giant planet somewhere around 20 times the size of Jupiter: a supermassive black hole 300,000 times the size of our sun has been ripping the planet apart!  (We’re all relieved to know it’s 47 million light years away from our much-beloved Earth.)

If perchance you take advantage of the weekend to catch up on your sleep, take special note of your dreams. Scientists in Japan have been carefully studying brain scans and reached a 60% success rate in identifying what images dreamers are “seeing”. Maybe soon we can finally answer one lingering question: Do Android developers dream of electric sheep?

Each week, Fridaygram brings you geek-friendly stories of interest to enjoy during your weekend. We can’t read minds, though. Just docs.

Fridaygram: high school computer science, desert termites, YouTube sleuthing

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) is a Google-sponsored program to enable professional development for high school and middle school students around the world interested in computer science. CS4HS holds workshops for teachers and provides funding to develop the workshops, along with help from local Googlers.

Earlier this week, we announced the recipients of this year’s grants, which will be the fifth year of the program (and you can see a list of previous years’ programs here). Computer science education isn’t just for university students any more.

Education leads to the scientific method, which is how researchers discovered that mysterious circles in the Namib Desert are probably not fairy circles or the work of an underground dragon, but are actually caused by termites in the sand. Norbert Jürgens of the University of Hamburg learned that sand termites eat the roots of grasses, creating the circles in the sand. That’s not nearly as cool as an underground dragon, but it seems more plausible.

Finally, you probably remember that astonishing meteor that lit up the sky over Russia last month, and you might have seen some of the many videos that recorded the event. So did Swedish blogger Stefan Geens, who figured out that he could learn more about the meteor from the videos in non-obvious ways. Geens used a video showing shadows cast by the meteor, along with Google Earth and Photoshop, to roughly calculate the meteor’s trajectory and landing place. From there, scientists figured out more about the meteor, including its size, track, and point of explosion. So this weekend, if you get inspired, you too can use YouTube to figure out something new.


Yes, meteor videos and sand termites are just part of the usual fun here on Fridaygram, where we eschew our usual developer fare and present just cool stuff instead, even if it doesn’t involve coding.

Fridaygram: art project expands, tweeting in tongues, speaking to movies

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

We posted once before about the Google Art Project, a very cool endeavor to make museum art available online to people around the world. We’re writing about it again today because the project has just expanded to include a bunch of great new stuff, including ancient works, contemporary art, and even urban art.

Highlights of the newly added works include hundreds of photos from highly regarded photographers, centuries-old maps, and historical documents. You can spend hours exploring museums from more than 40 countries while you sit in the park with your laptop.

Speaking of traveling without actually moving, a researcher has used public Twitter data to study the use of human languages in various places around the world. Researcher Delia Mocanu and her team studied languages from tweets sent in New York City and used the data to map neighborhoods by language use. In some cases, the secondary language used in a neighborhood matched the language spoken by original residents decades or even hundreds of years earlier. That’s even before Twitter existed.

Finally, when you’re done looking at art and learning about world language use, you can spend some time this weekend with Chrome’s new Peanut Gallery. This project uses Chrome’s voice recognition technology to let you add title cards to old silent films. It’s completely for fun – enjoy!


Get your API info and meaty technical details earlier in the week, because on Friday it’s all for fun: science, the humanities, and just general nerdiness.

Fridaygram: women in tech, buzzing bees, storytelling rules

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

Today is International Women’s Day, and one of the ways we’re celebrating is by being part of the Voices Global Conference. The conference includes sessions focused on women in technology, including new Women Techmakers episodes. You can watch live streams and archived videos, all available on the conference site.



Sometimes people ask the purpose of events like this. Beryl Nelson, writing in the Official Google Blog says it nicely: “A diverse workforce is critical in helping us build products that can help people change the world. That includes diversity of all life experiences, including gender.”

Now let’s turn to the uncommon combination of insects and coffee. Researchers in England were able to use caffeine found in some plants to help train the long-term memory of bees. The bees that got a hit of caffeine were far more likely to remember a particular plant than bees that received just sugar water. Coffee drinkers are probably nodding their heads knowingly at this news.

Finally, be sure to read Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling, which has been making the Internet rounds again lately. And try to take the time to enjoy a great story yourself this weekend.


Fridaygram: it’s not the usual yada yada. Sure, you figured out all the hidden codes on the new Google I/O site earlier this week, but think about this: why were those particular numbers chosen? See what you can come up with, then leave a comment on our +Google Developers page.

Fridaygram: Netizen of the Year, amazing ants, mesmerizing math

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

Each year Reporters Without Borders presents the Netizen of the Year Award to someone who makes a notable contribution in defense of online freedom of expression. This sort of activism is vital, and can be hazardous: bloggers and others are sometimes jailed for what they write online. This year, Internet users (that’s us) get to vote for the winner of the award. There are nine nominees. You can learn their compelling stories and vote for your choice at youtube.com/netizen2013.

The winner will be announced on March 7th and will be invited to receive the award in person at Google’s office in Paris on March 12th, which is World Day Against Cyber Censorship.

Moving from strong online voices to strong insects, researchers have found that Asian weaver ants have an incredibly strong grip, enabling them to hold 100 times their weight with their foot pads. These creatures can even rapidly expand their foot pads if they need more holding power, as when the wind causes the surface they’re standing on to move a bit. This will probably make us feel even worse about dropping our mobile phones.

Finally, spend some quiet time this weekend gazing at these animated Mathematica-based images. They prove that math is beautiful.


Another Friday is here, and we’re back with our Fridaygram, news that's both/either interesting and/or fun. Hold on tight, and enjoy your weekend!

Fridaygram: I/O registration, SpaceX launch, calendar history

By Ashleigh Rentz, Google Developers Blog Editor Emerita

As Spring draws nearer in the northern hemisphere, so too does this year’s Google I/O. Earlier today, we announced that registration for this year’s event will open on March 13th at 7:00 AM PDT. Tickets are in high demand, so be sure to mark your calendar!  Of course, we’ll continue to offer live streaming and recordings of many sessions as we’ve done in the past for those who can’t join us at Moscone Center (and for attendees who can’t be in two sessions at once).

Another thing to mark on your calendar is the upcoming launch of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft next Friday, March 1st. In the early hours of the morning (much earlier than Fridaygrams get posted), SpaceX will host a live webcast covering the launch. What’s more, they might just answer your question! Head over to their Google+ page for details on how to submit that burning question via YouTube.

If you find yourself scratching your head after looking at your calendar and wondering where this bizarre time-telling scheme ever came from, fear not! One YouTube user offers us “A Short History of the Modern Calendar”. It’s still annoying to deal with this mess of dates when coding, but at least it wasn’t devised purely to torment us. Why isn’t there an SI unit of month?

Once per 7-day week, Fridaygram puts away the compiler and brings you the latest in fun science and other nerd stuff. Occasionally, we meander through recorded history as well. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to GOTO 10.”

Fridaygram: commerce analytics, fixing the kilogram, big prime number

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

We all live together in one big blue world, but we do lots of things differently: like pay for our purchases in different currencies around the world, for example. That’s very important if you’re doing commerce on the web, because people like to pay for things in their local currencies. For e-commerce developers, Google Analytics just launched a feature to track revenue, tax, and shipping & handling costs in multiple local currencies on a single website.

This new feature, which is rolling out gradually to all Analytics users, lets you choose from 31 different flavors of local currencies when you set up your reports. With multi-currency support, you can give your site broader appeal while making the world seem like a smaller, more friendly place.

Speaking of shared international knowledge, you might know that the weight of a kilogram is defined by a cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy in France. Strangely enough, even though the International Prototype Kilogram is sealed in a vault, it’s getting infinitesimally heavier, about one-eighth the weight of a grain of sand per century. Obviously, that just won’t do. To fix this, scientists are going to clean the cylinder, and all will be well again.

Finally, spend some time this weekend contemplating the discovery of a new largest prime number, which is 17,425,170 digits long (and with the magic of the Internet, you can look at all those digits here). This prime number was discovered by Dr. Curtis Cooper – no, not that Dr. Cooper – via the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS).


Each Friday we publish a Fridaygram to tell you about strange and wonderful stuff from Google and the world at large. And please don’t worry about memorizing that long prime number – there will not be a quiz. Not even for you, Sheldon.

Fridaygram: online safety, asteroid close call, spectacular glacier

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

You’re reading a blog for developers, so chances are you’re probably pretty savvy about how things work online, and that includes safety and security. Of course, just because we know how to be secure doesn’t mean we always do what we should. And there are all our less-technical friends and family members who often turn to us for guidance. To help keep people secure online, we recently updated the site Good to Know: A guide to staying safe and secure online.

This site contains lots of common sense and advanced tips, such as how to secure your passwords, ways you can prevent identity theft, and a guide to technical terminology. Although Good to Know is designed to be useful to people from all backgrounds, even us tech folks can find some handy information there.

Speaking of safety, it turns out we can all can relax about Asteroid 2012 DA 14. According to NASA, the 45-meter object will get close to Earth, but no closer than about 17,000 miles. The space agency also says the asteroid won’t be visible to the naked eye, and will be hard to track even with telescopes. But the important thing is that we won’t have another Tunguska event.

Although it looks like we’re going to avoid an asteroid impact, nature continues to demonstrate enormous power that is sometimes destructive and awesome. A camera crew recently filmed an immense glacier calving, an event that lasted more than an hour. You can watch it from the comfort of your asteroid-safe home.


Safety is important, whether you’re on the Internet or looking out for asteroids. While we spend most of the week here telling you about Google developer topics, Fridaygram is set aside for science, technology, and other fun & generally nerdy topics.

Fridaygram: flu season, 40 year old engines, evenings with tech influencers

By Ashleigh Rentz, Google Developers Blog Editor Emerita

It’s hard to overlook: flu season is upon us with a vengeance this winter, particularly in the United States and Japan. Once again, Google.org’s Flu Trends tabulates the numbers that paint the map deep red and puts the historical data at your fingertips to prove that yes, this is worse than you remember it being last year. Take care of your health, drink lots of fluids, and consider taking a holiday to the southern hemisphere for some sweet summer days if you aren’t sick... The Australian waterfront is a beautiful shade of light green on the flu map.

If Australia isn’t far enough away from the germs and viruses (does anyone still use “virii” for the plural?), how about an excursion into near-earth orbit or beyond? Although NASA isn’t doing any human spaceflights at present, the agency is planning for the future by taking a second look at the past. Engineers of a new generation are test-firing a 40 year old engine built for the Saturn V rockets used during the Apollo missions. It’s part of the early planning for future heavy-lift rockets.

We hope you’re feeling well, but if you’re sick at home this weekend, spend some time recuperating in front of the TV with the Computer History Museum channel on YouTube. Our down-the-street neighbours often invite Silicon Valley luminaries to speak about their work and their lives. Among them, our own Eric Schmidt was there last November to tell a few stories of Google’s early days and give some insight into where the web is taking us. Get well soon!

Each week, Fridaygram nurses you back to health with a dose of data and fun for your weekend enjoyment. Fridaygram is not a doctor, please consult actual medical professionals if you are ill. Ashleigh is our blog’s Editor Emerita and fills in when Scott takes some well-deserved time off. (No, he’s not out sick today.)

Fridaygram: women Googlers speak, star-guided beetles, live video hacks

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

To build the future of technology, we need people from every community to join in, which is why we have programs like Women Techmakers. To help get more girls interested in technology careers, Women Techmakers and the Computer Science on Air programs have started a series of hangouts with women engineers at Google.



We think it’s cool and incredibly powerful for kids who are interested in a career in tech to get to look at a video of professionals and say "Hey, that looks like me!".

Once you start working in science and technology, you never know where it will lead you, from the far reaches of the galaxy to the bare ground. For example, a new study demonstrates, incredibly, that some insects use the stars for navigation. As a part of this study, scientists placed dung beetles in a darkened planetarium, and found the creatures were no longer able to move in a steady, straight line. But when the researchers turned on the Milky Way display in the planetarium, the beetles could crawl along in direct paths. Cosmic.

As you ponder the meaning of insects using astral navigation this weekend, hook the laptop up to your TV and tune in to Google Developers Live on Sunday evening. Lay back on the sofa and check out live demos from the LA Video Hackathon to see what other developers are doing with YouTube and Google TV, and join in by posting comments tagged with #ythackla. (Of course, if you already have Google TV, you won’t need to get up from the sofa to turn off a screensaver.)


We publish a Fridaygram each week with all sorts of cool, fun, and downright nerdy stuff. We like our Fridaygrams to range wide, like all the way from Women Techmakers to starry-eyed beetles.

Fridaygrammy hat tips to Ashleigh Rentz and Phoebe Peronto for their contributions to today’s post.

Fridaygram: student doodlers, wrinkled fingers, space station tour

By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog Editor

Each year the Doodle 4 Google competition gives K - 12 students in the U.S. a chance to win a place for their work on the Google homepage, along with some nice prizes. Submissions are open from now until March 22, and you can see all the rules and other information on the competition site.

This is the sixth year for Doodle 4 Google. If you’re a grade school student in the U.S., or you know someone who is, be sure to let them know about this cool program.

You can submit your Doodle 4 Google entry on paper, because lots of people like to do their drawing old school, with their hands. And speaking of hands, scientists have long wondered why fingers on those hands get wrinkled after long exposure to water, such as in a swimming pool or bathtub. A recent study suggests that this wrinkle effect might be an evolutionary advantage to help us gain a better grip on wet objects. Long ago, this might have helped with food gathering; now, it’s mostly just weird.

Finally, please take 25 minutes of your weekend and watch this wonderful video tour of the International Space Station conducted by departing commander Sunita Williams. Unless you’ve been to space, you’ll probably see things you’ve never seen before. And even if you have been to space, or you are from space, you’ll probably enjoy it.


Each week we take a break from developer topics and publish Fridaygram, featuring interesting stuff from Google and the rest of the universe that you might not have noticed before. Last year we didn’t mention Doodle 4 Google until it was over; we thought it would be better to talk about it sooner this time.