Tag: google

Forget Clickbait. This Is How Technology Improves News Reporting

Posted on by robbie

Steve Grove, a onetime print reporter at the Boston Globe and a broadcast journalist for ABC News, joined YouTube and helped the homemade video site influence world events (becoming a platform for investigative video reportage like Sen. George Allen using the obscure racial insult “macaca” and a way to mobilize millions, such as President Obama and will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” music video). Today, as head of Google’s News Lab, he’s enthused about virtual reality and big data becoming an integral part of storytelling. NationSwell spoke to Grove from Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters about the future of newsrooms.

What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
[T]o make it something that you practice, not something that you are. I tell my team at Google all the time, “You’re all leaders.” What I mean by that (this comes from some books I’ve read, a few classes I’ve taken and also my own experience) is leadership is helping a group that is facing a challenge grapple with it in an honest and productive way. It’s really getting to the root of what a problem is, engaging in various interventions or techniques to really get to the core issue they’re trying to solve. Great leaders are able to exercise leadership, not just embody it.

What’s on your nightstand?
I just finished a book called “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work,” which is about the modern economy and how technology has actually, in some ways, made us more distant from the actual work-product. The guy who wrote it was a motorcycle mechanic, and he talks about the power of working with your hands and how the trades are actually a really active way to use your mind and develop yourself. It’s not just an argument for, hey, you need to go start your own mechanic shop, but that you should understand how the things you own work.

What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
There are all kinds of new storytelling devices that are making journalism and frontiers really hopeful. While getting traffic to your site is a challenge and thinking about catchy titles or even clickbait is part of a conversation, deeper, more immersive storytelling is even more exciting and differentiates your site or broadcast. Virtual reality’s a part of that. You’re not just clicking and leaving: you dive into it. But another really interesting development (we’re not quite there yet) is journalism via drones. It’s really powerful for things like crisis response… and climate journalism — looking at ways different ecosystems have changed and are changing from above. It’s just a totally new perspective. There’s lots of challenges to figure out there ethically and technologically, but that’s exciting.

Data journalism itself is probably one of the biggest frontiers for journalism right now. It takes a massive amount of computing power that we now have, the extraordinary access to data sets we didn’t have before and a shift of how newsrooms think about telling stories. We, of course, work on Google data in that space, but ProPublica, FiveThirtyEight, The UpShot, Vox — they’re all really innovative data-driven journalism. That’s one of the things we’re betting big on: that data journalism has a huge potential for making readers around the world smarter about topics they’re discovering. Newsrooms are beginning to understand there’s never been a better time to be a storyteller, given the tools they have.

What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
I wish somebody had told me to lead with passion and manage with consistency. A lot of leaders are very good at one, but not the other. They can crisply manage a spreadsheet, a meeting schedule, a document and metrics tracker, but they don’t have the vision or the passion to lead an organization. Other leaders give the inspiration and purpose. That’s great, but the management piece falls off a little bit, because it’s harder for them to operationally develop things. Most leaders need to have both. I wish someone had defined that for me. I came into my work with the former — the passion and excitement — and I don’t think I was incapable of the latter, but I didn’t know when to toggle between the two.

What inspires you?
What’s most inspiring to me about my time at Google is amplifying stories or voices that wouldn’t have otherwise been heard. You look at YouTube as a platform for that, or the Internet in general as a chance to discover stories that wouldn’t have otherwise made it into our conversations — that’s a really powerful additive element of technology in media. Whether that’s citizen-captured videos from streets of the Arab Spring or whether that’s someone “coming out” to their community on a blog or whether that’s a kid in his bedroom in Philly or a mom in her house in Montana getting to ask the President a question in a Google+ Hangout, there’s all kinds of elements that plays itself out.

What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I feel very fortunate to have had some amazing experiences at Google. But if I had to pick something I was most proud of, I might go back to before I was a journalist, in my early twenties, when I spent about half a year in India. I just sort of went; I didn’t know anybody there. I bought a plane ticket and landed in Bombay [now Mumbai]. I wanted to do something that went beyond being a tourist, but I didn’t know what. I ended up finding the opportunity to work for an organization that did interventions in small rural Indian towns to try to get 30,000 people above the poverty line. They would help these people grow mango forests or cross-breed cows to create their own dairies. I [wrote] profiles of the people who this group was helping. I got to spend two months in rural villages, finding my own translators, talking to different people who were in these situations. It wasn’t the best journalism or work I’d ever done, but early in my career, it was a really transformative experience.

To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.

Home page photo courtesy of Steve Grove.

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Why Are Tech Giants Investing in This Decades-Old Technology?

Posted on by robbie

When the tech titans of Silicon Valley invest in a new venture, the markets pay close attention. But observers may have been surprised when two California-based companies made back-to-back announcements about infusing $1.1 billion into a not-so-new technology.
Last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed an $848 million deal with First Solar to build a huge solar farm in Monterey County, Calif., that will provide power to the creator of the iPhone’s new headquarters for the next 25 years, and Google fronted $300 million for homeowners to purchase their own rooftop solar panels.
Why the big bucks? For starters, they need the power. Along with Facebook, these tech companies all operate massive, electricity-guzzling data centers scattered throughout the country’s remote areas. Every time you upload a picture to iCloud or open a Google Doc, the data is housed in places like western North Carolina or central Oregon. The electricity that keeps those servers humming (plus the intricate cooling systems that monitor their temperature) consumes a whole two percent of America’s energy usage, according to a 2010 estimate. So it’s easy to see why techies would be interested in finding energy that’s both cheap and clean.
Apple and Google, who both have tens of billions in free cash, are making the smart business decision to build their own solar capacity now, rather than pay utilities over the long haul. It’s similar to the difference in cost between sitting on the lump sum and using it to rent an apartment for 30 years or spending it all now to buy a house without a mortgage.
Google’s huge push for residential solar power is particularly groundbreaking, but fits with the company’s ethos. The search engine has always promised it could make the Internet accessible for the masses, and now it’s doing the same with the democratization of energy. Partnered with SolarCity, their funding will pay for the installment of panels on nearly 25,000 roofs, giving each family true energy independence.
Just a few decades ago, these investments in solar power would have been considered wasteful. Solar and other renewable energy sources were commonly derided as “far-fetched and too expensive,” says V. John White, the executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies. “In the past 10 years, renewable sources have gone from being a slice of green on the dirty fossil-fuel grid to being cost competitive and more reliable than nuclear energy and coal, and catching up with natural gas. The cost of wind and solar power has fallen, and performance has improved.”
In California, that trend will be increasingly clear if Gov. Jerry Brown mandates that renewables account for half the Golden State’s electricity. As is typical in Silicon Valley, Apple and Google will once again be far ahead of the curve.
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After America Was Attacked, These Veterans Were Inspired to Protect and Serve

Posted on by robbie

At a Google Tech Talk yesterday, held at the company’s New York City offices, a panel of veterans recalled where they were on Sept. 11, 2001 — a date that motivated so many service members to join the Armed Forces.
In attendance was Joe Quinn, now the Northeast Director for Team Red, White & Blue, whose brother was one of the 658 employees at Cantor Fitzgerald who died when Flight 11 hit One World Trade Center. Former Green Beret Mark Nutsch told the story how he had to explain to his boys and his wife (seven months into her pregnancy) that he would soon have to deploy to get the bad guys. And Master Sergeant Eric Stebner spoke about earning the Silver Star for braving enemy fire to carry the bodies of fellow U.S. Army Rangers — including that of his best friend — in the battle of Takur Ghar in Afghanistan.
Carrie Laureno, founder of the Google Veterans Network, moderated the panel and emphasized the need to acknowledge these “achievements and contributions on behalf of all of us who have not served.”
Laureno led her team at Google Creative Lab to produce “The Call to Serve,” a temporary installation at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City to recognize the stories of Quinn, Nutsch and Stebner, among others. Reacting to the museum lacking any recognition of military accomplishments in the permanent exhibit, Laureno developed this tribute to the untold stories of military members who have served since 9/11.
Touch screens in the exhibit draw you into these stories using Google Tour Builder technology that integrates Google Earth imagery with personal photos and anecdotes provided by nine veterans.
While the exhibit will only be on view this week, as part of the 9/11 Museum’s “Salute to Service,” the tribute will remain online indefinitely.
Browse through the stories of the responders whose stories and service deserve recognition and thanks, then spread the word with the #ThankAVet hashtag.

The Doctor Is In…Your Living Room

Posted on by robbie

Ever Google “stomachache” and get scared into thinking you had appendicitis? Couldn’t decide whether that rash was skin cancer or contact dermatitis? Well pretty soon, you’ll be able to scroll past the witchdoctor websites and get the expert diagnosis you need from an online doctor’s visit.
Through their “Helpouts” product, Google is currently running a pilot program that uses search terms to connect would-be patients with doctors via video conference. According to the New York Times, they’ve partnered with Scripps and One Medical, groups that are “making their doctors available and have verified their credentials.”
An accurate diagnosis isn’t the only potential benefit, either. For those who look to the private sector to rebalance American healthcare costs, Engadget.com is speculating that internet-appointments could help bring down the cost of seeing a doctor.
Jonothan Linkous, chief executive of the American Telemedicine Association points out that “between 800,000 and one million consultations will be done over the Internet directly to consumers in the United States” this year. So it’s no surprise that the tech behemoth is looking to carve out a piece of the healthcare pie.
Google isn’t the only tech giant looking to elbow into the U.S.’s $3 trillion healthcare industry. Apple’s new HealthKit records a user’s vitals and physical activity for synching with third-party health and fitness apps. And, similar to Google, Wal-mart is testing Kaiser Permanente Care Corners, a telemedicine clinic where eligible members can walk in without an appointment to confer with a doctor.
So keep your slippers and bathrobe on next time you’re home sick — and keep your laptop close by, too.

You Can Now Have a Virtual Picnic in the Park, Thanks to Google

Posted on by robbie

California’s Department of Parks and Recreation is getting a facelift, and Google is operating.
The Mountain View-based company has spent the last three months traversing the California countryside, through the towering redwoods and atop Mt. Tamalpais to create virtual maps for more than a dozen parks, helping the once-antiquated state agency plug in and capture a new audience online.

“Information is key for people who are not active users of state parks,” says Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation. “You want to know what a place is like. You want to prepare in advance.”

Google mapped the parks at no cost, using Google Trekker, which was previously used on the Grand Canyon in 2012, according to the Los Angeles Times. Users can view the virtual images of the 14 parks mapped using the Street View feature, with the aim of attracting a younger generation of potential hikers and campers.

“It’s really important to connect a new generation to California parks,”  says Jon Christensen, a UCLA senior researcher working on the software. “We know that generation is very technologically adept and socially connected.”

The impetus to play tech catch-up was prompted by an accounting scandal in 2012, which revealed millions of dollars concealed in a department account during the height of state park budget cuts. Earlier this year in April, the Parks Forward Commission, an independent group created by the Legislature, issued a report finding that the parks system “is debilitated by an outdated organizational structure, underinvestment in technology and business tools, and a culture that has not rewarded excellence, innovation, and leadership.”

In addition to the maps, California officials have also begun experimenting with mobile parking payment at some state beaches in Orange County, while budding architecture students at Cal Poly Pomona are designing park cabins as an alternative for camping out in a tent. And state officials plan to triple the number of parks where visitors can pay fees by credit card by the end of the year, too.

Elsewhere in San Francisco, Stamen Design is teaming up with conservation group Resources Legacy Fund to develop a mobile application to assist users with navigating programs and activities throughout the state’s park system, regardless of whether they’re operated by a government agency.

“Years from now, when we look at the parks system, this is the time when we had the opportunity to make great change,” says Lisa Mangat, acting parks director.

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The Tech Giant That’s Playing Fairy Godmother to Teachers Nationwide

Posted on by robbie

Google is getting an A+ in generosity this month.

Teachers in Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Kansas City, Austin and Washington D.C. and more have been #FlashFunded (a social media campaign we can get behind) by the tech titan — meaning that educators in these cities recently saw every single item on their DonorsChoose.org (a crowdfunding site where teachers post items or materials they need for their classrooms) wishlists completely funded.

In Los Angeles, Google donated $1 million to 769 teachers, who will receive school materials such as paper, pencils, books, laptops, musical instruments and microscopes for their 75,108 students, the Santa Monica Mirror reports.
And in Massachusets, Google forked out $175,000 to 202 Boston and Cambridge teachers. (If you click on this DonorsChoose link, for example, you’ll see that every project that was listed on Boston’s page has been removed.)
Google’s move got a hearty pat on the back from native son, Ben Affleck.
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Austin received $87,803 for 133 projects, and teachers in Seattle had 341 back-to-school projects funded. Incredibly, a $240,000 donation to Washington D.C.’s teachers has impacted a total of 31,362 of the area’s students.
“We are so humbled and grateful to Google for their devotion to our teachers and students,” says Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, after a $194,370 donation funded 175 projects in greater Kansas City. “This is a great day for Kansas City classrooms.”
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Google’s gesture not only ensures that teachers in high-need communities have the supplies and tools they need to help students succeed, but it also alleviates a very expensive burden many of them probably face. As we previously reported, the average educator spends $350 of his or her own money for classroom supplies and resources (and we already know that our country’s teachers don’t make a lot of money). By allowing our nation’s teachers spend less time worrying about money, they can devote more time educating students instead.
This isn’t the first time Google has made a generous donation to help our nation’s educators soar, and undoubtedly, their current nationwide blitz is getting teachers in other cities very excited.
We wait with baited breath to see which city’s deserving students and teachers get #FlashFunded next.
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Will California’s New Kill Switch Policy Reduce Phone Theft?

Posted on by robbie

From family photos, banking information and all our correspondence (both text and email), we keep just about everything stored on our smartphones these days. So if yours is stolen, it can be very traumatic knowing that all your information is in the hands of a criminal. (Not to mention the amount money it’ll cost you to replace your phone.)
In an effort to prevent phone theft, Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that requires smartphone manufacturers to include a default kill switch on all phones sold across the state (after July 1, 2015), which allows individuals to remotely disable a phone after it’s been reported stolen. Only an owner can reactivate the phone with a password or personal identification number — meaning a phone becomes useless after it’s taken.
Introduced by state senator Mark Leno and sponsored by San Francisco district attorney George Gascón, the bill is the first of its kind. Though Minnesota became the first state to require the anti-theft technology on phones in May, California’s new policy requires manufacturers to turn on the switch by default.
“California has just put smartphone thieves on notice,” Leno says in a statement. “Starting next year, all smartphones sold in California, and most likely every other state in the union, will come equipped with theft deterrent technology when they purchase new phones. Our efforts will effectively wipe out the incentive to steal smartphones and curb this crime of convenience, which is fueling street crime and violence within our communities.”
Indeed, 2,400 cellphones were taken last year in San Francisco, the New York Times reports. More than 65 percent of all robberies in the City by the Bay involved stolen phones, while in Oakland, cell phone theft accounted for 75 percent of crimes, according to Time. In total, an estimated 3.1 million devices in the U.S. were taken in 2013, nearly double the number in 2012, Consumer Reports finds.
“Soon, stealing a smartphone won’t be worth the trouble, and these violent street crimes will be a thing of the past,” Gascón says in a statement. “The devices we use every day will no longer make us targets for violent criminals.”
But does the new law have the potential to prevent phone theft nationwide? California lawmakers are hoping that by requiring the feature in one of the nation’s biggest states, companies like Apple, Samsung or Google will begin adding the default feature to all phones ahead of potential legislation in other states.
While the default feature is a new development, earlier this year big brands like Nokia, Motorola and Samsung agreed to voluntarily include a kill-switch for users to opt-in after July 2015.
Apple has included a similar feature since September. In fact, recent reports from police in major urban areas like San Francisco and London reveal that theft of Apple devices has dropped in the wake of the company’s introduction of its anti-theft feature.
But not all are in favor of the new ruling. CTIA, the wireless industry’s trade organization, has railed against the proposal as detrimental to technology innovation.

The “action was unnecessary given the breadth of action the industry has taken,” says CTIA vice president Jamie Hastings. “Uniformity in the wireless industry created tremendous benefits for wireless consumers, including lower costs and phenomenal innovation. State-by-state technology mandates, such as this one, stifle those benefits and are detrimental to wireless consumers.”

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The Computer Will See You Now

Posted on by robbie

You’re back from a fun weekend at the beach and want to tag all your friends in the photos you took. That’s easy: Facebook’s facial recognition software does it automatically.
Or say, your doctor just took CAT-scan images of your chest and wants to tag everything that might be a lung tumor. Can computers do that, too?
Jeremy Howard says they can. The data scientist is the CEO of a just-launched company called Enlitic. He’s leveraging the power of a concept dubbed “deep learning” to develop ways for computers to spot injuries and diseases in X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs and other medical imaging, according to MIT Technology Review.
In the quest to make machines smarter, computers scientists have turned away from simply pumping the devices full of more and more facts and toward programming them to look for patterns and make connections on their own. This is deep learning — teaching computers to work the way the human brain does.
Deep learning is helping Google create self-driving cars and IBM make a computer that can win Jeopardy. Enlitic wants to use it to help doctors do their jobs better and faster.
Enlitic’s approach is to feed into a computer hundreds of pictures of, say, malignant liver growths, allowing the computer to identify the common characteristics they share. The computer can then begin to automatically tag tumors in medical images, highlighting areas for doctors to examine more closely.
Part of the venture’s appeal, for Howard, is that it’s a chance to apply data-mining techniques to a problem that’s more worthwhile than helping businesses figure out who your friends are or what you’ll want to watch next on Netflix.
“Data science is a very sexy job at the moment,” he tells Wired. “But when I look at what a lot of data scientists are actually doing, the vast majority of work out there is on product recommendations and advertising technology and so forth.”
Howard isn’t the only one working on ways to apply data science to medicine. Stanford University computer scientist Daphne Koller is training computers to analyze breast cancer scans. Her invention, Computational Pathologist (C-Path), also learns as it goes, figuring out which characteristics are the most important to look for.
Not only can Koller’s C-Path catch breast cancer tumors, it can also analyze them to predict patient survival rates.
Howard says his goal is not to replace radiologists and other doctors who examine medical images, but to help them be more efficient.
With deep learning computers on the rise in medicine, it may only be a matter of time before computers are tagging not only your vacation photos but your X-rays, too.
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How a Former Google Engineer Plans to Change the Government for Good

Posted on by robbie

Last fall, when the government stumbled launching the HealthCare.gov website last fall, Google engineer Mikey Dickerson stepped in to save the day.
Now, the White House is once again reaching out to Silicon Valley and carving out a permanent position for Dickerson, appointing him deputy chief information officer of the federal government and the administrator of the United States Digital Services Team.
Dickerson will helm a small team of digital experts aimed at repairing other government websites and computer systems, signaling a shift toward using technology to improve government efficiency. The goal is make these sites more accessible, user-friendly and as enjoyable as logging on to Facebook or Amazon, Dickerson told the New York Times.
Dickerson recalls walking into the storm that was the headquarters of of HealthCare.gov in Columbia, Md., in the winter of 2013.

“It was a very life-changing experience,” he says, adding his dismay over the lack of modern tools present to track data or better understand why the site was crashing.

“It’s easy just to order a bunch of machines and install them, and we’re doing all that stuff,” he says. “But you have to find exactly where is the choke point, and it’s a very compacted system.”

Dickerson likens his job to a traffic engineer, identifying where back-ups and bottlenecks exist. When the White House asked him to leave his job at Google for the new position, “there was really not any way I could say no to that,” he says.

In tandem with Dickerson’s hire, the White House also released a draft “playbook” to assist technology officers across federal agencies, using some of processes and tools enlisted in fixing the health care site last year.

The Digital Services Team plans to act as a sort of emergency responder to federal websites and systems temporarily stalled, but Dickerson also hopes to preemptively help agencies and anticipate potential problems on the horizon.

For now, the team will operate on a small scale, with only $3 million in the government’s technology budget. But the government has requested $13 million for next year and has plans to expand the team to as many as 25 people to help Dickerson revolutionize the next generation of government.

To us, that sounds like a goal that is certainly worth the cost.

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These Students Find Out What It’s Like to Run in Someone Else’s Shoes

Posted on by robbie

There is nothing quite as inspiring as watching your country’s Olympic team parade into the stadium behind their flag or seeing the amazing feats accomplished by the athletes.
Well, now with a partnership between Classroom Champions and Google Glass, some students will be able to see what it is like to compete like an athlete.
Started by Olympic bobsled gold-medalist Steve Mesler and Leigh Mesler Parise in 2009, Classroom Champions brings together athletes and students in kindergarten through eighth great at high-needs schools. During its inaugural academic year of 2011-2012, the group had five Olympians and two Paralympians working with 28 classrooms. As of the 2012-2013 school year, that number had increased to 35 classrooms and a pilot classroom in Costa Rica.
Working as mentors, each athlete adopts three to 10 classrooms per year and sends video lessons or participates in live video chats with the classroom a few times each month. Although the videos correspond with everyday school lessons – letter writing, reading, geography, math and technology – they add a new dimension to the everyday, mundane classroom activities. These athlete-mentors don’t teach from a textbook, but through their own personal experiences. They document their journeys, emphasizing how hard-work, training, goal setting, leadership, competition and, most of all, perseverance are the keys to success.
The goal? To inspire these children to dream and strive to achieve the impossible.
And now, thanks to Google, Classroom Champions is pushing it to the next level by giving their students the chance to see the world through the eyes of a blind Paralympian jumper Lex Gillette.
This year, Google launched its Giving Through Glass competition, which awards five winners with a pair of Google Glass, a $25,000 grant, Google Glass developers and a visit to the Google headquarters.
Classroom Champions is one of those recipients. Their plan is to have Paralympians wear Google Glass so that students can understand what it is like to live and compete with a disability. More importantly, however, it is showing how their determination and abilities, not their disabilities, defines these athletes.
For Gillette, the opportunity to share his experience is once in a lifetime.
“There’s a lot of things that go on with that, having someone basically directing me down this runway, and I’m running fast, he’s making calls on the fly,” Gillette told Fast Co. Exist. “I think it would definitely be cool [for kids to] see how all of that happens, see what that would look like in a visual sense.”
While most will never compete at this level like Gillette, Classroom Champions and Google Glass is helping these students to visualize their own track to success.
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