"Google’s video would very nearly be a remake of this 2009 Nokia video if it weren’t for the fact that Nokia’s protagonist is a girl who’s happy to lounge around at home, and Google’s one stars a more active guy. (Note: Nokia has not brought such goggles to market to date. It just made a video about them.) Both of these movies fall into a genre I wrote about last week: corporate future-vision movies. Such films have been around for at least seventy years, and while they often depict things that come to be, in one form or another, I don’t see any evidence that they actually help the companies involved to do great things."

Google Flu Trends uses the tendency of people to seek online help for their health problems. By tracking searches for terms such as 'cough', 'fever' and 'aches and pains' it claims to be able to accurately estimate where flu is circulating.

"Google actually knows far more than browsing histories, though. It knows what people write in Gmail messages, what YouTube videos they prefer, and where they go with an Android phone." they seem to have a pretty accurate picture of me...

Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn’t feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers.

"Google said in May that by the end of this year another team planned to introduce a Web-connected light bulb that could communicate wirelessly with Android devices." Google X get serious about the IoT gold rush

"Augmented Reality superimposes digital Google SketchUp model to scale and geo-located on the physical world. View construction projects before they are built, preview kitchens, furniture in place, the options are endless. Simply move the device to change the Augmented Reality view in real-time. No markers needed."

A place where industry leaders, experts and Google's homegrown visionaries offer their insight and provide an outlook on what’s to come.

we saw most of this 90min film before one of the days session started - a really interesting project with some great footage - worth watching when it is available.

Bruce Sterling Google Talk on Spimes and the Internet of Things.

"This is a follow up to my previous post on using Google Powermeter, but this time I’m going to give a step by step guide to getting your data uploaded." useful guide

"Every bus and tram in Helsinki and the surrounding cities of Vaanta and Espoo are being fitted with Linux servers and GPS units. Every bus and tram in the conurbation will not only become a wireless hotspot serving broadband internet throughout the vehicle - for free - but every bus and tram is visible on a Google map that uses the same real-time passenger information as the controllers in their command centre."

"Those of us lucky enough to have one of these devices installed in our homes experienced first-hand how access to high-resolution energy use information drives meaningful behavior change (PDF). So we set out to make that data easier for everyone to access and understand by sending the collected data to our Google PowerMeter software." Google announce the first device partner for google powermeter - consumer focus in this product

"The complete TED 5000 system includes one Gateway, one pair of CTs, one MTU, and the optional TED 5000 Display. Users who choose to simply access their data via computer can opt for a display-free system." the display is optional - nice - integrates out the box with google powermeter

"For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search." Nick made an interesting comment that this model fits the Arup world. Chris mentioned that P&G are using Facebook internally. How do we Facebook the Arup intranet.

Access to all the data so you can make your own video... !!! "No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes."

"This year for Macworld I decided to create a program that allows people to "surf" any region on the Earth's surface using a Nintendo Wii Balance Board and the Google Earth API. To do this, I used the Google Earth Browser Plug-in with a Javascript API. The Wii Balance Board transmits the your movements to the Earth Surfer application using Bluetooth and allows you to maneuver a virtual milktruck by shifting your balance as if you were on a surfboard." this would be another nice way to navigate through an Arup Realtime model...

"Our sister paper the Sunday Times has caused something of a storm by publishing a story based on the research from a Harvard physicist who claimed that every Google search generates about 7g of CO2." via Gonzalo

Project 10100 (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Here's how to join in.

Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition.

The future of computing is already taking shape on campuses today, and Google and IBM are thrilled to help inspire a new generation of computer scientists to think big. All of the course material developed by UW as well as other tools and resources to facilitate teaching this cutting- edge technology is available at http://code.google.com/edu. If you're a student wondering just what this sort of thing means for you, check out the five-part video lecture series (originally offered to Google Engineering interns) that introduces some of the fundamental concepts of large-scale cluster computing.

last week Google added a new feature, called My Location, to its Web-based mapping service. My Location collects information from the nearest cell-phone tower to estimate a person's location within a distance of about 1,000 meters.

generic link to everyones scifoo photos (note also previous years)

nice example of letting users vote for the ideas that should be developed first.