Google and Pac-Man

So apparently Pac-Man turns 30 today (didn't know that we shared the same birth year....). I can't do as big of a tribute to this amazing game as Google did though! Not only can you saarch for site through Google today, but you can also play Pac-Man!
Enjoy ~SJ

Origami Hippo

My students and I have had a running joke about hippos that steams from the Pythagorean Theorem. We also have been working on origami on and off all year long, so last night I got the idea of teaching them how to make an origami hippo. One small problem though, I don't know how to make an origami hippo, nor do I have a pattern - Google to the rescue! I did a little searching, found a few patterns but nothing that I really liked. While in search of the perfect paper hippo I updated my Facebook status to "is wondering how to make an origami hippo, anyone know?" Within moments I had a response complete with links, another few moments and I Mi Prima offer to look at the library for me today. Talk about service! Today I had a few moments so I gave one of the hippos a try, very simple and it might be the one I teach them how to make. With a few changes in the "nose" folding it could become an elephant too!

Enjoy ~SJ

Powering Google

I read this today on the Official Google Blog. I had never thought of the fact that when I do an internet search there are some sort of infrastructure out there powering my search. Thought I would share this amazing post in case you aren't as geeky as me and have an RSS feed on the Official Google Blog.

Not long ago, answering a query meant traveling to the reference desk of your local library. Today, search engines enable us to access immense quantities of useful information in an instant, without leaving home. Tools like email, online books and photos, and video chat all increase productivity while decreasing our reliance on car trips, pulp and paper.

But as computers become a bigger part of more people's lives, information technology consumes an increasing amount of energy, and Google takes this impact seriously. That's why we have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal. In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query.

Recently, though, others have used much higher estimates, claiming that a typical search uses "half the energy as boiling a kettle of water" and produces 7 grams of CO2. We thought it would be helpful to explain why this number is *many* times too high. Google is fast — a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds. Queries vary in degree of difficulty, but for the average query, the servers it touches each work on it for just a few thousandths of a second. Together with other work performed before your search even starts (such as building the search index) this amounts to 0.0003 kWh of energy per search, or 1 kJ. For comparison, the average adult needs about 8000 kJ a day of energy from food, so a Google search uses just about the same amount of energy that your body burns in ten seconds.

In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don't reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those of in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches.

We've made great strides to reduce the energy used by our data centers, but we still want clean and affordable sources of electricity for the power that we do use. In 2008 our philanthropic arm, Google.org, invested $45 million in breakthrough clean energy technologies. And last summer, as part of our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative (RE), we created an internal engineering group dedicated to exploring clean energy.

We're also working with other members of the IT community to improve efficiency on a broader scale. In 2007 we co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a group which champions more efficient computing. This non-profit consortium is committed to cutting the energy consumed by computers in half by 2010 — reducing global CO2 emissions by 54 million tons per year. That's a lot of kettles of tea.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations

Enjoy ~SJ

Google Reader, RSS Feeds and iGoogle

I am working with a group of teachers in the area brainstorming litercay and technology together. Last week we got together for the day and had the opportunity to work on lots of internet projects that I have been wanting to work the kinks out of. For many people in the group blogs and Google accounts were new to them. After our day of working together I told them that I would write on our group blog how to set up several useful tools with their new Google accounts. Below is what I wrote for them, I thought I would share with my dedicated blog followers in case there was something new for them.

Once you catch the blog bug you will start finding a vast number of blogs that you want to follow. There are a vast number of well written and useful technology education blogs that I try to follow on a regular basis (links to follow later).

Now that we all have Google accounts with gmail and blogger access we can use another Google product to help us keep track of our blogs. Google Reader allows you to subscribe to the blogs that you are interested in following and saves you checking all of the blog links for new postings. Whenever there is a new post on one of the blogs that you follow it gets fed into your Google Reader. Basically what Google Reader does is goes out to the blogs you tell it to and checks on a regular basis multiple times a day to see if there are any new posts. It is kind of like an email inbox for the internet. Your email all feeds into one place and you already check that on a regular basis, Google Reader allows many of the websites that you read on the internet be fed into an inbox.

You may have noticed that once you registered for your Google account you could make a new page for yourself called iGoogle. iGoogle is a page that you can customize with everything from news, your gmail, daily comics, games, and Google Reader. Below is a small screen shot of part of my iGoogle page.

Here are the steps that you need to follow in order to set up your iGoogle page.

1) Go to www.google.com
2) In the upper right hand corner click on iGoogle
3) In the new screen click on Sign In in the upper right hand corner
3) The next screen will ask you for your username and password

Now you are at your own iGoogle page which you can personalize. In order to personalize this page click on the "Add Stuff" link. On the next page you will be able to select different mini applications, or gadgets that you might find useful or fun. In order to add any gadget to your reader simply click on the "Add It Now" link below the gadget. This page is where you can find the Google Reader gadget by searching for "Google Reader".

Once you have the Google Reader gadget and all the other gadgets that you are interested in having on your iGoogle page click on "Back to iGoogle home" in the upper left hand corner. You will notice now that you iGoogle page has a new look. Congratulations, you now have set up your own personalized iGoogle page! If you like it, you may want to change your internet homepage to it.

Ok, so you have a google account, you have a personalized iGoogle page, and Google Reader can be found on your iGoogle page. Now it is time to add blogs to your Google Reader. Start by visiting www.google.com/reader Right now your Google Reader is empty, in order to add subscriptions, or blogs that you want to follow, click on "Add Subscription" in the left hand column. In the new box that pops up paste the link that you want to follow, for instance you might want to add http://sjbeat.blogspot.com

Last part of the Google Reader lesson, RSS Feeds. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Many websites that update themselves on a regular basis have an RSS feed. Like Google Reader, an RSS feed saves you the time of checking the website for updates and can feed it into your Google Reader. The image to the left is the universal RSS feed logo. Whenever you see this image on a website it means that you can feed the updates into your Google Reader. When you find a website that you like and it has the RSS logo click on it. On the next page you can choose to either feed the RSS updates to your iGoogle page or your Google Reader, the choice is yours.

If you have any questions, or my directions weren't clear enough, please post a comment and I will try to help you through the process.

Enjoy ~SJ

Live From MLTI

This is SJ reporting live from the Maine Laptop Technology Initiative (MLTI) 2008 Student Tech Team Conference. I am currently waiting for my Student Tech Team to arrive here on campus, once they get here they will help me with a workshop presentation on Sketch-Up. Sketch-Up is a wonderful free program from the amazing folks at google. It allows you to create 3-D models much like CAD.

Enjoy ~SJ

Google Foolin'

Google tried to pull a good April Fool's Day joke. I logged into my gmail account today to do a quick morning check of my email and discovered yet another wonderful google gadget - Google Custom Time! According to the website this new gadget allows you to send emails from the past, in other words you can send an email today, but you can set the date so that it was sent from the past. The catch is that Google will only allow you to send ten of these emails a year. Ahh Google you are funny!

Enjoy ~SJ

The Night Of No Technology

In all of my brilliance I took my briefcase into Mi Prima's house the other night so that my laptops (yes, I have two - my own MacBook, and the State issue MLTI) and my camera wouldn't get cold in the car. Well, as we went out the door to hang out at my house for the night I left the briefcase sitting by the door. Of course I did not realize that the bag and all of its precious contents were momentarily forgotten about until I pulled into my driveway 20 minutes later. Due to my desire to conserve gas we decided to "rough it" for the night without any way to access the internet. I know, I can hear you gasping in shock right now. It was a difficult night, we couldn't just Google burning trivial questions that we had, we couldn't surf Amazon to compare prices of random items, or watch mindless videos on YouTube. We managed to keep ourselves entertained by watching a few episodes of L Word and eating Ben & Jerry's. I somehow awoke the next morning still alive, yet itching to check my morning email and new sites. So after a few cups of coffee and some quick showers we went and rescued the precious electronics and headed out to the Corner Store (a.k.a. Dixfield University) for an afternoon of technology rejuvenation.

Enjoy ~SJ