Google turns the Sydney Opera House into an online exhibit

Google has launched a new interactive featurethat brings users inside the Sydney Opera House, one of the world’s most iconic works of architecture. The online exhibit, launchedthis week by the Google Cultural Institute, features more than 1,000 artifacts about the opera house, including early designs from architect Jørn Utzon, rare photographs, and a detailed look at the building’s mechanical organ, the world’s largest. Google has also released a 360-degree video of the venue, as well as a Street View feature (embedded below) that takes users inside the landmark.
The Sydney Opera House is just the latest addition to the Google Cultural Institute, which launched in 2011with the aim of bringing the world’s most treasured art and artifacts online. The institute has previously produced similar online exhibits about the Holocaust, Indian culture and heritage, and Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years.

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Google is helping this school build a ‘Waze’ for the blind

Like many Bostonians, Joann Becker uses her smartphone to find the nearest bus stop. Unfortunately, GPS is only accurate give or take 30-feet, and unlike most people, Becker can’t look up to see exactly where the bus is going to stop. Becker is blind.
Her employer, the Perkins School for the Blind, is building an app that crowdsources micro-location information. It’s starting with local bus stops but developers think it can eventually help address the “last 30-feet” problem faced by visually impaired commuters all over the world.
Now the Perkins School is getting a little help, and $750,000, from a technology company that knows a thing or two about mapping: Google.
Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google, is giving out more than $20 million in grants to organizations that are using technology to help people with disabilities. The company announced the 30 winners of its Google Disability Challenge on Tuesday, with an average of $750,000 going to each organization. Google received over a thousand applications from 88 countries after announcing the contest last year.
“This particular topic was of interest because it was really globally relevant,” said Google’s Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink, who led the challenge. “One in seven people around the world has a disability.”
The final grants will help people with a wide range of disabilities. There are groups 3D printing prosthetics and creating software that helps people with Autism Spectrum Disorders practice job interviews on digital people.
The Center for Discovery is getting $1 million to make indieGo, an open-sourced device that can turn a manual wheelchair into a power wheelchair. Ezer Mizion and Click2Speak are working on an on-screen keyboard that helps people with impaired motor skills type without their hands. Google.org is giving them $400,000.
Not all of the innovations Google is funding are high-tech. Miraclefeet will use its $1 million grant to expand the use of SMS messages to help clubfoot patients keep up with treatments.
Perkins is just one organization helping the visually impaired. As the first school for the blind in the United States, the school has always worked on innovative technology, but this is its first smartphone app.
“We see so much potential for mobile applications to help the blind, it’s like a brand new tool to go after the old stubborn problems,” said Perkins’ president Dave Power. The school is working with Raizlabs, a software development team in Boston.
The school got the idea after Becker mentioned her bus stop woes. An avid walker, her route can change from day to day, and she often visits new neighborhoods for her job.
“Thirty feet makes all the difference between a bus moving right past me to actually stopping where it ought to,” said Becker.
The app is still in the early stages but they hope to have a final version next year. It will ask sighted commuters to share more detailed information about bus stops they visit, such as the exact space where a bench or shelter is located. It will motivate people to contribute information by making it into a game or offering rewards like a discount on coffee.
Google isn’t just offering money to these organizations, it’s also connecting them with its own experts to consult on the final products. It has a special connection in mind for the Perkins School.
“We at Google actually have a team that does a lot of crowdsourced clues” said Gosselink. “It’s called Waze.”

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Google agrees to join T-Mobile’s ‘Binge On’

T-Mobile’s controversial “Binge On” program has added an industry heavyweight to its streaming video service lineup.
Google said in a blog post that YouTube and Google Play Movies have joined the program.
Binge On launched back in November with 24 services, such as Netflix and HBO Go. The service lets users stream video without it counting toward a customer’s data plan.
Google, however, agreed to join Binge On only after T-Mobile made changes to the service.
“The initial implementation of the Binge On program raised questions from both users and video services, including YouTube,” Google said.
T-Mobile, it said, has now agreed to give customers “more help to understand” how the program works and allowed Google to retain more control over how its steaming content is “optimized.”
“We think these changes, which T-Mobile is making for all users and video providers on a non-preferential basis, can help insure the program works well for all users and the entire video ecosystem,” Google said.
The Binge On program was initially met with criticism, with several reports and opinion pieces accusing T-Mobile of “throttling” customers by downgrading video quality.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere said at the time that special interest groups were purposely confusing people about the program.
“Throttling is slowing data and removing customer control,” Legere said. “Let me be clear: Binge On is neither of those things … I think they may be using net neutrality as a platform to get into the news.”
— Hope King contributed to this report.

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Google, JetBlue, eBay join alliance to combat wildlife trafficking

The U.S. Wildlife Trafficking Alliance says it’s teamed up with 13 companies, including Google, eBay and JetBlue, to tackle illegal trafficking of wildlife.
Each of the companies will go after trafficking in different ways, depending on their particular areas of expertise and zones of influence in the business world.
Other companies in the new alliance include Tiffany&Co., Ralph Lauren, Discovery Communications and Etsy, the alliance says.
Sophia Mendelsohn, head of sustainability for JetBlue, said the airline will educate passengers traveling to trafficking hot spots like Latin America that it is illegal to dine on certain animals or take others home as pets.
“It’s about stopping the problem before it gets to the point of being on an airplane,” she said. “Once it’s in a box or a bag on an airplane, it’s already too late.”
Discovery said it will educate its viewers and reach out to schools about trafficking of endangered wildlife. The company is also creating virtual reality content to be shown at zoos and aquariums about wildlife trafficking.
David J. Hayes, chair of the U.S. Wildlife Trafficking Alliance and former deputy secretary of the Interior, said that “some companies have platforms that traffickers use, or try to use, to sell their products.”
He said that eBay and Google are “raising their efforts to develop algorithms and other methods to stop the selling of illegal products.”
Google Shopping already has a policy against the advertising of products from “threatened or extinct species” like tigers, shark fins, elephant ivory, tiger skins, rhino horn and dolphin oil.
Etsy already has a policy prohibiting the sale of live animals as well as parts made from endangered animals and cats and dogs. An Etsy spokeswoman said that joining the alliance will help the company “share knowledge and continue to combat bad actors in our marketplace.”
Tiffany will partner with other jewelers to educate them about the harm of selling jewelry made from wildlife, like ivory from elephants, according to Hayes.
Poaching and the international black market in wildlife parts is a multi-billion dollar industry that’s been linked to the funding of terrorism, according to Representative Ted Poe, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Non-Proliferation and Trade.
The illegal wildlife trade “runs the gamut from illegal logging of protected forests to supply the demand for exotic woods, to the illegal fishing of endangered marine life for food, and the poaching of elephants to supply the demand for ivory,” according to the U.S. Fish&Wildlife Service International Affairs.
Ivory harvested from illegally killed elephants and rhinoceroses is most one of the notorious aspects of the industry. Despite the efforts of some African nations to stop the poaching, it’s caused a massive reduction in animal populations.