DigiTech Geeks

Expanding Google Arts and Culture with Expeditions When I first joined Google 13 years ago, I was most excited by the company's sense of exploration and possibility. Search allowed you to look up nearly any fact in the world and Maps helped you find even the most remote destination. That spirit of possibility also led to the launch of Google Expeditions, a virtual reality (VR) tool designed to bring the world into every classroom. With this product, educators took students on new adventures to experience far-away places, travel back in time or learn about cultures unlike their own. It has been truly magical to see how educators and students alike incorporated our VR tours into their imaginative curriculums. Engaging students in the classroom has taken on an entirely different meaning this year. As schools around the world reimagine education from the ground up for a hybrid world, we’ve also been thinking deeply about how to adjust our tools to meet the moment and simultaneo...

5 ways to celebrate TensorFlow's 5th birthday Five years ago, we open-sourced TensorFlow , our machine learning framework for research and production. Our goal was to expand access to state-of-the-art machine learning tools so anyone could use them. Since then, TensorFlow has become the most popular machine learning library in the world, with over 160 million downloads. Seeing so many people use TensorFlow is an incredible and humbling experience, and we’re thankful for the thousands of people outside of Google who have contributed code, created educational content and organized developer events around the world to support TensorFlow and the growing machine learning community. To celebrate five years of TensorFlow, we’d like to point out a few interactive demos you can try from your browser with a single click, as well as some tutorials that can help you create your own projects. If you’re new to TensorFlow, these are a great way to get a feel for what it can do. And if you l...

How two Web Creators are celebrating Diwali For Web Creators, holidays can be a great way to connect with readers, providing tips and advice on how to prep for upcoming celebrations. Diwali , also known as the Festival of Lights, marks the beginning of the new Hindu year and is celebrated by spending time with friends and family, eating delicious foods, decorating with colorful designs and lighting diyas (oil lamps), which represent goodness and purity.  This year we sat down with two popular Web Creators, Hetal Vasavada (founder of Milk & Cardamom ) and Neha Mathur (founder of Whisk Affair ) to discuss how they approach the holidays from a content perspective and their must-have Diwali snacks. How does a big holiday affect the way that you create content online? Hetal: I’ve always shared all my recipes on my blog and the one thing bloggers know is that we do a lot of work for free. This year is actually the first time that I’ve ever done an Ebook. I...

Behind the scenes with a Pixel camera product manager Pixels have always been known for their incredible cameras. The recently-launched Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 are no exception, and include new features like Night Sight in Portrait Mode and Cinematic Pan.  Anyone can enjoy these new capabilities—or at the very least, the photos they produce. But we thought photography buff and Pixel Camera product manager Isaac Reynolds was best-suited to take us inside what’s new, and even let us in on his photo and video background. What originally got you into photography? I wish I remembered! When I scroll way back in Google Photos, I can see I photographed my first airshow at an air force base near Seattle in 2008. That desire to remember special moments beautifully and permanently stays with me today. Since then I’ve gotten into videography as well. It’s so much more challenging and time-consuming, but more rewarding and flexible, creatively.  What subjects and styles do you l...

Supporting Australia’s economic recovery There’s no doubt 2020 has been a really tough year, testing the resolve of all Australian businesses and communities. Despite the challenges, though, we’ve seen some of the best of Aussie entrepreneurship and resilience. Lost in Books —a multilingual bookstore that temporarily moved online—is just one example of the many inspirational businesses that have adapted how they do things to continue serving their customers.  I’m sharing an update here on how Google Australia has been working to help business owners across the country with our tools and services, training and support—so they can get back up and running.  Supporting small businesses  There are millions of small businesses in Australia; they're the lifeblood of local communities and critical to our economy. And as new Google Search insights show, Australians want to back their local businesses. In fact, searches for supporting local and small business are the highes...

Tenor, text sets, captions come to Web Stories for WordPress If you’re already using Web Stories for WordPress , we have a sweet new update for you—and if you’re not, now is the time to get started. Web Stories for WordPress 1.1 is the first major update after the initial stable release and includes three big updates: Great typography at your fingertips with the help of the new font-aware text sets, countless high performance GIFs powered by Tenor and caption support for videos. On the text tab, you’ll now find a list of high quality text sets created specifically for editorial use-cases. We partnered with the typography experts at iA , known for its award-winning app iA Writer and  world-class typography craftsmanship. The result is a set of carefully created combinations that let you mix and match different harmonious typography, and a dynamic toggle (“Fonts in Use”) that shows you only text sets that match what you’re already using, so you can be confident tha...

Bickey Russell finds inspiration from his native Bangladesh Welcome to the latest edition of “My Path to Google,” where we talk to Googlers, interns and alumni about how they got to Google, what their roles are like and even some tips on how to prepare for interviews. Having spent his childhood between London, Milan and Dhaka, Bangladesh, Bickey Russell began his career at Google in sales before pursuing his passion for developing technology to serve under-resourced communities. Today, he’s the founder and leader of Kormo Jobs . Guided by Google's commitment to our AI Principles , Bickey and his team are helping job seekers across Bangladesh, Indonesia, and India find meaningful work.  What’s your role at Google? I founded the Kormo Jobs app and currently lead global product operations for it as well as some other new projects in the Next Billion Users initiative at Google. I drive Kormo Jobs’ go-to-market approach. This involves things like working with employers to us...

A sign language app to bridge the hearing gap My partners and I started DeafTawk , a mobile application that provides online sign language interpretation at an affordable cost, to eradicate hurdles in communication for the deaf community. I was born blind, like my co-founder AQ, while our other-co-founder, Wamiq, is hearing impaired. Growing up in Pakistan, each of us was well aware that there are too many barriers for people with disabilities to be successful.  Our tagline for DeafTawk is “Bridge the Gap.” We thought, wouldn’t it be incredible if we could connect deaf people all over the world with quick and easy sign language interpretation, from their phones? We started in 2018 with two interpreters and no customers. Today, we have more than 1,100 interpreters and we’ve helped nearly 18,000 people in Singapore and Pakistan. But we wanted to do more. As we looked to the next stage for DeafTawk, we knew that we still had our own gaps that we wanted to bridge. We we...

An update to storage policies across your Google Account Over the past decade, Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos have helped billions of people securely store and manage their emails, documents, photos, videos and more. Today, people are uploading more content than ever before—in fact, more than 4.3 million GB are added across Gmail, Drive and Photos every day.  To continue providing everyone with a great storage experience and to keep pace with the growing demand, we're announcing important upcoming storage changes to your Google Account . These changes will apply to Photos and Drive (specifically Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard files) and will enable us to continue investing in these products for the future. We're also introducing new policies for consumer Google Accounts that are either inactive or over their storage limit across Gmail, Drive (including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard files) and Photos, to bring our...

What veterans can bring to the business world 2019 Google for Startups networking event for Veterans and Military Spouses at the American Underground in Durham, NC. Photo by Erin Bell of Bull City Photography. For veterans, the transition from military life to the workforce can be tricky. I know how crucial it is to offer support, because I’ve been there myself. It's not that I doubted my abilities, but after eight years as a Navy officer, I quite literally did not know what my options were in the professional world. Kevin Ryan Thankfully, I was fortunate to land in a challenging role with a ton of support at Google. Even still, I remember feeling completely overwhelmed during my first two weeks before realizing when I had felt just as lost before: My first time on a submarine. When I first struggled to get my bearings on a ship, I taught myself to focus on the task at hand and get the job done.  Similarly, when I first started out in tech I didn’t nec...

Dive into Diwali at home with Google Arts & Culture Every autumn, millions of people around the world come together for firework displays, feasts, prayer, and festivities in celebration of Diwali—the festival of lights. Millions of clay lamps illuminate homes and public spaces. Floors are covered with cheerful rangolis to bring good luck. With the food, family and festivities, Diwali is all about the experience of coming together, and the vibrant spectacle of color and light, but the global pandemic changes how we celebrate this year. Google Arts & Culture has created a virtual Diwali experience that everyone can be a part of, wherever you are in the world. Festive lights in Augmented Reality To recreate some festival fervor, try out a new Augmented Reality experience . Decorate your space virtually with diyas (lamps), detonate virtual anar (firecrackers), for some explosive, playful fun, and to learn more about these important cultural traditions. ...

Say G’day to Aussie AR Animals Australia is home to some of the most magnificent creatures in the animal kingdom: birds that laugh , duck-billed monotremes and marsupials that smile , hop and sleep for ~20 hours a day . They can’t be found in the wild anywhere else in the world. Until now.  With AR on Google, you can meet eight life-sized Aussie animals up close and bring them into your backyard, living room, classroom—or take them on your adventures. Just search for koala, kangaroo, quokka, wombat, platypus, emu, kookaburra or echidna on your mobile browser (Android or iOS) or in the Google App and tap “View in 3D.” 10:25 You’ll be able to see their life-size scale, detail, movement—and even hear their sounds on Android devices (sounds are coming soon to iOS too). You’ll also be able to capture content of these Aussie icons. Our fascination with Aussie creatures, especially koalas, has been on the rise this year. During Austra...

Joining the European Commission’s Pact for Skills During the pandemic, online tools have been a lifeline, helping us to stay connected, learn and work remotely and support local businesses. These same tools are vital to help Europe’s economic recovery, where we see an urgent need for new sets of digital skills . In fact, research conducted by Google and The McKinsey Global Institute before COVID-19 shows that, to ensure job creation, more than 90 million workers may need to develop significant new skills. The pandemic has only accelerated this trend. Google has responded by renewing our commitment to skills training through our Grow with Google program, which has trained millions of people on digital skills since it was founded five years ago, and contributed to two million Europeans finding a new job or growing their business or career. Since lockdowns started in March, we’ve trained an additional one million people in Europe alone. This includes Korina in Greece, who after a...

Understanding Africa’s $180B internet economy future Genetic scientists study human DNA to better understand medical conditions and how to treat diseases. But their research is often based on samples that don’t actually reflect the world’s population. Around 80 percent of the human DNA used in genetic studies is from people of European descent. This means that researchers are often unable to study and address conditions that affect global ethnicities.  In January 2019, Abasi Ene-Obong, a young tech engineer from Nigeria, founded 54gene with the aim of making gene studies more representative by increasing access to African genomic data—which currently accounts for less than 3 percent of all genetic data sets. After securing two rounds of funding, 54gene has gone on to complete a fully resourced biobank in Lagos, crucial to support academic research, drug development, and disease detection. Ene-Obong’s story is just one example of how talented African entrepreneurs are creat...

How Google supports military communities As a major in the California Army National Guard, I generally know in advance when I'll be activated for military service. But this year, everything was different: Between the COVID-19 response and the California wildfires, I've taken military leave from my job at Google as a strategy and operations lead more than a few times. I was gone for three months to help with the COVID-19 response, followed by another week-long activation. Helping my community during these difficult times has been both draining and fulfilling. When I’m activated on short notice, my team at Google immediately steps in to cover my work while I’m gone. I feel remarkably supported by my peers and manager and recognize how fortunate I am to work at a company that respects and welcomes people with part-time active duty military roles like me, as well as other veterans and their families.  Not only do I feel supported by my colleagues at Google, I am incredibly pro...