Using Google Earth to hunt for treasure

For as long as I can remember my dad has had a real knack for doing puzzles, in particular cryptic crosswords. On the other hand, I don’t have a clue when it comes to puzzles. I just don’t seem to be able to get into that “figuring out puzzles” mindset. But my time may have come with the release of a new book The Great Global Treasure Hunt on Google Earth by Carlton Books.



Filled with beautiful artwork, The Great Global Treasure Hunt allows you to take part in an interactive puzzle quest that could lead to a €50,000 prize. You can take part in a journey of discovery as the book works with Google Earth to reveal a series of textual and visual clues. Once you’ve made sense of each of these, a picture will begin to emerge leading you to a specific location on Google Earth. When you think you picked apart the clues set by the book’s puzzle master, Dedopulos, you can submit your answer online for your chance to win the €50,000 prize.





One of Google Earth’s most notable attributes is its ability to facilitate a better understanding of the world around us. With more than 700 million activations, a new breed of “armchair explorers” with a thirst for information are using Google Earth to make new discoveries and enhance their understanding of our planet - and sometimes further afield. I’m really excited that this book uses Google Earth to add a 21st century technological twist to the world of mysteries and puzzles.



Happy hunting everyone.



Posted by Phil Verney, Program Manager, Google Earth and Google Maps

Congratulations Russia, the National Geographic World Champions

(Cross posted on the Official Google and Google Student blogs)

This island has a population of about 57,000 people, with the most settlements concentrated on the west coast. Very little of this island is suitable for agriculture.

After eight rounds of questions from none other than quiz king Alex Trebek himself, the team from Russia was crowned the National Geographic World Champions today at our Mountain View, Calif. headquarters after answering this final question correctly.

(By the way, the answer is Greenland.)

The National Geographic World Champions from Russia (photo courtesy of National Geographic)

Students from 17 regions around the world competed in the 2011 National Geographic World Championship. Today’s final round included answering a series of challenging questions like the one above. The students also interpreted maps and museum artifacts from the University of California Berkeley and fielded questions about live animals from the San Francisco Zoo during the earlier rounds of the competition.

Congratulations to the Russian team and to all of the students who participated. We look forward to seeing where your explorations and knowledge take you.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth

National Geographic World Championship comes to Google

(Cross posted on the Official Google and Google Student blogs)

It’s summer vacation for many kids, but 51 students from 17 different regions have been spending their time off polishing and fine-tuning their geographic skills to prepare for this year’s National Geographic World Championship, a biennial geography competition hosted by the National Geographic Society.

This year, Google is the proud sponsor and on Wednesday, July 27, we’ll host the three final teams from Canada, Chinese Taipei and Russia at our campus in Mountain View, California. The preliminary rounds included a written exam on Sunday and activities at the San Francisco Zoo on Monday morning. Teams ventured to various zoo exhibits and were asked to identify climate maps and geographic locations associated with 10 different animal habitats housed throughout the zoo.

Teams from Canada, Chinese Taipei and Russia will move on to the National Geographic World Championship

Since most of you can’t be here to witness the action in person, we’re going to live stream the finale, hosted by Alex Trebek of the game show JEOPARDY!. Tune into the National Geographic YouTube Channel Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. PDT to cheer on these young competitors from wherever you are in the world.

Through this competition, we aim to inspire the future generation of leaders and innovators to become more geographically literate and have a deeper understanding about the world they live in. We hope you are as excited as we are to see such enthusiasm and passion around geographic education.

Please join us in wishing all of these young geographic experts the best of luck!

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP, Google Earth and Maps

Congratulations to Tine Valencic, the 2011 National Geographic Bee Champion

After preparing for months and working their way through a field of several million participating students, the top 10 geographic student masters, met in Washington D.C. today at National Geographic headquarters to compete in the National Geographic Bee. After 124 questions (including the championship round), Tine Valencic from Texas answered this one correctly to take the championship crown:

Question: Thousands of mountain climbers and trekkers rely on Sherpas to aid their ascent of Mount Everest. The southern part of Mount Everest is located in which Nepalese national park?
Answer: Sagarmatha National Park

Google is proud to support National Geographic Bee, for the 3rd year in a row. National Geographic and Google share the same passion for inspiring and encouraging our future generation of leaders and innovators to learn about and explore the world around them. Being geographically literate and understanding the world is a vital skill for students of all ages. Technology, like Google Earth, has helped make the world a more accessible place and students need geographic skills to be prepared for a global future.

Students who participate in the National Geographic Bee finals are fourth through eighth-graders from every state, the District of Columbia, Atlantic Territories, Pacific Territories, and Department of Defense Dependents Schools. They won their school Bees that were held in thousands of schools across the US. These school winners then took a written qualifying test, which was scored by the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. From the school winners, the top scorers in each state are eligible to participate in the State Bees. You can learn more about the students who won their State Bees using the interactive Google Maps gadget on the National Geographic YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/nationalgeographic.

The first-place winner, Tine Valencic, won a $25,000 college scholarship, a lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society, and a trip to the Galápagos Islands. The second-place winner and recipient of a $15,000 college scholarship was Georgia's Nilai Sarda and third place and a $10,000 college scholarship went to Kansas' Stefan Petrović. The seven other finalists, who won $500, were Andrew Hull, of Alaska: Luke Hellum, of Arizona; Tuvya Bergson-Michelson, of California; Kevin Mi, of Indiana; Karthik Karnik, of Massachusetts; Alex Kimn, of South Dakota; and Anthony Cheng, of Utah.

The top 10 national finalists from both 2011 and 2010 are eligible to be selected for the three-person U.S. team at the National Geographic World Championship to be held at various locales in the San Francisco area in July 2011, with the finals taking place at Google headquarters in Mountain View.

Congratulations to Tine Valencic and to all of the students who participated in this year’s National Geographic Bee. We look forward to following all of you as you continue to explore the world and we expect to see some of you at Google after you have earned your degrees.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth

Google Science Fair seeks budding Einsteins and Curies

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Are you a student who loves science? Do you have a good idea for an experiment that you’d like to share with the world? In 1996, two young computer science students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had a hypothesis that there was a better way to find information on the web. They did their research, tested their theories and built a search engine which (eventually) changed the way people found information online. Larry and Sergey were fortunate to be able to get their idea in front of lots of people. But how many ideas are lost because people don’t have the right forum for their talents to be discovered? We believe that science can change the world—and one way to encourage that is to celebrate and champion young scientific talent as we do athletes and pop idols.

To help make today’s young scientists the rock stars of tomorrow, in partnership with CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, we’re introducing the first global online science competition: the Google Science Fair. It’s open to students around the world who are between the ages of 13-18. All you need is access to a computer, the Internet and a web browser.

You may have participated in local or regional science fairs where you had to be in the same physical space to compete with kids in your area. Now any student with an idea can participate from anywhere, and share their idea with the world. You build and submit your project—either by yourself or in a team of up to three—entirely online. Students in India (or Israel or Ireland) will be able to compete with students in Canada (or Cambodia or Costa Rica) for prizes including once-in-a-lifetime experiences (like a trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer), scholarships and real-life work opportunities (like a five-day trip to CERN in Switzerland). And if you’re entering a science fair locally, please feel free to post that project online with Google Science Fair, too!

To enter, register online and create your project as a Google Site. Registration is open through April 4, 2011. Please note: you must get parental or guardian consent in order to compete. You can check out the complete rules here. After April 4, we’ll begin judging and will announce our semi-finalists in early May.

The semi-finalist projects will be posted on our online gallery, where we’ll encourage the public to vote for a “people’s choice” winner. From our list of semi-finalists, we’ll select 15 finalists to bring their projects to Google headquarters on July 11 to compete in our final, live event, where world-renowned science judges will select a winner in each age category, as well as a grand-prize winner.

Here's an example of a great science fair project site to inspire you. We asked Tesca, a U.S. high school senior from Oregon, to create it for us based on an award-winning project she’s been working on for years. Tesca’s objective is to make hospitals more efficient using artificial intelligence—a world-changing goal, to be sure.

So if you think you're the next Albert Einstein, Marie Curie—or Larry Page or Sergey Brin—sign up today for the Google Science Fair. Prove once again how science can change the world!

Posted by Cristin Frodella and Samantha Peter, Education Product Marketing Managers

Who's the newest Super Modeler? Vote!

(Cross-posted from the Official SketchUp Blog)

Today we’re announcing a new approach to bestowing “Super Modeler” status on our geo-modeling rock stars. More on that below—but first a little history.

A new form of 3D modeling began when @Last Software, the maker of SketchUp, was acquired by Google in 2006. Modeling 3D buildings for the purpose of viewing them in Google Earth went from being a quirky activity to a new art form. We refer to it as "geo-modeling.”

Being 3D enthusiasts ourselves, we were always on the lookout for good building models in the 3D Warehouse. When we discovered particularly impressive ones, we would add them to the featured modeler collection.

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood by Arrigo Silva

Internally, we used the phrase “super modelers” to describe the people creating these amazing models, but it wasn’t until we started planning the first geo-modeling conference in August of last year that we began to publicly refer to modelers in this way. Following the event, a newsgroup was established, a collection created, and the user community representing some of the most skilled geo-modelers was officially born.

As the geo-modeling community expanded, so did the number of people creating remarkable models. We continued to add new modelers as we discovered them, and earlier this year we introduced badges in the 3D Warehouse—with one designated specifically for Super Modelers.

The coveted Super Modeler badge

With badges comes competition—more and more modelers began to ask how they could earn this honor. As time passed it became evident that we needed a clear set of criteria by which a modeler would be considered. The time had also come to establish greater transparency for how these decisions were being made, and who was making them.

So today we’re announcing a new process to become a Super Modeler—you decide!

It works like this: Each month the Super Modeler community will nominate ten geo-modelers who they believe are, well, super. Votes will be accepted for a three-week period. At the end of that period, the modeler who has received the most votes will become the newest Super Modeler.

In addition to being awarded a Super Modeler badge, the winner’s collection will be prominently featured on the Google 3D Warehouse until the next Super Modeler is selected. They'll also receive a one-of-a-kind “I’m a Google Supermodel(er)” t-shirt from the Google team.

It all starts now: Take a look at November's nominees, then cast your vote for the next Google Super Modeler!

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager

Announcing the Panoramio Photo Contest

The Panoramio community enables you to share your photos and explore them on Google Earth, Google Maps and other places. If you’ve never geo-tagged a photo, watch this video to learn how easy it is to add photos to the Panoramio layer in Google Earth.

Now you can add some excitement to your photo project and enter your photos to the monthly Panoramio Geotagged Photo Contest! Starting this month, we’ll be giving away the new Casio Hybrid-GPS camera EX-H20G to the winner of each category (Scenery, Heritage, Travel and Unusual Location). The Panoramio community reviews all of the submissions and votes for what they consider to be the best each month.


Casio’s new Hybrid-GPS camera combines a GPS engine with autonomic positioning made possible by a motion sensor. This makes geotagging easy—both outdoors and indoors.


If you haven’t joined the Panoramio community yet, try it out and don’t forget to participate in our monthly contest. To enter your photo, click on “Submit to the contest” and choose a category. Good luck and we can’t wait to see your photos!

Posted by Gerard Sanz, Panoramio Community Manager