Get a free 3D photo tour through Google Maps now.

At some point of life, some of us may want to pack our bags and head to far-off places that we may have heard from our friends or through the web. Before touring a place, you must research.

Now, imagine discovering interesting sites and places in a 360 degree view right from your home? This can help you in several ways — you know what you want to see, what not to miss, and you will find interesting places that are around the site.

A few years ago touring the world virtually wouldn’t be possible, but now you can, all thanks to Google.

Start a 3D Photo Tour

Google Maps now brings an interactive 3D touring experience that lets you choose a tour from over 15000 popular destination. All this is of course free.

The way Google brings this photo tour is interesting. Google collects public images submitted by Panoramio and Picasa Web users and then similar images are grouped together.

If there are tonnes of overlapping public photos, Google uses advanced computer vision technique to create a 3D shape of each place. While you may not experience a complete 3D virtual tour sometimes, this is still an improvement.

If you are using Safari, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser, head over to the this 3D Photo Tour link. Every time you want to start a virtual tour, you have to enable Maps GPL on your browser — don’t worry, you have to click Enable MapsGL to access 3D destinations.

Related: Find 3D Models on Google Maps.

You can read the original blog post here Start a Virtual 3D Tour To Popular Places Through Google Maps.

Google Search Engine has evolved over the years by making frequent changes in its design and the search algorithm. The company has helped millions of users find relevant websites and information in no time. For many of us, Google is almost synonymous with Internet.

Google is also an aid to webmasters and bloggers as it brings search traffic to their websites, which means more readers and ultimately more money to the website owner, thanks to Google-owned networks like Google Adsense.

The Improved Google Search Engine

Google is now moving forward. The future Google Search Engine will be built entirely on the semantic search algorithm, which will help users find what they are looking for without having to visit websites.

Need proof? Search for height of Albert Einstein on Google and this is what you get:

The list of website links are pushed down while on the top of the search page is the answer to the search query. When you search a popular game release (example), the semantic algorithm will retrieve and display the exact date of the game release.

Google’s data centers have all the required data to make semantic search possible. The Google bots crawls hundreds of websites, aggregates data and if the user query matches with the available data, a semantic search result, like the one above, will be displayed.

This is what semantic search is all about — ask a question and Google brings the answer to you in less than a second.

Google Draining Pageviews of Websites

When you click on Show details, Google references the websites used to bring the semantic search result. Even then, these semantic search results can be a serious threat to small-time webmasters and bloggers who are solely depending on Google for traffic.

Let’s us consider that you run a The Beatles fan-made website; now, whenever a user searches for this band on Google, this is the search results page the user will see:

Image source: Reddit.

Larry Page said the perfect search engine understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want, and the above search result page is really helpful from an end-user point of view. However, bloggers and webmasters, your sites pageviews will be reduced drastically.

Sadly, some of the bloggers blogging in specific niche may notice a slump in their traffic. Some of the bloggers may have to strain every nerve, work even harder to get good traffic from Google.

On a related note, in the near future Google is planning to bring voice translation onto mobile phones and computers. For instance, you speak a sentence in English to your phone and the voice will be automatically translated into another language.

Such voice-to-voice translation is helpful. Similarly, semantic search results will help users get what they are looking for without having to browse through endless number of webpages.

You can read the original blog post here Google Semantic Search – A Threat to Bloggers.

Here’s a really interesting site built on Google Maps that provides the exact opposite location from your current location.

Let’s say that you are going to dig straight through the earth from your current location, which means you will end up in a new place. Now I am from Bangalore and if I was about to drill a hole through the earth’s core, I would be in South Pacific Ocean. That’s awesome, right?

Antipodemap is the site you need to use for finding your opposite location. There are two Google Maps available; in the first one you will have to set the marker to your current location.

The second Google Map — the Antipode* Map — will automatically show the antipodal (opposite) direction, which is the place where you’d come out if you were to dig through the earth.

Did you end up somewhere in the ocean or an island?

*According to WikiPedia, Antipode is the point on the Earth’s surface which is diametrically opposite to it.

Related: 3D Titanic Model on Google Maps.

You can read the original blog post here Find Opposite Location Through Google Maps.

Here’s another reason to love Google.

Searching in Google for the term Suicide reveals helpline number that can eventually help the person to put an end to his/her suicidal thoughts. For instance, the Google US version displays the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number 1-800-273-8255 on the top of its search page.

If you use the keyword Suicide in the Google UK, this is what you get:

Need help? In the United Kingdom, call 08457 90 90 90 – Samaritans.

Similarly the Google Australia page displays the nearest local helpline number.

Unfortunately, Google India doesn’t display any helpline phone numbers. On the brighter side, the result in the search page is inclined towards solutions and tips on how to get rid of Suicide, and not on how to plan a suicide.

I bet this must have saved quite a lot of lives.

We also have Facebook taking charge to save people’s lives through organ donation, which is yet another noble cause. Looks like the web is the next frontier for humanitarian aid.

You can read the original blog post here Google Brings Suicide Helpline Number on its Search Pages.

Transferring documents and important notes to a USB stick and then using these documents on another computer can be a time consuming task.

You are also inviting trouble if the second computer doesn’t have any word processor installed, which means you can’t edit these files anymore. You will be adding up time if you are going to download and setup your favorite word processor on that system.

To make life easier, you can upload these files to Google Docs. Then you can edit, add text and play around with your notes as and when you like.

Sync Your Notes to Google Docs

Uploading your notes / files every time to Google Docs is also a time consuming chore. If you are using Google Chrome browser, there’s an extension that will automatically sync your writing to Google Docs.

Scratchpad is a simple note-taking app that takes your notes offline and syncs to the cloud.

You can type your notes on the Google Chrome browser. And when you are connected to the Internet, Scratchpad will silently sync these notes to Google Docs. To access these files on a different computer or laptop, log in to Google Docs with your Google account.

There’s no need to hit upload or save button, as all the notes written on Scratchpad will be automatically saved to Google Docs.

Download Scratchpad: You need to run Chrome browser to download Scratchpad. Here’s the download link. After you have installed this extension, you have to grant access to Google Docs (this is a one-time process) for syncing all your notes automatically.

Useful Keyboard shortcuts

Note: If you’re using a Mac, you’ll need to use the command key instead of Ctrl.

Related: Convert files to PDFs using Google Docs.

You can read the original blog post here How to Write And Save Notes to the Cloud.

How can you use Google Search Engine effectively? What does it take to mine quality links and become a skilled Google searcher?

All you need is some basic training and time to become a better searcher. There are various queries you can use to find quality resources on Google. For instance, if you want Google to reveal only PPT files, simply use this string filetype:ppt along with your keyword. [Example]

Better Google Search Training

If you are a student or a teacher using Google regularly to find relevant resources for your work, and if you are struggling to find them, you are doing it wrong. But let that not dissapoint you as Google is now offering free advanced tips for everyone.

Advanced search tips are offered to guide students find quality sources that can help them in their school and college work. Anyone can go through these lessons and video training to find what they are looking for. Best of all, this training is completely free!

Google Search Lessons Online

Basically the lessons are divided into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced section. You can start reading these Google Lessons anytime to learn more about Google and how to operate the Search Engine for better search results. The lesson plans are as follows:

• Picking the right search terms
• Understanding search results
• Narrowing a search to get the best results
• Searching for evidence for research tasks
• Evaluating credibility of sources

Google Search Video Training

For those who don’t want to go through the lessons, there’s also a live search training video from the Google Search experts explaining essential tips for better searching.

There are 14 videos currently, each of them almost an hour long but they are designed to teach individual more about Google and it is probably the only guide you need to master Google.

Teachers can also use “A Google A Day” challenges to test their search skills.

You can read the original blog post here Google Search Tips For College Students And Teachers.

Now you can use Google Earth to explore the Titanic 3D model from the comfort of your home.

After the Titanic superliner (other word for ship) collided with an iceberg, it sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. Years later the story has inspired books and movies (3D movies) and is memorialized in museums and monuments.

The ship went down in 1912 — almost 100 years ago.

Google now believes this ill-fated ship deserves your attention, so they have partnered with National Geographic and a couple of Research institutes including NOAA to help you tour the Titanic shipwreck using the free Google Earth tool.

3D Titanic Model on Google Maps and Earth:

To view the 3D model, you need to download this KMZ file. This file can be opened in Google Earth.

After you have launched Google Earth, on the left panel you will notice a drop-down menu, click on Model (screenshot) and Google Earth will zoom into the location of Titanic.

You can read the original blog post here Use Google Earth To Explore 3D Titanic Model.

Project Glass is an innovative idea from Google that can help one explore and share the world like never before. This augmented reality device can do wonders.

Let the video below do the talking:

Cool, isn’t it? If Google can bring this augmented reality product to life in the near future, our lives will be drastically revolutionized.

Imagine the ability to click photos while driving, or finding the nearest restaurant through Google Maps without having to use our smartphone or laptop. And using our voice to reply to the messages on social networking sites. This is something we all want.

You can read the original blog post here Project Glass: Future Technology From Google [Video].

What really is under the hood of one of the widely used Search Engine on the Internet? Ever wondered how much energy does an average Google search consumes?

Whenever a search is initiated, nearly 0.3 watt-hours of electricity is used, which is roughly equal to a 60 watt light bulb switched on for 20 seconds.

Google delivers billions of search queries every day, has over 200 million smartphone users, and houses millions of businesses in the cloud. To support this and much more of its upcoming services, Google generates 260 million watts of energy, which is equivalent to the power used in 350,000 homes.

Google’s Data Center:

Most of the energy is used to power up the data centers spread across the globe. These data centers are custom build by Google. For example, Google now houses a new data center in Finland which uses a seawater cooling system to reduce the electricity cost.

This is a 273 million dollar data center located in Finland. The data center hosts 900,000 to one million servers — which is about 3 percent of the world’s server.

Google tries to run their offices and data centers on renewable energy, but when unavailable, they go with carbon offset to reduce the impact of carbon dioxide emission.

Google Using Renewable Energy:

As mentioned in the video, Google buys clean energy through a Power Purchase Agreement that delivers energy and power from sources like wind farms.

Google also finances projects dealing specifically with renewable energy, as this will benefit not only their own products but also help improve at least a part of the world.

You can read the original blog post here How Google Uses Energy.

Google Font Directory shelters a diverse array of fonts that site owners can deploy on their WordPress blogs. The fonts are fresh, easy to install, and optimized for a better readability experience.

Served with visual richness, the Google web fonts are high-quality open source fonts compatible with any modern browsers. This is the best part: because these fonts are stored on Google’s server, there’s no need for you — or your readers — to install fonts on the computer.

Google fonts are designed for the web, and Google has made it significantly easier by hosting the fonts on the cloud. Mac or Windows, Google fonts doesn’t rely on the Operating System. Even installing of fonts on WordPress sites is a breeze.

Before we jump into various ways to install Google fonts on your blog, let’s list out the browsers compatible with Google web fonts:

• Mozilla Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Safari
• Internet Explorer

There are two ways to go about adding Google Web fonts on your WordPress blog. The first method, a manual process, includes adding a couple lines of HTML on your blog.

Installing Google Fonts Manually

To take advantage of the Google Fonts API, this is all you have to do: browse through the fonts catalog, pick a font, and add the code on your site.

For example, for font Tangerine, this code goes straight into the header.php file.

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

And this code goes into the style sheet file — usually named style.css.

body { font-family: 'Tangerine', serif; }

My only beef with this procedure is the difficulty in changing the fonts, although it’s not really a tedious process. You can, however, use a WordPress plugin to enable Google fonts on your blog.

Google Fonts Plugin

WP Google Fonts is a WordPress plugin available for free. As soon as you have this plugin installed on your WordPress blog, you can change fonts on the fly.

All you have to do is to choose the font from the neat drop down menu, select the elements you want the changes to be reflected to, and add custom CSS (optional).

All the latest Google web fonts are accessible through this plugin. It does simplify the process of adding fonts on your site. So, go ahead and download the plugin from here.

You can read the original blog post here Easily Add Google Web Fonts on WordPress Blog.