The Official google.org blog

Applications now open for the 2010-2011 Global Heath Corps

2010-02-04T17:22:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to share with you that the Global Health Corps (GHC) is now accepting applications for their 2010-2011 class. GHC sent their inaugural class of 22 recent university graduates to complete year-long assignments in public health organizations in various countries. This program came to fruition after discussions at the aids2031 conference hosted by Google.org in March 2008.

GHC is a unique program that enhances a fellow's cultural experience by pairing cross cultural teams - one fellow from the host country and one international fellow. Once accepted, all chosen fellows must complete a summer training course sponsored by Stanford University. This year GHC has 32 open positions with locations ranging from Burundi, Rwanda, New Jersey, Malawi, and Massachusetts. We believe that Global Health Corps offers a unique experience that enables young professionals to gain valuable experience for strengthening global public health equity.

The American application deadline is set for March 1st while the deadline for in-country fellows is April 1st. Applicants must be under 30 years old, possess at least an undergraduate degree, and be proficient in English. Fellows wlll be chosen based on their skills that meet organization's assignment goals once they successfully complete GHC's intense interviewing, application and orientation process. Good luck!

Posted by Kataneh Sarvian, Google.org

How much power do you use in the middle of the night?

2010-02-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

"Always On" power is the lowest level of sustained power used during a day-long period. On our energy-monitoring software tool, Google PowerMeter, this shows up as a dark green bar on your power usage graph. We've found that American users, on average, have 589 watts of electrical power being consumed all day long. What items are using all this electricity?

- "Vampire loads" - appliances that don't really turn off, even when you're not actively using them

- Old appliances, especially refrigerators

- Lights that are never turned off

- Outdoor lights

- Cable box or DVR

- Computers that never turn off

- Electric water heaters

Here's the good news: It's typically very easy to reduce your Always On power. Below is a graph of a household that did just that. This household started reducing electricity use by turning off their outdoor lighting (green period) instead of leaving the lights on all day (red period). That change reduced the average Always On from 420 watts to 300 watts. That 120 watt Always On reduction can yield hundreds of dollars in estimated savings over a single year!

On January 27, 2010, almost 40% of Google PowerMeter users had Always On levels at over 500 watts. If these users reduced that amount by just 100 watts each, that's a significant cumulative savings. (Look for more of these aggregate analyses of our data in the future as we continue to learn more about how people use electricity.)

Posted by Omar Khan, Software Engineer

FCC broadband plan to call for access to real-time energy info

2010-01-21T22:00:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from Public Policy Blog)

Over the past six months we have been providing you with periodic updates and comments on the FCC's National Broadband Plan, which is scheduled for release in mid-March. Earlier today FCC energy and environment director Nick Sinai gave a sneak preview of one of the Plan's key components: how broadband will facilitate smarter energy usage.

He told an audience at the Clean-tech Investor Summit that the FCC will call on States and the Congress to give consumers and consumer-authorized third parties access to real-time energy information. This kind of information could have a huge financial and environmental impact. Studies show that access to real-time usage data results in energy savings of up to 15%. He talked about how, combined with other measures, this information could create a platform that could lead to new products and services to help consumers manage energy. Picture it: a smart phone apps store for home energy management.

Sinai singled out for praise technologies like "smart" electricity meters and recent efforts in California to include consumer data access policies as part of a statewide smart meter roll out. (Learn more by reading Google's comments.) While encouraged by state-led initiatives like this, Sinai said if state efforts don't work, the FCC could recommend that Congress consider national energy data accessibility legislation.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel

Staying connected in post-earthquake Haiti

2010-01-15T19:41:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

With relief efforts underway, many displaced Haitians and their friends and families around the world are deeply concerned about the safety and whereabouts of loved ones. In response to the Haitian earthquake, a team of Googlers worked with the U.S. Department of State to create an online People Finder gadget so that people can submit information about missing persons and to search the database.

You'll find this gadget on our Haiti earthquake response website as well as on the State Department website. In order to prevent the proliferation of multiple missing persons databases (a big problem during Hurricane Katrina), we've made the People Finder gadget standards-based and easily embeddable on any website (see here for instructions). The gadget is currently available in English, French and Creole.

We're also helping families in the U.S. stay connected with their loved ones in Haiti by offering free calls to Haiti for the next two weeks via Google Voice. If you don't have a Google Voice account already, request an invitation at www.google.com/voice.

For anyone interested in viewing updated imagery in Google Earth, we've now included GeoEye's shots from Wednesday in the Historical Imagery feature. Now you can view the imagery without downloading the KML file and can use the time slider to easily compare the stark before-and-after images, such as those below. To help relief organizations, GeoEye has made professional-quality files of their recent satellite imagery of Haiti downloadable via our earthquake response website. We hope the imagery in this format will be valuable to GIS organizations and aid workers.

(Click to see full-size)

We have also made Haiti Map Maker data publicly available for download for non-commercial use and attribution. Data can be used by relief workers to do things such as create offline maps, combine data sets and run analysis, all of which we hope will help with their efforts on the ground. Please help improve Haiti maps with Google Map Maker.

News and user footage continues to roll into YouTube. Oxfam and the American Red Cross are even responding to donations by uploading videos that show viewers exactly where their contributions are making a difference.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller and Prem Ramaswami for the Google Crisis Response Team

Helping Haiti respond to the earthquake

2010-01-14T14:35:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from Official Google Blog)

These recent satellite images of Port-au-Prince, Haiti before and after Tuesday's earthquake dramatically show the devastation caused by magnitude 7.0 trembler. Here are before-and-after screenshots of the National Palace and an area of Port-au-Prince:

Click to see full-size

In order to help the people of Haiti respond to this catastrophe, Google is donating $1 million to organizations on the ground that are rescuing those still trapped and providing clean water, food, medical care, shelter and support to those affected. We'd like to make it easy for anyone moved by the tragedy to respond as well, so we've included a link on our homepage to information, resources and ways you can help, including information on how to donate to organizations including: Direct Relief, Yele Haiti, Partners in Health, Red Cross, World Food Program, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, Lambi Fund, Doctors Without Borders, The International Rescue Committee.

You can also use the below buttons to donate to UNICEF or CARE.

Donate to CARE

Donate to UNICEF

In addition, Map Maker data has been made available to U.N. organizations and the team is working with the Map Your World Community to encourage Map Maker users with on the ground knowledge to help update the map of Haiti with disaster response data. We've received requests from relief organizations and our users to publish recent satellite imagery of the country. One of our imagery partners, GeoEye, has provided us with post-earthquake imagery from Haiti. You can check our Lat Long blog for further updates.

We've also reached out to the YouTube community for help. A Spotlight on the homepage and a ticker across the entire site drives traffic to videos from Oxfam and the American Red Cross, where you can make donations to relief efforts. We're also keeping a running playlist of the video footage coming out of Haiti on Citizentube; you can find a broad collection of citizen reports, news wire clips and personal stories of some of the victims.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller and Prem Ramaswami for the Google Crisis Response Team

Google Flu Trends in 121 U.S. cities

2010-01-12T11:36:00.000-08:00

In contrast to the unusually early spike of flu activity we saw this October, Google Flu Trends is currently showing a low level of activity in the United States. Since the strain of influenza that is active (H1N1) is novel, no one knows exactly what will happen next. However, the CDC is warning that one possibility is a second spike of flu activity, which is what occured in 1957 when another novel strain of influenza spread in the United States.

We've been chatting with public health officials about new ways we can help people understand the spread of flu during this unusual time and today we're excited to bring city level flu estimates to 121 cities in the United States.

By tracking the popularity of certain Google search queries, we're able to estimate the level of flu in near real-time. Google Flu Trends is updated daily and may provide early detection of flu activity, since traditional flu surveillance systems often take days or weeks to collect and release data. These city level estimates are "experimental," meaning they haven't been validated against official data. However, the estimates are made in a similar manner to our U.S. national estimates, which have been validated. Check out our YouTube video for a quick introduction to this system.

We're pleased to be announcing this addition to Google Flu Trends during National Influenza Vaccination Week. If you're looking for a flu vaccine location near you, please visit the flu shot finder.

Posted by Matt Mohebbi, Software Engineer

Earth Engine, powered by Google

2009-12-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

I'm here in Copenhagen this week, at the COP15 International Climate Change Conference. Whether you're attending in-person, or reading news headlines from home, you can't miss the fact that addressing climate change requires the world to solve a mind-boggling mix of science, policy and political issues. These are formidable challenges, but new technologies can help provide solutions for these complex problems. For example, one of the most promising areas of compromise has been an accord to compensate countries for preserving forests and other natural landscapes that play a crucial role in reducing emissions. Implementation of the agreement, known as Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation, or REDD, will require the ability to accurately track deforestation at a regional and global level.

Despite the widespread availability of global satellite imagery through products like Google Earth and Google Maps, it hasn't been easy for tropical nations to understand the state of their ecosystem, and to quantitatively monitor changes in forest coverage or other key indicators. That's why I'm proud to announce a new computational platform for global-scale analysis of satellite imagery: Earth Engine, powered by Google.

At an event today hosted by Avoided Deforestation Partners, global leaders from the President of Guyana to the Prime Minister of Norway expressed their support for REDD. Earlier today, the U.S, Australia, France, Japan, Norway and Britain pledged $3.5 billion over the next three years to protect rainforests. At the event, I demonstrated a prototype forest monitoring application built on top of Earth Engine that we developed together with the Carnegie Institution for Science, IMAZON and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Traditional forest monitoring is complex and expensive, requiring access to large amounts of satellite data, lots of hard drives to hold the data, lots of computers to process the data, and lots of time while you wait for various computations to finish. Our prototype demonstrates how Earth Engine makes all of this easier, by moving everything into the cloud. Google supplies data, storage, and computing muscle. As a result, you can visualize forest change in fractions of a second over the web, instead of the minutes or hours that traditional offline systems require for such analysis. The prototype applications running on Earth Engine aren't yet available to the public, but you can see screen shots in our earlier blog post.

We want to ensure this technology is widely available when it's ready, so today I formally announced Google.org's commitment to provide our Earth Engine free to tropical countries to support their forest monitoring programs. I believe that this is just the first of many Earth Engine applications that will help enable scientists, policymakers, and the general public to better monitor and understand the Earth's ecosystems.

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP Engineering

A simple way to curb climate change

2009-12-15T09:39:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted from Google's Public Policy Blog)

People often get up in settings like the international climate change conference in Copenhagen and make complicated pronouncements that leave heads spinning. Today was different. Google, GE, the Climate Group, and NRDC, supported by other leading businesses and NGOs, had a simple message: governments across the world should ensure people have real-time access to their home energy information.

Most of us know little about how we use energy in our homes, other than what our monthy power bill tells us. Yet studies show that when people can see in real-time how much energy they are using, they save up to 15% on their electricity use with simple behavioral changes, and even more with investments in energy efficiency. The savings are huge when added up: if all US households reduced 15% of their energy use by 2020 it would be equivalent to taking 35 million cars off the road and would save consumers $46 billion on their energy bills.

As 40,000 people gather in Copenhagen to fight global warming, we think that's a solution that governments should be paying attention to. This group, which will take other actions after the meeting has ended, has begun a push to give ordinary citizens the tools to save money and save the planet. A lot of the decisions on the table in Copenhagen are hard, we believe this one is simple.

Copenhagen statement signers: Google, GE, The Climate Group, NRDC, Alliance to Save Energy, Center for American Progress, Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition, Digital Energy Solutions Campaign, Dow, Energy Future Coalition, Intel, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, US Green Building Council, Whirlpool

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel, Google.org

Seeing the forest through the cloud

2009-12-10T04:59:00.000-08:00

Today, at the International Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, we demonstrated a new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's forests. We hope this technology will help stop the destruction of the world's rapidly-disappearing forests. Emissions from tropical deforestation are comparable to the emissions of all of the European Union, and are greater than those of all cars, trucks, planes, ships and trains worldwide. According to the Stern Review, protecting the world's standing forests is a highly cost-effective way to cut carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. The United Nations has proposed a framework known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) that would provide financial incentives to rainforest nations to protect their forests, in an effort to make forests worth "more alive than dead." Implementing a global REDD system will require that each nation have the ability to accurately monitor and report the state of their forests over time, in a manner that is independently verifiable. However, many of these tropical nations of the world lack the technological resources to do this, so we're working with scientists, governments and non-profits to change this. Here's what we've done with this prototype to help nations monitor their forests:

Start with satellite imagery
Satellite imagery data can provide the foundation for measurement and monitoring of the world's forests. For example, in Google Earth today, you can fly to Rondonia, Brazil and easily observe the advancement of deforestation over time, from 1975 to 2001:

(Landsat images courtesy USGS)

This type of imagery data — past, present and future — is available all over the globe. Even so, while today you can view deforestation in Google Earth, until now there hasn't been a way to measure it.

Then add science
With this technology, it's now possible for scientists to analyze raw satellite imagery data and extract meaningful information about the world's forests, such as locations and measurements of deforestation or even regeneration of a forest. In developing this prototype, we've collaborated with Greg Asner of Carnegie Institution for Science, and Carlos Souza of Imazon. Greg and Carlos are both at the cutting edge of forest science and have developed software that creates forest cover and deforestation maps from satellite imagery. Organizations across Latin America use Greg's program, Carnegie Landsat Analysis System (CLASlite), and Carlos' program, Sistema de Alerta de Deforestation (SAD), to analyze forest cover change. However, widespread use of this analysis has been hampered by lack of access to satellite imagery data and computational resources for processing.

Handle computation in the cloud
What if we could offer scientists and tropical nations access to a high-performance satellite imagery-processing engine running online, in the “Google cloud”? And what if we could gather together all of the earth’s raw satellite imagery data — petabytes of historical, present and future data — and make it easily available on this platform? We decided to find out, by working with Greg and Carlos to re-implement their software online, on top of a prototype platform we've built that gives them easy access to terabytes of satellite imagery and thousands of computers in our data centers.

Here are the results of running CLASlite on the satellite imagery sequence shown above:

CLASlite online - This shows deforestation and degradation in Rondonia, Brazil from 1986-2008, with the red indicating recent activity

Here's the result of running SAD in a region of recent deforestation pressure in Mato Grosso, Brazil:

SAD online - The red "hotspots" indicate deforestation that has happened within the last 30 days

Combining science with massive data and technology resources in this way offers the following advantages:

Unprecedented speed: On a top-of-the-line desktop computer, it can take days or weeks to analyze deforestation over the Amazon. Using our cloud-based computing power, we can reduce that time to seconds. Being able to detect illegal logging activities faster can help support local law enforcement and prevent further deforestation from happening.

Ease of use and lower costs: An online platform that offers easy access to data, scientific algorithms and computation horsepower from any web browser can dramatically lower the cost and complexity for tropical nations to monitor their forests.

Security, privacy and transparency: Governments and researchers don't want to share sensitive data and results before they are ready. Our cloud-based platform allows users to control access to their data and results. At the same time, because the data, analysis and results reside online, they can also be easily shared, made available for collaboration, presented to the public and independently verified — when appropriate.

Climate change impact: We think that a suitably scaled-up and enhanced version of this platform could be a promising as a tool for forest monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) in support of efforts such as REDD.

As a Google.org product, this technology will be provided to the world as a not-for-profit service. This technology prototype is currently available to a small set of partners for testing purposes — it's not yet available to the general public but we expect to make it more broadly available over the next year. We are grateful to a host of individuals and organizations (find full list here) who have advised us on developing this technology. In particular, we would like to thank the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for their close partnership since the initial inception of this project. The goal of the Moore Foundation’s Environmental Conservation Program is to change the ways in which people use important terrestrial and coastal marine ecosystems to conserve critical ecological systems and functions, while allowing sustainable use. We're also working with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a consortium of national government bodies, inter-governmental organizations, space agencies and research institutions through GEO's Forest Carbon Tracking (FCT) task force. Last month together we launched the GEO FCT portal and are now exploring how we can also together bring the power of this new technology to tropical nations.

We're excited to be able to share this early prototype and look forward to seeing what's possible.

Posted by Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager, Google.org and Dr. Amy Luers, Environment Manager, Google.org

Innovation and the Transformation of the Global Energy System

2009-12-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

Last Monday, we hosted experts from the U.S. Department of Energy, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Nth Power and Google for a discussion on clean energy innovation in our San Francisco office. The panelists focused on the important role innovation plays in seizing the economic benefits of developing and deploying cost-effective low carbon technologies.

We were honored to have Under Secretary of Energy Kristina Johnson deliver the opening remarks live from Washington DC. Panelists included Dr. Ernie Moniz, Director of the MIT Energy Initiative, Dr. Daniel Kammen, Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Renewable and Appropriate Energy, Dr. Lynn Orr, Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google, and Tim Woodward, Managing Director of Nth Power.

The discussion centered on key themes and policy solutions for advancing clean energy innovation:

Promptly establishing a price on CO2 emissions to drive an economically efficient private sector market for new clean energy capital investments;
Accelerating the introduction of economy-wide energy efficiency standards and incentives that drive substantial reduction in energy use within a decade;
The central role of university research;
Expanding and sustaining a clean energy technology innovation agenda focused on both supply and demand. On that point:
The unprecedented boost that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided for clean energy technology research, development and demonstration (RD&D) and the upcoming challenges of the post-stimulus funding "cliff";
The need to increase federal RD&D investment to a minimum of $15B/year and sustain funding for at least a decade;
Establishing a Clean Energy Deployment Administration, as currently under development in Congress, to help jump-start full-scale cost-competitive commercial deployment.

These policies, if adopted and supported, will help us at last put in place what has been lacking in terms of clean energy innovation: a robust pipeline extending from basic research to applied research to demonstration projects to commercial scale-up to full deployment. At Google, we call this cycle "Lightbulbs to Lightbulbs" -- from the initial "lightbulb moment" of invention to full commercial deployment. Each one of these steps is vital to the whole process. Ignoring any of these steps can inhibit the effectiveness of the whole innovation cycle.

Watch the full event here:

With equal measures of smart policy, investment and will, we can realize the great role clean energy innovation can play to solving climate change and boosting the American economy.

Posted by Charles Baron, Google.org

Climate Action - Let Gov. Schwarzenegger be your guide!

2009-12-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

Today Governor Schwarzenegger and the California Natural Resources Agency is announcing CalAdapt, a new Google Earth-based tool designed to help Californians learn more about climate impacts and adaptation. The Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) helped develop the CalAdapt prototype with support from the California Energy Commission and Google.org. SEI has been a leader in developing an international network of interactive climate adaptation tools, as you can see at WeAdapt. CalAdapt is still in Beta, but the goal for this interactive tool is to bring science to the people.

And California has the science. The California Climate Change Center is one of the few state-funded climate research programs in the country. The Center has provided critical support for research and collaboration among scientists and resource managers in a series of state-wide climate assessments.

Don't miss Gov. Schwarzenegger's narrated Google Earth tour, which shows the risks of continued climate change for Californians and the important actions state and local agencies are taking to address these. See the short video version below (and the longer one here) or download the full tour for Google Earth here. You can learn more about California's response in its Climate Adaptation Strategy, which was also released today.

We're pleased to see California's continued leadership in addressing climate change.

Posted by Dr. Amy Luers, Senior Manager, Environment, Google.org

We’re Going (RED) for World AIDS Day

2009-12-01T14:48:00.000-08:00

HIV/AIDS has cut a swath of destruction across the globe—infecting more than 60 million people, leaving 14 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa alone. But a global movement to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, along with scientific breakthroughs in treatment, have reversed the momentum in recent years. For those living with HIV in Africa, just two pills at 40 cents a day can bring a recovery so miraculous it’s known as the Lazarus Effect. Watch the transformation of lives in this video:

Thanks to the efforts of The Global Fund and other organizations around the globe, the number of people in low and middle-income countries receiving these medicines has increased ten-fold over 5 years. But fewer than half of those in need of treatment have access. And the number of new HIV infections continues to outstrip the numbers on treatment: for every two people starting treatment, five become infected with the virus.

Taking action has never been easier. Our World AIDS Day page offers plenty of options:

Learn more about the global effort to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS at UNAIDS, International AIDS Society or LIVING PROOF.
Find volunteer opportunities in your area at All for Good.
Advocate for action with the ONE Campaign.
Give (RED) for friends and family this holiday season.
Unite with others at the Global Network of People Living with HIV.

Show your support in other ways, too. Select the iGoogle World AIDS Day theme for one day on your personal iGoogle homepage. On Twitter, from approx. 4 am EST (for 24 hours), include #red to turn your tweets the color red; if you like, follow @joinred. And on Tuesday night (December 1) starting at 8pm EST, watch a live Alicia Keys concert on YouTube benefiting Keep a Child Alive.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Advocacy Director, Google.org

Energy R&D funding from "Lightbulbs to Lightbulbs"

2009-11-20T13:02:00.001-08:00

(Condensed Remarks from the 2009 California Cleantech Open)

There are still power plants operating today that Thomas Edison could have seen with his own eyes. If he were to tour our electrical grid, he would recognize that too. As former Secretary of State George Shultz says, in energy "the past must not be prologue." Can we reinvent our energy system in only ten years? I think we can -- but we need to have a clear mission, we need to aim high, and we need substantial and sustained R&D funding.

This funding, coupled with tax incentives, loan guarantees, and other market mechanisms, is needed to drive innovation across the entire R&D pipeline -- from research, to development, to demonstration, to deployment, to full-scale commercialization. At Google we like to say, “from lightbulbs to lightbulbs" -- from the initial idea to real products. However you phrase it, investment is needed across that entire pipeline, especially from the government in the early stages where the energy industry often does not invest the large amounts needed to generate technological breakthroughs.

Since 1980 U.S. federal investment in energy R&D has dropped by 58 percent. Back then, 10 percent of the total government R&D investment was in energy. Today, the percentage has shrunk to only two percent. Recent signs in Washington are definitely positive. Earlier this year, President Obama added over $5.7 billion in 2-year stimulus funding for energy research, development, and demonstration. But this isn't enough, and it's not sustained. We're still on a 2-lane innovation road, not a superhighway -- and the road we're currently on is headed for a big cliff. Unless something changes, we're going to lose this significant funding after next year.

President Obama has called for $150 billion over 10 years for energy R&D. Some experts go even further -- Professors Dan Kammen and Gregory Nemet at UC Berkeley propose that annual energy R&D levels on the order of $30 billion will be necessary to address the climate challenge. And I was delighted to see recently that ARPA-E -- the new Department of Energy agency chartered to fund breakthrough ideas -- has made its first set of grants of $151 million for 37 projects. This is a great start, but it is only a start. We all need do our part to help convince our leaders in Washington to follow up on this down payment with substantial and sustained investment.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Finding flu vaccine information in one easy place

2009-11-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

(cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

This year, it's especially important to have clear information on what you can do to prepare for the flu season. With this in mind, we are happy to share a new feature for the U.S. which allows you to more easily find locations near you for getting both the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccine. After expanding Google Flu Trends to a total of 20 countries and 38 languages, allowing more people to see near real-time estimates of flu activity, we began brainstorming with the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), their flu.gov collaborators and the American Lung Association on the flu shot finder and other ways Google can be helpful to people this flu season.

You can check out the flu shot finder at www.google.com/flushot. The same tool will also be available shortly on www.flu.gov and the American Lung Association websites. It's important to note that this project is just beginning and we have not yet received information about flu shot clinics for many locations. In addition, many locations that are shown are currently out of stock. We launched this service now in order to help disseminate information about locations where vaccines are available, and also to make more vaccine providers aware of the project so that they can contribute.

Especially given slower than expected vaccine production, we think it's important to bring together flu shot information in a coherent manner. We've been working with HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health agencies to gather information on flu vaccine locations across the country, particularly for the H1N1 flu vaccine (both the nasal-spray vaccine and the shot). At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting. We are also continuing to add information from chain pharmacies and other providers in all 50 states; today, you'll find results from chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle.

Of course you should still call flu vaccine providers ahead of time to find out more about availability and eligibility for the two vaccines.

We hope to continue providing you with relevant information to help keep you and your loved ones healthy.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, M.D., Product Manager and Jennifer Haroon, Product Marketing Manager

Empowering the UK with Google PowerMeter

2009-10-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

Electricity consumers in the United Kingdom can now access Google PowerMeter, a free software tool that provides consumers with information on how much energy their home is using. The software receives information from utility smart meters and in-home energy management devices and visualizes this information on a personalized iGoogle homepage. Today we're announcing both our very first UK utility partnership and our very first UK device partner.

Our utility partner, first:utility, is the only energy supplier in the United Kingdom to provide free smart meters to its customers, and is currently in the process of rolling them out across the country. To date, first:utility has over 30,000 customers signed up to its service. Starting in early November, all first:utility customers with smart meters will be able to sign up to use Google PowerMeter, empowering them with greater information about their home electricity use. According to Mark Daeche, first:utility’s Chief Executive, "At the end of the day, if you can’t measure and view your energy use, it’s very difficult to make savings.”

Google is also partnering with AlertMe, a self-install consumer device manufacturer and our first partner with a product available in the United Kingdom. Starting today, AlertMe customers in the UK can access their home’s data through Google PowerMeter on their iGoogle homepage. In just a few minutes consumers can access their home energy data from anywhere they can access the Internet. Pilgrim Beart, founder and CEO of AlertMe noted, “Our partnership with Google PowerMeter puts your home energy consumption right in front of you every time you go online.” Check out this video to learn more about how you can start monitoring your home energy use today.

With today's announcement, we've now signed up two device partners and ten utility partners serving five countries!

Posted by Ka-Ping Yee, Software Engineer and Jens Redmer, Business Development

Will genomics help prevent the next pandemic?

2009-10-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

The first outbreak of the new "swine flu" strain, now known as H1N1, earlier this year in Mexico caught the world by surprise. Public health officials around the world tried to stop the virus at the borders but were largely helpless. Shortly after, on the other side of the world from Mexico, I saw the health check posts in Cambodia at the airport and at a borderpost with Vietnam, right when the country found its first H1N1 cases which were flown in by US exchange students. The weapons used by the health officials to combat the spread of the virus were primarily paper survey forms and thermometers; the virus won, very quickly. Genomics is rapidly changing both the way diseases are diagnosed and the way medications and vaccines are developed - but will it give us the tools to prevent the next pandemic?

What if countries where emerging infections originate, from Cameroon to Cambodia, could rapidly sequence suspect samples and discover new pathogens when only a few people have become sick?
What if all such sequence data were immediately shared in a single global open access database?
What if you could search for a string of sequence data and all associated data, annotations or publications as easily and effectively as a Google search?
What if markers discovered for a new disease would quickly be incorporated into affordable hand held multi-pathogen diagnostic tests widely available at the point of care?
What if the results of those tests were uploaded to a database where surveillance tools like Google Flu Trends could discover outbreaks?

Today the Public Library of Science, a mission driven, non-profit and open access publisher, presents "The Genomics of Infectious Disease" a collection of essays, perspectives and reviews that explores how genomics—with all its associated tools and techniques—can provide insights into our understanding of emerging infectious disease. This collection was produced with financial support from Google.org with the editorial independence and rigor of PLoS and the expert opinion of leading researchers.

In one piece Rajesh Gupta, Mark Michalski (of Stanford, but at Google.org last year) and I provide Google.org’s perspective and vision for how systematic application of genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics to infectious diseases could predict and prevent the next pandemic. To realize this vision, however, we feel that a focused, coordinated and scaled-up effort would be required. We urge the community to unite under an “Infectious Disease Genomics Project,” analogous to the Human Genome Project, to accelerate today's impressive progress as reviewed by this cross-journal open access collection.

You can read more in this blog from PLoS and listen to a fascinating audio interview debate with with Jonathan Eisen, Siv Andersson, and Raj Gupta, led by Kirsten Sanford.

Posted by Frank Rijsberman, Google.org

Pouncing on the iCat opportunity

2009-10-15T16:36:00.000-07:00

As a relatively new philanthropy ourselves, Google.org continues to explore innovative and sustainable solutions to improving the lives and livelihoods of people in the developing world. This exploration often brings us into dialogue with many start-up social enterprises and other philanthropies trying to overcome challenges working directly with less advantaged populations. One such group, LGT Venture Philanthropy, has articulated a recurring theme: organizations with effective and innovative solutions to social and environmental problems often lack the manpower and expertise to implement these solutions in the most effective way, especially during the growth phase. They have come up with a creative solution: the iCats Program.

The iCats Program was designed to bridge the gap between philanthropic organizations or social enterprises in need of professional know-how and resources, and business professionals with the desire to apply their knowledge and experience to benefit the social sector, thus acting as “impact catalysts.” This is how the name iCats was inspired.

iCats are professionals from all over the world with diverse professional backgrounds who are willing to share their business expertise with carefully selected philanthropic organizations and social enterprises. LGT Venture Philanthropy created a web-based platform to match experienced professionals with specific needs in trusted partner programs.

In 2009, eight fellows are working in organizations in Africa, India, and Latin America. Peter Shrimpton, CEO of Heart in Capetown notes of the iCAT program, “Your funds may have mobilized us, but it is your fellows who are optimizing our performance. If your funds are the vehicle, your fellows are the fuel.”

I wanted to share with you that applications for the 2010 iCat Program are now underway. A fellow works 11 months on-site with a portfolio organization from February to December 2010 and receives regular mentoring from the LGT Venture Philanthropy team. In addition, a 4-day induction workshop brings all fellows together in the Swiss mountains.

The fellow positions for 2010 are now online on www.icatsprogram.com. Application deadline is 26th October 2009.

Posted by Mark Smolinski, Google.org

Google Flu Trends expands to 16 additional countries

2009-10-08T00:35:00.000-07:00

If you're like us, you're probably thinking a lot about how this year's flu season might affect you and your community. To help you out, we at Google.org are excited to announce the expansion of Google Flu Trends to 16 additional countries, including much of Europe. We've also made the site available in 37 languages. Flu is a global threat, affecting millions worldwide each year, so we're pleased to make this tool available in more regions and languages.

Last November, we launched Google Flu Trends in the United States after finding a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. By tracking the popularity of certain Google search queries, we are able to estimate the level of flu, in near real-time. While some traditional flu surveillance systems may take days or weeks to collect and release data, Google search queries can be counted immediately. Google Flu Trends provides an additional surveillance tool that may help public health officials and the public make more informed decisions about preparing for the flu season.

In the past year, we've expanded our coverage to include Mexico, New Zealand and Australia and have continued to see a good correspondence between our estimates and official flu activity data. In fact, our analysis of last season shows that Google Flu Trends had a close 0.92 correlation with official U.S. flu data.

An important aspect of Google Flu Trends is that we filter out terms that may be popular because people hear about them in the news. What we do not use in the models is a term like [swine flu] since people are more likely to type that into Google because they want to know more information about it, given the news headlines, and not because they actually have H1N1 or swine flu. For more information about how we built this model, take a peek at this video:

If you visit Google Flu Trends for the U.S., you'll notice that the flu season is starting early this year. For tips on how to stay healthy this season, please visit our friends at the U.S. CDC and the ECDC.

Posted by Matt Mohebbi and Dan Vanderkam, Software Engineers

Open enrollment for Google PowerMeter partners

2009-10-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

The Google PowerMeter team is pleased to announce an important milestone for our product -- open enrollment. This means that utilities can enable self-serve sign-up for customers to use the Google PowerMeter gadget. More users means improved feedback on our product and this will translate into an improved product experience. Here's how it works: If your utility has open enrollment enabled for your account, with just two simple steps you can have your usage data transmitted to Google and visible online via Google PowerMeter.

Yello Strom, a German utility and our first partner in Europe, is fully up and running with open enrollment. All of the customers who use Yello's smart electricity meter - the Sparzähler - can now also view their individual electricity consumption online using Google PowerMeter. With over 1.4 million customers, Yello is among Germany's top ten electricity companies and the very first company to offer commercial smart meters nationwide in Germany since 2008. Yello’s smart meter interacts with a PC to make energy consumption visible for the customer – both in real-time within their own household and online at fifteen-minute intervals. Expanding the number of customers who can sign up for Google PowerMeter is just one more way this forward-thinking utility is improving access to energy information. As Executive Director Martin Vesper put it, "We are now offering our customers even more ways to maintain an overview of their electricity consumption with the help of the internet. And when people know exactly what is going on with their energy usage, they can use energy efficiently without sacrificing convenience."

Other Google PowerMeter partners are also working towards open enrollment capabilities. Florida's JEA has built an open enrollment system and is actively rolling it out within their customer base. And National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC), the latest addition to our strategic partners, is actively integrating Google PowerMeter into their offerings for all Utility Co-ops that they service.

Open enrollment and our recent device announcement mean that even more users can now see their electricity data to save energy and money!

Posted by Srikanth Rajagopalan, Product Manager

Google PowerMeter's first device partner

2009-10-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted to the Official Google Blog.

Today, we're very excited to announce we have secured our first official device partner. (That means having a smart meter installed by your utility is no longer a prerequisite for using Google PowerMeter!) For the last several months, a few hundred Google employees have been testing a number of in-home electricity monitoring devices. Those of us lucky enough to have one of these devices installed in our homes experienced first-hand how access to high-resolution energy use information drives meaningful behavior change. So we set out to make that data easier for everyone to access and understand by sending the collected data to our Google PowerMeter software.

The TED 5000 from Energy Inc. is an energy monitor that measures electricity usage in real-time (TED stands for "The Energy Detective"). As of today, we're pleased to announce that anyone in North America can purchase and install the TED 5000 and see personal home energy data using our free software tool, Google PowerMeter, from anywhere you can access the web including through iGoogle for mobile phones. (If you already have a TED 5000, you can download a free firmware upgrade to enable this functionality.)

Combined with Google PowerMeter, the TED 5000 device can help you understand your electricity usage to save energy and money. Energy Inc. is just our first device partner and if you are working for a company that manufactures energy monitors, we'd like to hear from you. Stay tuned for more!

Posted by Tom Sly, New Business Development & Charles Spirakis, Software Engineer

Swine flu near you?

2009-09-01T14:47:00.000-07:00

Well, there's now an app for that.

Today Google.org grantee HealthMap launched a new iPhone application called "Outbreaks Near Me" available for free download.

Curious about what disease outbreaks have been reported in your neighborhood? Or maybe in that city you're headed to for work or vacation? "Outbreaks Near Me" empowers users to track and report outbreaks of infectious disease near them in real-time. In addition to following the reports near you with an automatic alerting function, you can even become a disease detective yourself by reporting on outbreaks happening around you. It's the latest and greatest in grassroots disease surveillance.

Outbreaks Near Me pinpoints a user’s location and maps local outbreak reports.

HealthMap co-founder Clark Freifeld explains, "In releasing this app we aim to empower citizens in the cause of public health, not only by providing ready access to real-time information, but also by encouraging them to contribute their own knowledge, expertise and observations. In enabling participation in surveillance, we also expect to increase global coverage and identify outbreaks earlier."

HealthMap is based at Children's Hospital Boston. They launched this new application in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab. Please read HealthMap's press release for more information.

Posted by Corrie Conrad, Google.org

Announcing 14 Geo Challenge Grant Recipients

2009-08-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

When we launched our Geo Challenge Grants project last fall, we hoped our small grants program would provide nonprofits with the impetus and resources they need to take advantage of powerful online mapping tools like Google Earth and Google Maps. We were, without a doubt, not disappointed. In fact, we were overwhelmed by the hundreds of exciting and innovative geospatial applications that poured in from around the world, addressing diverse issues from renewable energy resources to education.

We are excited to announce that we have awarded grants to fourteen organizations with creative geo applications. These projects address important problems through creative and scalable geospatial applications. Grants are awarded either through the Google.org Fund at Tides Foundation or directly from Google.org.

Over the next six months to one year, these Geo Challenge Grant recipients will launch their projects and open-source all of the data, making both the projects and the data accessible to people all over the world. We hope these projects will inspire others to use geospatial platforms to address global problems:

Grantee	Project Name	Project Description	Amount
Academy for Educational Development	Data Visualization for Global Education	Using the Education Policy & Data Center's existing data system, AED will develop new visual tools for better communication of education patterns, inequality, and trends to policy makers and program developers	$21,600
Appalshop, Inc.	Wise Energy Forums	Mapping the renewable energy resources in Wise County Virginia to show the opportunity of a sustainable energy future locally	$5,000
Asha for Education	Interactive geospatial web-based portal for dissemination of information related to the education of underprivileged children in India	Developing an interactive geospatial web based portal for dissemination of information related to the education of underprivileged children in India	$6,000
CartONG	REDD Pilot – Elaboration and displaying of forest gains and losses in two target communities in Vietnam	Designing a pilot system for monitoring deforestation rates for Central Highlands of Vietnam. The project will carry out forest inventories and calculate carbon stocks using models	$25,000
e-Geopolis	e-Geopolis Data Dissemination Project: Urban Growth in Africa and India, 1950-2020	Enhancing the quality and quantity of urbanization data for communities of 10,000 people in India and Africa	$50,000
Esperanza del Barrio	Street Vendor Mobile Mapping	Developing a mapping application and website that will accept multi-user texts to map and update street vendor locations, integrating data into websites like Yelp and Urbanspoon, and providing information about access to healthy foods to the community	$21,600
Green Belt Movement	The Green Belt Movement Tree Planting Project Mapping in Kenya	Creating a web-based system to visualize and monitor the Green Belt Movement supported community tree nurseries and associated tree planting sites in Kenya	$50,000
International Snow Leopard Trust	Climate Change Impacts on Snow Leopard Range: Prioritizing Conservation Efforts to Mitigate Human-Wildlife Conflict	Displaying different climate change scenarios in regions of China where the snow leopard lives to prevent human-snow leopard conflict	$5,000
King's College London	Mapping the potential of global hydropower to sustain renewable energy demands, the risks imposed by climate change and strategies for adaptation through land cover management	Mapping the global distribution of dams, contributing watersheds and the role of protected areas and community reserves in providing water-based environmental services to these dams	$25,000
Marine Conservation Biology Institute	Renewable Energy at Sea: Best Places for Wind, Wave & Current Generation in US Waters	Creating a map of offshore wind, wave and current renewable resources as well as shipping lanes, marine sanctuaries, and aquaculture that will highlight the most favorable areas for development	$5,000
Point Reyes Bird Observatory	Biodiversity Futures: Mapping Biological Responses to Climate Change	Building a dynamic and user-driven online modeling application using existing avian, climate, vegetation, and land use change data to show deviation of avian migration based on climate change scenarios	$25,000
Royal University of Phnom Penh	Mapping Healthcare Centres in Cambodia	Mapping the health centers in the country's capital city (clinics, services, contact info, languages, etc) and using this as the foundation for a Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) emergency system	$5,000
Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society	To develop a dynamic Geo Portal interfaced with Google Earth and climate change data to provide a “one stop shop” Internet database for Asian elephant conservation and to identify individual elephants through an automated identification program	Developing a dynamic Geo Portal with climate change data to provide a “one stop shop” Internet database for Asian elephant conservation and to identify individual elephants through an automated identification program	$15,000
UK Consortium on AIDS & International Development	Mapping availability of HIV, AIDS and TB services in Africa	Using the Ushahidi platform, it will map organizations providing HIV, AIDS and TB related services in Kenya and create a tool that enables organizations without experience of mapping to publish data on HIV, AIDS and TB services in their own countries	$40,800

Posted by Adam Borelli, Associate, Google.org

Cash for a clunker

2009-08-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

Ever since college, I've been driving the same car: a 2000 Nissan XTerra. It's been a great car and, after more than 100,000 miles, it has a lot of memories: a ski trip to Lake Tahoe through a blizzard, driving down the I5 to Los Angeles, driving across the entire country and then back! However, over the last few years I started to feel guilty about the how much gas my car managed to guzzle. The official stats claimed 19 miles-per-gallon on the highway, but they must have been driving slower than I do because I never saw that sort of mileage. So, I was excited when the government approved the "Cash for Clunkers" program!

I talked it over with my wife, and we decided it was time to upgrade to a more environmentally friendly car. We looked around, and decided to get a Toyota Prius. After checking out the Cash for Clunkers website, I figured out that because the Prius is rated at 50 mpg, well more than 10 mpg more than the 16 mpg my XTerra currently rates, we were eligible for a $4,500 trade-in value through the program. That made the Prius not only a environmentally friendly choice, but an economically attractive one as well. We found a participating dealer nearby and headed over to trade in our clunker.

After a quick test drive and some effective negotiations, we struck a deal and bought the new car. As always, there was quite a bit of paperwork involved, including a few extra pages for the "Cash for Clunkers" program. (Then again, $4,500 is certainly worth a couple of pages of paperwork.) After signing on the dotted line, the car was ours.

Just today President Barack Obama signed a bill extending funding for this incredibly popular program, which burned through its $1 billion budget in just one week. It's not often you can get something you want, feel like you're doing something good for the planet, and get $4,500 for doing it. So consider trading in your clunker for a more fuel-efficient model this weekend!

Posted by Jeff Keltner, Business Development Manager

Turning on the Solar Power Tower

2009-08-06T13:23:00.001-07:00

In 2007 Google.org launched our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative and announced a $10 million investment in the early-stage clean power company eSolar, Inc. Yesterday in Southern California, eSolar flipped the switch on what is to be the first solar power tower facility in the U.S. that will enter full commercial operation.

Success here could signal the emergence of a clean energy technology by which we might -- for the first time -- economically harness the sun to produce large quantities of electricity. And we would be harnessing a massive and, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible energy supply.

In many respects eSolar has turned conventional thinking about solar power tower technology on its head in order to drastically reduce the capital and operating cost of solar thermal power plants. Instead of employing a small number of large and expensive specialty mirrors eSolar takes the opposite approach – incorporating thousands of small mirrors that can be made cheaply in massive quantities. And instead of having to reinforce large mirrors to stand up to high winds, eSolar’s small mirrors have a low profile, reducing material costs including steel and concrete for the mounting structures.

Of course this massive number of mirrors requires more sophisticated software so they accurately track the sun leading to high heat output and system efficiency. At Google we’re particularly intrigued with this aspect of the eSolar product -- that is, how the performance of energy technology can be enhanced by information technology. Call it ET meets IT.

The eSolar team has taken a giant step toward cracking the code on solar power tower technology. I’m hopeful that just a few years from now we will see this facility – and many more like it – focusing the sun’s energy to produce a brighter future for our children and the planet they will inherit.

Posted by Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change & Energy Initaitives

The vast potential of energy efficiency

2009-08-06T09:10:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from the Public Policy Blog)

It's no surprise that the cheapest and most available solution to the climate problem is simply to use energy more efficiently. But a recent study issued by McKinsey & Co. details just how compelling an opportunity we are missing. McKinsey predicts that an annual investment of roughly $50 billion over the next 10 years would cut energy demand by 23% and yield savings to the U.S. economy worth $1.2 trillion! The energy savings would be equal to taking the entire U.S. passenger fleet of cars and trucks off the road.

Such efficiency gains are possible only if we overcome some major hurdles. For instance, most people have no idea how much energy we use in our homes on a daily basis or which of our appliances or devices are consuming the most energy. That's one of the reasons that we created Google PowerMeter, a software gadget that shows users detailed information on their home electricity consumption. Studies show that when people have access to this kind information they reduce their energy use by up to 15%. Greater savings are possible if people use the information to buy a more efficient refrigerator or air conditioner, insulate their home, or take advantage of off-peak electricity rates.

The McKinsey report acknowledges that energy efficiency alone won't solve our energy and climate challenges. We must continue to put major resources into low-carbon sources of energy like renewable energy, and the federal economic stimulus, with its tens of billions of targeted dollars and incentives, is a good start. But the McKinsey findings are a wake up call. As we enact more comprehensive energy policies, energy efficiency -- and giving people the information, tools and incentives to take advantage of it -- should be front and center.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Program Manager, Google.org