Google Tech Talks
May 3, 2007

ABSTRACT

DNA is a programming language for living cells. The cell’s basic operating system, or genome, directs functions like growth and reproduction, energy utilization, and the production of useful compounds like ethanol or penicillin. With genetic engineering, new functions can be added to cells or broken metabolic pathways repaired. Until recently, genetic engineering has required the DNA molecule itself to be physically manipulated, a tedious and expensive process. Now, automatic DNA synthesis permits virtually any DNA code to be made from scratch, opening up genetic engineering to anyone with a computer and a credit card. The capabilities of this new synthetic…

Google Tech Talks
April 13, 2007

ABSTRACT

Since its inception in the 1980s, the popularity of the Internet has been growing exponentially, resulting in a mass of shared knowledge and fast, cheap communication. Hand-in-hand with these developments, we have seen the birth of a plethora of new valuable systems and services ranging from web search and email to blogging and social networking sites. Perhaps the most essential system for monetizing such web services is online advertising. In this talk, I will first present an overview of the most common market mechanism for online advertising, namely pay-per-click auctions. I will then discuss some of the challenges in the design of these auctions…

Google Tech Talks
April 12, 2007

ABSTRACT

The mission of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) movement is to ensure that every school-aged child in the lesser-developed parts of the world is able to engage effectively with their own personal laptop, networked to the world, so that they, their families and their communities can openly learn and learn about learning.

The OLPC Association focuses on designing, manufacturing and distributing XO laptops to children in lesser developed countries, initially concentrating on those governments that have made commitments for the funding and program support required to ensure that all of their children own and can effectively use a laptop.

Initially the…

Google Tech Talks
May 1, 2007

ABSTRACT

Images and videos form a rich source of information about the visual world. The extraction of 3D information from images is an important research problem in computer vision and graphics. The ubiquitous presence of cameras and the tremendous advances of processing and communication technologies yields important opportunities and challenges in those areas.

My work has focused on developing flexible techniques for recovering 3D shape, motion and appearance from images. A first example of this is an approach to recover photo-realistic 3D models of static objects or scenes from videos recorded with a hand-held camera or on a moving vehicle. A key aspect of…

Google Tech Talks
June 26, 2007

ABSTRACT

An electronic book is defined as a digital book that not only captures the affordances of a physical book, but also transcends the limitations of its paper counterpart. There is much debate as to whether the use of the book metaphor is appropriate for an electronic document. User studies suggest that current popular document presentations (HTML and PDF) are not always the most convenient, or the most comfortable, for the reader. On the other hand, while realistic physically-based computer models of books have been around for years, they are rarely deployed in practice. I suggest that this happens not because of any proven drawbacks, but is purely…

Google Tech Talks
April 30, 2007

ABSTRACT

World-renowned Science Fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling will outline his ideas for SPIMES, a form of ubiquitous computing that gives smarts and ‘searchabiliity’ to even the most mundane of physical products. Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth.

This same paradigm will find you “wrangling” with product-lifecycle- management systems that do for physical objects what the iPod has done for music. These and other radical ideas are delivered in Sterling’s latest book`Shaping Things’. This concise book was written to inspire designers to visualize radical scenarios connecting information technology and…

Google Tech Talks
May 31, 2007

ABSTRACT

In a recent survey conducted by the PEW Internet and America Life Project it was found that 64% of wired Americans use the Internet for religious and spiritual activity. People are going online to do everything from searching for religious information and answers, to joining in online prayer groups, undertaking virtual pilgrimages, and even participating in online rituals. Dr. Christopher Helland, one of the foremost authorities studying religious activity on the World Wide Web, will present a summary of his current research, demonstrating the unique ways people are utilizing Internet technology so that it can meet their religious and spiritual needs. As…

Google Tech Talks
May 22, 2007

ABSTRACT

Artists and graphic designers of all stripes continually face the problem of how to compose their works in aesthetically pleasing ways. Despite its importance and generality, the perceptual basis of aesthetic response has not been adequately studied. I will report the results of three projects that investigate people’s aesthetic responses to spatial and color composition. Our results show strong, consistent preferences in the spatial composition of simple images containing familiar objects and configurations of objects in rectangular frames to be positioned at or near the center of the frame (the “center bias”) and to face toward the center of the frame…

Google Tech Talks
May 17, 2007

ABSTRACT

Urban Pattern Shaped by Transportation
Bicycle Transportation in Modern Cities,Management by Motorists,Bicycle Advocacy
Present Governmental Bicycle Programs,
Rational Management, Operating Rules,
Instruction, Social Policies Credits: Speaker:John Forester