Google Tech Talks
December 13, 2006

ABSTRACT

For 3D global visualization systems, it is important to be able to render city-sized collections of relatively simple building models at fast speeds without losing spatial coherence. Since traditional mesh simplification algorithms are not designed for collections of simple models, we introduce a method of simplification through merging of similar objects. We incorporate the concept of “urban legibility” from architecture and city-planning as a guideline for simplifying city models. Our algorithm can be broken down into five steps. Hierarchical clustering, cluster merging, polyline simplification, and hierarchical texturing are performed during…

Google Tech Talks
September 20, 2006

Reed M. Benet
Biofuels Focused Ph.D. Student University of California Davis Institute of Transportation Studies
Consultant to The Energy Foundation, Chevron, Nissan
10 Years Founding, Funding, Consulting to or Leading Venture Capital Backed Life Sciences, High-Tech or Energy-Tech Co’s
Europe Finance & Operations
5 Years USMC Infantry Officer

Harvard MBA (Entrepreneurship)
Princeton B.A. (Politics)

ABSTRACT
Speaker proposes that plug-in hybrid diesel vehicles (versus gasoline variants) combined with biomass-to-liquid gasification and fischer-tropsch diesel fuels (versus ethanol, cellulosic or otherwise) is the best holistic and medium- to long-term…

Google Tech Talks
December 1, 2006

ABSTRACT

In late 2001, Microsoft released the Xbox, their first gaming console, to compete against Sony and Nintendo in the living room. As the real money is made with the games and not the consoles, Microsoft had to make sure (as much as they could) that nobody could play pirated games or use the machine for anything other than games. Although the original security design idea was a good one and has been copied a lot since then, Microsoft’s inexperienced team made a variety of design, implementation, and policy mistakes. This talk first (re)constructs the design of the Xbox security system from Microsoft’s point of view, and then deconstructs it from the…

Google Tech Talks
August 15, 2006

Karl Fogel

ABSTRACT
Copyright is derived from a 16th-century English censorship law, later turned into a monopoly right to subsidize distribution. This history is somewhat at odds with the modern conception of copyright, and an understanding of it is increasingly important today, as the economics of distribution are changing radically.

This talk will give the audience a mid-level overview of copyright’s history, with pointers to further reading, followed by a survey of alternative economic bases for creation and distribution, and a discussion of what these dynamics mean for companies, like Google, that flourish in an environment of frictionless information…

Google Tech Talks
November 15, 2006

ABSTRACT
What is it about technology that does not change? What persistent patterns can we learn—can society at large learn—in order to understand and evaluate the technologies underlying our important personal, political, social, and economic decisions?

The author of “Technology Challenged” and director of nonprofit corporation KnowledgeContext, Miguel F. Aznar, will share stories about Hawaiian bobtail squid, North Korean radios, and nanotechnology to illustrate a strategy for understanding and evaluating any technology. This strategy is the seed for a technological literacy curriculum that KnowledgeContext has been offering in a grassroots attempt to…

Google London Test Automation Conference (LTAC)
Google Tech Talks
September 8th, 2006

Presenter: Bob Binder Credits: Presenter:Bob Binder

Google Tech Talks
November 16, 2006

ABSTRACT

Lumiere Technology specializes in high resolution photography + computer enhancements of fine art. The Mona Lisa is just one of many examples of paintings that have been scanned using this new technology. See this news release for an example:
http://www.lumiere-technology.com/Pages/News/news3.htm

Jean Penicaut, CEO of Lumiere, will describe the technology and present several examples of the work he is doing. Credits: Speaker:Jean Penicaut

Google Tech Talks
December 1, 2006

ABSTRACT

The Human Genome Sequence was a big jump in scale for the then young bioinformatics field. Thirty times bigger than the worm genome that we were only just getting to grips with and with far greater numbers of interested users. The Ensembl project was started from scratch to handle this data: a system to store the data in an RDBMS; a pipeline to generate a pre-computed set of analysis; an API to provide both web and programmatic access. Ensembl evolves continuously: a new release is made every 2 months and in nearly every release the schema is updated to handle new data types. It now integrates more than thirty large genomes and provides researchers with…

Google TechTalks
April 07, 2006

ABSTRACT
Marc works with an initiative that seeks to make biological and genomic data open and available such that anyone can go play with it and form communities around working with this data. The hope is that by having data freely available people there will be many more people working with the data and thus more leads into potential therapies and cures.