Official Google Blog

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• Celebrating the 50th country on Street View
• A new kind of summer job: open source coding with Google Summer of Code
• In support of a national STEM Teacher Corps

Celebrating the 50th country on Street View Posted: 23 Apr 2013 09:00 AM PDT Whether you're planning a summer vacation to visit the Colosseum or exploring potential neighborhoods for your next move, Street View gives you instant access to the places you want to see—even before you leave the house. We launched Street View in 2007 in five U.S. cities to give you what we called a "feet on the ground" experience and have since been growing the program to make it more comprehensive, accurate and useful for everyone. Today, we've reached 50 countries with the launch of Street View in Hungary and Lesotho and are significantly expanding our coverage in Poland and Romania, among other locations around the world. This is also the largest single update of Street View imagery we've ever pushed, including new and updated imagery for nearly 350,000 miles of roads across 14 countries. Now you can take a virtual stroll through the historic center of Budapest, right along the Danube (the river that carves the city in two). See the Hungarian Parliament building or the famous Chain bridge. View Larger Map Budapest, Lánchíd (Chain bridge) Other Hungarian treasures to be discovered include the Széchenyi thermal bath, the largest medicinal bath in Europe, as well as the wonders of Buda castle. Lesotho, an enclave surrounded by South Africa, is the only independent state that sits entirely 1,000m or more above sea level. Explore some of the mountainous imagery captured by our Street View cars, including the winding roads and lakes. View Larger Map Leribe District, Lesotho Other sights include the Lesotho Evangelical Church, which is one of Africa's oldest Protestant churches, founded in 1833 by missionaries from Paris, and the traditional architecture in Nkesi, Maseru. We're also refreshing and expanding existing Street View coverage in France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. And, we've added new special collections of a host of picturesque spots—using our Street View Trike technology—including Portugal's Pena National Palace, or the Sha Tin Che Kung Temple in Hong Kong or the Kilkenny Castle in Ireland. View Larger Map Kilkenny Castle, Ireland From the first handful of U.S. cities, to the now thousands of cities and villages worldwide, we've spent the past six years updating Google Maps for you. From Antarctica to Australia, from South Korea to South Africa, from the snow-capped peaks of Everest to the Great Barrier Reef, you can navigate more than 5 million miles of the world, without ever leaving home. So spin the globe and take a walk through any one of the 50 countries now on Street View. Posted by Ulf Spitzer, Program Manager, Google Street View

A new kind of summer job: open source coding with Google Summer of Code Posted: 22 Apr 2013 12:15 PM PDT If you're a university student with CS chops looking to earn real-world experience this summer, consider writing code for a cool open source project with the Google Summer of Code program. Over the past eight years more than 6,000 students have "graduated" from this global program, working with almost 400 different open source projects. Students who are accepted into the program will put the skills they have learned in university to good use by working on an actual software project over the summer. Students are paired with mentors to help address technical questions and concerns throughout the course of the project. With the knowledge and hands-on experience students gain during the summer they strengthen their future employment opportunities in fields related to their academic pursuits. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all. Interested students can submit proposals on the website starting now through Friday, May 3 at 12:00pm PDT. Get started by reviewing the ideas pages of the 177 open source projects in this year's program, and decide which projects you're interested in. Because Google Summer of Code has a limited number of spots for students, writing a great project proposal is essential to being selected to the program—be sure to check out the Student Manual for advice. For ongoing information throughout the application period and beyond, see the Google Open Source blog, join our Summer of Code mailing lists or join us on Internet relay chat at #gsoc on Freenode. Good luck to all the open source coders out there, and remember to submit your proposals early—you only have until May 3 to apply! Posted by Stephanie Taylor, Open Source team

In support of a national STEM Teacher Corps Posted: 22 Apr 2013 11:46 AM PDT Last year, while hosting the White House Science Fair, President Obama said, "If you win the NCAA championship, you come to the White House. Well, if you're a young person and you produce the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too." We agree—and we think the best science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) teachers who inspire those young people should be honored and supported as well. That's why Google and our partner organizations support a national STEM Teacher Corps to acknowledge the great teachers who help students achieve amazing things in the fields of science and technology. We're excited that the President has recommended funding for a STEM Teacher Corps in his budget (PDF). Today we're co-publishing a white paper (PDF) with Math For America and the Broad Institute that outlines some of the key features of such a corps. We gathered input from more than 80 organizations to make recommendations for a program that will reward teachers and schools with significant stipends, foster a community of teachers empowered to make broad improvements in STEM education, and recognize a larger percentage of teachers than any existing recognition program. We must do more to retain the best teachers so our students have the opportunity to succeed in these growing fields, and we applaud the many organizations already working to elevate and celebrate the top STEM teachers nationwide. We look forward to continuing to support the development of the STEM Teacher Corps and doing our part to ensure that every student has access to truly great STEM teachers. Posted by Jordan Lloyd Bookey, Head of K-12 Education Outreach and Nancy Lee, Director of People Operations

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