“In the beginning”...bringing the scrolls of Genesis and the Ten Commandments online

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A little over a year ago, we helped put online five manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient documents that include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. Written more than 2,000 years ago on pieces of parchment and papyrus, they were preserved by the hot, dry desert climate and the darkness of the caves in which they were hidden. The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century.

Today, we’re helping put more of these ancient treasures online. The Israel Antiquities Authority is launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, an online collection of some 5,000 images of scroll fragments, at a quality never seen before. The texts include one of the earliest known copies of the Book of Deuteronomy, which includes the Ten Commandments; part of Chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis, which describes the creation of the world; and hundreds more 2,000-year-old texts, shedding light on the time when Jesus lived and preached, and on the history of Judaism.

The Ten Commandments. Photo by Shai Halevi, courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority
Part of the Book of Genesis. Photo by Shai Halevi, courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority
Millions of users and scholars can discover and decipher details invisible to the naked eye, at 1215 dpi resolution. The site displays infrared and color images that are equal in quality to the Scrolls themselves. There’s a database containing information for about 900 of the manuscripts, as well as interactive content pages. We’re thrilled to have been able to help this project through hosting on Google Storage and App Engine, and use of Maps, YouTube and Google image technology.

This partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority is part of our ongoing work to bring important cultural and historical materials online, to make them accessible and help preserve them for future generations. Other examples include the Yad Vashem Holocaust photo collection, Google Art Project, World Wonders and the Google Cultural Institute.

We hope you enjoy visiting the Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, or any of these other projects, and interacting with history.

Posted by Eyal Miller, New Business Development, and Yossi Matias, Head of Israel Research and Development Center

Count down to Christmas Eve with Google Santa Tracker

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While millions of people eagerly await Christmas Day, Santa and his elves are keeping busy at the North Pole. They’re preparing presents, tuning up the sleigh, feeding the reindeer and, of course, checking the list (twice!) before they take flight on their trip around the world.

While we’ve been tracking Santa since 2004 with Google Earth, this year a team of dedicated Google Maps engineers built a new route algorithm to chart Santa’s journey around the world on Christmas Eve. On his sleigh, arguably the fastest airborne vehicle in the world, Santa whips from city to city delivering presents to millions of homes. You’ll be able to follow him on Google Maps and Google Earth, and get his stats starting at 2:00 a.m. PST Christmas Eve at google.com/santatracker.

Simulating Santa's path across the world—see it live Dec 24
In addition, with some help from developer elves, we’ve built a few other tools to help you track Santa from wherever you may be. Add the new Chrome extension or download the Android app to keep up with Santa from your smartphone or tablet. And to get the latest updates on his trip, follow Google Maps on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.

Get a dashboard view of Santa's journey on Google Maps
The Google Santa Tracker will launch on December 24, but the countdown to the journey starts now! Visit Santa’s Village today to watch the countdown clock and join the elves and reindeer in their preparations. You can even ask Santa to call a friend or family member.

We hope you enjoy tracking Santa with us this year. And on behalf of everyone at Google—happy holidays!

Posted by Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Google Earth

Explore Spain's Jewish heritage online

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You can now discover Spain’s Jewish heritage on a new site powered by comprehensive and accurate Google Maps: www.redjuderias.org/google.

Using the Google Maps API, Red de Juderías de España has built a site where you can explore more than 500 landmarks that shed light on Spain’s Jewish population throughout history. By clicking on a landmark, you can get historical information, pictures or texts, and a 360º view of the location, thanks to Street View technology. You can also use the search panel on the top of the page to filter the locations by category, type, geographic zone or date.

Toledo, Synagogue Santamaría la Blanca
Information is included on each landmark
This project is just one of our efforts to bring important cultural content online. This week, we worked with the Israel Antiquities Authority to launch the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, an online collection of more than 5,000 scroll fragments, and last year we announced a project to digitize and make available the Yad Vashem Museum’s Holocaust archives. With the Google Art Project, people around the world can also view and explore more than 35,000 works of art in 180 museums.

Read more about this project on the Europe Blog. We hope this new site will inspire you to learn more about Spain’s Jewish history, and perhaps to visit these cities in person.

Posted by William Echikson, External Relations, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Cloud computing enabling entrepreneurship in Africa

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In 2007, 33-year-old Vuyile moved to Cape Town from rural South Africa in search of work. Unable to complete high school, he worked as a night shift security guard earning $500/month to support his family. During the rush hour commute from his home in Khayelitsha, Vuyile realized that he could earn extra income by selling prepaid mobile airtime vouchers to other commuters on the train.

In rural areas, it’s common to use prepaid vouchers to pay for basic services such as electricity, insurance and airtime for mobile phones. But it’s often difficult to distribute physical vouchers because of the risk of theft and fraud.

Nomanini, a startup based in South Africa, built a device that enables local entrepreneurs like Vuyile to sell prepaid mobile services in their communities. The Lula (which means “easy” in colloquial Zulu), is a portable voucher sales terminal that is used on-the-go by people ranging from taxi drivers to street vendors. It generates and prints codes which people purchase to add minutes to their mobile phones.

Today, Vuyile sells vouchers on the train for cash payment, and earns a commission weekly. Since he started using the Lula, he’s seen his monthly income increase by 20 percent.

Vuyile prints a voucher from his Lula
Nomanini founders Vahid and Ali Monadjem wanted to make mobile services widely available in areas where they had been inaccessible, or where—in a region where the average person makes less than $200/month—people simply couldn’t afford them. By creating a low-cost and easy-to-use product, Nomanini could enable entrepreneurs in Africa to go to deep rural areas and create businesses for themselves.

In order to build a scalable and reliable backend system to keep the Lula running, Nomanini chose to run on Google App Engine. Their development team doesn’t have to spend time setting up their own servers and can instead run on the same infrastructure that powers Google’s own applications. They can focus on building their backend systems and easily deploy code to Google’s data centers. When Vuyile makes a sale, he presses a few buttons, App Engine processes the request, and the voucher prints in seconds.

Last month, 40,000 people bought airtime through the Lula, and Nomanini hopes to grow this number to 1 million per month next year. While platforms like App Engine are typically used to build web or smartphone apps, entrepreneurs like Vahid and Ali are finding innovative ways to leverage this technology by building their own devices and connecting them to App Engine. Vahid tells us: “We’re a uniquely born and bred African solution, and we have great potential to take this to the rest of Africa and wider emerging markets. We could not easily scale this fast without running on Google App Engine.”

To learn more about the technical implementation used by Nomanini, read their guest post on the Google App Engine blog.

Posted by Zafir Khan, Google App Engine

Marking the birth of the modern-day Internet

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Today is the 30th birthday of the modern-day Internet. Five years ago we marked the occasion with a doodle. This year we invited Vint Cerf to tell the story. Vint is widely regarded as one of the fathers of the Internet for his contributions to shaping the Internet’s architecture, including co-designing the TCP/IP protocol. Today he works with Google to promote and protect the Internet. -Ed.

A long time ago, my colleagues and I became part of a great adventure, teamed with a small band of scientists and technologists in the U.S. and elsewhere. For me, it began in 1969, when the potential of packet switching communication was operationally tested in the grand ARPANET experiment by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Other kinds of packet switched networks were also pioneered by DARPA, including mobile packet radio and packet satellite, but there was a big problem. There was no common language. Each network had its own communications protocol using different conventions and formatting standards to send and receive packets, so there was no way to transmit anything between networks.

In an attempt to solve this, Robert Kahn and I developed a new computer communication protocol designed specifically to support connection among different packet-switched networks. We called it TCP, short for “Transmission Control Protocol,” and in 1974 we published a paper about it in IEEE Transactions on Communications: “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication.” Later, to better handle the transmission of real-time data, including voice, we split TCP into two parts, one of which we called “Internet Protocol,” or IP for short. The two protocols combined were nicknamed TCP/IP.

TCP/IP was tested across the three types of networks developed by DARPA, and eventually was anointed as their new standard. In 1981, Jon Postel published a transition plan to migrate the 400 hosts of the ARPANET from the older NCP protocol to TCP/IP, including a deadline of January 1, 1983, after which point all hosts not switched would be cut off.



From left to right: Vint Cerf in 1973, Robert Kahn in the 1970’s, Jon Postel
When the day came, it’s fair to say the main emotion was relief, especially amongst those system administrators racing against the clock. There were no grand celebrations—I can’t even find a photograph. The only visible mementos were the “I survived the TCP/IP switchover” pins proudly worn by those who went through the ordeal!


Yet, with hindsight, it’s obvious it was a momentous occasion. On that day, the operational Internet was born. TCP/IP went on to be embraced as an international standard, and now underpins the entire Internet.

It’s been almost 40 years since Bob and I wrote our paper, and I can assure you while we had high hopes, we did not dare to assume that the Internet would turn into the worldwide platform it’s become. I feel immensely privileged to have played a part and, like any proud parent, have delighted in watching it grow. I continue to do what I can to protect its future. I hope you’ll join me today in raising a toast to the Internet—may it continue to connect us for years to come.

Posted by Vint Cerf, VP and Chief Internet Evangelist

A little help from Google on your New Year’s resolutions

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The new year has arrived, and with it all the resolutions that we hope to tackle in 2013.

But resolutions can be hard to keep. And since eating better, taking control of personal finances, travelling more and learning something new regularly top the list of New Year’s resolutions, we've pulled together some of our best tips and tricks across Google to make 2013 the year you succeed with your goals.

Eat better

• Counting calories? Apps such as Diet Diary can be easily accessed through Chrome or your Android device—that way it’s with you when it‘s on your mind. If spreadsheets are more your style, try one of several Google Docs templates, like this weekly meal planner.
• Find recipes for healthy meals and how-to-cook videos with apps like BBC’s Good Food for Chrome or food channels like Show me the Curry on YouTube.
• Rely on the Google+ community for motivation and learn from others via hangouts on how to prepare healthy meals.
• We know how easy it is to fall off track. Check out Google Play to find apps, books and music to keep you motivated.
  

Get fiscally fit

• To control your finances, you need to know exactly where money is coming in and out. This simple budget template in Google Drive already has you halfway there.
• If you prefer a more detailed budget, try using an app like Mint to track your finances on the go, available on both Android and Chrome.
• Keep track of your stock portfolio and related market news via Google Finance or with brokerage apps like E*TRADE from Google Play.

Travel more

• Use Google Flight Search to quickly compare flight times and costs across airlines. Try the “tourist spotlight” feature on Google Hotel Finder to find a room near the hottest spots in the city.
• Simply type [tourist attractions <city name>] into Google Search to see some of the top points of interest. Once you have a list of the things you want to do and see, keep it in one place and share it with your travel buddies using Google Sheets. 
• Never get lost with Google Maps. Whether your plans are local or international, indoors or out, comprehensive and accurate Google Maps can help you find your way.

Learn something new

• Learn how to hone your yoga practice or crochet a granny square by following the steps of experts on YouTube. If classroom style learning works better for you, try joining a Google+ Hangout or Community to learn how to paint, cook or knit from people who share your interests and passions.
• Try a free language learning app like the Que Onda Spanish app for Chrome or the Busuu Portuguese language app for Android.
• Keep up with current events or hone in on specific interests by personalizing your Google News and setting up Google Alerts to receive information on specific topics directly in your email. If your inbox is already on overload, try the Google Currents app for news on the go.
• Learning something new doesn’t have to break the bank. Check out Google Offers for deals on classes for dancing, cooking, bartending and more. 

If your resolution wasn’t listed here, try checking out SELF Magazine’s Google+ page with tips from experts, live via Google+ hangouts, for 13 more resolutions starting on January 13.

Research shows that you’re more likely to achieve your resolutions if you write them down and have support. Try sharing your goals with communities around you. When you’re ready to share your new year’s ambition with the world, or if you're interested in seeing what resolutions look like around the globe, add it to the interactive resolution map on our 2012 Zeitgeist website.


No matter who you are, the web can help you do anything.

Posted by Liz Wessel, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Send a Free Fax to Anywhere in the World

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If you don’t have a fax machine at hand, or if the cost of sending an international fax seems prohibitive, this should interest you. →

Send an online fax for free to any fax machine in the world

HelloFax, the online fax company, has recently partnered with Microsoft and now lets you send up to 50 pages per month to any fax machine in the world for free. All your need is a web browser and a Microsoft account (your Hotmail or Windows Live ID should also work).

To get started, go to hellofax.com/skydrive and click the “Sign-up with Microsoft” link. Once your are signed in, just upload any document and put in a fax number (with country code) to send your first online fax. Once your fax has been successfully delivered, a copy of the outbound fax document will be automatically saved in your SkyDrive.

You can use HelloFax to send Word documents, PDFs, text files, images and several other popular formats. You can also pull in documents directly from your SkyDrive, Box, Dropbox, Evernote and Google Drive accounts for faxing.

Also see: Comparison on Online Fax Services

Your free account will only help you send faxes to other numbers but in order to receive faxes, you’ll have to buy an incoming fax number that costs around $7.99 per month.

Update – If you don’t have a Microsoft account, go to hellofax.com/googledrive and use your Google Account to sign-up for HelloFax.  You will still get credit for sending up to  50 faxes per month for free for a maximum of 6 months.

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This story, Send a Free Fax to Anywhere in the World, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 13/12/2012 under Fax, Internet.