A partnership with the Eiffel Tower Operating Company takes you up the Eiffel Tower in the comfort of your own home.
Providing panoramic street level views of various different cities, Google's Street View service was impressive enough when it launched just over six years ago. Since then, though, the service has expanded to include so much more than just city streets and suburban roads, allowing users to visit penguins in Antarctica or the inside of Thomas Jefferson's house.
This week, Google announced that Street View has gone up the Eiffel Tower.
Street View has had images of the Eiffel Tower for years, but now the service allows users to actually go up the tower. The Google Cultural Institute and the Eiffel Tower Operating Company teamed up to create three online exhibitions that cover the history of the Eiffel Tower.
The first covers the birth of the Tower; the second covers the construction; and the third covers the opening of the monument and its first visitors.
Google's Street View imagery is featured in the exhibit and was captured using the Street View Trolley, which was designed especially for monuments and museums. It snapped 360-degree views of the monument’s architecture and its views over Paris.
The company's Street View panoramas are complemented by 50 archival images, plans, engravings and photos that tell the story of the Eiffel Tower’s development and social impact in the 19th century. This includes a recording of Gustave Eiffel’s voice by Thomas Edison.
Check the exhibits (one, two, three) for yourself.
NEW YORK – The PC is dead. Long live the tablet!
Following the worst quarter ever for worldwide shipments of personal computers -- the biggest decline in almost 20 years, blamed by many analysts on weak demand for Windows 8 -- numbers slumped an additional 11 percent in the April-June period, according to data from research firms Gartner and IDC, as people continued to migrate to tablets and other mobile devices.
Gartner said Wednesday that the PC industry is now experiencing the longest decline in its history, as shipments dropped for the fifth consecutive quarter. Computer makers shipped 76 million PCs in the April-June period, down from 85 million in the same three months of 2012, according to Gartner.
International Data Corp., which uses slightly different methodology, essentially came to the same conclusion, though it noted that the decline was slightly smaller than expected.
"With second quarter growth so close to forecast, we are still looking for some improvement in growth during the second half of the year," said Jay Chou, senior analyst at IDC, in a statement. "Slower growth in Europe and China reflect the risks, while the improved U.S. outlook reflects potential improvement."
Gartner's Mikako Kitagawa said inexpensive tablets are displacing low-end computers in "mature" markets such as the United States. In emerging markets like China, meanwhile "inexpensive tablets have become the first computing device for many people, who at best are deferring the purchase of a PC. This is also accounting for the collapse of the mini notebook market," she added.
IDC said the numbers "reflect a market that is still struggling with the transition to touch-based systems running Windows 8." Microsoft Corp.'s latest operating system launched in October and sales have disappointed analysts. But Kitagawa said that while "Windows 8 has been blamed by some as the reason for the PC market's decline, we believe this is unfounded as it does not explain the sustained decline in PC shipments."
Lenovo was the No. 1 PC maker, beating out rival Hewlett-Packard Co. by a narrow margin, according to both firms.
A massive iceberg, larger than the city of Chicago, broke off of Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier on Monday (July 8), and is now floating freely in the Amundsen Sea, according to a team of German scientists.
The newborn iceberg measures about 278 square miles (720 square kilometers), and was seen by TerraSAR-X, an earth-observing satellite operated by the German Space Agency (DLR). Scientists with NASA's Operation IceBridgefirst discovered a giant crack in the Pine Island Glacier in October 2011, as they were flying over and surveying the sprawling ice sheet.
At that time, the fissure spanned about 15 miles (24 km) in length and 164 feet (50 meters) in width, according to researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany. In May 2012, satellite images revealed a second rift had formed near the northern side of the first crack.
New Antarctic Vent Community Found: Photos
"As a result of these cracks, one giant iceberg broke away from the glacier tongue," Angelika Humbert, a glaciologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, said in a statement. (Photo Gallery: Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier Cracks)
Humbert and her colleagues studied high resolution radar images taken by the TerraSAR-X satellite to track the changes in the two cracks, and to observe the processes behind glacier movements.
"Using the images we have been able to follow how the larger crack on the Pine Island Glacier extended initially to a length of 28 kilometers [17 miles]," Nina Wilkens, one of the team researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, said in a statement. "Shortly before the 'birth' of the iceberg, the gap then widened bit by bit so that it measured around 540 meters (1,770 feet) at its widest point."
Before Office 2013, Microsoft relied on a three-year release schedule, making it easy for both consumers and businesses to know what and when improvements will take place. But "nimbler" opponents like
Dropbox, Box and even Google – which deliver frequent updates over the Web – have pushed Microsoft to ditch the tried-and-true schedule for something more frequent and easily accessible. The three-year release
schedule just doesn't work in a fast-paced world anymore.
Thus, within a year, users of the subscription-based Office –
including e-mail, telephony and collaboration tools according to Office
VP Jeff Teper – will have parts of the software refreshed on a weekly
basis. Previously, Microsoft planned to refresh the software once per
quarter at the very least, but has now moved up to a monthly update.
Microsoft has already started with more frequent updates as seen with
Windows 8.
The shift to a more frequent update schedule stems from Microsoft's acquisition of Yammer back in July 2012.
The five-year-old startup had reportedly convinced its own customers
that frequent updates were an advantage, as it gave them the latest and
greatest features. Then again, Yammer only had seven million users (most
unpaid), whereas Microsoft has more than one billion users, most of who
pay for the software. For Microsoft, moving at a fast pace will have
its risks.
Currently, Yammer issues updates twice per week, which is infrequent
compared to Facebook which updates twice a day. Yammer is expected to
move to three times a week in the near future, then adopt a continuous
system of updates. Adam Pisoni, Yammer’s CEO and co-founder, is also the
general manager of engineering for Office, hence the Yammer update
reference.
That said, there's fear that the product quality of Office could
suffer. Make an unpopular change or install a buggy feature, and
Microsoft will face an even worse issue than the feedback stemming from
Windows 8 and Xbox One combined. But Microsoft has signed on Yammer’s
data chief, Peter Fishman, who has a Ph.D. in economics, to help
Microsoft with its own data analysis which in turn should keep the
Redmond company from implementing bad ideas.
"It’s all about service and quality," said Raman Padmanabhan, chief
information officer for Xerox’s business-services unit. "You have to
have a certain quality or it just kills your business."