Humans have always been fascinated by the night sky. And Googlers are no exception. Over the years, Google engineers have used their 20 percent time to create Google Sky, Moon, Mars and most recently Google Sky Map for Android . This handy app, built by engineers in our Pittsburgh office , turns your Android-powered phone into a live map of the night sky. You just point your phone to the sky and it gives you information about the stars and planets that you’re looking at. Since we introduced the app a year ago, Sky Map has been downloaded more than 5 million times. On Sunday night we had a wonderful opportunity to share our passion for astronomy with our community in Pittsburgh at the Deep Sky Urban Star Party , held in the abandoned swimming pool at Leslie Park in Lawrenceville . We loaded up a bunch of Android phones with Sky Map and joined the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh —who brought along their telescopes—and several hundred local residents for a night of stargazing. As a Sky Map engineer the biggest thrill I get is when we get emails from people who have used our app to show a planet to their children for the first time. At the Star Party we were delighted to have the chance to show people around the night sky in person. It was great to meet so many people who were both excited by astronomy and interested in Google’s technology. Thanks for all of your ideas for new features, and a big thank you to the Leslie Park Pool Collective and all involved for organizing such a fun event. Photos by Jason Parker-Burlingham Posted by John Taylor, Software Engineer

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Stargazing in Pittsburgh

I must confess to being a junky for reading economics and investing sites. A person can’t beat the market for a long period of time without having some skills, and so the level of discourse you find on top investing blogs blows other areas out of the water. And sometimes the comments are more quote-worthy and insightful than the blog posts. For instance , ” The organisation of society is for one purpose only, to separate as much labor-value from the majority as is possible .” Cynical? Or Realistic? Some people might look at the above quote and say “well that is cynical” but the truth of a debt based money system means that many people MUST fall behind and be impoverished by debt. How else do you explain most people having nothing saved for retirement going into our jobless recovery , while their children get to eat nearly 6 figures of debt just for being born? It is fraudulent, but it is how “the system” is set up, and until enough people get outraged by it, it will continue : That chart of diminishing returns is the window to understanding why humankind is trapped in a central banker debt backed money box. No money for NASA manned space flight - NASA’s total budget a puny $18 billion in comparison to the $1.9 Trillion that went to service the bankers last year. One half the schools closing in Kansas City, states whose debts and budget deficits seem insurmountable all pale in comparison to how much money went to service the use of our own money system. It doesn’t have to be like that, in fact it’s a ridiculous notion that the people of the United States, or any country, should pay private individuals for the use of their money system. Ridiculous! It’s difficult to see this from inside the box, so let’s look at what happened to Iceland to illustrate. The central banks of the world created financial engineered products and brought them to the banks of Iceland. These products created a boom in the amount of credit. Prices of everything rose, and the people of Iceland then had no choice but to go along for the bubble ride. Then with incomes no longer able to service the bubble debt, the bubble collapsed. To “save the day,” the IMF and central bankers around the world rushed in to “rescue” the people, banks, and government of Iceland. They did this by offering loans… documents that create money simply by signing a contract of debt servitude. That contract demanded ownership of Iceland’s infrastructure such as their geothermal electrical generating plants. It also demanded the future productivity of the people of Iceland in that they should work and pay high taxes for decades to pay back this “debt.” Debt that they did not create or agree to service in the first place! There were some wise people who saw through this central banker game and started a movement. They DEMANDED that the President of Iceland put the debt servitude to a vote and the people wisely said, “Central Bankers Pound Sand!” How Structural Accounting Fraud Produces “Wealth” All around the world banksters make large bets, and lever up on any kind of fraud they can spread to blow huge speculative bubbles . When/while they win, they keep the profits . When they lose ( an inevitable consequence of blowing huge economic bubbles ), they threaten to destroy the economy if someone else doesn’t cover their losses. The correct term to describe the strategy is financial terrorism . They Don’t Make Presidents Like They Used To! “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs” - Thomas Jefferson Some people thought the current US president would be different than the most recent president. It is the populist angle he based his campaign on. But promptly after entering office he got on his knees for the banking class . “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place .” - Dick Durbin . Non-transparency = Fraud The sad reality is we are headed toward bankruptcy and are implementing exactly the wrong strategies if we have any hope to get out of it . Years after the fraudulent bailouts were passed in the U.S. (against the will of the people) the Federal Reserve is still withholding information and appealing legal requests , and key members are willing to commit perjury to maintain secrecy. When they gave away a half-trillion Dollars to foreign interests they couldn’t even share who got the money . The don’t worry, trust us angle doesn’t hold water when the mathematical realities of failure hit us all. “Nontransparency in government programs is always associated with corruption in other countries, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be here” - Gerald O’Driscoll, former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Until the bankers who looted Trillions of Dollars via mortgage fraud see jail time I don’t think there is any hope for change. The system is rotten to the core, from the top down. Moral Hazard in Context Normally we make laws to prevent such corruption : “In the early years of the London insurance market, it was possible to buy a life insurance policy on a complete stranger. Then insurance companies noticed the high incidence of unexpected homicides among their lives assured, and the concept of insurable interest was devised, codified by the Life Assurance Act of 1774. Today, you can’t buy a life insurance policy unless you can demonstrate some loss by the assured party’s death. The business is safer that way!” In paying banksters for losing money & relaxing accounting standards (so they can claim false profits while losing money), they are only encouraged to commit more fraud. It’s moral hazard writ large. Stolen vs Earned Give anyone a trillion Dollars to play the market, backstop the losses on the losing half and let them keep the profits on the winning trades and they will make billions. It’s so easy a monkey could do it. And yet it is considered a legitimate trade for bankers to do just that. Most of these large financial companies are entirely parasitic in their nature, providing society with no real or lasting value - stealing whatever they earn while creating economic distortions that harmfully misallocate capital. Whatever scam they can use to steal your retirement will be deployed : “Quite bluntly, the clueless dolts who allowed [high frequency trading] to occur need to be publicly excoriated, fired from their job as exchange officials, and driven out of town on a rail. Oh, and, all the gains from this organized theft should be clawed back from all the front-running firms that stole this money — THAT’S RIGHT, ITS THEFT — one quarter cent at a time. - Barry Ritholtz” A top investment bank can give you bogus trading tips on a stock over a half-dozen times in a row - while trading against the (mis)information they share publicly to move the markets. But if someone else trades against that information before they do it is illegal and must be stopped . How is This Relevant to the Web? The web shifts the flows of information and finance. The above mention folks in positions of authority don’t like that much. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell Popularity is the inequality in supply and demand, equalized by price. The web allows for a direct connection between content creators and their audiences with little to no intermediation : This isn’t complicated. In today’s wired world, the most important economic competition is no longer between countries or companies. The most important economic competition is actually between you and your own imagination. Because what your kids imagine, they can now act on farther, faster, cheaper than ever before — as individuals. Today, just about everything is becoming a commodity, except imagination, except the ability to spark new ideas. The inventor of the web & leaders of other popular internet services think government transparency is important. Many people view access to the WWW as a fundamental human right . What do elected officials like Jay Rockefeller think? The internet should have never existed. Numerous governments have aimed at destroying WikiLeaks due to fake security concerns, while some government agencies track social network activity . Lets not forget how many governments are willing to outright lie to their own populous to gain support for bogus wars . War is a racket. It always has been . Just like our banking system! The freedom and opportunity the web represent can’t last long. If it does, many of the above concerns will try to regulate it or (rightfully) find themselves irrelevant. Where do you place your bets? And who is betting against you?

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Embedded Structural Contempt for Personal Freedom

I must confess to being a junky for reading economics and investing sites. A person can’t beat the market for a long period of time without having some skills, and so the level of discourse you find on top investing blogs blows other areas out of the water. And sometimes the comments are more quote-worthy and insightful than the blog posts. For instance , ” The organisation of society is for one purpose only, to separate as much labor-value from the majority as is possible .” Cynical? Or Realistic? Some people might look at the above quote and say “well that is cynical” but the truth of a debt based money system means that many people MUST fall behind and be impoverished by debt. How else do you explain most people having nothing saved for retirement going into our jobless recovery , while their children get to eat nearly 6 figures of debt just for being born? It is fraudulent, but it is how “the system” is set up, and until enough people get outraged by it, it will continue : That chart of diminishing returns is the window to understanding why humankind is trapped in a central banker debt backed money box. No money for NASA manned space flight - NASA’s total budget a puny $18 billion in comparison to the $1.9 Trillion that went to service the bankers last year. One half the schools closing in Kansas City, states whose debts and budget deficits seem insurmountable all pale in comparison to how much money went to service the use of our own money system. It doesn’t have to be like that, in fact it’s a ridiculous notion that the people of the United States, or any country, should pay private individuals for the use of their money system. Ridiculous! It’s difficult to see this from inside the box, so let’s look at what happened to Iceland to illustrate. The central banks of the world created financial engineered products and brought them to the banks of Iceland. These products created a boom in the amount of credit. Prices of everything rose, and the people of Iceland then had no choice but to go along for the bubble ride. Then with incomes no longer able to service the bubble debt, the bubble collapsed. To “save the day,” the IMF and central bankers around the world rushed in to “rescue” the people, banks, and government of Iceland. They did this by offering loans… documents that create money simply by signing a contract of debt servitude. That contract demanded ownership of Iceland’s infrastructure such as their geothermal electrical generating plants. It also demanded the future productivity of the people of Iceland in that they should work and pay high taxes for decades to pay back this “debt.” Debt that they did not create or agree to service in the first place! There were some wise people who saw through this central banker game and started a movement. They DEMANDED that the President of Iceland put the debt servitude to a vote and the people wisely said, “Central Bankers Pound Sand!” How Structural Accounting Fraud Produces “Wealth” All around the world banksters make large bets, and lever up on any kind of fraud they can spread to blow huge speculative bubbles . When/while they win, they keep the profits . When they lose ( an inevitable consequence of blowing huge economic bubbles ), they threaten to destroy the economy if someone else doesn’t cover their losses. The correct term to describe the strategy is financial terrorism . They Don’t Make Presidents Like They Used To! “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs” - Thomas Jefferson Some people thought the current US president would be different than the most recent president. It is the populist angle he based his campaign on. But promptly after entering office he got on his knees for the banking class . “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place .” - Dick Durbin . Non-transparency = Fraud The sad reality is we are headed toward bankruptcy and are implementing exactly the wrong strategies if we have any hope to get out of it . Years after the fraudulent bailouts were passed in the U.S. (against the will of the people) the Federal Reserve is still withholding information and appealing legal requests , and key members are willing to commit perjury to maintain secrecy. When they gave away a half-trillion Dollars to foreign interests they couldn’t even share who got the money . The don’t worry, trust us angle doesn’t hold water when the mathematical realities of failure hit us all. “Nontransparency in government programs is always associated with corruption in other countries, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be here” - Gerald O’Driscoll, former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Until the bankers who looted Trillions of Dollars via mortgage fraud see jail time I don’t think there is any hope for change. The system is rotten to the core, from the top down. Moral Hazard in Context Normally we make laws to prevent such corruption : “In the early years of the London insurance market, it was possible to buy a life insurance policy on a complete stranger. Then insurance companies noticed the high incidence of unexpected homicides among their lives assured, and the concept of insurable interest was devised, codified by the Life Assurance Act of 1774. Today, you can’t buy a life insurance policy unless you can demonstrate some loss by the assured party’s death. The business is safer that way!” In paying banksters for losing money & relaxing accounting standards (so they can claim false profits while losing money), they are only encouraged to commit more fraud. It’s moral hazard writ large. Stolen vs Earned Give anyone a trillion Dollars to play the market, backstop the losses on the losing half and let them keep the profits on the winning trades and they will make billions. It’s so easy a monkey could do it. And yet it is considered a legitimate trade for bankers to do just that. Most of these large financial companies are entirely parasitic in their nature, providing society with no real or lasting value - stealing whatever they earn while creating economic distortions that harmfully misallocate capital. Whatever scam they can use to steal your retirement will be deployed : “Quite bluntly, the clueless dolts who allowed [high frequency trading] to occur need to be publicly excoriated, fired from their job as exchange officials, and driven out of town on a rail. Oh, and, all the gains from this organized theft should be clawed back from all the front-running firms that stole this money — THAT’S RIGHT, ITS THEFT — one quarter cent at a time. - Barry Ritholtz” A top investment bank can give you bogus trading tips on a stock over a half-dozen times in a row - while trading against the (mis)information they share publicly to move the markets. But if someone else trades against that information before they do it is illegal and must be stopped . How is This Relevant to the Web? The web shifts the flows of information and finance. The above mention folks in positions of authority don’t like that much. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” - George Orwell Popularity is the inequality in supply and demand, equalized by price. The web allows for a direct connection between content creators and their audiences with little to no intermediation : This isn’t complicated. In today’s wired world, the most important economic competition is no longer between countries or companies. The most important economic competition is actually between you and your own imagination. Because what your kids imagine, they can now act on farther, faster, cheaper than ever before — as individuals. Today, just about everything is becoming a commodity, except imagination, except the ability to spark new ideas. The inventor of the web & leaders of other popular internet services think government transparency is important. Many people view access to the WWW as a fundamental human right . What do elected officials like Jay Rockefeller think? The internet should have never existed. Numerous governments have aimed at destroying WikiLeaks due to fake security concerns, while some government agencies track social network activity . Lets not forget how many governments are willing to outright lie to their own populous to gain support for bogus wars . War is a racket. It always has been . Just like our banking system! The freedom and opportunity the web represent can’t last long. If it does, many of the above concerns will try to regulate it or (rightfully) find themselves irrelevant. Where do you place your bets? And who is betting against you?

Go here to see the original:
Embedded Structural Contempt for Personal Freedom

These recent satellite images of Port-au-Prince, Haiti before and after Tuesday’s earthquake dramatically show the devastation caused by magnitude 7.0 trembler. Here are before-and-after screenshots of the National Palace and an area of Port-au-Prince: Click to see full-size In order to help the people of Haiti respond to this catastrophe, Google is donating $1 million to organizations on the ground that are rescuing those still trapped and providing clean water, food, medical care, shelter and support to those affected. We’d like to make it easy for anyone moved by the tragedy to respond as well, so we’ve included a link on our homepage to information, resources and ways you can help , including information on how to donate to organizations including: Direct Relief , Yele Haiti , Partners in Health , Red Cross , World Food Program , Mercy Corps , Save the Children , Lambi Fund , Doctors Without Borders , The International Rescue Committee . You can also use the below buttons to donate to UNICEF or CARE . Donate to CARE $ Donate to UNICEF $ In addition, Map Maker data has been made available to U.N. organizations and the team is working with the Map Your World Community to encourage Map Maker users with on the ground knowledge to help update the map of Haiti with disaster response data. We’ve received requests from relief organizations and our users to publish recent satellite imagery of the country. One of our imagery partners, GeoEye, has provided us with post-earthquake imagery from Haiti. You can check our Lat Long blog for further updates. We’ve also reached out to the YouTube community for help. A Spotlight on the homepage and a ticker across the entire site drives traffic to videos from Oxfam and the American Red Cross , where you can make donations to relief efforts. We’re also keeping a running playlist of the video footage coming out of Haiti on Citizentube ; you can find a broad collection of citizen reports, news wire clips and personal stories of some of the victims. Posted by Jacquelline Fuller and Prem Ramaswami for the Google Crisis Response Team

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Helping Haiti respond to the earthquake

by Jennifer Laycock Regular readers of Search Engine Guide probably noticed I’ve been less than active as an author and Twitter voice this past year. All of that’s about to change. Over the next few months you’ll all see me getting back into the swing of things here on Search Engine Guide and hopefully back to my chatty self on Twitter and other social media sites. Returning to My Roots As of this week, I’m back at Search Engine Guide full time to resume my position as Editor-in-Chief. I’ll also be launching my own consulting company so I can continue to work with small businesses and larger corporations to build practical and impactful social media strategies and campaigns. Regular Search Engine Guide readers know that apart from a false start on a new Facebook series last month, I’ve been fairly quiet this past year. Those in the industry know my lack of writing was because I’d joined my good friend Matt Bailey as his new Director of Marketing for SiteLogic and simply didn’t have the time to develop content. After five years of churning out thousands of words of content a day, I was severely burned out and was itching to get my hands dirty with client work again. While I’ve enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to go back inside an agency, I’ve missed Search Engine Guide and my readers immensely. As such, after eight months with SiteLogic, I’ve made the decision to strike out on my own as a social media strategist and consultant to give myself the freedom to spend more time with my children and to once again get back to cranking out the type of content Search Engine Guide readers have come to expect from us. Want to Hire Me? I’m obviously exploring my options right now, but for those of you who may be interested in working with me, there are several types of services I’ll be offering. You’ll continue to see me on the speaking circuit at shows like Search Engine Strategies , PubCon and various others. I’m also available for corporate training, local events and speaking at anything else social media, blog or reputation management related. Of course you’ll also find me over at Market Motive continuing to crank out training courses and content for their Social Media classes and expert certification. (In fact, their next round of social media certification starts in January, which makes it a great time to get your budget approved and sign up !) I’ll also be accepting a limited number of social media consulting clients. I’d like to keep my load light to allow plenty of time for Search Engine Guide, but this past year has taught me how much I really do enjoy the strategy side of things. While I’m open to working with all types of companies, readers here know that my heart lies with small business. My ideal client is the type that has internal staffing and resources or a willingness to put some time in themselves, but needs guidance, strategy and creative ideas from someone with experience in the industry. Coming along side those types of businesses to help them build their internal processes and learn how to create and manage their own campaigns is what I really enjoy. As always, you can feel free to get in touch with me about any of these things via email . (I wouldn’t complain if you spread the word to friends and associates about my new availability either!) What Type of Content Are You Looking For? I’ve got quite a few content ideas up my sleeve, starting with the Facebook series that I haven’t had a chance to finish. I’ll also be diving back into social media strategy, a new take on creating a viral marketing campaign, various social media tools and perhaps a new series on blogging. If there are specific topics, tactics or tools you’d love to know more about, leave me a note in the comments and I’ll add them to my list of ideas. Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chiropractic/ / CC BY-SA 2.0 Check out our small business news site.

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Striking Out On My Own All While Staying Put

If you could reinvent the American education system, what would you do? It’s a question we think about a lot here at Google. This week we’re exploring possibilities with Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age , a forum organized in cooperation with The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Common Sense Media , with the support of the MacArthur Foundation . This event will bring together 200 of the nation’s thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy and policy to design a strategy for scaling up effective models of teaching and learning for children, with an emphasis on technology. The forum will showcase new research, proven and promising education innovation models to challenge decision-makers to refresh and reboot American global leadership in education. There’s plenty of evidence that shows that the current educational system in the U.S. needs improvement. Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education produced ” A Nation at Risk ,” a report which first highlighted that our country’s system wasn’t meeting the national need for a competitive workforce in the day’s global economy. Since then, our education system has gone through great upheaval, from the state-level standards reforms in the 1990s to 2002’s No Child Left Behind , which is similarly based on the belief that setting high standards measurable goals will improve individual outcomes in education. Though the intention of these reforms was to close the global achievement gap, they left many teachers and students feeling restricted to teaching and learning “to the test.” And we’re still seeing disheartening results; the U.S. is currently ranked 25th of OECD countries in math scores and 24th in science scores according to the PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow’s World report . And according to McKinsey’s Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools report, if the U.S. had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of higher-performing nations, our GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher. That’s 9 to 16 percent of GDP! Fortunately, there are people today who are working to change these statistics. One is tonight’s keynote speaker, Geoff Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone . The Harlem Children’s Zone combines educational, social and medical services with the goal of reaching all of the children in Harlem. Another organization addressing the issue is the MacArthur Foundation , which has created the Digital Media and Learning Project to explore the effects of digital media on young people and its implications for the future of learning and education. And we can’t forget Sesame Workshop , which this year celebrates 40 years of educating children with Muppets and media. There’s great hope for American education, as long as we can work toward innovative solutions that not only allow students distinct educational experiences tailored to their interests and abilities, but also drive toward a common goal of assessable success. Students today are technologists too, and embracing that familiarity and bringing it into the classroom will help teachers and students better engage and work together to teach and learn. Most importantly, we need to support our teachers, principals and administrators — the true agents of change who tirelessly and passionately work to connect with each and every student that passes through their classrooms. The Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age forum is one step we’re taking to address some of our most pressing national education system issues. If you’re interested in joining us at the forum, we’ll be broadcasting live on the web both today and tomorrow . We welcome your questions and ideas to help us shape our discussions. Go to http://www.google.com/events/digitalage/ to participate and learn more. Posted by Cristin Frodella, Product Marketing, Google Apps Education

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Sesame Street comes to Google: Improving our education system at the Breakthrough Learning forum