(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog ) What do Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers have in common? Last week, these individuals and groups all came together at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA to celebrate exploration and learning. Google hosted its first Geo Teachers Institute, an intensive two-day workshop in which 150 educators received hands-on training and experience with Google Maps, Google SketchUp and Google Earth, including features like Mars, Moon and SkyMaps. Attendees from around the globe not only learned how these products work, but also discovered tips and resources for introducing these tools to students and using them to conceptualize, visualize, share and communicate about the world around them. Through this event, teachers were hopefully inspired to bring the world’s geographic information to students in compelling, fresh and fun ways. John Hanke, VP of Product Management, addressing the audience of educators As part of our continued effort to collaborate with teachers and help students get a better sense of places across the globe, we also announced that Google Earth Pro is now available to educators for free through the Google Earth for Educators site . Educators from higher educational and academic institutions who demonstrate a need for the Pro features in their classrooms can now apply for single licenses for themselves or site licenses for their computer labs. A similar program exists for SketchUp Pro through the Google SketchUp Pro Statewide License Grant , which is currently being provided via grants to 11 states, and available to all others at the K-12 level at no cost. In conjunction with these exciting Geo-related events and announcements, the Geo Education team also thought it’d be timely and fun to test Googlers’ geographic knowledge by hosting the company’s first ever Google Geo Bee. With help from National Geographic, 68 teams relived their school years and took a written geography exam, competing for a spot on stage with Alex Trebek, who hosted the main event. The competition was based on the group version of the National Geographic Bee for students, which Google has sponsored for the past two years. Questions included those like “Which country contains most of the Balkan Mountains, which mark the boundary between the historical regions of Thrace and Moesia?” and “Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, is located in which mountain chain?” The winners of our Google Geo Bee: Ian Sharp, Marcus Thorpe and Rob Harford The final three Google teams (the Tea-Drinking Imperialists, the Geoids and the Titans) all showed off their geographic literacy and answered a plethora of diverse and complex questions. In the end, it was the Tea-Drinkers who emerged the winners when they figured out that Mecca was the answer to the clue, “Due to this city’s location on a desert trading route, many residents were merchants, the most famous of whom was born around A.D. 570.” And they didn’t just walk away with bragging rights; thanks to Sven Linblad from Linblad Expeditions , they also won an amazing adventure trip to either the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica. Through all of these education efforts — for teachers, students and grown-up Googlers alike — we hope people of all ages never stop exploring. Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Team

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Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers unite at the Google Geo Teachers Institute

In September I didn’t do a 30 day challenge because, frankly, I had a lot of work that I really needed to crunch through at the Googleplex and I didn’t have much spare time. But October is a new month, and so it’s time for a new 30 day challenge. For October, I’m not going to use any Microsoft software. No Microsoft operating systems (WinXP, Vista, or Windows 7) and no Microsoft Office allowed. I will continue to use their keyboards, because they make very nice keyboards , and I will allow myself to use their websites–sometimes I need to do a query on Bing to test how well they do, for example. I don’t plan to switch to Apple, although I might try a Mac for a week. Apple products are polished and usable, so why not switch to Apple? That would be a much longer blog post. Apple makes great design decisions for the majority of people, but if you don’t like a particular decision, it can be very difficult to change it. Have you ever wanted to see the exact time (including seconds) on an iPhone? It’s hard to do, and I’m that kind of guy . Another big reason is just that I’m huge believe in free and open-source software, and I want to support that sort of software. So on Friday I installed Ubuntu on my Windows XP laptop. On Saturday, I downloaded all the data from my pedometer (the software only runs in Windows) and shut down my home Windows XP machine. I already had a machine running Ubuntu at home, but I managed to get it driving two out of my three monitors: What have I learned so far? The current version of Ubuntu (called “Jaunty Jackalope”) is really quite nice. There’s a lot of polish to the UI and the day-to-day tasks work very smoothly. At the same time, it’s possible to tinker around with something so much (I’m thinking about fonts right now) that you mess things up. But the dev version of Chrome for Linux has been really fast and stable, even though Chrome for Linux isn’t officially supported yet . I spend a large chunk of each day in a web browser, so having Chrome as an option was critical. I’ll let you know how the 30 days turns out, but right now I’m optimistic.

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30 day challenge for October: No Microsoft Software

One of the things I’m thinking about in 2009 is how Google can be even more transparent and communicate more. That led me to a personal goal for 2009: if I give a substantial conference presentation (not just a question and answer session), I’d like to digitize the talk so that people who couldn’t attend the conference can still watch the presentation. In that spirit, here’s a belated holiday present. In November 2008 I spoke on a panel about “Preventing Virtual Blight” at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. A few weeks later I ended up recreating the talk at the Googleplex and we recorded the video. In fact, this is a “director’s cut” because I could take a little more time for the presentation. Here’s the video of the presentation: And if you’d like to follow along at home, I’ll include the actual presentation as well: You can also access the presentation directly . By the way thanks to Wysz for recording this not just on a shoestring budget but for free. I think we’ve got another video ready to go pretty soon, too. Written by Matt Cutts, Search Quality Team

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Preventing Virtual Blight: my presentation from Web 2.0 Summit

Konnichiwa! Hajimemashite! *Hello, Nice to meet you! We just launched a new Webmaster Central Blog in Japanese. For those of you who feel more comfortable reading Japanese, and are interested in webmaster-related information from Google, and even learning about issues specific to our region and language, we hope you enjoy on our Japanese version of the Webmaster Central Blog Written by Naoko Imai, Search Quality Team

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Japanese WMC Blog launched