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Explore the ocean and travel through time in Google Earth 5.0

Now, Internet users can dive into the oceans, travel in time and see the planet Mars in high resolution, through the new features of Google Earth 5.0 (beta application), which were presented at the Lisbon headquarters of the company, during a press conference included in the series of worldwide presentations.

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According to Inês Gonçalves, marketing director of Google Portugal, Google Earth 5.0 will also allow the sharing of images, videos and pictures made by the users. The new Google tool will show the Earth's surface covered by ocean, 5 % of which is already explored, mapped and displayed in more detail.

It is important to observe that Portugal has the 3rd largest EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) of the European Union and the 11th in the world. The seazone over which the Portuguese state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources, has an area of 1,727,408 km2.

With Google Earth 5.0, you will be able to “navigate” the surface and the bottom of the ocean (like visit the Mariana Trench) and you can follow the journey made by a monitored white shark as well.

Google Ocean also allows us to know water temperature and the best places for surfing, kitesurfing and diving along the Portuguese coast, and we can also learn about ocean observations, climate change and endangered species.

The Internet user can also track changes made by man over time, through the availability of historical imagery from around the globe (like the impact of suburban sprawl or global warming), or record and share a trip, adding a soundtrack or a narration to personalize the journey.

This version is available in 40 languages, including Portuguese. To access the Ocean in Google Earth simply download the latest version at Google Earth

Related articles:

• Google Transit and Google Maps integration: Cheaper, Faster and Greener
• Google Transit trip planning in UK, Switzerland and Italy
• Google establishes New office in Portugal
• Google Maps Portugal and Google Transit Lisboa

Google Maps Portugal and Google Transit Lisboa

Yesterday, Google Portugal announced two services in the Portuguese language: Google Maps and Google Transit for Lisbon (Lisboa). After Vienna, the Portuguese capital is the second European city to receive this service. Now, it’s possible to get Google information of how to travel in Lisbon on public transport, a service provided by Google Transit.

Read more

We are satisfied with these news, because one year ago Google announced the launch of Google Transit trip planner in Europe, having only information for some places and transport companies. Nowadays, over 70 agencies in 10 countries make their information available in Google Maps.

When the project was only available in some selected cities, not located in Europe, we published a simple plan for a trip across Europe, between Lisbon and Helsinki, to observe which of the transit agencies’ schedules might be integrated to increase the Google database. This year, Google Transit was developed in partnership with Metro and Carris, companies where is available all the information relevant to public transport in Lisbon, such as the location, travel time and ticket prices.

To plan a trip, you can simply click on the "Get directions " link. Then, it’s only necessary typing the start and end address in the "Get directions" boxes to get the results.

Google believes this is an important step in encouraging people to use public transit. The company hopes that folks will decide to leave the car at home if they can easily discover a transit stop next to a business as they're searching for it, or if they realise it's easy to take a train as they plot their journey from point A to point B.

In a yesterday press conference, Inês Gonçalves, Google Portugal responsible of marketing, said:

"It’s obvious that we want more cities, now it depends on the partners"

"Google Maps is not only put a map online, it’s to get a location where the language is understood, and with local content."

As we notice, on November 2007, Google established in Lisbon to concentrate on online publicity, trying to attract investments from Portuguese companies.

Yesterday, Paulo Barreto, chief executive of Google Portugal, said that "since a year ago that we operate directly in Portugal, our priority has been to adapt products to Portuguese."

Companies can also advertise for free on Google Maps through a Local Business Center, a service now available in beta Google Maps PT or in Google Maps for Mobile. In addition, there is also accessible the Google Maps API that will help developers, webmasters and designers to incorporate the functionality of Google Maps on their websites.

The world integration of the public transit schedules (in different transport modes) will surely be a great challenge to improving the schedule-based service. Indeed, IT and modern real-time logistics are crucial keys for the design of the future public transport.

So, to increase the integration of their schedule-based services, the agencies should have a public transportation data for their cities, and get it included in the Google Transit trip planner. The Google Transit Partner Program describes how to share agencies information on Google Maps. For participating the agencies should provide a transportation service that is open the the public, and operates with fixed schedules and routes.

Related articles:

• Google Transit and Google Maps integration: Cheaper, Faster and Greener
• Google Transit trip planning in UK, Switzerland and Italy
• Google establishes New office in Portugal

Towards the merger of French and Nordic telecoms?

According to the Swedish-language newspaper in Finland Hufvudstadsbladet, France Telecom has announced its interest in moving closer to the Finnish-Swedish operator TeliaSonera. Björn Sundell wondered whether the merger would be advisable.

"This operation would not generate synergy effects. The overlap between the two entities and the potential for lower costs are too weak. In addition, following its last wave of purchases, France Telecom faces heavy debts. The French operator will therefore have difficult to get 30 billion euros needed for the acquisition of its northern counterpart …"

Read more on the site Eurotopics

Links:
France Telecom eyes Nordic rival news.bbc.co.uk
France Telecom mulls Nordic expansion chron.com

Stumbler Interviews by Michael

Michael created a new blog strictly about StumbleUpon and decided to conduct a serie of interviews with some members of this social networking service (including me). Enjoy!

Stumbler Interviews by Michael W. Jones:

• Stumbler Interview - MrBelding

• Stumbler Interview - My Interview

• Stumbler Interview - Brianreeder
  

• Stumbler Interview - Bdarbs

Google Transit trip planning in UK, Switzerland and Italy

Google announced the launch of Google Transit trip planner in Europe. Now you can plan your entire journey using public transportation. So far Google has information for the following places and transport companies:

Read more1 - Traveline South East, UK

"The UK's No 1 website for impartial information on planning your journey, by bus, coach or train... or any combination of the three!"

Google Transit can plan trips on the following agencies in this area: Traveline Southeast, including national data for long-distance coach services.

2 - SBB, Switzerland (train, ferries and long distance bus coverage)

3 - VBZ, Zurich, Switzerland

4 - Turin, Italy (Gruppo Torinese Trasporti)

www.5t.torino.it/5t/en/percorsi

5 - Florence, Italy (ATAF&Linea, AMV, ACV)

www.provincia.fi.it/mobilita/

www.ataf.net/travelPlan/calcolapercorso

You can try it yourself: type your start and end address in the "get directions" boxes. The default results are driving directions, but in the areas that Google has transit routing coverage, you can simply click on the "Take Public Transit" link.

Google believes this is an important step in encouraging people to use public transit. Google is hoping folks will decide to leave the car at home if they can easily discover a transit stop next to a business as they're searching for it, or if they realise it's easy to take a train as they plot their journey from point A to point B. Google is always looking to improve the coverage and work with more partners and they will keep you posted as more places and transport companies are added.

How to provide transit data to Google Transit Trip Planner

Recently we made a plan for a trip across the Europe, Lisbon - Helsinki. The aim was to see which of the schedules of the transit agencies might be integrated to increase the Google database, giving to the users a chance to check which would be the cheapest, probably fastest and most environmentally friendliest trip.

Lisbon – Helsinki trip plan
Start: Rotunda da Expo 98; Lisbon, Portugal
End: Mannerheimintie ; Helsinki, Finland
Travel: 4,069 km – about 1 day 20 hours (by car)

Transporlis is a multimodal information system of the metropolitan area of Lisbon.

It is a system that integrates the main transport operators of the metropolitan area of Lisbon, and that allows to optimize the use of their transports in function of the schedules of each company. It also integrates the flight schedules of the airport of Lisbon.

YTV door-to-door Journey Planner gives you advice on the best public transport connection to your destination within the Helsinki region.

The principal duties of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council (YTV) comprise transport system planning, regional public transport provision, waste management and air quality management for its four member municipalities (Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen and Vantaa).

We can say that the world integration of the public transit schedules (in its different transport modes) will surely be a great challenge . Once achieved, this previous example would be highly simplified, improving the schedule-based service. IT and modern real-time logistics are crucial keys for the design of future public transport.

So, to increase the integration it's necessary that the agencies have a public transportation data for their cities, and get it included in the Google Transit Trip Planner. The Google Transit Feed Specification describes how to provide transit data in a format that Google Transit Trip Planner can use, i.e. how a public agency that oversees public transportation can submit a feed to Google Transit Trip Planner.

Google establishes New office in Portugal

Google establishes in Lisbon to attract national companies. Google will concentrate on the online publicity, attracting the portuguese companies to invest.

Google Portugal team has finally arrived to Portugal. Good news for a country that seeks an economic growth based on investments in new technologies.

Read more
It almost passed one year since a European delegation of Google came to Portugal to prospect the market, shaking the technological sector and waiving with the hypothesis of doing purchases among the most technologically attempting ones.


But everything ended the best way: Google named a representative, Paulo Barreto, who worked from Spain until reaching the right moment for investing in Portugal.

“We want the companies know that we are here”, explains Paulo Barreto in an exclusive interview to Diário Económico, some hours before receiving several dozens of potential customers in the heart of Lisbon.

Among the invited companies is PT, holding company of the largest Google rival in Portugal, the portal Sapo. “It is an event to present the office”, Paulo Barreto continues, nothing annoyed with the allusion to the competition between Sapo and Google.

What Google Portugal wants from now on , is to affirm in the online publicity market and to leave other wars for later. The small team of the structure, composed exclusively by portuguese professionals , was recruited along six months with the objective of creating one specialists team. Some came directly from the European headquarters of Google, in Dublin.

Paulo Barreto's mission will be now to lead his sales office totally turned for the online publicity , that just represents in Portugal “3% to 4% of the total of the advertising investment” .

According to Barreto, Google can help the internationalizing of the portuguese companies. He's convinced that this publicity platform is actually the marketing form with largest return. The used system is the well-known AdWords.

Some customers of the system are, for example, Impresa, RTP and Cofina. However, Google believes that it has potential for much more.

The Portuguese office is integrated in Google EMEA (area 3), together with Spain, Italy and France.

Google has 2.500 collaborators in Europe and twelve R&D offices, spread by countries like United Kingdom, Israel and Switzerland, among others. Portugal won't be contemplated , for a while.

Links:

diarioeconomico.sapo.pt

www.jornaldenegocios.pt

Google Transit and Google Maps integration: Cheaper, Faster and Greener

Lisbon – Helsinki trip plan with Google Maps ( for a while , car-free travel planning isn't available in Europe)

Google recently announced that Google Transit has graduated from Google Labs being fully integrated with Google Maps . This means that Google Transit allows travelers to choose public transportation instead of driving and to receive customized directions (in areas where Google has transit coverage). Thus, you have freedom of choice to check which is the cheapest, probably fastest and most environmentally friendliest trip.

Read moreYou can select the time of departure or arrival and Google Transit will plot the best course (you can choose from a few alternate routes). Considered parameters are: walking directions to and from public transportation stations, cost of the trip (compared to the cost via car) and estimated total time of travel.

For a while, the project is only available in selected cities, not in Europe. Next, we will make a plan for a trip across the Europe, Lisbon - Helsinki. The aim is to see which of the schedules of the transit agencies might be integrated to increase the Google database.

Lisbon – Helsinki trip plan

Start: Rotunda da Expo 98; Lisbon, Portugal
End: Mannerheimintie ; Helsinki, Finland
Travel: 4,069 km – about 1 day 20 hours (by car)

Note: the following information is merely experimental , it doesn't release the consultation of the transportation services. In reality, traffic, construction works or other events may affect the results.

1. Selection of flights from the available options (booking)

Estimated time of travel – 6h25min + 1h30 (check-in, luggage, etc)

Itinerary
From---------To--------- Departure-------------Arrival
Lisbon------ Munich ----- 29Oct, 06h30---------29Oct, 10h35
Munich ---- Helsinki------ 29 Oct, 11h20 ------29 Oct, 14h55

2.Trip between Rotunda da Expo98 and Portela Airport (2 points placed in Lisbon city) 3.9 km
Estimated time of travel (public transport) – 88 min
Estimated time of travel (by car) – about 8 min
It's better to call a taxi...

Transporlis is a multimodal information system of the metropolitan area of Lisbon.

It is a system that integrates the main transport operators of the metropolitan area of Lisbon, and that allows to optimize the use of their transports in function of the schedules of each company. It also integrates the flight schedules of the airport of Lisbon.

Path Finder
Video

3.Trip between Vantaa Airport and Mannerheimintie(Helsinki) 19.8 km
Estimated time of travel (public transport) – 43 min
Estimated time of travel (by car) – about 22 min

YTV door-to-door Journey Planner gives You advice on the best public transport connection to your destination within the Helsinki region.

The principal duties of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council (YTV) comprise transport system planning, regional public transport provision, waste management and air quality management for its four member municipalities (Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen and Vantaa). It also maintains regional databases and conducts studies on different issues affecting the region. Besides its member municipalities, YTV also serves a number of nearby municipalities on the basis of separate contracts.

Departure (Lisbon) - 4 h 30min
Arrival (Helsinki) - 16h 47min
Estimated total time of travel - 10h 17m

Level of satisfaction of the residents with public transport in selected cities (2006)

Satisfaction of the residents with public transport in selected cities in 2006.

Source: Survey on perceptions of quality of life in 75 European cities. European Commission 2007. The survey was carried out in November 2006 by interviewing 500 people in each 75 cities participating in the survey. There were 23 questions on the quality of life in the respondent’s area.

In this above graph we can notice the satisfaction of the residents of selected cities with public transport in the year of 2006 ( survey on perceptions of quality of life in 75 European cities). Helsinki is placed in the first position followed by Wien, Rennes, Hamburg and Munchen. Paris is in the middle. Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon are in the last third, while Roma and Napoli are at the bottom.

In Helsinki, the central city, the share of public transport is among the highest (in European comparison). This is a result of active policies of promoting public transport.

In relation to the national wealth (GDP per capita), monthly passes are very inexpensive in Helsinki (the price difference of single and monthly passes is significant).

In the Helsinki metropolitan area the share of the operating costs of public transport financed by ticket revenues is higher than in most cities included in international comparison and all the public funding is derived from municipalities, contrary to most of metropolitan areas in Europe (particularly in capital cities), where the central government usually takes the main responsibility of public transport.

It is not surprise that the YTV door-to-door Journey Planner service is among the most visited sites of the country, due to its simplicity and efficiency - a Helsinki “slang” site version complements the 3 languages of the site (finnish, swedish and english) and the site also includes one mobile version and journey planner for cyclists.

The Finns seem to have learned from the success of the world of IT and modern real-time logistics , keys for the design of future public transport.

How to provide transit data to Google Transit Trip Planner

We can say that the world integration of the public transit schedules (in its different transport modes) will surely be a great challenge . Once achieved, this previous example would be highly simplified, improving the schedule-based service.

So, to increase the integration it's necessary that the agencies have a public transportation data for their cities, and get it included in the Google Transit Trip Planner. The Google Transit Feed Specification describes how to provide transit data in a format that Google Transit Trip Planner can use, i.e. how a public agency that oversees public transportation can submit a feed to Google Transit Trip Planner.

References
Petri Jalasto, Eeva Linkama,Seppo Lampinen (YY-Optima Oy), Finnish transport system in European perspective, Ministry of Transport and Communications, 28 September 2007

Facebook: hundreds of new Finnish users every hour

Some weeks ago "the main auditorium at the Old Student Building in downtown Helsinki was packed with people. TV-cameras rolled and the sponsors' neckties gleamed as media guru Sam Inkinen delivered a presentation.

As it happens , the content of the event did not quite match up to the surroundings and the glitz: the National Union of University Students and the Student Union of the University of Helsinki were launching their new Virtual Campus Lyyra, a nationwide Internet networking service, where students can keep blogs and photo albums and send messages to their friends and colleagues.

Nothing so terribly revolutionary in all this, then. However, the stunt - arranged by the Helsinki advertising agency BOB - filled the hall because the invitations contained the magic words: "Lyyra to challenge Facebook"

Back in the spring of this year, Facebook was for Finns still just one social networking site among many. Yes, it had users, but it was hardly the sort of mega-phenomenon that the video-sharing YouTube operation represented.

However... during the summer the service achieved critical mass, after which user numbers increased rapidly.

Now they have gone ballistic: on Tuesday afternoon [October 2nd], nearly 500 Finns joined the Facebook community in the space of around an hour and a half.

It is hard to list the number of users in a newspaper article, because the figures are out of date before the paper heads off to the printers. On Sunday evening just over a week ago, the total was 57,000 users - by Tuesday evening it was 63,500. Today [October 9th, 15:00] it is hovering just under 88,000. (...)

It is difficult to explain quite why the Finns found Facebook right now, and not earlier. In Norway, for instance, the big boom in new members took place back in the spring, and there are now nearly 370,000 Norwegian Facebook users, and more than 400,000 in Sweden."

full article
NEWS ANALYSIS: Facebook draws in hundreds of new Finnish users every hour, By Olavi Koistinen - Helsingin Sanomat

"University students have opened their own nationwide Internet service, Lyyra, which is a Finnish counterpart to social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

“In one fell swoop, we’re making Finnish students some of the most progressive in the world. Whereas Facebook is merely a way of having fun on the Internet, Lyyra will have a positive impact on students’ real lives,” says Lasse Männistö, Chairman of the National Union of University Students in Finland.

www.lyyra.fi is a virtual meeting place for 300,000 students. It will open up a new channel for the activity that characterizes the student lifestyle – pranks and protests will now be organized on the Internet. Lyyra is also the world’s most advanced student card – it’s the first large-scale application based on Sony FeliCa technology in Europe.

Lyyra’s mission is to offer benefits and services that will both enhance and ease students’ lives, while also providing a social network. Lyyra aims to spark off debate and remind people that alongside the rapid accumulation of study credits, students should be gaining a world of educational and entertaining experiences – and, of course, new friends."
full article
Virtual Campus Lyyra to Challenge Facebook
VIRTUAL STUDENT CAMPUS LYYRA TO CHALLENGE FACEBOOK - Finnish students to rank among the most progressive in the world

______________________________________

The evolution of the science and the technology has reached many extraordinary inventions that nobody dreamed of before. The greatest wonder is the crossing between the man and the machine, cyborg. On one side, hopes were placed on the healthier and more diversified human body. Another side it has been considered to threat the humanity and human values. The guide of the cyborg balances between these contradictory ethical visions.
Tekninen teos kyborgeista

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