Tag Archives: google

Wesleyan Comes to “Street” View

Do you have a severe case of wesdrawl? Suffer no longer! Whether you’re sitting in your parents’ house in Manila or laying in bed in the Butts, you can now virtually walk around campus through the Street View function on Google Maps.

As the Official Google Blog itself put it, “Whether you’re a current student trying to familiarize yourself with campus, an applicant assessing your options or an alumnus feeling nostalgic, the Street View feature in Google Maps can be your tour guide without the backward walking.” An LA Times blog post linked to by the Wesleyan Facebook observes that prospective students and their families can now “imagine strolling along the Charles River at Boston University or enjoying the sunshine at Wesleyan University’s Foss Hill, right on the computer.”

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Google Voice for Students

Ever been in class and wanted an easier way to secretly text? Perhaps sneak find out what that voicemail someone left you said (without even having to listen to it)? Don’t lie.

I’ve had Google Voice for a while now and it can be pretty useful. It gives you a new phone number you can use on multiple phones and has a web interface that you can text from (for free). It transcribes voicemail into text and sends you the audio file to your email. Also, there are applications for smartphones that make it even more convenient. It’s not for everyone and isn’t necessarily always useful but can be helpful.

The Gawker technology blog Gizmodo reports that Google is now giving priority to students who want the currently invite-only service. All you have to do is sign up here using your .edu email address. Heck, why not? We already have email, documents, and calendar provided to us by Google.

More information can be found at the Google Voice Blog.

The Googly Eye Alliance

If you’ve walked around campus with your eyes open this year, you probably know that googly eyes have been appearing all over the place, turning nondescript surfaces into little guerrilla faces. Students have expressed their approval of the googly phenomenon in small ways. Various commenters on a post about a Fauver Frosh googly creature pointed out the location of googlies they encounter in their day-to-day lives. One student wrote a really cute email to the Wesleying staff a few months ago to declare her love for the lil’ guys. And today I saw the URL of a blog devoted to googly eye pictures scrawled on a bathroom wall.

Who are the individuals behind the googly eye placement? According to a top-secret source, there is a Googly Eye Alliance composed of students dedicated to the strategic placement of the crafty ocular things. That’s right–an underground coalition devoted to google-izing stuff. Part of their mission: to reclaim the word “google.” One of their mottos: “not everything that can be googled should be googled, but everything that should be googled must be googled.” Mysterious… and profound.

So remember–before Google was a giant Silicon Valley company with a reputation for making employees happy and storing intimate information about our lives, it was a word that meant craft projects. And watch your back in the PAC elevator; something might oggle you.

Wave Farm

The Anonymous Overlords over on the ACB have suggested/ordered that, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we somehow facilitate the bestowal of Google Wave Invites by those of us with accounts upon the less fortunate. To that end, reply to this post with your email address. Bestowers, please post something like “I’ve invited X through Y” and we will do our darnedest to remove those gracious wavers from the replies to prevent confusion. Go Team?

(You’ll usually get your invite an hour or so after it’s been sent.)

Google’s Project 10 to 100th

Big thinkers of Wesleyan, listen up. Got a great idea that could change the world? Recent alum Paul Cao ’08 has a tip for you:

I am writing to let Wesleyan folks know that Google is putting $10 million on the line to implement 5 ideas that would “help as many people in the world as possible.” It is referred as Project 10 to 100th. And the idea selection works via user-submitted ideas (and an optional YouTube video), from the submission pool, the Google panel will select 100 ideas and post on their website for the general public to vote for then, the twenty semi-finalist. Out of these 20, the Google panel will select five 5 final idea to implement.

This is perfect for any Wesleyan social entrepreneurs who are looking for funding in the range of $2 million.

The deadline is October 20th, 2008–Click here for more information.

Weird Things We Come Up For

So one of the most fun parts about being an administrator for this site is getting to read to the site meter. Over the summer, we don’t really care how many people read Wesleying because we’re just posting crap and what does it matter. However! I love reading the referrals, because I’m wondering how people who don’t go to Wesleyan find out about our blog. Some of the more recent Google searches (as in just today) that have brought visitors to Wesleying include:

…and while no one searched for this (yet), let’s run a search for annoying harry potter dumbass vagina. Yep. Number one hit for annoying harry potter dumbass vagina. Fantastic.

(actually, this isn’t before us for some reason, but deserves to be:)

Google’s Latest Attempt to Take Over World

So Google is promoting solar panel energy and in the last 24 hours, produced over 9,906 kilowatt-hours from solar panels installed at one of its California campuses:

In the last 24 hours, Google produced 9,906 kilowatt-hours of electricity from the sun.

In October 2006, Google announced a commitment to solar energy production and launched the largest solar panel installation to date on a corporate campus in the United States. Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project. Panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the Googleplex (check out this fly-over video).

This installation is projected to produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 California homes or 30% of Google’s peak electricity demand in our solar powered buildings at our Mountain View, CA headquarters.

We built this page to monitor and share the day to day production of clean, renewable energy from our very own rooftops. Keep checking in to see how we’re doing. We think the future looks bright!

Very cool. I am very much a fan of creating green-collar jobs, so I’m a big advocate of companies of all sorts moving in this direction. Thumbs up!


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