Official Canada Blog
News and notes from Google Canada
The 2012 London Summer Paralympics Live on YouTube
Friday, August 31, 2012
(Cross-posted from the
YouTube Blog
)
Missing the thrill of fierce global competitions and awesome displays of athletic prowess? Well, lucky for you, these things live on through the 2012 Summer Paralympics Games in London. The Paralympics just kicked off this Wednesday (check out the
Opening Ceremony
!) and will run through September 9th. This year, the Paralympics are more accessible and global than ever through YouTube.
Whether your favorite sport is powerlifting, sitting volleyball or wheelchair basketball, you can catch all the action on the International Paralympic Committee’s YouTube channel at
youtube.com/paralympicsporttv
. The channel will feature 500 hours of live competitions accompanied by a real-time commenting feature for viewers in the United States and Canada. Additionally, others around the world have access to over 1000 hours of on-demand catch-up footage of current and previous games, interviews with Paralympic athletes and other behind-the-scenes footage.
(Team Canada fans can also be sure to stay on top of their favorite athletes throughout the games and access original content made available by the Canadian Paralympic Committee at
youtube.com/cdnparalympics
or
youtube.com/CTVOlympics
.)
One of the most anticipated competitions will no doubt be the T44 100m pitting South African superstar “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius against British sprinter John Peacock and American runner Jerome Singleton on September 6th. After making history when he competed in the Olympics several weeks ago, Pistorius will return to the Paralympics to see if he can defend his title. This is a race you certainly won’t want to miss!
Nor would you want to miss any of the action at this year’s Paralympics. If you’re like us, you’ll be tuning in morning, noon, and nights, over the coming weeks to catch the acts of sheer athleticism and stunning heroism that we’re sure will no doubt come out of the 2012 London Paralympics.
Happy Viewing!
Posted by Tommy O’Hare, Sports Content Manager, recently watched, “
Channel 4 Paralympics - Meet the Superhumans (Annotated Version)
"Hauler" Back... to School with Video
Friday, August 31, 2012
It’s no secret that the Internet has changed how we shop for goods and services: 93% of online Canadians use the Internet to research products and services. Combine that with our voracious appetite for watching online video - we watch 30 hours per person per month, according to comScore - and it’s no surprise we’re
turning to videos to help make purchase decisions
.
This fall we’re seeing shopping reviews explode on YouTube. In particular, “Haul” videos - where people detail their “hauls” from recent shopping sprees - are particularly taking off.
YouTube vloggers posting their latest shopping finds aren’t just sharing their recommendations with close friends, they’re sharing with an audience of thousands of subscribers and millions of views. Canadian YouTube partner
Beautycakez
has more than 10 million views of her fashion and style videos. There are nearly 600,000 shopping ‘haul’ videos on YouTube, more than 35,000 of which were uploaded in the last month alone.
With searches on YouTube in Canada for both “haul” and “back to school” videos at an all-time high, marketers are increasingly incorporating video into their back-to-school digital strategy. Visit
YouTube
to learn how you can use video to promote your business.
Posted by Andrew Swartz, Google Canada
Turn-by-turn voice directions for cycling enthusiasts
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Good news for the
14 million Canadians
who enjoying cycling!
Turn-by-turn voice-guided biking navigation
launches today
and is available everywhere biking directions are available on Google Maps for Android. With over 530,000 kilometers of green biking lines in Google Maps, that’s enough to go around the world 13 times. Help us add even more bike friendly roads with Google Map Maker and update to the latest version of Google Maps for Android to enjoy Canada’s awesome bike routes.
Posted by Aaron Brindle, Google Canada
Meet Doctor Mad Science: An extraordinary young Canadian bringing DIY experiments to a kitchen near you!
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
With our new Official Google Canada Blog, each week we’ll aim to show you some of the incredible videos and channels being developed by Canadians right across the country on YouTube. Today we’re featuring Jordan Hillkowitz, a 10 year-old autistic YouTube partner, whose passion for science is inspiring others.
When Jordan Hilkowitz was 18 months old, he was diagnosed as severely autistic. He didn’t speak until he was five and his mom, Stacey, wondered if he would ever be able to go to school and make friends.
But, from a very early age, one thing was certain: Jordan loved science. And, about a year ago, he started posting simple
do-it-yourself science experiments
on YouTube out of his kitchen in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Today, to a growing number of people around the world, Jordan is perhaps better known as Doctor Mad Science. His channel has attracted millions of views.
From how to
squeeze an egg into a bottle
, or build your own
exploding rockets
, Jordan’s videos are helping kids learn about the magic of science while also stirring
discussion
about how the web can help children with autism connect to the community around them. For Jordan, being Doctor Mad Science has helped grow his confidence, improve his speech, and make friends in the real world who share his passion for science.
With over 7,000 subscribers and 2.5 million video views, Jordan’s videos are a hit and his story has been covered by the
Los Angeles Times
,
Scientific American
,
Canada AM
,
The Globe and Mail
, and others.
If your colleague next door suddenly starts sporting a homemade
no-heat lava lamp
, you’ll know where they found it!
Posted by Aaron Brindle, Google Canada
The Meaning Behind a MapUp
Friday, August 24, 2012
CAMBRIDGE BAY, NUNAVUT -- A couple of nights ago the Cambridge Bay Daycare was added to the Google Map. Then came the Northern Store, a high school, the wellness centre, the local bank, and finally, after dozens of businesses and roadways were added, the old stone church off of Ovayuk Road materialized on the Google Map of this isolated Arctic community.
View Larger Map
Map of Cambridge Bay
It all happened in the space of a couple of hours at a community MapUp hosted by Cambridge Bay mapping expert Chris Kalluk and the Google Maps team. It was an amazing experience, watching 16 local residents use
Google Map Maker
to make sure the world they know so well is accurately reflected back to them on this map of the 21st century.
Cambridge Bay residents during the MapUp
Yesterday and today we’ve been pedalling the
Street View Trike
along the gravel roads of this tiny hamlet and capturing some indoor imagery as well, so that in a few months - once the images are uploaded - you’ll be able to take a 360 degree virtual tour of the places that were added at this very special MapUp.
Finishing the MapUp
There was a sort of giddy excitement in the room where the MapUp was held Wednesday night. But it wasn’t just seeing places like the Elder’s Palace spring to life on the map... it was the realization that Cambridge Bay - and the culture of the Inuit people who live here - suddenly had a global audience.
Anna Nahogaloak, an elder in the community and a renowned seamstress, captured the significance of the moment:
I think that it is important for Inuit people to contribute to the maps.
It is important for everybody. The land is everybody’s land. We all share it.
Anna’s vision is our vision. And we look forward to sharing her map with you.
Posted by Aaron Brindle, Google Canada
Google Maps heads north...way north
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
(Cross-posted from the
Official Google Blog
)
Search for [cambridge bay] on
Google Maps
and you’ll fly to a tiny hamlet located deep in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut in Canada’s Arctic, surrounded by an intricate lacework of tundra, waterways and breaking ice. High above the Arctic circle, it’s a place reachable only by plane or boat. Zoom in on the map, and this isolated village of 1,500 people appears as only a handful of streets, with names like
Omingmak
(“musk ox”) Street and
Tigiganiak
(“fox”) Road.
View Larger Map
Cambridge Bay in Google Maps
There are 4,000 years’ worth of stories waiting to be told on this map. Today, we’re setting out on an ambitious mission to tell some of those stories and to build the most comprehensive map of the region to date. It is the furthest north the Google Maps Street View team has traveled in Canada, and our first visit to Nunavut. Using the tools of
21st century cartography
, we’re empowering a community and putting Cambridge Bay on the proverbial map of tomorrow.
The hamlet of Cambridge Bay
We’re not doing it alone, but with the help of the community and residents like Chris Kalluk. We first met Chris, who works for the nonprofit
Nunavut Tunngavik
, last September at our
Google Earth Outreach
workshop in Vancouver, where he learned how to edit
Google Maps
data using
Google Map Maker
. Today Chris played host to a
community Map Up
event in Cambridge Bay, where village elders, local mapping experts and teenagers from the nearby high school gathered around a dozen Chromebooks and used Map Maker to add new roads, rivers and lakes to the Google Map of Cambridge Bay and Canada's North. But they didn’t stop there. Using both English and Inuktitut, one of Nunavut’s official languages, they added the hospital, daycare, a nine-hole golf course, a territorial park and, finally, the remnants of an ancient Dorset stone longhouse which pre-dates Inuit culture.
Catherine Moats, a member of the Google Map Maker Team, working with Chris Kalluk and others at the Community Map Up.
Now we’re pedaling the
Street View trike
around the gravel roads of the hamlet and using a tripod—the same used to capture
business interiors
—to collect imagery of these amazing places. We’ll train Chris and others in the community to use some of this equipment so they can travel to other communities in Nunavut and continue to build the most comprehensive and accurate map of Canada’s Arctic. As Chris put it to us, “This is a place with a vast amount of local knowledge and a rich history. By putting these tools in the hands of our people, we will tell Nunavut’s story to the world.”
The Street View Trike collecting imagery of Cambridge Bay.
So stay tuned, world. We look forward to sharing with you the spectacular beauty and rich culture of Canada’s Arctic—one of the most isolated places on the planet that will soon be, thanks to the people of Cambridge Bay, just a click away.
Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach team
Welcome to the official Google Canada blog!
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Posted by Chris O’Neill, Managing Director of Google Canada (and Leafs fan)
A lot can happen in 10 years.
Thinking back to 2002, there was no such thing as
Gmail
or
YouTube
, your mobile phone—if you had one—generally just made phone calls, and "social media" was a phrase that didn’t mean anything to most people. Less than
two-thirds
of Canadian households had an Internet connection, we were still eight years away from the Vancouver Olympics, and the Toronto Maple Leafs were, well, in the hunt for a Stanley Cup. (Not all things change.)
Ten years ago, Google Canada opened its doors in
Toronto
, becoming one of the first international Google offices. Since then, we've added Google offices in
Kitchener-Waterloo
and
Montreal
, bringing together an incredible team of people who you just might find
scrambling up an indoor climbing wall
or
sliding into their office
on any given day of the week.
What a lot of people may not realize is how, over this time, Canada has had a hand in many of the products Canadians love—from the Chrome browser to Gmail for Mobile—or how Canadians themselves are gaining global recognition for the amazing things they're doing on the web, whether they're launching a
music career
, making us
laugh
, or discovering new ways to reach out and
inspire others
online.
We'll be using this blog to share some of these stories from Canada and about Canadians, to make announcements about Google products and events, and to share a glimpse of life at Google in Canada. We’re going to keep it informal, even a little bit fun, with many different Canooglers—Canadian Googlers—posting to the blog.
Most importantly, we hope to hear from you. Send us your
feedback
on our Google+ page and let us know how we’re doing and what you’d like to know more about.
Here’s to discovering what the next 10 years have in store, and stay tuned for an exciting week ahead!
Chris
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