Awesome Google

For the last 12 years, Google Japan has been having a little fun with silly and impractical keyboard designs. Their latest concept is a keyboard that’s basically a Möbius strip – a twisted keyboard that loops back onto itself. It has 208 keys and has to be picked up to access them all, but it’s also awesome. Best of all, you can build your own. Turn captions on.

The Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold (a lot of pros here) are powered by the new Tensor G4 processor. They also have a new 48MP ultrawide camera, at least 12GB of RAM, and tons of AI photography features. The 9 Pro gets you the XL features but in the standard Pixel 9 size, while the 9 Pro Fold has a 6.8″ foldable inner display.

Google is working on an AI-powered system that can take a single photograph and allow you to fly into a synthetic world. Infinite Nature uses machine learning to extrapolate hidden areas and areas outside of the image, while increasing the resolution of details. Two Minute Papers explains this fascinating technology.

There was a time when finding what you wanted on Google was a simple task. But over the years, the ubiquitous search engine has modified its algorithms and design so much that it can overwhelm with irrelevant information and ads. Comedian Ryan George pokes fun at what it’s like to run a search these days.

Google shows off the future of video calling with a prototype system that makes distant people feel like they’re sitting face-to-face in the same room. It uses multiple cameras, 3D depth sensors, high-speed video compression, and a “light field” display to convey an incredibly realistic sense of depth.

In a major upgrade to Google Earth, the service now offers 2D and 3D time-lapse satellite images showing how our planet has changed since 1984. To experience it first-hand, visit g.co/Timelapse. There’s an awesome library of pre-rendered videos as well if your computer isn’t up to the GPU and CPU challenge.

Google Arts & Culture’s online exhibition offers a fascinating look at the history of electronic music. The museum features content from cultural partners around the world and looks at the people, technology, and creativity that paved the way for modern music. You can also play with AR Synth, a virtual electronic music studio.

Looking for something fun to do today? Why not visit with a giraffe, a zebra, or maybe a penguin? Thanks to Google, you can enjoy the company of 50 new animals using augmented reality tech on your phone. Using the Google mobile app, search for an animal, then tap “View in 3D” to invite these virtual pets into your world.

Developed by Magenta using Google AI tech, Tone/Transfer takes ordinary sounds like a human voice and makes them sound like a musical instrument. It can also digest the sounds made by one kind of musical instrument and map them onto a different one. You can play with the online demo for yourself.

This interactive online plaything uses a recurrent neural network to produce loops of music that you can influence by moving around and clicking on objects in its scene. Once you’ve created a sound you like, you can share a link to your tune. Find out more details about the project here.

Only like the marshmallows from Lucky Charms? Well you could buy a bag without the oat bits, or you could do what these guys from Google did, and build a machine that separates them for you. The Teachable Sorter can actually be used to recognize and sort other objects, and you can get the code, 3D files, and build details here.

If you can believe it, there was a time when “Google Plus” was the most popular search phrase in the U.S. V1 Analytics‘ infographic video looks back at Google search data from 2010 to the beginning of 2020, showing off the top trending search phrases for each state, from “Dr. Oz” to “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”

With people wearing all kinds of improvised protective gear these days, an outing to the grocery store can be a strange and surreal experience. But Pouff’s trippy grocery shopping video was created back in 2015, using neural network technology which attempted to identify animal faces in places where they didn’t actually exist.

CollegeHumor returns to the comedy well with an animated installment of their hilarious “If Google Was a Guy” series. While most of the questions asked relate to living during the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems there are still plenty of people out there who are just idiots.

“Some games even require a Pentium microprocessor!” Google’s Stadia streaming game service hasn’t exactly been off to a great start. But that didn’t stop Squirrel Monkey from envisioning how much worse it would have been had it been released sometime around 1995, cranking out 320×240 graphics at 6 fps.

While crowdsourcing traffic data generally has improved the quality of navigation services, it’s also possible that the data could be manipulated. Berlin artist Simon Weckert shows how he was able to create non-existent traffic jams on Google Maps by walking through empty streets while pulling a wagon full of 99 cell phones.