Google Asia Pacific Blog: January 2014

Riding into the Year of the Horse

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Many cultures across Asia Pacific are celebrating the arrival of the Lunar New Year. In the Chinese calendar, 2014 marks the beginning of the Year of the Wooden Horse -- which is the inspiration behind the rocking horse in our special holiday doodle. The boy is holding up firecrackers to ward off evil spirits, while the red paper lanterns symbolize letting go of the old year and welcoming the new.

We wish all of our readers a Gong Xi Fa Cai and a happy time with family and friends!

The world's virtual tourists rush to Japan

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The postcard can never replace the destination. But maybe a view of the street can replace the postcard, especially if no one has to send it to you.

While we introduced Street View as a way to better navigate the world through photos, people began using the 360-degree imagery on Google Maps to virtually see the world without taking a plane.

Historically, many of the most popular destinations on Street View have been the flagship European sites that lure tourists in flocks from around the world: Paris’ Eiffel Tower, Rome’s Coliseum, and the U.K.’s Stonehenge are world-renowned tourist destinations and some of our best-loved locations on Street View.

Now Asia’s getting a larger slice of the world’s virtual tourism, with Japan emerging as Asia’s leader when it comes to online visitors. What’s surprising is how many sites that haven’t been popular offline became online hits.

Here’s a look at some of the most popular Asian places on Street View that attract visitors from around the world, including the regional top ten, as well as the top ten locations in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand.

Mount Fuji and Osaka Castle were already prime destinations for tourists; yet the abandoned coal mines at Hashima Island — hardly a household word — emerged over the past year among the ten Asian destinations that attracted the most global traffic.

Mount Fuji, Japan

Dotonburi Canal, Japan

Hashima Island, Japan

Other Asian sites whose panoramas are attracting virtual tourists from around the world in large numbers include these from Taiwan and Singapore:

Jiou Fen Old Street, Taiwan

View of the Marina Bay Sands from Fullerton Heritage Promenade, Singapore

As the map makes clear, the rise of the Asian Internet is adding some balance to the world’s culture. Even if a visit to a 360-degree panorama can’t replace a visit on foot, it can at least make Asia’s most astonishing vistas seem as immediate as the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building.

Posted by Ulf Spitzer, Street View Program Manager

A map of the flooding in Indonesia

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

We've put together a map for those navigating the recent floods in Indonesia. It includes information about which areas are affected, as well as which transit routes are still running and other features - thanks to Indonesia's board for disaster management, Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana, which made this data available.

This map is open to anyone who would like to embed it on their Web sites - you can click the “Share” button at the top of the crisis map to embed or share by email or social media.

Posted by Yu Chen, Partner Technology Manager

Mabuhay, Street View Philippines!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

A country with 7,107 islands has a lot to offer, but it can also be a logistical challenge to explore this archipelago. Today, in collaboration with the Department of Tourism, we’ll start capturing Street View imagery in the Philippines, beginning in Metro Manila. Once this imagery is published, people will be able to virtually walk around panoramic photos of the Philippines through Google Maps.

As a preview of the Philippines’ take on Street View, we’re publishing today 360-degree photos from within Manila’s historic walled city of Intramuros: The San Agustin Church, Baluarte de San Diego, Plaza San Luis Complex and Fort Santiago. They were captured using the backpack-attached Street View Trekker, which allowed us to walk past where cars have to stop and explore Intramuros’ narrow paths. We’ll continue to use Trekker, along with the Street View Trolley, to photograph more of the Philippines’ off-road, natural and indoor destinations.

We can’t wait to share more of the Philippines with people around the world through Street View. Mabuhay!

Posted by Ryan Morales, Country Marketing Manager, Google Philippines

Open to all possibilities

Friday, January 24, 2014

Filipinos now have a better view of where their tax pesos go, thanks to the government’s new open data portal, Data.gov.ph. Easy access to information about government spending helps citizens evaluate how their representatives are performing and allows policymakers to better plan for the future development of our country.

Last week’s launch of Data.gov.ph — a website where public-sector datasets can be viewed, downloaded, and transformed into apps by anyone, free of charge — puts the Philippines at the forefront of open data initiatives in South East Asia. Data.gov.ph is a product of the Philippine government as part of its commitment to the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an alliance between government and civil society to improve governance through greater transparency, with over 60 member countries.

As well as offering downloadable information related to government spending, education, traffic and more, Data.gov.ph contains a number of neat infographics and “dashboards”. These provide snapshots of things like the price of consumer goods and medicines, import revenue collection and even ambient water quality (see below).

Measuring ambient water quality in Makati

Already, we’re seeing some impressive (and practical) uses of open data across the region:

The Great Singapore Rat Race visualizes government data about income and wages across age groups, industries and occupations to give fresh graduates and professionals insight into salary levels and wage progression in the island state
Traffic Spot Hong Kong gives commuters real-time traffic information to help them map out the fastest way to get from A to B
Rollcall.ph tracks the attendance rates of elected officials in the Philippine House of Representatives and presents the data in a graphic format.

We hope such examples together with the launch of Data.gov.ph will make people’s lives better across the region, by increasing transparency and improving citizen services for all.

Posted by Aileen Apolo, Outreach Program Manager, Google Southeast Asia

Search Battle of the Kollywood Titans: Jilla vs Veeram

Friday, January 17, 2014

You probably know about India’s most all-singing and all-dancing cultural export, the Bollywood movie industry. You may not be as familiar, however, with Bollywood’s cousin to the south, the thriving Tamil-language film industry known as “Kollywood.” Kodambakkam, the industry’s epicenter, is home to a base of extraordinarily passionate fans. In fact, in 2010 when director Mani Ratnam made two versions of the exact same movie in Hindi and Tamil, the Tamil “Raavanan” brought home $26 million in box office receipts, dwarfing the Hindi “Raavan’s” $5 million box office revenues. That gap was also reflected in searches.

We witnessed some of this passion for Kollywood first-hand over the holiday weekend. Over this past Pongal, or harvest, the two top trending search terms in India nationally were “Jilla” and “Veeram” — movies released by Kollywood’s biggest rival stars, Vijay, aka the “Young General,” and Ajith, aka "The Leader”. Here are the trailers:

These movies claimed top spots in last week’s top trending search terms in India. We also noticed an uptick in searches for these terms in the original Tamil script rather than the phonetic English version that is typically more popular. The volume of search queries has increased significantly since the last time these actors released their respective movies “Pokkiri” and “Alwar” at the same time in 2007, showing that more Tamil-speaking Indians are coming online and searching for what is most interesting to them. While searches for “Jilla” were concentrated in India as well as Sri Lanka, interest in “Veeram” spread more widely across the Tamil diaspora, with search queries from the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and Malaysia.

Source: Google Trends

Still, Bollywood has kept a bigger profile overseas. For the 2013 International Indian Film Academy awards in Macau, the IIFA organisers brought highlights and backstage interviews to their official YouTube channel, broadcasting the ceremony online to viewers across the globe. Marketing for newly released Bollywood movies usually also includes an active online marketing campaign. The Internet age allows people to market and broadcast to diasporas, not just nations. As interest in Kollywood grows, the industry can boost its international cache even more by building its online presence, appealing both to the Tamil diaspora as well as new audiences worldwide.

Posted by Vaishnavi Jayakumar, Public Policy & Government Relations Associate, Google Asia-Pacific

.みんな is now available for みんな (everyone)

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Starting today, you can apply for a domain name using .みんな (minna, “mee-n-nuh”), the first open top-level domain in hiragana. We hope that .みんな will make it easier for Japanese people and companies to create more recognizable website names that better suit their businesses or personalities and are easier to understand and remember in Japanese.

“みんな” means “everyone” in Japanese and suggests multiple people doing things together. Our vision is for .みんな to be a collaborative space, where folks can build online communities — something along the lines of “Cook, everybody!” or “Run, everybody!” But that’s just a thought. We can’t wait to see what new ideas the new domain will help make possible.

The number of generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, has remained relatively static in comparison to the growth of the Internet. In the last 30 years, the domain space has been limited to about two dozen domains (think .net, .org. and .gov). More than half of all website addresses have .com at the end. New domains such as .みんな, the first gTLD we’re able to offer, open more real estate for the Web to grow and make the Web feel more like the diverse world that creates it.

You can read more about our plans for expanding the Internet domain space here, including the other domains we’re interested in and what else we think they might be useful for. And if you’ve already thought of the name of a website you’d like to create on .みんな, you can go ahead and register it by visiting one of our registrar partners’ websites.

Posted by Vishal Jain, Business Product Manager

Fly through Tokyo and more with new 3D imagery in Google Maps

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Have you ever dreamed of skydiving over Tokyo without having to jump out of a plane? With new 3D imagery on Google Maps and Google Earth, you can now virtually glide above Tokyo, Chiba, Sendai and Kanagawa, experiencing immersive and realistic views of these areas right from your desktop or mobile device. You can access the new 3D imagery through Earth View in Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google Earth for mobile.

New 3D imagery of Tokyo, Japan

Previously, people from around the world could view these prefectures through satellite and aerial photos on Google Maps and Google Earth, as well as through Street View. This new imagery adds fully 3D digital views of major landmarks, such as the Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Sky Tree, as well as surrounding buildings, topographies, and parks.

New 3D imagery of Tokyo Sky Tree

New 3D imagery of Meiji Jingu Gaien Stadium in Tokyo

We hope you have fun virtually soaring over these new 3D areas in Japan.

Posted by Setsuto Murai, Strategic Partnerships Manager, Google Japan

Yasmin Ahmad: Opening eyes and touching hearts through film

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Today we celebrate the 56th birthday of the acclaimed Malaysian filmmaker and screenplay writer Yasmin Ahmad. Her movies and commercials examined the barriers between cultures, she was not one to shy away from difficult subjects and she touched the hearts of many Malaysians while winning awards from both the ad and film industries.

For this doodle, we were inspired by her 2004 film Sepet, which tells the story of how two young lovers from different racial and religious backgrounds cope with family and social pressure. Here’s the trailer from this much-loved film:

To learn more about Yasmin Ahmad’s work, check out this insightful and humorous TEDx talk that she gave in Kuala Lumpur shortly before her death in 2009:

Posted by Sajith Sivanandan, Country Manager, Malaysia

The raw data of art

Friday, January 3, 2014

Editor’s note: Today’s post comes from You Yang, deputy director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in China.

Soon after the UCCA announced it would be the first mainland Chinese museum to join Google’s Art Project, I was asked by an audience member what was my motivation.
Beyond the promotional benefits, what may be more important is the revolution in how the Art Project allows us to enjoy art.
Until recently, art knowledge has been based mostly on exhibits or reviews that have a clear slant. Indeed, when we want to learn more about artists, it’s often to find to find a truth lying beyond the exhibit’s theme or reviewer’s opinion. That truth — the original, unprocessed data that makes up art: the works, the facts, the materials — has until recently been kept mostly out of the hands of the public.

From the museum view of the UCCA at Art Project

There are few opportunities to view large amounts of this kind of data when it comes to art. Modern-art fairs and biannual themed exhibitions have been the best way; but they are becoming increasingly uninteresting. Both require a lot of time and energy to attend and both push the public’s opinion in a specific direction.

Google, or maybe just the general uniqueness of the internet, can counter this by reproducing works from top-tier museums and letting the public to form their opinion. This creates a new problem for the public: where to start? Art Project allows users to reorganize the raw data however they want, creating more possibilities in the way that art is categorized and interpreted.

The Ullens Center of Contemporary Art

The Google Art Project encourages partners to upload high-definition gigabyte images. Many times when we look at contemporary art, we are more interested in the ideas behind the work rather than the work itself. But when we can actually look at classic artworks that were created, brush stroke by brush stroke, in extreme detail, it immediately shows the advantage of the Internet as a way to experience art.

For instance, looking at a classic artwork magnified 20 times on your screen and passing over the colors and the textures as they intermingle on the canvas is something that would be hard to imagine in a crowded exhibition hall.

This is particularly good for contemporary art. The spirit of some works lies in the relationship between the creative process and the space in which the works exist. For instance, when you open the page for Beijing's UCCA, you can see Li Hui's work V for which professional photographers worked with the artist to present a lifelike dream-scape to the online visitor.

A detail from Li Hui's "V: Exhibition Scene 4"

The angles from which the photos are taken highlight the perfection of the artwork, which is difficult to see in person and can only be accomplished with the help of some imagination and a little technology.

There’s no need to worry that a rampant spread of online artwork platforms will hurt the physical museum. When people walk into an art space they experience more than the artwork, they also experience the space where the artwork is shown, along with how the artwork, viewers and space relate to each other.
Today, and in the future, the sharing of information both online and offline experiences will provide a wide range of opportunities for the public to experience these artworks. This is also one of the missions of internet technology to seek out and fulfil its role in promoting culture.

Asia Pacific Blog

Riding into the Year of the Horse

The world's virtual tourists rush to Japan

A map of the flooding in Indonesia

Mabuhay, Street View Philippines!

Open to all possibilities

Search Battle of the Kollywood Titans: Jilla vs Veeram

.みんな is now available for みんな (everyone)

Fly through Tokyo and more with new 3D imagery in Google Maps

Yasmin Ahmad: Opening eyes and touching hearts through film

The raw data of art

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