Solve for X: Sergei Brin on taking moonshots and the value of failing

Charlie Rose with Larry Page

Sebastian Thrun on Project Glass

Sebastian Thrun has been interviewed by  Charlie Rose. Among other things they have spoken about the Google Project Glass and Udacity a step ahead to the democratization of higher education. Watch the full interview here.

Google Maps for NES

Google has added a 8-bit Dragon Quest-like map layer to Google Maps. I realize it is an April Fools' Day joke as soon as I watch the presentation video in which Google developers show a NES cartridge that, once connected to the Internet, it loads a retro Google Maps. Glorious NES days...we all wish to go back in time.

Here a view of my town Oñati though the sky and a pic of Google Street View that has also turned into 8-bits

Google Developers SXSW LEGO Rumble

I would like to play with LEGO Mindstorms. It's great to see that Google is doing such nice things with Android.

Where were you when Google was born?

On september 27, 1997 Google is born. Well... I am writing this on september 27, 2011 in Google's 13th birthday. I realized about it via Gizmodo. But as we like to look backward so much I just thought it was a good excuse to went to the old photo albums of school days and scan the 1997-1998 one.  Here my class of 1997. 

We had such a good time this year. We were 13 by the time and we were in DBH2 (2nd grade of Compulsory Secondary Education). I remenber I was still playing football those days. I think it was the first year we started playing as a team in Aloña Mendi. I played as defense, training session were so fun, we were all friends, some playing so seriously and others with so many crazy ideas. Our coach got fed up with us.

My brother Aaron was 11 years old. Here his last year of Primary Education class. (He is missing, maybe he went to the Doctor or something)

In those days, we didn't have any computer at home and I don't know if there was internet in school neither. But I clearly remember how this September, after much insistence my parents allowed us to buy a Nintendo 64 for Christmas. So my brother and I, picket up a plastic pink piggy bank and started earning some money. We also started to buy Nintendo Accion magazine, to start to see what games were coming out on Christmas holidays. Finally a high-tech something was coming to our home!

In the first Nintendo Accion September issue #58 we had, there was a preview of Lylat Wars, the highly anticipated prequel of the Super Nintendo's Star Fox. Aside for the game itself, that was supposed to be mesmerizing, everyone was speaking about a peripheral that will come with it: The Rumble Pack. It was a device to be attached in the bottom of the 64's controller, meant to change the way you played, making the action of the screen rumble in your hands! The choice was done. That was the game we wanted.

So there we where  in september 1997, in another school year, with no much worries than earning some money and have good marks so we could enjoy the Nintendo 64 on Christmas. Happy old school days!