Launching Google Game Developer Central

Today, the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) officially kicks off in San Francisco. From browser technologies to cloud storage solutions, Google has many products and services that can be useful to game developers. Until now, it was hard for developers to track down information on how Google can help them build, distribute and monetize their games. This is why we are excited to release Google Game Developer Central.

Google Game Developer Central provides an overview of Google products and services that are particularly relevant to game developers. You’ll be able to explore different platforms like Chrome, learn about technologies such as GWT, WebGL and HTML5, and check out monetization options like AdMob.

This is just the first iteration of Google Game Developer Central. In the next few months, we plan to add additional content to make this an even better resource for all game developers. If you’d like to give us feedback on how to improve the site, please join our developer forum or for those of you at GDC, stop by our booth on the expo floor. We look forward to meeting you in person!

By Ian Ni-Lewis, Game Developer Relations Team

Sneak Peak: QRCodes and iPads in The Grant Museum

Here at University College London, the Grant Museum of Zoology, which contains some of the rarest extinct animal specimens in the world, is to re-open on 15 March, 2011 after an eight-month renovation and moving period. Over the past few months we have been working here in CASA with the nice people over at the Centre for Digital Humanities and UCL Museums to build interactive signage for the exhibits.
Based around the ‘Tales of Things‘ technology, each artefact has a QRCode and Twitter Hash Tag allowing digital conversations to be carried out both inside and outside of the museum space. In typical ‘sneak peak’ photo mode, below is a look at one of the iPad mounts:

We are not sure why all first look photos are blurred, but such is the case. The project, known as ‘QRator’ is placing 10 iPads around the museum to explore new models for public engagement and informal learning in museums using handheld mobile devices and new interactive digital labels. The aim is to enable the public to collaborate and discuss museum concepts and object interpretation with museum curators, and academic researchers.
Wired UK has a good article on the Museum with a mention of QRCodes, for a more in depth view of such matters head over to Digital Nerdosaurus.
We will have much more on QRator over coming weeks….

The Street View Trike keeps on trucking

A few years ago, Google introduced the Street View “trike” — a three-wheeled bicycle that contained a StreetView camera, for the purposes of capturing areas that cars couldn’t reach. Since then, they’ve captured interesting areas such as Stonehenge and Sea World.

Today, Google has announced that additional Trike-generated Street View imagery is now available in a few different places around the world, including the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin, Ireland, as seen below.

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If you’d like to see the Botanic Gardens for yourself, you can fly there using this KML file. Other new additions include the Château de Chenonceaux in Civray-de-Touraine, France (KML), the gardens at the San Diego Art Institute (KML) and some beautiful locations inside Balboa Park in San Diego (KML).

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As you know, Street View was greatly enhanced with the release of Google Earth 6, making it much easier to browse this kind of imagery from within Google Earth. To enter one of these areas, or any other Street View-enabled location, simply drag the “Peg Man” from the controls in the upper right corner onto the globe.

At this point, we’re not aware of any new traditional Street View cities that have been added with this update, but please leave a comment if you notice anything else that is new today.