Did you hear about the Deep Sky Urban Party on Sunday? I just heard and I’m hoping to be there.
Admission to the event is free and we’ll all be gathering at a really cool abandoned Swimming pool in Lawrenceville (the Leslie Park Pool).
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There will be amateur astromomers and some really High Tech stuff and staff from Google showing off how their Sky Map application (largely developed in Pittsburgh ya-know) works.
To really set the scene, there will be a little Chamber music being played too thanks to John Cordle and friends.
Come along! Check it out!
Background about Google Pittsburgh and the Google Sky Map app
As you may know, Google has had a significant presence in Pittsburgh for more than four years and will be relocating to our new office in Bakery Square later this summer. At our current Collaborative Innovation Center, a group of software engineers at Google Pittsburgh developed Sky Map, an astronomy application for Android mobile phones, using their "20% time" — a perk at Google that enables employees to spend one day per week working on projects that aren’t necessarily in their job descriptions — including developing new features and products. First released in May 2009, Sky Map has seen great adoption and popularity around the world. Especially given Eric Schmidt’s recent statements that every day 160,000 Android-powered devices are activated (nearly two devices every second) and upcoming back-to-school mobile phone sales, there’s ever greater opportunities for people to use the "pocket planetarium" app to transform their mobile phones into devices of interplanetary exploration.
More detailed information about the Sky Map app can be found at:
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6znyx0gjb4
Google Mobile blog, http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/05/sky-map-for-android-mobile-planetarium.html
