Future:Media:Change

By combining satellite imagery with the power of cloud computing, Google is helping scientists identify where deforestation is occurring across the globe. According to a TechCrunch article, Google plans to release a prototype service free of charge that will use images from Google Earth to analyze changes in forestation across time.

Today Google gave an early Christmas gift and spread out significantly more invites for Google Wave to existing users. A Mashable article reported that the fledgling service will soon hit 1 million users and will continue to grow as invites are spread out.

Google recently published some of their Google Wave user survey results. The most obvious finding is that Google Wave is more fun with your friends. This was to be expected, but it highlights the reality that Wave will run up against the same brick wall that renders most collaboration tools useless in organizations: Adoption.

With Google only a month old, already organizations are already finding unique ways of integrating the technology to fit their needs. Will Google Wave become the Segway of the internet or will it live on to become something totally new? Is your nonprofit on Wave? What are they doing? Let’s take a page from the private sector and figure out some cool ways of integrating Wave into our operations.

Google adds World Bank data to their visualization of search results as they try to “do no evil,” while staying ahead of upstart search engine Wolfram Alpha (recently partnered with Microsoft’s Bing). It’s a move in the right direction, but my simple attempts to find the number of Twitter users in Africa, or discover the maternal mortality rate in Sierra Leone, show that Google and their competitors still have a ways to go.

Nonprofits are using a public Wave to share tips on how to use Google Wave. One idea: use Wave to replace Twitter for chatter and structured conversations at your next conference or event.

Google is honoring 40 years of Sesame Street with a series of “Doodles,” possibly making the Children’s Television Workshop the first nonprofit with their very own official doodle. In exchange, Sesame Street offered up a “16 year old” video of Cookie Monster singing about words that rhyme with Google. Don’t miss it!