Google’s 3D City View is now available on iOS. The Google Earth update adds three-dimensional imagery to major locations including Washington D.C, San Francisco and Boston. It’s arriving alongside Tour Guide; select a notable attraction to go straight to it, with accompanying trivia you can bore your friends with later. Sadly 3D maps requires the processing hardware of the iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or the third-generation iPad, but other iOS (4.2 or higher) device users can still get access to Tour Guide. Unsurprisingly, the update’s available via the App Store – but you shouldn’t need a map to find your way there.

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Eric Schmidt has said that Google will make cash available through its investment into Teach First to buy Raspberry Pi and Arduino units for British schoolchildren. He was at the UK’s Science Museum to talk about Mountain View’s partnership with the charity, which puts top university graduates into schools to teach disadvantaged kids. The Android-maker wrote a cheque to fund over 100 places on the scheme, aiming to get bright computer scientists to reintroduce engineering principles to pupils. Mr. Schmidt hoped that with the right support, kits like the Raspberry Pi would do for this generation what the BBC Micro did three decades ago.

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Dust off the baking soda and bust out the vinegar, because Google’s throwing a science fair. That’s right, the internet giant is taking the time-honored tradition of hastily constructed teenage science experiments online. Entrants must be between 13 and 18 years old and submit their projects (in English) via Google Sites by April 4th. Once the projects are in, a panel of real-life teachers will select 60 semi-finalists. From there, the pool will be narrowed down to a group of 15, who will attend an in-the-flesh fair at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA, this July. The big event’s judges include CERN’s Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Google’s Vint Cerf, and Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis. Grand prize winners in three age groups will receive a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos islands, and some stuff from LEGO and Scientific American. On second thought, maybe the baking soda volcano isn’t such a great idea. (Rube Goldberg-inspired promo video after the jump.) Read more

Last year, we expressed a yearning for something we called the Continuous Client that would allow us to pick up on one device where we left off on another, and in less than a year we saw the advent of HP’s “Touch-to-share” technology, but our dreams weren’t fully fulfilled – we longed for a platform that would offer seamless sharing across all of our devices. Well, it’s like we rubbed a bottle and KonnectUs popped out. The cloud-based software is a collaborative effort between Sensus and Open Exhibits that enables you to transfer files and information across platforms – including Windows, iOS, and Android – with a simple swipe of your finger. As it turns out, KonnectUs was built with museums in mind, but the company is offering APIs for integration into third party applications – so maybe the perfect world isn’t that far off after all. Oh, that’s right – we still don’t have a robot to shake our martinis after a hard day at the office. Video after the break. Read more

We’ve seen the Kindle DX fail as a textbook alternative, but the iPad marches ever onward as a pioneer of wireless education. Or so it seems, anyway. This time the tablet has set its sights on a private school in Knoxville, TN, where all students from fourth to 12th grade will be required to carry iPads starting this August. Webb School students can either provide their own slate or lease a WiFi-only model for $20 a month. Just like administrators at Seton Hill University, the folks at Webb School see the iPad as an eventual replacement for traditional textbooks, as well as a tool for interactive learning. We’ve voiced our skepticism about the in-school iPad trend before, and while we still wonder just how effective the devices might be in the classroom, we’re interested to see how this thing turns out. You know, we love the Oregon Trail and everything, but don’t today’s students deserve to see more than pixelated trailblazers dying of digital diphtheria?

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At least according to L'Oreal. The hair care giant (and purveyor of giant hair) just announced Matrix Class for Glass, which gives clients and beauty school students a stylists-eye view of your head. The three-part program includes a video series of in-depth beauty tutorials shot with Google’s wearable; Matrix Eye for Style, an “exclusive” salon experience provided by George Papanikolas, who will record sessions with the headset; and a series of lessons for beauty professionals given by be-Glassed hair care superstars.

This isn’t the first or last time L'Oreal has taken advantage of the wearable; it used Glass to document Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Madrid late last year and has plans to release a Glass app sometime in 2014. It might seem like an odd coupling considering most glass holes are more Super Cuts than Vidal Sassoon, but L'Oreal says there’s an intersection between the early adopters of fashion and tech. According to a study done by its partner at Fashion Week, Nurun, “The futuristic nature of Google Glass appealed to the fashion-forward, tech-savvy audience…” When we start seeing years-old issues of Wired replacing copies of Southern Hair at Truvy’s, we’ll believe it.

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Another dusty gem’s emerged from the vintage gold mine that is AT&T’s Tech Channel archive, and this one’s packed full of useful information and some classic Jetsons-style animation. The Thinking Machines pits man against computer to explain how the things reason, and it does so with a soundtrack that’s straight out of, well, 1968. Unsurprisingly, the film’s populated by giant, button-laden switchboards, early computer graphics, ladies sporting beehives, and gents rocking unfortunate facial hair, but if that doesn’t do it for you, it also offers genuine pearls like this: “Best of all, they never get bored. Like other machines, they can do the same monotonous chores all day long without complaining.” Someone should tell that to the disgruntled Roomba residing in our hall closet. Check out the full video in all its dated glory after the break. Read more

Online education platforms are rapidly gaining in popularity as more and more people revel in the idea of learning just about anything – from sciences to the arts, all from the comfort of their own homes. Khan Academy, the non-profit educational organization that works towards providing a word-class education to everyone, has announced that it has released a dedicated Android app as well as a redesigned iPhone app.

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Google’s first-ever science fair came to a close yesterday, as 15 finalists, ranging in age from 13 to 18, showed off their smarts at Google HQ. Top honors went to three young ladies – score one for the girls – in three separate age groups, but there could only be one Highlander Grand Prize winner. The big win went to Shree Bose for an experiment which focused on improving treatment of ovarian cancer, following accumulated resistance to chemotherapy drugs. Lauren Hodge and Naomi Shah also took home trophies for their experiments which dealt with carcinogens in grilled chicken and reducing reliance on asthma treatment, respectively. Along with trophies built of Legos, these young brainiacs took home prizes that included lifetime subscriptions to Scientific American and big-money scholarships ranging from $25,000 to $50,000. A very long video documenting the award ceremony can be found – featuring a shocking lack of baking soda volcanoes – after the break. Read more

If you fancy yourself a Stanford (wo)man, but lack the requisite dollars to actually attend, now’s your chance to collect those collegiate bragging rights. Starting October 10th, you can join Professor Sebastian Thrun and Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig, in a free, online version of the school’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course. The class covers, “knowledge representation, inference, machine learning, planning and game playing, information retrieval, and computer vision and robotics,” and ambitiously aims to be the largest online AI course ever taught. If you’re feeling the ole red and white, you can register at the source link below, but if you’re looking for the official Stanford stamp of approval, we’re afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree – non-students will receive a certificate of completion from the instructors only. Still interested? Check out the video introduction after the break and hit the source for more details. Read more

Sifteo’s cute little gaming Cubes have grown up a lot over the past couple of months: they’ve undergone two name changes (from Siftables to Cubits to Cubes), experienced the gaming rites of passage at CES, and now these 1.5-inch full-color computers are making their FCC debut, including the ritual teardown. The not-so-cute internal photos show one of the Cubes, guts exposed, revealing a 32-bit ARM processor. Also buried in the FCC documents is evidence that the darling devices communicate with computers via a 2.4GHz USB dongle and sport a three-axis motion sensor. Sifteo’s already sold out of its first round of pre-orders, but we’re guessing we’ll be seeing more of the adorable little guys sometime real soon. Read more

Kapil Sibal’s not resting after the explosion of interest that followed the initial launch of the $60 Aakash education tablet. He’s now pushing to get the rebadged DataWind Ubislate 7 into the hands of students free of charge, rather than the $35 they currently pay. The plan is to offer a 50 percent government subsidy for each unit, with education institutions fronting the other half, but only if inclined to do so. He’s also pushing for the tablet to be manufactured domestically rather than imported – hoping that the comforts of home will enable it to spread nationwide. See? We got through that without making any “cash” puns. Read more

In 1947, the Tucker Car Corporation opened shop at the Dodge Chicago Plant, the one-time world’s largest building located on the city’s southwest side, a stone’s throw from Midway Airport. Half a decade before, construction workers lovingly nicknamed the site “Hitler’s Headache,” a title it earned for being the birthplace of most of the engines for World War II’s B-29 bombers. After Tucker’s notoriously brief tenure, Ford took over, again devoting the massive structure to the construction of military aircraft, this time for the Korean War. Look to the left of the entrance when you arrive at Level UP’s subterranean storefront, and you’ll spot a model of Tucker’s 1948 Sedan sitting atop a glass case. Jackie Moore keeps the little burgundy Tucker “Torpedo” for some small sense of history of the space her program occupies. “You know they made these right here,” she explains, holding a plastic version of Tucker’s stillborn dream. “All 51 of them.”

Level UP is located in the basement beneath the food court of the Ford City Mall, a sprawling shopping center that opened up on the lot in 1965, borrowing its name from the third car company to take up residence here. Once upon a time, these underground tunnels housed cafeterias and machine classes for factory workers. These days, however, this particular wing stands more as a testament to the state of the American shopping mall in the early 21st century. Down here, there’s a hairstylist and shop devoted to eastern herbal remedies, but not much else to speak of beyond employee locker rooms and several empty storefronts. Moore apologizes for the mess when we first arrive. It’s clearly a well-loved space, with various tools of the trade scattered all over the tables and floor. Nearly every wall in the converted storefront is papered with writing – charts, diagrams and instructions for tinkering with electronics.

In the middle of the space is a strange four-wheeled vehicle, with exposed circuitry and a small chute with a spinning wheel that sends Frisbees flying at high speeds. On a nearby table sits a huge orange Pac-Man-shaped cutout on wheels and a nearly finished CNC machine. There are a number of deconstructed Roomba-like iRobot open-source platforms, including two that serve as the base for anthropomorphic banana and grape characters built from PVC piping that are, admittedly, a bit worse for wear. Toward the front, beneath the Tucker Torpedo, is a glass case loaded with trophies and certificates from competitions with names like Botball, all testaments to the work that goes on here. Jackie Moore has devoted this space and her life to teaching kids how to build robots.

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