Fascinated by her Kindle Fire tablet and robots — and totally taken by the idea of working somewhere with drive chairs, go-karts, and slides — Chloe decided to apply for a job at Google.

Here’s Chloe’s letter, shared with Business Insider by her father, Andy Bridgewater:

———————————–

Dear google boss

My name is Chloe and when I am bigg I would like a job with google. I also want to work in a chocolate factory and do swimming in the oylmpics, I go swimming on Saturday and on Tuesday. My dad said I can sit on bean bags and go down slides and ride go karts in a job in google. I like computers too and have a tablet I play games on. My dad gave me a game where I have to move a robot up and down squares, he said it will be good for me to learn about computers. My dad said he will get me a computer one day. I am 7 years old and very good in class and am good at my spelling and reading and my sums. My dad told me if I carry on being good and learning one day I will be able to have a job at google. My sister Hollie is also very clever but she like doll dressing up, she is 5. My dad told me to give you a application to get a job in google. I don’t really know what one of them is but he said a letter will do for now. Thank you for reading my letter, I have only ever sent one other and that was to Father Christmas. Good bye.

Chloe Bridgewater, Age 7

———————————————–

Super cute, right?

Imagine her surprise and delight when she got a letter back from the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, who encouraged her to follow her dreams.

“I look forward to receiving your job application when you are finished with school! :)” he wrote.

 (Business Insider has confirmed the veracity of the letter.)

In that LinkedIn post, Andy said the letter was a much-needed confidence booster for Chloe, who was “knocked down” by a car years ago.

Chloe’s fascination with Google began recently, Andy told Business Insider, when she asked her father where his ideal place to work would be.

Andy currently works in sales for a refrigeration-system parts manufacturer.

“And I said, ‘Oh, Google would be a nice place to work,'” he said, because of its world-famous perks and the cutting-edge work it does.

When Chloe decided she wanted to work there, too, her father encouraged her to apply and “get the ball rolling,” he said.

All the attention garnered from Pichai’s response has redoubled Chloe’s drive to work for Google. Andy says his daughter now wants to find a way into the Silicon Valley-based company through going on TV and talking to the media.

He’s largely resisted, though, saying he wants her to focus on her studies and develop her skills.

But Andy wants to brush up on his own technological skills to catch up with Chloe.”Sadly, I think I’ve got to up my game,” he said.

Now imagine what Adam Jones had to go through when he was trapped on a deserted island for 9 long years and who was rescued using one of the most incredible technological advancements of our time, Google Earth. Here is his story.

The voyage

Adam Jones and 2 of his friends had taken off for a journey in 2006. They were supposed to travel to Hawaii from their home in Liverpool, crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the Panama Canal on their way.

The first stage of the voyage went off without a hitch. They crossed the Atlantic smoothly, but as soon they reached the Pacific Ocean after passing the Panama Canal, things began to go wrong for them. Their boat got trapped in a huge storm which damaged their electronic equipment and the boat. It also caused his two friends to go overboard and knocked Adam unconscious for 17 days while he drifted in the Ocean.

Initial days

Adam had to spend 2 weeks on his boats water ration, but had to build a water trapping contrivance to collect water at a drop a minute. He saved lots of water when it rained. He also had to build a solid shelter after his makeshift shelter of debris form the boat collapsed. It took him 11 weeks to bring a tree down using a clam shell.

He laments not having a machete as that tool alone would have helped him quite a lot on the island. He also learned how to make a fire and finally had heat and light on the island.

Food hunting

Adam had to hunt for food and found 8 feral goats on the island. But they were difficult to hunt without any equipment. He tried using a bow and arrow but the construction was not sturdy enough. But as luck would have it, he found a goat trapped in some tree bushes.

Adam killed it by first trying to squeeze its windpipe and then bashing its head in using a clam shell. He describes the experience as gruesome and it took 15 minutes for him to kill the animal. But it was meat and close to 50 kilos of it.

The physical endurance

Adam admits that he had to work hard to keep himself physically fit on the island. He says that he used to do push ups, chin ups on a tree branch and squats with boulders on his shoulders. He did those exercises every day. That also included 300 meter runs on the beach.

The mental agony

Adam says that the most difficult part was the mental agony he had to suffer on the island. The constant feeling of being lonely on a big island and the impending feeling of never being rescued ate him up from inside. He says that if you are alone for quite a long time and start talking to yourself, there is something very wrong with you.

Adam had built a SOS sign 10 feet high but found it inadequate. Finally he decided to clear a large area and built a huge SOS sign that would be visible easily. He said he always had a hope of a plane flying above and sighting the SOS sign and rescuing him. It was hard but he never gave up and it was the most important thing he could do.

And the rescue arrives finally

Adam was surprised to hear the sounds of a plane one day above him. He waved towards the plane multiple times and the plane eventually dropped a packet for him.

The packet contained fresh water, a radio, food and a medical kit. When he switched on the radio and talked to the pilot, it was the first human voice he heard for 9 long years. After talking for a long time, he asked how he was found. The answer came that a kid in Minnesota had seen his SOS sign on Google Earth and alerted the authorities.

He still had to wait for 5 days to be rescued, since it took that long for a boat to reach that unnamed island and he finally departed from the place he called home for 9 years.

source: trendingpost.net

Can you match the words with their opposites?

Key: 

1. e.

2. a.

3. j.

4. b.

5. i.

6. h.

7. c.

8. d.

9. g.

10. f.

Google has finally launched the much awaited Kiddle, a customised search engine for children. Entering the search site, one finds Kiddle written in the characteristic colourful Google style, this time set not against the plain white of Google, but a colourfu lalien planet surface. There is also a red droid alien waiting to answer all your queries.

While the search interface is largely the same, with different search options including the usual web, images, news and videos, the search results are clearly modified for a younger audience. For example once you type Obama (in big blue fonts), in the search box, you would not have the President’s website, Obama’s twitter handles, the latest news on top or his Wikipedia page at the top, as is the usual case with standard Google. Instead, you would have a list of links to Obama’s pages on biography.com, britannica.com, famousbirthdays.com etc. each of which would be   by a large picture of the American President.

The search results are also not as cluttered, and come well-spaced with a bigger font, easier for kids to read.

On its ‘About’ page, Kiddle also explains the logic behind its search results.

Safe sites and pages written specifically for kids, which will be handpicked and checked by Kiddle editors, would usually be featured in the first three results. The next rung would include safe, trusted sites that are not written specifically for kids, but have content written in a simple way, easy for kids to understand.

Finally, after this would follow safe, famous sites that are written for adults, providing expert content, but are harder for kids to understand.

If the child types something ‘unsuitable‘ for kids, one of Kiddle’s alien droids would come hob-nobbing with the message “Oops, looks like your query contained some bad words. Please try again!”

Lastly, Kiddle has also announced that they “don’t collect any personally identifiable information, and (their) logs are deleted every 24 hours”.

As specialty stand-in artwork, Google doodles serve as a sort of informal day calendar for the entire Internet. They are used to celebrate historical events, famous birthdays, groundbreaking inventions, and pretty much anything else deemed worth of replacing the search engine’s ubiquitous logo for a day.

But when did this tradition start?

According to Google’s official doodle history, the first one wasn’t used to commemorate or celebrate anything, but rather serve as an “out of office” note.

In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were headed out to desert festival/spiritual quest/“thinkfluencer” summit Burning Man, and they wanted to playfully let site users know they were out of town. They re-did the company logo to include a Burning Man-inspired stick figure behind the second “o” (pictured above) and posted it on August 30.

The idea didn’t return for another two years, when the two asked intern Dennis Hwang to design a doodle for Bastille Day. It was a hit, and soon Hwang became doodler-in-chief. Today, an entire team of graphic designers creates multiple doodles per day for use on Google’s various international websites.

source: mentalfloss

Let’s practice the words from the text. Fill in the gaps in the sentences.

1. He wasn’t at home, he just left a small …………… on the table before he left.

2. After finishing his schools he started to work as an …………… first.

3. The new …………… made work in the factory much easier.

4. Several presidents and prime ministers were present at the …………… .

5. Today the trams are …………… by buses on this line.

6. His new movie was a real …………… and made him famous and rich.

7. After work all the men were  …………… to the match.

8. She wasn’t an artist at all, she was only able to draw …………… .

9. Inhis books he wrote about his …………… for the meaning of life.

10. They were happy to find an oasis in the …………… at last.

Key:

1. note

2. intern

3. inventions

4. summit

5. replaced

6. hit

7. heading out

8. stick figures

9. quest

10. desert

Twitter

Change is afoot in China economic reforms are underway. But in many areas, there’s still a long way to go.

Try using Twitter for example. Too bad!

The social media platform can’t be accessed from within the so-called Great Firewall of China, a censorship project operated for more than a decade by the Communist Party.

Thousands of websites cannot be viewed inside China either, but social media platforms draw special attention from censors.

Google

Gmail is the latest Google service to be severely restricted by Chinese regulators.

Other Google offerings including Search, Sites, Picasa and YouTube are also currently disrupted, according to the company.

Google has for years engaged in a running battle with Beijing over censorship. In 2010, Google redirected search traffic from Mainland China to its uncensored Hong Kong and largely pulled out of the market. The relationship has improved little since then.

Determined users can still access Gmail using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which for a fee allow subscribers to circumvent the Great Firewall.

Meanwhile, homegrown streaming video sites Youku, Sohu and iQiyi are very popular in China.

Facebook

Chinaturned out the lights on Facebook in 2009, and there are no signs that Beijing plans to restore access to the U.S. – based social media platform.

China-based social media sites are allowed to operate in the country, which helps to promote the domestic tech industry. Still, these platforms are heavily censored. Domestic operators accept this as a fact of life, while western tech firms are much less likely to give up control.

Foreign films

Chinese regulators allow only 34 foreign films to be shown in theaters each year, severely limiting access to the latest Hollywood blockbusters.

Approved films still face the heavy hand of government censors, who cut anything the Communist Party considers offensive or subversive.

Despite the commercial advantage it gives them, Chinese filmmakers are likely to continue to bump heads with Beijing over censorship. China heaped praise on Taiwan-born director Ang Lee when he won the Academy Award for Best Director in 2005. His film, Brokeback Mountain, was never shown in China.

Casinos

Beijing outlawed gambling in 1949, and casinos are not allowed to operate in China. Yet many Chinese have an inclination toward games of chance, a tradition that dates back thousands of years.

Today, the ban doesn’t stop entrepreneurial Chinese from setting up underground gambling operations and private lotteries.

The policy has also given rise to a ring of casinos that operate just outside Beijing’s reach. The most notable of these territories is Macau, which boasts a casino industry that is seven times larger than Las Vegas.

Websites

Beijingblocks access to thousands of websites at any given time, including social media platforms and websites that host pornography.

Censors also prohibit Internet users from visiting sites that criticize the Communist Party or address sensitive issues such as human rights.

Search results and social media chatter are also censored, forcing Internet users to come up with a clever alternate language to discuss news or historical events like the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown.

The massive censorship project has been dubbed the Great Firewall of China, and using a Virtual Private Network or secure proxy are the only ways to access forbidden websites.

Books

China’s General Administration of Press and Publication screens all books before publication in China, and censorship is standard procedure.

Critical talk regarding human rights, Tibet or the Communist Party is off limits. Reporting on the wealth of Chinese officials is also forbidden.

Publishers that skirt the rules are quickly shut down, leaving authors with a choice: Agree to censorship or forfeit access to 1.4 billion potential readers.

Books are often smuggled into China from jurisdictions including Hong Kong, where publishers enjoy more freedom. Bookstores in the city overflow with works on everything from President Xi Jinping to the devastating Chinese famine that killed upwards of 45 million people during the Great Leap Forward.

Snapchat

Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only social media platforms blocked in China. Chinese users are unable to access Snapchat, either.

Keeping western firms out has given Chinese tech companies ample time to develop their own networks.

A few of those homegrown platforms are now flourishing.

Source: CNN

1. The workers try to avoid …
bureaucracy.

2. What is great about Google?
That you have a lot of autonomy over your product and its direction.

3. Often the best ideas come from …
the employees.

4. What is the biggest resource?
Definitely the people.

5. What they say about the food?
It is great.

6. "We have … lunch where we get together and we speak …
French

7. "There’s any type of amazing cuisine, even better than …
some of the restaurants in New York.

8. They know that what they are working on will be seen by …
millions and millions people.

9. What allows Google for its employees?
It allows them a fantastic environment to be innovative and to get your product developed really quickly.

10. Workers are encouraged to …
work on whatever they think it is important.