Via the Google Blog:

A few members of our Brazil and U.S. Street View and Google Earth Outreach teams are currently in the Amazon rainforest using our Street View technology to capture images of the river, surrounding forests and adjacent river communities. In partnership with the Foundation for a Sustainable Amazon (FAS), the local non-profit conservation organization that invited us to the area, we’re training some of FAS’s representatives on the imagery collection process and leaving some of our equipment behind for them to continue the work. By teaching locals how to operate these tools, they can continue sharing their points of view, culture and ways of life with audiences across the globe.

We’ll pedal the Street View trike along the narrow dirt paths of the Amazon villages and maneuver it up close to where civilization meets the rainforest. We’ll also mount it onto a boat to take photographs as the boat floats down the river. The tripod—which is the same system we use to capture imagery of business interiors—will also be used to give you a sense of what it’s like to live and work in places such as an Amazonian community center and school.

Image: Google cameras head up the Amazon, via the Google Blog.

Originally posted on the Future Journalism Project.

With Amazon leading the way, and Google among other heavies rolling out solutions of their own, computing and especially the applications we’re growing to love are all out in the ‘cloud’. Today, Information Week named Amazon’s 50-year-old CTO Werner Vogels Chief of the Year for his role in developing and implementing Amazon’s cloud computing platform that’s now used by approximately 400,000 developers. And, perhaps more importantly, for changing attitudes about how think of computers, networks and applications in relation to the Intertubes.

Werner claims it’s only “day one” of the cloud. We say, congratulations. (Disclosure: Yes, we use AWS to host and deliver content)