Nifty Google Earth Election Presentation

Some smarty pants got all US election results, by county, back to 1980, into Google Earth.

This is pretty cool to play with.

To me, Google Earth is like a whole hunka potential. To date, I've just kind of played around with it, and found using it like a Flight Simulator is fun, but have not done much useful with it yet...same for its iPhone app which was released this week. But I think it will only be a short amount of time before my Birks are knocked off by it.

Mark Ambinder's blog at The Atlantic is where I saw this mention first.

Google Cache To the Rescue

I generally don't pay much attention to gymnastics, but did catch a bit of the womens/little girls competition the other night when the Chinese were competing. I remarked to a friend at work that they just seemed so young. I really didn't care enough to know that the age limit was 16 and there's quite the controversy brewing over their gold medal.

Huffpo comes through with some nice investigative work suggesting, gasp, the Chinese might be falsifying things for competitive advantage.

No Big Surprise

The Times has one of the first mainstream articles I've seen in a while making the argument that Google might share some characteristics with most other companies in the world...they occasionally tick their employees off.

The folks in Mountain View are having some trouble keeping people happy with their on-site day care offerings.

It's nothing terribly shocking, really. But I just thought it was kind of interesting to see some anti-Google editorializing when it came to their HR practices...given the land of milk and honey perception that was allowed to develop over the last few years.

I Love Google Search Terms

Huh...seems that two people found a Rachel Ray item I had this spring based on an interesting search term.

Why Doesn't YouTube Offer This?

I was looking at some video of Dennis Kucinich to post this morning and found YouTube's apparently-extensive sharing functionality...I can Digg, post to MySpace, Facebook and others, but not the Google-owned property, Blogger.

WTF?

This is is kind of surprising that it's not easier to take a video on a site they own and seamlessly put it into my blog. Heck, Clipmarks, which I use here often, is easier!

Google Maps Streetview Adds New Cities...Including Cleveland!

A few years ago, A9, Amazon's search engine, introduced a streetview-like functionality.

It was the first step on a path towards an application that everyone knew would be cool.

Well, it just got cooler with the folks from Mountain View adding the following new cities the other day.

• Albuquerque, NM
• Anchorage, AK
• Austin, TX
• Cleveland, OH
• Fairbanks, AK
• Little Rock, AR
• Madison, WI
• Nashville, TN
• Rockford, IL
• Richmond, VA
• Spokane, WA
• St. Petersburg, FL
• Tampa, FL

Below are a few shots from our fair city. Give it a try yourself!
Quicken Loans Arena, downtown.
Corbo's Bakery, down the street, that I walk by every day.
My old school apartment in Minneapolis.

So, waxing nostalgic about the old days, Barenaked Ladies' The Old Apartment came to mind. It's set to Gilmore Girls footage...which is always cool.

Enjoy!

Blogger Appears to Be Phucking Around With Photos

All my image files hosted by blogger appear to be down. I've done a little bit of research and while it's not all Blogger sites, I'm by no means the only one.

Hopefully this isn't some sort of fraternity prank or something where the boys from Redmond poured Aunt Jemima syrup all over Google's servers!

Stay tuned....

Addendum>>> Actually, this is quite amusing. I mean it's a temporary pain, but I'm pretty confident that Google didn't lose all my stuff, and even if they did, I'm not paying a dime for it. But when you read some of the frantic posts people are putting up, you'd think this was as important as the cancellation of Gilmore Girls!

Update on Monday Morning>> Problem appears to be fixed...duh.

Those Clever Little Bastards at Google

Nice Google Functionality

There's no surprise here, and nothing really all that new, but Google has extended its news search service over to searching specifically for news photos.

This is particularly nice for people who like to blog on current events. I was using it to look for a photo of the snow bowl going on at Browns Stadium now.

Too bad we're playing the Bills, a team against which we have no serious snow advantage.

Cool Interractive Google Maps Tool for CA Wildfires

Came across a nice application someone built into Google Maps to look at the various fires that are turning SoCal into an inferno.

The Los Angeles NBC affiliate also has a fascinating photo collection they are building up. I've never seen anything like this and unlike other things like hurricanes and blizzards, which seem somewhat more predictable on a micro-level, I can't imagine how scary and frustrating something like this must be.

Google Continues its Bid to Take Over the World

I grew up with a kid whose parents had a doberman.

When it was just a puppy, they thought it was cute to let the little thing jump on the bed and sleep.  It was fun to toy around with him and the warmth on their feet probably made a few winter nights more tolerable.

Unfortunately, as the dog got older and much bigger, this became quite a problem.  Sleep and the performing of certain marital duties became complicated, to say the least, since the standard became practically irreversible.

Google, pending a few perhaps-minor conditions, is set to get in on an upcoming government auction for ownership of radio frequencies.  The airwaves are going to be cleared as television stations begin going digital and will be available for the building of more wireless networks.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

Does Google Stand a Chinaman's Chance?

Okay, I really had to stretch to find a way to make this picture even mildly appropriate for the post, but there is some interesting news going around this week about eBay standing up to fellow giant Google.

The boys in Mountain View had been trying to muscle in on eBay-owned PayPal and coercing power sellers on eBay to use Google Checkout.  They even planned (then had to cancel) a big shin dig for them in Boston.

It's not clear that the power play worked because eBay pulled all its paid 
search listings from Google and there is no immediate sign of them having taken a big hit.  

Since Google was not  scrubbing eBay items from its organic results, which most users are not averse to hitting, 
the power in this relationship does not solely reside with Google.

Power to the upstarts... 

Google Under Scrutiny

The Google buyout of Doubleclick is under anti-trust investigation by the Federales.

Could this be the start of a bad news cycle for the boys out west?

While I have no way of knowing what the outcome will be, I am glad that this is getting a second look.  The scary thing to me (and others, obviously) about the buy was not so much the consolidation of money at Google, but of information.

Anyone who thinks that *someone* is not paying attention to their surfing and purchasing behavior at any point in time is insane.

Think of it like walking through a shopping mall or big city.  At any moment, there are anywhere from a handful to dozens of people with you at least in their line of sight.  This does not trouble most people who might spend an afternoon at a shopping mall.

Consider now, though, if a single person or group followed every step you took through that mall and inspected everything you picked up, how often you went to the restroom, when you decided to sit down for a pretzel....

This is what the Google deal does since it would increase its reach so much into customer/surfer information-gathering.

Is there anything illegal about that?  I don't know.  But I'm very interested to see how the FTC interprets what's going on here.  I'll be watching this story while they watch me.

New Masthead at HuffPo

Looks a little more newspaper-ish.  No immediately-apparent content changes.

Speaking of mastheads, Instapundit notes that Google again chooses not to observe Memorial Day, but Ask does.

Slip It On Before You....Follow a Paid Google Ad?

Apparently some virus-writers are up to mischief...planting viruses in some paid Google ads. This is disconcerting because, as most people know, hovering over a paid Google link does not really show you were you are going. You're running on trust and if it's this vulnerable (frankly, not a surprise to most people) then the G-men could be in a bit of pickle.

Stay tuned.

Google Making a Run at Nielsen?

Of course their ultimate goal is to take over the world, but Google started running a new "feature" last week that Toolbar users are having all their online behavior tracked if they are logged in. Users can opt out should they desire.

One has to wonder if Google is making a play at offering a Nielsen-like audience measurement service. After all this groundwork is set up, it would probably be a cakewalk to throw something like that together and they get around the significant panel recruitment costs that Nielsen and others incur.

It's also not hard to argue that with the size of their userbase, Google's data might be more representative of Internet users as a whole.

Google Amusement of the Day

1. Go to google.com
2. Click on "maps"
3. " " "get directions"
4. Type "New York" in the 'from' box
5. " "Rome" in the 'to' box
6. Scroll down to step 23

Google's Local Phone Search

We just tried this at work and it's very easy. Google is now offering a free phone search service for local businesses

We just called 1-800-Goog-411, said "Cleveland" and then when prompted for name, said the name of a local business and it found it right away and connected us, no problem!

Google is taking over the world.

Pot Meets Kettle

The recent billion-dollar lawsuit that Viacom filed against YoutubeGoogle recently gets more interesting now that folks realize that Viacom's iFilm appears to have its own share of copyrighted material it does not own.

Hilarity ensues.