Google Roundup for September 29th-Ocotber 6th

On the Google front, it has been rather quiet for the past week. The biggest item was the Google Blog Search, but I already covered it this week. Here goes another round of Google Roundup:

• Check out this KML file to view the location of Minaret Lake, where Steve Fossett crashed his plane. If you didn't know who this guy was, he was an adventurer who flew solo around the world in a balloon, check out this Wikipedia article about him. Look at this Google Earth Blog post for more information.

• New cities have been added to Google Earth that have 3D buildings and some cities such as Washing DC have a KML network link file to report on the status of fire hydrants.

• I read this on the Google Operating System blog. Google is testing a feature in Knol that automatically converts an article to an audio file to be downloaded or played. Check out and listen to this article on skin allergies.


• Picasa 3 is now released for Linux, enjoy.
  


• For you iGoogle users, check out the Slideshow for Facebook gadget.
  


• For Mac users, go to the Google Mac Playground and check out Top Draw. This can create complex images which are very trippy.
  

Trippy

• Read about Google's analysis of how fossil fuels can be decreased significantly by 2030. Read a summary of this on the Official Google Blog. Also check out the graph of how Google's servers/data centers are more energy efficient than average ones. Google, what a company hey?

• Go back to the future and do a 2001 Google search.

• YouTube Insight has been improved with the addition of a new feature called Hotspots which shows the highs and lows of viewership. Pretty neat for people who want to know when and possibly why people are abandoning their video.
  

I think I made a mistake above, their was quite a bit of news, and I seemed to really enjoy adding photos this time around. Life is about variety hey? Cheers.