I’m blown away. Google has just released version 4 of the Google Earth program, and it is astounding.

If you don’t know about the product here is a short description. Google calls it “A 3D Interface to the planet” but it is so much more!

The educational uses of Google Earth are unlimited. To be able allow someone to view almost any location on Earth, no matter how remote, is something we couldnt have dreamed of 20 years ago.

Download Google Earth Here: Google v4 (Get the Beta, the one on the right)

Visit the Google SightSeeing Website here: Google SightSeeing

If you still haven’t installed Google Earth, here is a list of some really cool things that you can find on there.

AWACS planes!
Pyramids of Giza

Recently I saw an article on a group called no-www that advocate changing the way people talk about and type internet addresses. They make perfect sense. Don’t use, type, or tell anyone to go to “www.” anything anymore.

History: In the beginning (of the Internet) browsers used the “www.” subdomain to tell the resource you were connecting to that you were going to be using port 80 and the http protocol. All browser (for some time now) have been using port 80 and http as default. There is no need to explicitly state this, because they are going to do it anyway.

no-www’s goal is to get all of the traffic to http://www.yourdomain.com redirected to http://yourdomain.com. That way, no one is losing service or not getting to where they want to go, but they are being reminded that “www.” is no longer needed. If you noticed when you came to this website, if you typed www.thesmithsplace.com, you have been redirected to thesmithsplace.com.

So try it out and see if it makes your life a little easier. Next time, don’t type that www.!

UPDATE: Well, the .htaccess rewrites hosed my gallery installation, so I quit rerouting people who came from http://www. to just http://.  Oh well, it was a noble idea anyway. 

This image of the Andromedy Galaxy is actually 3,000 seperate infrared images stitched together. The Andromeda Galaxy contains 1 trillion stars. Astronomy is so humbling. Astrology even moreso….