Mark has been playing around with the Google Desktop SDK and created a plug-in.
It looks like the folks over at Google liked it.

When did the information bubbles on Google Maps start casting a shadow?

Has it always done this?  I don't remember seeing it before.  I know that I don't remember seeing it on the arial views before.

Maybe it's been there all along and I just didn't notice.....

Here is a cool Google Maps hack using the maps and census information.

A report came out the other day talking about our nation's air quality.

Now here in Oregon, we take our air quality (as well as water quality, timber quality, pretty much any nature quality) pretty darn seriously.  It's to the point that an average person might start to think, "Dear Lord!  If it came down to me or that damn fish surviving, I think that the state government would side with the fish!"
But this quick rant is about the air.  I spend $25 per car every two years to have my car's exhaust tested, to make sure that certain parts of the exhaust are below a certain level.  It might be $27, I don't have the numbers right in front of me.  Whatever it is, the DEQ gets that money to help it police our environment.  Off the top of my head I don't know how much money they get from the general tax funds.

So here's the kicker.  Well, it's a kicker if you've read that first link talking about the report, and you pay the DEQ to test your car and make sure that it's clean.  WE HAVE THE THIRD DIRTIES AIR IN THE COUNTRY!  Right behind New York and California.  What's up with that?

Now that I think about it, I don't even know why I'm writing this blurb.  Anyone who cares is probably somebody who lives here, and if you live here you already know about this.  It's been all over the news.  Quite a shot to Oregon's "Our state is cleaner than your state" attitude.

I still find it kind of hard to believe.  I've been to cities/states with no kind of vehicle testing, way more industrial factories, places where a lot of the people treat the state as their own personal trash can if you judge it by the sides of the highway, and I could tell the air was funkier than here.

Of course, maybe that's just the Oregon Environmental Prima Donna in me.  Whatever.  I'm going to go read my Sierra Club magazine and eat some granola now.....

Quarter inch of snow on the ground this morning.
Notice I said the ground not the street.
Still, it's chaos on the city.

Google video of SPORE, a new video by Will Wright.  It looks like a crazy game.  It looks like a game along the lines of an artificial life simulator along the lines of Sim City or Civ, with some aspects of fighting kind of like Command and Conquer, or one of that genre.  The only difference is that it looks like IT MIGHT BE fun to play and still not have to invest hours and hours to really enjoy the game.  As a husband, father of two, with a full time job and some on the side freelancing it's kind of hard to play any game that you have to put too much time into.  Sometimes a half hour of mindless game play is all that can be really squeezed into the day.  So for those days there is always Unreal Tournament or Pro Wrestling (by Nintendo).

Still, SPORE does look promising.
Here is a link to the official homepage over on EA.
Here is a review over on IGN.

Here is a link to the live action Simpsons short that may or may not have bounced into your email box yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOVQdPHSihM&search=simpsons

Microsoft has been slowly trying to build some hype for the Origami project.  Over at Engadget, they have plenty of speculation about what it might be.  They also have some info about what they think Apple has in the works.  I think that it is a safe bet that these things will have some similar functionality.  Namely, mobile media.

Now to add more fuel to the fire (at least it gets me excited) is ABC saying that they will be offering some of their shows for free.  Grey's Anatomy and Lost among others.  The free versions will have commercials in them.  In case the thought of commercials makes you cringe, it sounds like you will still be able to buy the commercial free episodes via iTunes.

Now the two questions I still have:

   1. How much will the players cost?

   2. How long till SciFi offers Battlestar Gallactica for free?

Completed registration.
Got the hotel.
Looks like I'm going to TechEd 2006.

If you are thinking about going, you better sign up now.  It's already getting hard to track down a hotel room.

I noticed that the TechEd Bloggers site is already up and running.  Not that I think that I'll be signing up.  If I keep writing at my current pace, maybe I'll get one post written during TechEd.