Nano2Sol by Marc Boucher

I was little disappointed today when Google launched it’s new Instant Messaging and free Talk service. The client program only works on Windows. Considering that Google itself is a fan of Apple computers you have to wonder why they would not have a client for Mac OS X.

The one saving grace is that if you have Mac OS X Tiger installed you can configure iChat to IM with people using the new Google Talk client. But you’re out of luck if you want to use Talk feature.

Since I use Vonage for Voice Over IP (VOIP) and am happy with the service I don’t think Google’s new offering would interest me anyway.

When Mike Griffin became NASA administrator I was one of those people who was really enthusiastic about his selection. I thought previous administrator Sean O’Keefe did a good job with what he was tasked to do and now with the new “Vision for Space Exploration” starting, having Griffin onboard, a seasoned engineer, was a good choice. But lately I’ve been wondering like so many people what’s going on at NASA.

There are a lot of mixed signals out there. Griffin is hard at work implementing the Vision, as he sees it. And that’s where the problems seem to be starting. In reading NASA Watch, run by my SpaceRef business partner, and his recent post “Rollout Plan for Griffin’s Architecture Stumbles“, you have to wonder if there is a disconnect between Griffin and the White House.

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Japan Today is reporting that JTB Corp. is planning to market space tours through Space Advenures. Here’s the press release resealed by Space Advenures.

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Ok, so you’re headed out of town and you want to shop at this particular store at your destination and you know where on the map it is but have no idea what the sore looks like and the area around it. No problem, Amazon’s A9 new map service can help you out. In fact to make this work Amazon had people drive around 22 cities in the States with camera’s hooked up to GPS enabled laptops to take all those pictures. Now that’s cool.

A9 Officially Launches Maps Service; Block View Imagery Added for More Cities: “If you’ve come across the story today about A9 launching a map service and it sounds familiar, it just might be. About 6 weeks ago I blogged a couple of comments about the service becoming available and included a link to an overview by Greg Linden. So, what’s really new at A9 today? ‘Block View’ imagery has been made available for a few more cities: Salt Lake City, UT Sacramento, CA Long Beach, CA Reno, NV…”

(Via Search Engine Watch Blog.)

Who’s index is bigger? And who returns more results? The following comparison would still lead me to believe that Google is still number 1.

NCSA Compares Google and Yahoo Index Numbers: “chrisd (former Slashdot editor and now Google employee) writes ‘Recently, Yahoo claimed an increase of index size to ‘over 20 billion items’, compared to Google’s 8.16 billion pages. Now, researchers at NCSA have done their own, independent, comparison of the two engines. ‘”

(Via Slashdot.)