Official Google Blog: New year, new imagery

We’re always trying to improve the imagery in Google Earth and Google Local, but our latest update is bigger than usual. Not only have we added extensive 6-inch imagery for many parts of the U.K., but we’ve updated the Google Local database to match the coverage we have in Google Earth, and (drum roll, please) … we’ve added two more zoom levels in Google Local’s Satellite mode! Now for many areas around the world you can see a lot more detail than you could before.

Take a look at people standing at the gates of Buckingham Palace in London, or jump over the pond and see the Statue of Liberty in New York, and then maybe drop down to the southern hemisphere and check out the boats sailing past the Sydney Opera House.

This means that most of the Greater Sydney area is now in high-res on Google Earth and Google Local.

Waay too close to 30 now!

New age, new WordPress version (2.0) and a new template… what do y’all think?

Liquorice has just put live the re-design of David Campese’s e-commerce website Goosestep. Named after his trademark acceleration technique that fooled opponents into thinking he was slowing down when in fact he was speeding up, Goosestep supplies great coffee, Campo’s own line of clothing and rugby memorabilia. If you’re ever in the Rocks, Sydney, drop in for a Campo-chino. Otherwise you can visit Goosestep.com.au and browse and buy to your heart’s content. The Goosestep site runs the custom-built LiquoriceCMS.

This has been a public service announcement for Liquorice Asia Pacific. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

From the funny-cause-it’s-true department

Whenever I listen to the They Might Be Giants song Particle Man, I always got this image of a Tiny Toons cartoon. I thought it was just my brain mashing up a couple of different memories, but it turns out I’m not going mad, they actually did a Tiny Toons cartoon to particle man

Easily one of TMBG’s most popular songs, this song was used in a musical episode of the cartoon Tiny Toon Adventures titled “Tiny Toon Music Television”. Plucky Duck was a professional wrestler version of Particle Man who was clobbered by Triangle Man, Universe Man, and so forth.

Watch the episode here. Found on the brilliant This Might Be A Wiki

Oh and TMBG have a podcast too!

Creative have had an MP3 player on the market for pretty much the same amount of time as Apple has, but the Zen has always been the bridesmaid to the iPod, they’ve just never quite been able to crack it. I’ve always thought this was a pity, as the Zens have had some features that the iPod could not, or more specifically, would not have. Ben Mansill at AtomicMPC seems to think that the Zen Vision: M may just do it this time:

All that has been turned upside-down now. Within just a minute of playing with the new Zen Vision: M you know that this is the player to own all players. It is clear that Creative invested heavily in making the Vision: M the very best possible player. This is not a rebadged Chinese clone, it is not a hobbled together gadget from off the shelf parts. It is an exquisitely designed and engineered product that, finally, towers over every portable media player currently available.

The one feature that’s always attracted me is that you don’t need to use iTunes, and you don’t need to let it mangle your filenames & directory structure. The Creative Zens have always just mapped themselves as another haddrive when you plug them in, so you can do whatever you want with the files. They have provided the ‘Zen Explorer’ to manage the files if you want, but it’s always been a bit redundant seeing as you can just copy the files yourself. As Ben Mansill in the review says There’s no iTunes nonsense, you manage your files the way you want to, not how someone else tells you to.

Other coolness:

The Zen also functions as a picture viewer, and again, every format under the sun is supported. There’s an FM radio receiver and recorder and a built-in microphone, too. It will also output to TV via a sold separately cable. It will output either PAL or NTSC, selectable from the menu.

Like I said, I want one. It hasn’t been released in Australia yet, apparently it’s due around March/April 2006, but ebay seems to be having them for around AU$450. Still a wee bit beyond my price range at the moment, but my birthday’s in 3 days so…