Google - why I still like them

The whole China debacle took the shine of Google to some extent didn't it? But I have to say that I still use Google, and not just the search engine, but also things like Sitemaps. What draws me to Google is innovation - they are constantly innovating. Two examples of interest to those with an astronomical bent are:

moon.google.com which is like Google Maps for the moon. Places where the Apollo missions touched down are marked, and they have little popups telling you who was in the mission. I loved this stuff as a kid! try zooming in to the maximum magnification...

And then there is Google Mars which is much more sophisticated. It combines a number of sets of data so that you can see colour coded topo maps, infared, or visible spectrum views of the planet's surface. There is also more info on mountains, spacecraft, canyons etc.

Both of these are potentially useful I suppose, to someone, but the beauty of them lies not in the usefulness, but in the vision of a company that would allow it's employees to work on something cool like this that brings in no direct revenue what so ever. They might have done a bad thing with China, but that doesn't mean they are a bad company.

More Happiness

Martin Seligman of "Authentic Happiness" fame is being invited to the UK to give happiness lessons to children aged 11 - a crucial age apparently. The story in the Independent seems to confirm Seligman's celebrity status here in Blighty. This was front page news yesterday although I'm not sure if other papers covered it. The article and at least one other go into Seligman's background, and he has already been a very influential fellow in the world of psychology. Worth a read.