Google just gets cooler

Google is so cool. It helped me in my job so many times by getting me the best search results. It's just like an external brain... there is a heck of a lot of stuff I don't know but then I google it, get the answer, answer the question and then I *seem* smart, when in actual fact I'm probably not - I just know what keywords to use. I guess it's like how people in South Beach *seem* perfect (or walk around like it) when in actual fact of course, they're not (1). They just find ways around it (read plastic surgery). Oh, and I'm not talking about personality here either. I'm actually just dribbling.

Anyhow, Google has just released google maps: maps.google.com. I'm a big supporter of clean, usable interfaces (props to Frosty who actually got me thinking about that stuff in the first place) and this interface rocks. It's so quick, clean and intuitive I just love it. You search for a business nearby and va-voom! There it is. I'm saying goodbye to Mapquest from now on. For now maps is only US-centric but I expect that will change as Google modifies it to cater for other countries in the future, especially considering it's still only a beta.

Also, I'm now an even more major fan of Google because of their Picasa photo organising program. I thought I'd give it a shot and see how it'd do with organising my 7+ gigs of photos on my computer. No problem. It found ones I'd actually forgotten about and because the interface is so damn good I had no problem in actually realising this.

Oh, I also use blogger, also (now, anyway) by Google. And I use gmail (e-mail addy is daecks@gmail.com by the way) Why? Because they're piss easy to use and I've never had any problems with any of them.

(1) - ok, I don't think she was from South Beach but it's a funny story anyway. At the Superbowl party I went to on Sunday night these stripper-like girls turned up. I thought "wow, these parties really go off!" but as it turned out they were only friends of friends (2). Anyway, the blonde one was looking at a globe of the world later on in the night and showing us where her family comes from. She didn't know where Belgium was. I don't think she was even looking in Europe.

(2) - that's not to say of course that a friend of a friend could not be a stripper. Had to make that clarification. A friend who was a stripper would be even better though. Had to make that clarification too.