Ok I said some pretty nasty things earlier about Google and their inability to keep their index clean and passing this on to unwary bloggers. I could say more nasty things about their dealings with the CHICOMS and the kowtowing to demands to exclude data related to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence from the index served in China...but I won't.
I will instead praise Google for this:
Create picture collages of famous Americans with Picasa. Find out what Virginia newspapers had to say about the Civil War in 1862 with Google News Archive Search. Check out the pyramids in Egypt with Google Earth, and then build your own with SketchUp.
Google Earth is the best of the bunch thus far in my book. I have downloaded satellite imagery, overlayed traditional maps in the 1:50,000 scale and inserted my waypoints and other data directly from my GPS into my laptop all thanks to Google - thing is I paid for the GPS and the laptop but Google provides me with the imagery for free. I have used this for work, for recreation and for creative imagination ( a siege of that mean, nasty old man that owns the place adjacent to my farm back home - but don't ask)
I have yet to really dig into the archive service in detail but what I have done I liked. I have always enjoyed going to the library and just finding stuff to read - old stuff. Of course you are always limited by what archives they have available. No more of that with the Google archive search.
Well they still may be evil, after all I am inclined not to trust anyone with their finger on the pulse of so much vital information - but the market is what it is and you can say one thing for Google, they are at least not the bully that Microsoft became (not yet at least).
No comments:
Post a Comment