If you downloaded Google Earth, you no doubt tried "visiting" your country (outside the U.S. and Canada) and were disappointed to just see wide satellite imagery that showed no rich detail.

Google Earth is now global covering every region of the world. You can visit Bangalore, India or for that matter, most major cities of the world and can see vivid satellite imagery (courtesy DigitalGlobe) showing you buildings, roads, bridges and what not.

Apparently, most countries aren't very happy about the satellite imagery being available to the whole world. Yeah, no doubt the Americans and the Russians always saw everything with their spy satellites, but now every Tom, Dick, Harry and you can see it too. And the Governments of these countries aren't very happy.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1243460.cms

http://www.webpronews.com/insidesearch/insidesearch/wpn-56-20050811GoogleEarthContinuesToRaiseSecurityConcerns.html

If you thought these countries were crazy - instead of embracing technology and opening avenues for a navigational system based on Google, they're talking about security issues and causing red tape - wait till you see this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/13/google_earth_threatens_democracy/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/20/google_earth_democracy_two/

Obviously not a pretty picture. Will Google be forced to take off this wonderful "feature"?

PS: I like what MSN Virtual Earth does with countries outside the US and Canada - it shows very good maps, with even city names of relatively unknown cities (I tried viewing India, of course), with no detail. Google Maps does not do that yet - though their own Google Earth does it. I wonder why!?

Finally! Welcome Vyas.

(As per our deal, every click that goes from here gets me a beer!) :)  Talk about revenue generation.

Yahoo! has been right there competing with MSN and Google. Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Maps, everything.

And now, Yahoo! is getting its huge user base to do community and blogging activities. Check out http://360.yahoo.com

Also, Google has changed Orkut logins to link to Google accounts. So now Google has a unified view of YOU!

There is exciting stuff going on in MSN.

September 13th is the Professional Developers Conference and is also the unveiling of the MSN Developer Center.

It is worth seeing it right now at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msn The nice big MSN logo and the announcement is really heart-warming, because it announces with a big bang - hey Google, here we come.

Check out interesting things that will be part of MSN Developer Center: http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=ec5ea191-4b3c-4d94-94a9-dc5e67902648

It is also rumoured that PDC opening session by Bill Gates will have people talking. Bill G is supposedly going to take on Google (indirectly of course) by the launch of Atlas and many other cool stuff for Web 2.0. Read about it here: http://news.com.com/Microsoft+Web+plan+takes+aim+at+Google/2100-1007_3-5855244.html?tag=nefd.top

And about Beating Google, Scole says it all at http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/09/09.html#a11079

You can watch Bill Gates' session live from http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx

This was a moment to cherish!

Being at the Golden Gate is just an experience. The bridge is so massively huge, it just brushes you aside and completely overwhelms you.

This is the one of the entry points to the USA from the wide, wide Pacific. That's also where it gets its name from.

http://www.jayanthan.com/blog/2005/08/28/so-there-is-a-god-after-all/

Hilarious!

I am simply addicted to Google Desktop. I can't find files like I used to before Google Desktop Search.

Now, I just have to remember keywords (which is always easier) and go search. And I land up on that buried email, document or file in seconds.

And now Google Desktop Search has gone to the next level. Here's version 2 with some real cool nifty features: http://desktop.google.com/?pr=hpp-gds-en-v2-3

There is a Google Desktop Search Enterprise Edition too that organizations can deploy for search within Intranet. That means you can search on your file servers, other peer computers and just about everywhere!

The interesting thing is Google has beaten Microsoft to taking up the "sidebar" space. Google Desktop allows you to have a sidebar similar to the proclaimed Longhorn sidebar that is to release with Microsoft Windows Vista. It will be interesting to see what happens if people get used to Google's sidebar. Considering Microsoft still has an year to get Vista to release and then the time it will take for people to adopt, Google sure has an upper hand.

http://www.jayanthan.com/blog/2005/08/21/rules-and-regulations/

How amazingly true!!