World's Most Admired Companies - 2010 #fortune #googlemaps

Fortune has come out with its annual list of "The World's most Admired Companies". Coming in at #1 this year is of course Apple followed by Google.

Here's a Google Maps view of the locations of "Top 50 Most Admired Companies". The map opens up with a marker placed at Apple's headquarters (Cupertino, California). The information window which opens up above the marker has very basic information like the company name with a link to more detailed information at the Fortune site. In addition the address information is also shown.

Thank You Google! for the awesome Prize!!

Over the years I earned MCSE certification (late 90's) and then Sun Java Programmer Certification in 2003. Both Microsoft and Sun gave me a paper "Certificate" and it felt great at the time.

Fast forward to December 2009 and I enrolled into "Google Qualified Developer" program for JS Maps API and fulfilled the program requirements (BTW cost of the program is $0.00). Like others I was expecting a "Certificate". WOW! Unbelievable.... FedEX package from Google gets delivered yesterday. I open it and this is what I get as a PRIZE. How cool is that... Thanks Google!!

Nexus One

Welcome to the capital of Kansas....GOOGLE, KANSAS!!

Google, Kansas. Yes for the next month the capital of Kansas will be Google, Kansas instead of Topeka, Kansas.

This, it looks like is related to Google's plan to "sell 1 gigabit-per-second fiber optic broadband to consumers" to no fewer than 50,000 homes in the initial test, and maybe as many as 500,000. Google though has not specified where it plans to roll this out. Topeka, Kansas is going all out to get Google to implement this in Topeka.



Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten signed a proclamation Monday calling for Topeka to be known for the month of March as "Google, Kansas — the capital city of fiber optics."

(via Techcrunch).

Google Logo Today - Crop Circles?

Google's Logo today is - Crop Circles. Why? I got no idea. Take a look at Google's tweet (image shown at the end of this post). This Tweet's status has a Latitude/Logitude of 51.327629, -0.5616088 along with a twitpic image which when clicked takes you to the Google Logo Image.

Mashable states

The latitude and longitude that were tweeted out correspond to Surrey, England, where one enterprising soul noticed a “flying saucer” sighting by a family car on the 15th, back in 1985.

And now my finding: I found Latitude/Longitude in the tweet refers to Horsell, England (Google Maps). The Wikipedia entry for Horsell, England states

Horsell in Surrey is an ancient (pre-Domesday Book) village nearby to the more modern 19th. century Woking, probably best known because of its association with the story The War of the Worlds, written by H.G. Wells. (The War of the Worlds (1898) is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells describing an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians equipped with advanced weaponry. It is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth.)

Google changes its Veterans Day Logo!!

Just noticed the change. Letter "l" has changed.

Morning: 2008-11-11




Evening: 2008-11-11

Google knows when you might catch the "Flu Bug"

Google launches "Flu Trends", which will provide up-to-date flu-related activity estimate for all 50 states in the U.S. Quoting from Google Blog

Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we found that there's a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day's flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness

(Information first found at: http://bit.ly/XTyX)

Google's Logo on Election Day 2008

Krispy Kreme bacon cheddar cheeseburgers

This whopper of a artery buster meal (Krispy Kreme bacon cheddar cheesburgers) was served at Latitude: 40.7417 and Longitude: -74.0038. I wonder if it came with ZOCOR!! at the side. (Source: Flickr). The description at Flickr states

This was lunch at Google NYC's cafeteria to celebrate the birthday of the head of the cafe staff...

Google Hell bent to solve Energy crisis.

Google has thrown itself into the energy debate. Instead of looking offshore for energy, Google is looking deep underneath your feet. This from FORBES

Deep underneath your feet is a hellish stone soup, kept hot by a torrent of radiation from poisonous isotopes of uranium, thorium and potassium in the earth's superheated mantle. This is the heat that helps cause volcanoes, geysers and hot springs. And it is the heat that powers a modest number of electricity generators around the world, from Iceland to Indonesia.

This from Google.org

Today, as part of our Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative, Google.org announced more than $10 million in investments and grants in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) technology. EGS expands the potential of traditional geothermal energy by orders of magnitude. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam or hot water. The EGS process, by comparison, replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine.

Check out the massive US Geothermal resource in Google Earth, Google Maps

Here's a Google Maps View of West Ford Flat Power Plant which is one of the 21 power plants located at Geysers. The Geysers, a geothermal power field located 72 miles (116 km) north of San Francisco, California, is the largest geothermal development in the world (source wikipedia).