The mainstream press attend press conferences and briefings where Apple proclaim that their Perfect Gadget does everything up to, and maybe even including, ordering sliced bread from the online grocer at the precise thickness that it knows you will prefer (a fact derived from a semantic analyses of how you use said gadget).

Socially driven news sites will go utterly berserk.

So how long must we wait until Apple actually makes this announcement? Perhaps we’re only five or ten years away from The Perfect Gadget 1.0.

Converging on Perfection, and Overselling the Dream

In 2007, Apple announced their intent to produce the iPhone. Even before the announcement, the iPhone was hotly debated by potential owners whose excitement was akin to a small child who’s told they could go on the swings and the roundabouts and visit the local shops to buy as much sugar based confectionery as they can carry before going home to watch cartoons, leading some to call it the Jesus Phone. Even I, as a non Apple owner*, was hooked by the hype. Mesmerised by the hope of a perfect gadget.

The iPhone was never going to change the world, but reading back over some of the rhetoric that Apple spun into their press conferences you’d be forgiven if you thought it would. When Apple chief Steve Jobs opened his keynote speech saying “we’re going to make some history together today” it was an archetype of overstatement. Apple are not alone in overselling. The technology industry as a whole is guilty, and the trend is going to increase as gadgets and appliances become less about the technical specifications and more about the design of the hardware and the software – the human factors. Any company that’s marketing something with intangible or immeasurable value, can safely oversell and over-hype their product, because those that buy it want all the hype to be true. They need it to be true to validate their emotional buy-in and to affirm their “lifestyle choice”.

Future Perfect

There will come a time however, when The Perfect Gadget really is released. It will herald a fundamental change in the the world of consumer electronics. A ubiquitous device that people don’t want to part with. Users will not upgrade because they will be perfectly happy with it, so eventually there will be billions of units in circulation.

Past Imperfect

As a seasoned user of seven laptops, seven desktop computers, several hosted severs, eleven different types of mobile phone and three PDAs I’ve probably invested more time and energy than the average punter who uses gadgets. I’ve relied on them for my livelihood, maintained their hardware and software, synchronised their data with the other devices, and failed to part with most of them, so I have a fall-back if the next gadget doesn’t work. So what would be my personal perfect gadget? The gadget that would force me, the moment it’s announced, to call up the person on stage announcing it and say “I don’t care how much, I want the device that’s in your hand, name your price, sir/ma’am, ship it to me now“. When I wrote them all down, my list of requirements became unwieldy, so I thinned them out to a manageable core that can be found later in this article.

Benefiting from the Paradox of Choice

Gadgets with a similar form factor to the iPhone are both blessed and cursed with simplicity. The keyless form factor enables the gadget to be more easily be tailored to the users desire, but such devices are intrinsically harder to differentiate, and their potential can overwhelm.  Often the key benefit that gets marketed is that a product can do more than the competition, which leads consumers into the paradox of choice. With so much potential, how do they avoid selecting the wrong gadget? They have to fall back on the emotional – they choose the gadget that makes them feel good. This is something Apple do really well, they focus on ‘their way’ of doing things and make that it simple and rewarding.  The perfect gadget, above all, will be intuitive and emotionally rewarding to use.  Technological sedimentation and improved software can simplify the multiplicity of capabilities, so a dual focus on the intangible factors of software and hardware design are the critical factors in differentiating gadgets that have identical underlying technological specifications.  Apple’s name change from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc. highlights its bias shift towards non-technical consumer devices. Indeed, Apple are in an enviable position that when they announce something, there is a lot of interest from consumers who tend do not burden themselves with technicalities: they’re just happy to know that it’s new, that it looks nice, and will reassure their ego of its value, whilst being generally useful and (critically) unchallenging to use.

Enjoy the gadgets, but beware the hyperbole.

The Perfect Gadget Specification

The perfect gadget should incorporate:

1. Everything in the iPhone. Because in a world where design differentiates, the iPhone is a great design. Telephones have undergone two critical form factor changes in the last 30 years. The first was moving the keypad onto the handset, which enabled the whole phone to become mobile. The second is the removal of the keypad from the handset, which removes the limitation on the device to be predominantly a phone. It can now just be a device that has communication as one of it’s capabilities. Apple were not the first people to suggest this: cognitive scientists have been saying it for years, but Apple brought it to market very successfully.
2. Screen size vs Portability. Phone screens are too small and a larger screen area is key to making the gadget useful in more circumstances. Something that uses up every available millimetre in the back pocket of a pair of jeans is perfect.
3. Flexibility. The problem of a device that’s sized for the back-pocket is that placing it there will put all kinds of stresses through it (because buttocks are not flat) so some degree of flex would be a bonus.
4. Induction Charging. I never ever want to plug my device in. Instead, I will have a tables and shelves around the house that are rigged up with an inductive charging system. The shelf by the door is a perfect candidate. Anything left on these inductive shelves would be recharged with no need to connect cables. We already have all the phones syncing over Wi-Fi and bluetooth, so it makes total sense to never ever have to plug them in again.
5. GPS/Galileo. I want the unit to know where it is at all times so my whole life can be tracked, then every photo and every calendar event can be correlated. GPS is good, but for Europe, Galileo is likely to be better (because of the control and positioning of the satellites).
6. Compass and spirit level. The device must know which way up it is and where it’s pointing, so that when I take photos using the device both location and viewing frustum can be recorded.
7. Cameras. Equally spec’d cameras and screens front and back (so that front and back become concepts in software only). The camera image sensors should be interspersed with the screen pixels so video chat is more natural and doesn’t appear as if the other person is talking to a point on the wall just behind you. With a screen on both sides, the image could be viewed by the person taking the photo, and by the subjects, bringing to an end all pictures where the subjects are needlessly and awkwardly tilting their heads when they’re already in-frame.
8. Social awareness. The device should be able to associate geographical locations with social conventions. When I visit the library (or the crematorium) the gadget must know this and no matter how loud I have it set it must not interrupt.
9. A Thermometer. If the device is below body temperature, it’s in my bag not in my pocket, so vibrating is less to help – it should know this and be more noisy. If it’s below body temperature and flat on it’s back, and its after 11pm, and it’s dark, then I’m asleep, so don’t ring until after 7am… Intelligence and configurablility of all these capabilities is key.
10. Peer awareness. Sensing the environment can be enhanced if other sensors can be consulted for comparison. If multiple perfect gadgets are near each other they could (and should) share common information. Rather than each one of them running at full power measuring all things, they could take it in turns. One sampling and sharing GPS position, another doing cell negotiation, etc. Sharing the work could mean reduced overhead and increased battery life.
11. Waterproof. Induction charging would make a 100% sealed unit a highloy viabile possibility; and with so9lid state devices operating better than disk drives under increased pressure it could be made waterproof for diving (or mountain climbing if that’s your bag).

… and of course, since the is the perfect gadget …

1. Tactile Feedback. A feedback system that makes the surface smoother and stickier as it is exposed to a varying electrical current. The whole experience of using the iPhone is lacking in tactile feedback and whilst a vibration feedback system would improve things, it’s not enough.
2. Self Repair. An organic surface, that can repair itself of scratches.

What’s probably not necessary…

1. Replaceable or Upgradable Storage. Globally ubiquitous and fast network connections with inexpensive data rates will render on-device storage irrelevant. Users will no longer need to replace their device every eighteen months for the sake of more space.
2. Replaceable Batteries. Opportunities to recharge mobile devices could increase exponentially. An induction device in your car seat would mean you never have to take the phone from your back pocket. A induction device in the train table would mean your phone would charge whilst commuting. Your whole desk at work could charge phones, laptops all at once. Batteries will never run out of charge.

Web advertising is dying. Banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, text ads and video ads; all dead horses. Their time has come and gone.

The First Web Ads

The first paid-for banner appeared in 1993, when most people still hadn’t heard of email. A global marketing phenomenon has built up around that simple concept in the intervening thirteen years as the web’s user base has continued to grow.

During that time many companies have grown rich and respected by promoting responsible and non-irritating adverts, conversely the get-rich-quick merchants have (with the same natural and misguided competitive zeal that will destroy humanity), destroyed the market by their desire to get rich quicker than the next guy by any means possible.

Blocking Ads

The result of this advertising abuse is ad-blocking software which is starting to come as standard in web browsers. Today (still), only a fraction of the planet uses the world wide web, but as new, naive web users come online they will be protected from adverts from the outset and can no longer be harangued by irresponsible advertisers in the same way that the first wave of web users were.

We, the people, with our open-source software, have made the web less annoying, but advertising and marketing are important, they promote and reward investment in the web, so blocking ads has a downside.

As of today, 50% of the visitors to this site have advert blocking software installed. That’s probably higher than average, because a lot of visitors are at least a bit tech-savvy, but it’s indicative of a significant upward trend.

It’s also getting easier to block adverts. As web standards (such as XHTML and CSS) have evolved, web pages have become described in terms of what the content is, rather than how it should be displayed, so even if an advert is not marked as such, then the advert blocker can still make a fairly good guess at which part or parts of a page are advertising.

The remaining market

So the future audience of web advertising is a sporadic, poorly defined group of people who have mis-configured ad-blocking software, that’s not a particularly lucrative or stable market for any global advertising business, and it’s certainly a difficult sell-on to the advertiser.

The alternative to web advertising

So my alternative suggestion is that a major broker buys the right to advertise to me and my counterpart web users.

I agree, as a consumer, to enter into an exclusive contract with said advertising broker and in return, they provide me with responsible, bespoke advertising wherever I visit. It’s a win-win-win-win situation.

The four wins:

1. I win because
   1. I get paid to be advertised to.
   2. Advertisers can bid on my time, they can bid on how many times I get shown their advert, or what percentage of my daily browsing is laced with their message.
   3. The ISP bandwidth that I pay for is not being wasted by an advert that I didn’t ask for
   4. The screen that I paid for isn’t being wasted by an advert that I didn’t ask for.
   5. All adverts are relevant to me, because my broker knows me.
   6. All adverts are restrained, they don’t blink at me with garish flair and I never get pop-ups or pop-unders, because my broker is considerate.
2. The broker wins because they have dedicated groups of consumers that can become the target of concerted long term advertising programmes. Problems such as click-fraud are massively reduced and they can sell larger and more integrated multiple product (i.e. lifestyle) advertising programmes to advertisers.
3. Publishers win because they can provide the page and let the broker deliver an advert that may be unrelated to page content but still relevant to the user, so the publisher gets rewarded for publishing what interests the consumer, and not for publishing articles comprising mostly buzzwords that are intended to trigger adverts.
4. Advertisers win because they can target a specific group of consumers rather than a selection of consumers who happen to visit a particular website, plus, their advert can if they wish, be shown on every page I visit.

Advert blocking and page filtering will eventually destroy the basic web-based advertising model, but advertising helps pay for innovation and site development. If the web user enters into a contract with the advertising broker, there may be an intermediate solution that benefits all parties.

Google have good reason to be concerned, because something Microsoft are already keen to promote is how Vista will help to “manage digital memories”, which to the layman means “show Photos and Videos”. To this end Microsoft look set to include “Windows Photo Gallery” when you buy the operating system.

Google have a photo management system called Picasa, and it’s now possible for Google advertisers to earn revenue by referring potential Picasa users to Google.

Previously Google only paid for two kinds of referrals: (1) to their advertising services and (2) to their own version of the Mozilla Firefox Browser, so the introduction of Picasa to this small group could be interpreted as a move to grab as much of the “digital memories” market as possible before Microsoft can use their monopoly to swamp the market.

Déjà Vu

Folks who’ve been around computers for a while will see strong parallels with the denouement of the “browser wars” of the the late 1990′s.

The main worry that Microsoft had about Netscape was that the Netscape web browser provided a means for thin client computing to become popular again. Thin clients had been common during the mainframe era, when the client was a simple box that did data input and output, with little or no processing. As the Personal Computer took hold, the processing moved from the mainframe to the client, and Microsoft made it’s money by selling an operating system for every client.

Microsoft feared Netscape because their browser re-introduced the concept of the thin client, and to mitigate the risk, Microsoft wanted to control the browser market. To this end they (unlawfully) gave away Internet Explorer freely with the Windows operating system in an attempt to “cut Netscape’s air supply” [Maritz]. The US Department of Justice ruled that “Microsoft’s dominance of the personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to the monopoly.”

Changing the game

That was 10 years ago. Today Microsoft see Google in a similar vein because they are starting to deliver on the potential that Netscape opened everybody’s eyes to. Google’s web based applications make the operating system irrelevant, so they destroy the foundation of the Microsoft monopoly.

That’s the potential, but it can’t happen without there first being a free, open source alternative operating system for people to use instead, which is why Google’s recent push into the Linux market, and this most recent of advertising twists is an ominous foreshadowing of the corporate battle ahead.

When I saw the Swansea Tango Advert I laughed long and loud; the shots from the original are carefully copied and you don’t initially realise that it’s not the bravia advert. It’s perfect tango stuff, and follows the “metaphor” advert brilliantly.

Bravia Advert

In case you missed it, or just fancy seeing it again, here’s the original Bravia advert, featuring a 170,000 bouncy balls; filmed in San Francisco.

Tango Advert

The Tango advert, featuring several hundred pieces of fruit, filmed in Uplands, Swansea.

Residents Anger

The link that led us to the advert was from the website of the outraged residents association who were not happy about the damage to their property that all the free-falling fruit had caused.

The road on which it’s filmed (Cambridge Street, Swansea) is just down the road from where a school friend used to live, so I know the area, and the residents association being in “Swansea North” didn’t seem right. A little digging around quickly confirmed that the residents association website is owned by the advertising company.

Viral Marketing

It’s a beautfully done piece of viral marketing. The site is resplendent with dodgy background, low frame rate animated gifs, broken and irrelevant links, missing pictures, poor formatting, a broken feedback form and some truly dull copy.

It’s the attention to the small details that’s makes it so enjoyable, and probably very convincing.

They’ve even gone so far as to create two satellite spoof news sites (Brecon Beacons Herald and Swansea Press) with what look like real stories.

Marketing of this kind can only get more elaborate from here. Almost full marks go to CHI Advertising for their work.

The only magazine big enough to be seen from space – and only in Vegas!

That’s beautiful… only in Vegas… and maybe Paddington, West Australia.

Seen from Outer Space!

Here’s what Maxim has to say on the subject:

Constructed near Vegas out of vinyl mesh to celebrate our 100th issue, this colossal babe can be seen from outer space using Google Earth.

This is utter nonsense, but brilliant marketing.

Invisible from space.

When I was composing the backstory for the iPod gag, one thing I was very careful of was to give it enough factual basis that the silly bits could be believed, so I checked about the height where space officially begins, and I checked that the tailings dam was visible from that height in Google Earth, without magnification.

The Maxim advert which covers 697 square metres is a tiddler in comparison to “the iPod” which is more than 1000 times bigger, covering 893240 square metres.

If the advert exists (and I’m assuming it does) it has an absolute zero chance of being spotted by an orbiting astronaut taking a walk after lunch. As commercial ventures/hoaxes go, however, it’s a total success, because it’s got press coverage, and it’s got web coverage.

The journalists at C|Net, Yahoo etc. may be feeling a little used right now over the whole “from space” thing. This however, is the world of entertainment, where facts don’t matter and a good story is the only thing of importance.

So what is this Maxim thing really?

If you use Google Maps to go to the spot where the magazine is supposed to be you find a big plain empty patch of ground.

To create this image I used this bookmark from Google Earth to show the spot where the magazine is supposed to be – look for the remarkably small white rectangle just above right of centre.

No evidence?

There are no images currently in Google Earth that show the existence of a giant magazine cover. You can’t see it without an overlay.

The lack of evidence from a trusted third party (in this case Google) is what has prompted many to cry hoax. This is also the reason why the iPod gag took off – it was visible in Google Earth and Google Maps without any overlays, people believed they could verify its existence, so they believed the story.

Maxim have had to create an overlay that you can load, which adds the image of the magazine onto the desert, and for good measure, it adds a bit of desert too. This is probably so you don’t wonder why the nearby desert is in such low resolution when looking at the magazine in relatively high resolution. The downside of this is that although it looks nice, people don’t trust it.

Ultimately, Size Does Matter

So did they really create it? It’s feasible. It’s not particularly big, so it could be done. Remember this is 1000 times smaller than the iPod; but why bother when photo manipulation can do it so effectively?

One theory (which I’m enamoured with) is that we are seeing a preview of higher resolution data that has not yet made it into Google Earth; in which case Maxim have spent a lot of money on an advert that seems to have arrived too late. Hence the need for the overlay. Supporting this theory is the fact that this image can be downloaded from earth.google.com.

If that’s not the case, then it’s a pure unadulterated and massively successful hoax.

One not so giant leap for advertising

If the tailings dam really were an advert, then it really would be visible from space, but whatever the full story is behind the Maxim magazine cover, it’s not visible from space (as is claimed on the cover itself), because it’s just way too small, which is a shame.

In the centre you’ll see that little white rectangle again. That’s the size of the magazine.

You can try taking Google Earth to the edge of space and looking for it (62 Miles/100Km high), but you won’t see it. In fact, to make it simpler, I’ve shifted the maxim overlay to Australia so you can see one within the other. The size remains the same, only the magazine’s positioning has been transposed (which is why it appears upside-down). The height is set at 62 miles up to get you started, then you can zoom in.

And the winner is…

Google, obviously.

It’s another wonderful example of Google Earth becoming the advertisers dream, which, oddly enough I sort of I predicted back in October 2004 when I wrote:

Virtual billboards here we come.

Ah well.

Digg this.

Today I learned from a trusted source that Apple is poised to make history next Saturday when it unveils the worlds first advertisement that can be seen from space.

Apple had hoped to keep their creation secret until the grand unveiling, however, after I was tipped off, and with just a little bit of lateral digging, I was able to uncover enough background information to get a clue of the location.

From there, it was just a matter of firing up Google Earth, and hunting for it! The pictures are a few months old, but clearly show the advert well on the way to completion.

The sheer size of the publicity stunt is difficult to comprehend. It covers 893240 square metres; roughly equivalent to eighty football pitches.

The ad, which depicts Apple’s flagship iPod product has been constructed on the site of an abandoned mineral mine in remote western Australia. It has been in development for almost two years since Apple’s founder Steve Jobs acquired the location during a game of poker with (the late) Australian publishing and gaming tycoon Kerry Packer.

Aliens need not worry about advertising regulations however; the general concensus is that the edge of space is at a height of 62 miles (100Km), and once you go much higher than that, the ad will very quickly shrink towards invisibility. It’ll look like an iPod nano for a while, then maybe a tictac.

Speculation is currently rife that the grand unveiling will be coordinated with the launch of a touch screen Video iPod.

Apple have a press meeting scheduled at the start of next month when more details will be revealed – you heard it here first.

See it in Google Maps.
See it in Google Earth (Free Mac & PC versions available).

The surprising insight that I got from this experience was that, financially, Slashdot have to work harder than probably any other site to generate revenue, because their audience is the most tech. savvy and adaptive of any website, and therefore the most capable of blocking adverts.

Based on the a comparison between the stats of an average day, and yesterday, I did a few sums, and discovered (from this small empirical sub-sample) that 37% of slashdot readers use advert blocking software. The sums tell me that an average story-page on this site serves 2 adverts, but yesterday, that average had dropped to 1.25.

Advert blocking software was developed as a remedy for annoying, flashing, vibrating and misleading adverts that make web pages difficult to read, or that mislead people into clicking on them. The downside is that responsible and relevant adverts are affected too.

The costs of being the busiest technical news forum on the web can’t be small, and Slashdot have to meet these costs whilst dealing with 37% less potential for generating revenue. The long term solution may be more adverts, attempting to increase the return from those who don’t block all ads, or it may a further shift towards the subscription model.

Either way, yesterday’s increased visitor numbers here have highlighted to me that generic advert blocking software is not the panacea it appears to be. Adverts are often necessary to cover operating costs, so a blanket ban affects the good sites as well as the bad.

It would not surprise me if anti-blocking measures are developed before too long. I can forsee something, perhaps in javascript, that descrambles a page based on a key that must be retrieved from the advert, or from the advert server.

Obviously such measures would themselves result in countermeasures, so the only real solution is the responsible use of ad blocking software. Currently however, software such as AdBlock and Remove It Permanantly are not designed with this responsibility in mind.

A short term solution may be the inclusion of a “Show Ad’s” toolbar button, similar to the “Show Images” button seen in many email applications, but long term, blocking software needs to be more aware of the kind of advert that’s being displayed and make more intelligent decisions of what to remove.

It’s based on Keyhole EarthViewer which used to cost $29.95 for a subscription, so google are obviously relying on (a) the advertising revenue they can generate from this new search portal and (b) sales of the enhanced “Pro” “Fusion” and etc. versions that will be of interest to companies that want real-time 3D data integration.

Get it here.

If (like me) you find the controls amazingly clunky and non-intuitive, you might like to try WorldWind, on which the mouse-control is decidedly more dynamic. The major difference between the two products is that Google’s financial clout results in more high resolution imagery being available for places outside the USA.

In contast, the last few seasons have been poor. Those of us with F1 in our veins have found this difficult to admit, but the dominance of Ferrari has made the spectacle less interesting for all but the most ardent follower. To become an F1 fan you must first be ensnared by the action, and drama, before learning of the technical complexity, the strategy, and the psychological deulling that are as important and absorbing as the on-track action.

I am therefore delighted to be able to say that the 2005 F1 season has, so far, been fantastic. A combination of changes to the rules has meant that the starting grid has been interestingly shaken up, and that has resulted in some scintillating racing. To paraphrase something Nigell Mansell once said, F1 is a Racing Drivers Championship, but what we want to watch is Racers, not Drivers.

Today’s race at San Marino gave us a race; and what a fantastic race it was. Schumacher had qualified badly and was in the middle of the field, whereas Alonso, the championship leader was in pole position. As the laps ticked away, and the cars peeled off for their pitstops, Schumacher, somehow, stayed out. He was carrying way more fuel than his peers, so as they re-joined the race, heavy with fuel, he had a light car and leapt forward from 12th to 3rd.

What followed was a 30 lap chase where Schumacher ate into Alonso’s lead by 1.5 seconds every lap. We commented that the last time we could remember a race with this potential for a granstand finish was “that time Nige’ was 18 seconds down and pulled back a second a lap on Piquet”. Several laps later, the ITV commentator James Allen recalled the same race. They knew what was in store too.

This is what great F1 is about. Knowing that every corner matters; every entry has to be good, every apex hit, every exit clean. Schumacher had it all to do, and he delivered lap after perfect lap.

The tension build for 20 laps and with around 12 laps to go Schumacher caught up with Alonso. What followed was a car chase that puts anything Hollywood can create to shame.

This was electric.
This as real.
This was live.
This was the championship leader against the 7 time world champion, in a race to the flag.

As the 10 laps ticked off, Schumacher’s Ferrari edged closer through the corners and the Alonso’s Renault clawed back breathing space on straights.

This, is the stuff that hooks people on F1. This is what makes it a global phenomenon.

This, with 3 laps to go, and the tension thicker than gravy; this, according to ITV, would be a perfect time to interrupt the coverage for a few quiet advertisements.

We sat there numb with shock. ITV returned in time to catch most of the last lap. The tension, the excitement, the anticipation, the enjoyment… had been destroyed.

Immediatly after the race had finished, only minutes later, the commentators handed back to the studio who cheerily suggested that we viewers should rejoin them after another ad break to see the last 3 laps of the race.

Somehow, somebody in ITV has failed to understand that watching the three climactic laps that we just missed, after the race has been won, and we know the result, is entirely pointless.

We switched off the TV so that ITV could not advertise to us, and turned it back on after two minutes later in order that we might see the driver interviews.

This got us to thinking….

The BBC used to provide us with uninterrupted coverage of F1. The only reason that ITV can afford to outbid the BBC is because they can sell advertising. ITV therefore need to come up with an alternative means of advertising that does not ruin the race, or they need to step back and leave it to someone who can.

Now, market forces are such that ITV are not going to stop their coverage, or change their way of working unless there is commercial pressure to do so – so we’re going to start that commercial pressure ourselves, by turning our television off for 30 seconds during every advert break for the rest of this F1 season.

Yes, as of today we’re going to boycott the adverts that ITV show during F1 and we invite others to do likewise.

Stick that in your post race analysis ITV.

Keyhole make a product called EarthViewer, which is one of the coolest applications I’ve ever seen – it makes extensive use of the high end graphics cards found in PC’s to map satellite images onto a virtual Earth, adding topographical information into the bargain and then overlaying information about roads, rivers, gas stations, ad infinitum.

Google’s aquisition puts it in a position where it can provide geographically attuned search results – imagine, for example, that you wish to see, at a glance, how many people in the USA have a weblog that mentions “I voted for Kerry“. Google now has the potential to provide such information overlayed directly onto the USA as seen from several kilometers above.

Google is currently rich from the proceeds of it’s IPO, so it is now in a position where it can make strategic purchases the like of which it could only dream of before. With Keyhole, Google has bought itself into a position where it could introduce a completely new way of presenting and interpreting searches results – the combined data from all Google’s other ventures now has a serious and highly attractive presentation engine that could put Google months, if not years ahead of it’s rivals.

Earlier I called Keyhole “one of the coolest applications I’ve ever seen” for good reason – it has competition (which emerged only a few weeks ago) in the form of a NASA led project which is now hosted on sourceforge, namely Worldwind.

Aside from being several years of development behind Earthviewer, Worldwind’s greatest advantage (that it is open source, and free) is also it’s greatest downfall. Interest in Worldwind has been so great that the servers which provide the satellite images from NASA have been down due to overloading. Nasa (and others) are working to remedy this at present, however, with Google’s legendary server farms this is a problem which is unlikely to befall the great search-monster.

Google have immediately slashed the price of the end user version of EarthViewer, and I will not be surprised if it lowers this still further (to zero) once full integration with it’s other services offers significant economies of scale, and advertising opportunities hitherto unimagined.

Virtual billboards here we come.

In the mean time, developers are of course invited to get involved on sourceforge and help develop Worldwind.