I ♥ Google
May 15
Google Labs is typically chock full of activity (the stuff they let you in on), but as concepts become normal features, albeit in beta form, a few useful tidbits remain. Here are a couple of picks from their latest postings on the site.
Google Mars, was added to the labs list back in March of this year. It allows you to do some martian surface roving of your own. 
Based on data from Nasa researchers at Arizona State University, the mapping system – which is obviously based on the Google Maps platform – allows you to view and navigate the surface of mars in three modes.
The first view, “Elevation,” is an altitude color coded relief map of the surface based on data from Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. The second available view is “Visible,” based on images from Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, which is pretty much basic digital imaging of the surface. The third view is a mosaic in Infrared based on images from Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft. This imaging can see through clouds and dust, allowing proper imaging of all regions colored by the temperature of the surface, warm areas are light and colder areas are darker. To date, these are the sharpest images of the surface ever taken.
My hope is that they will be updating these maps with forthcoming imaging from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter once it completes braking and gets down to business because all in all, this is a very neat feature to have available to the common curious person. Visit Google Mars…
With Google Trends, Google adds an excellent statistics tool to the “average webmaster without big budget for analytical research tools” toolset. A more generalized approach over the Alexa service using Google traffic data. Google Trends makes an interesting case to see the proliferation of data in your chosen keyword area over years as well as in news coverage. What seems to be missing is a baseline or standard measuring unit for the displayed results, but the graphs are still interesting for the general result.
The next natural thing to do then is to search for your name. Unless you have a very common one, expect to be heartbroken when the search turns up a polite “not enough search volume to show graphs” making it painfully clear how unpopular you really are on the internet, yes including myself. Visit Google Trends…