Cold Earth, GoogleEarth, and Unearthed

From the January 8^th Daily Mail…The fountains in Trafalgar Square had frozen over this morning due to the freezing cold temperatures in London.

Lord Nelson looks pretty danged cold, doesn’t he? But that was last month, as noted. In case you hadn’t heard, London was paralyzed by about a foot of snow yesterday and this past weekend (two-minute video and story at the link).

Photo credit: The Guardian (UK)

I’ve been in London during a heavy snowfall and it ain’t pretty. Well, check that… it IS pretty in a purely aesthetic sense. But getting around? Ug-leee. The Brits just aren’t equipped to handle snow in any substantial amount, defined (as near as I can tell) as about five inches or more. Things just STOP while the authorities… and everyone else… waits for it to melt. OTOH… any snow at all results in a snow day. And that’s not a bad thing at all, once every ten years or so.

There are 45 photos of the recent snowstorm at the Guardian’s web site; still more at the Beeb. All of the Brit papers have pictorials (and more than a few American news outlets do, as well)… just go to Google News and type in “London snow 2009.” Or click the link… I’ve made it easy for ya, Gentle Reader.

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Speaking of our friends at the Googleplex… There’s some pretty cool new features in GoogleEarth… and here’s a short (1:38) video highlighting the new stuff:

I like the historical imagery feature and I think that’s the thing I’ll use the most. The ocean stuff looks interesting but it might be a “one time use” feature where I’m concerned. All that said… Jeez. I’ve become a shill for Google. As if they needed one…

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We’re heavy on video today… but I just could NOT resist this two-minute 1981 teevee news bit about how the San Francisco Examiner was developing the first on-line edition of the newspaper… hosted in Columbus, Ohio (!). Here’s “1981 primitive Internet report on KRON.”

I liked this bit especially: “… it takes over two hours to receive the entire text of the newspaper over the phone and with an hourly use charge of five dollars…” Note there’s no mention of graphics… just text. And five bucks an hour? Yowza!

See how good you have it, Gentle Reader? Text and pictures. Video. Links to major foreign news sources. All right here, right now... at your fingertips... assembled by an old geezer in New Mexico. And we take all this for granted!

Progress. It’s what’s for dinner… and breakfast and lunch, too.