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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google

Google Maps tells you how to get from here to there - literally

Google Maps here to there
Ever wonder how long it takes to get from here to there? About 7 hours and 51 minutes according to Google Maps. It turns out both here and there are in France. If you're still confused, there are two cities in France with the convenient names of Héré and Théré. So if you type "here" and "there" into the directions fields of Google Maps, what you get are directions from one spot to the other.

This is not, by far, the oddest thing we've seen on Google Maps. For example, last year if you looked for directions from a US location to destination in Europe, Google would tell you to "Swim across the Atlantic." The company seems to have removed that suggestion, possibly after someone at Google pointed out that it would be faster to get use a hot air balloon.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet

Practice your world geography with Statetris - educational time waster

Statetris World A few months back we realized that we don't know Kentucky from Kansas thanks to Statetris, an online game that combines geography with Tetris. At the time, all we could do is bungle the placement of US states. But now that Statetris has gone international, we realize just how little we know about world geography.

There are new versions of Statetris for Africa, Europe, France, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, and for some reason, the state of South Carolina.

Game play is pretty much the same for each version. Just drop geographical locations into the appropriate place on the map. Depending on which version you're playing, the goal may be to put states, provinces, or countries in the proper location. Play often enough and you might just be able to figure out how to find Latvia on a map.

[via Brent Evans]

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Kids, Blogging, Web services, Social Software

Teenie Bopper social network site Piczo gets a larger vocabulary

piczo goes internationalOne thing that tends to take a while in the Web 2.0 market is the expansion to non-English speaking markets. Even Google is guilty of waiting a while to open up services for non-English speaking residents of the world.

Piczo, the social network that specializes in the teen market, has finally expanded to include other languages. The second place superstar in the social space for teens now has international versions for users in Germany, France and Spain.

It's a move that hasn't come soon enough for the over 1.2 million users in Germany alone. Piczo's current user base is approx. 25 million users worldwide.

[via webware]

Filed under: Internet, Kids, News, E-mail, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Open Source

French students to be given open-source software

Eifel TowerFrench authorities plan on passing out open-source software to incoming high school freshman next year.

The software expected to include Firefox and Thunderbird as well as an office suite; instant messaging software and an audio video player will be put on a USB flash drive and passed out to students at the beginning of the school year. The USB drive will give students the ability to check email and surf the web with personal preferences without purchasing each child their own personal laptop.

An expected 175,000 USB sticks will be passed out this year at a cost of around 3.4 million dollars. Should the program be a success the Greater Paris Regional Council plans on continuing it in following years.

The company that wins the bid for the USB sticks will determine the exact software included on the stick. All of the software is required to be open-source.

[via Yahoo!]

Filed under: Windows, Microsoft, P2P

Orange and Microsoft join IMs

windows live and orange imMicrosoft is doing some connecting with leading edge suppliers in Europe to boost its Live service. Soon 375 millions people are going to be able to IM each other using mobiles or PC's though a deal with Orange in France. The new service will be called Orange Messenger by Windows Live. The application will essentially allow Orange customers to either use the IM tool online, or on their mobile devices to connect to other Windows Live Messenger users. Microsoft and Orange will be joining users in Spain and the UK as well in the near future. Microsoft chose to work with Orange because they are the leading edge supplier in mobile communications in Europe, and there are not many leading edge communication developments being made in the US.

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google

Quaero: The official search engine of the European Union

Jacques
ChiracIn his 2006 New Year's address, French President Jacques Chirac apparently focused on Quaero, a new search engine being built by "some of the top tech labs in France and Germany." The project is ambitious, to say the least, reportedly providing "an array of multimedia tools for identifying and indexing images, sound and text," including "a powerful translating tool which will be able to 'understand' audio as well as text," and available on mobile devices and digital TVs. Beyond that, the article is tantalizingly vague, and includes this less-than-promising passage: "The ambitious project will probably not be available anytime in the near future. Quaero is still in the earliest stages of development, so early that none of the major players have yet ventured a guess as to how much the project might cost. When Quaero does launch, it will have a great deal of catching up to do." Good luck with that, Chirac.

[Via Slashdot]

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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