Googol err Google

Well my friends, everyone's favorite company is at it again. A friend already covered Google Maps so I will only briefly rave about it here. In the end, the maps page get's you the same thing. The huge plus here is getting there (funny, because we're talking about directions ;)...ok I'll stop). The interface is amazing and hella-fast. All details have been covered. I think it's the little things that a user isn't likely to notice that go a long way. For example:

• did you notice that the map auto-resizes to fill your browser? Go ahead and resize your window--no scrollbars!
• I believe you can also drag the map to pan/scroll.
• the tiles are cached, so the more you use it, the faster it gets
• I printed some directions and they were delivered on one page! Usually with mapquest, they go over to two pages, with the "@copy;" being the only thing on the 2nd page. Alright, alright, enough...

Interestingly, Google Local is still using MapQuest...but I guess Google Maps is still beta software.

In other google news...I just searched for "Spiderman" and was given some images results mixed in with the normal results (similar to Amazon's A9 search). It's pretty neat, though I can't quite figure out how it determines to show images. I searched for all sorts of things that could suggest I wanted images (Lindsay Lohan, beach, sunsets, animal pictures, etc.). So far, I've only been able to get recent (but not new) movies to work like spiderman, anchorman, etc.

For some inside info on Google, you could also check out this guy's blog.