Want to escape for a vacation? Travel with Google Street View in the Amazon rain forest and Thailand!

Today I came to know what is Murphy's law =( The sun is shining, birds are singing, nature invites to the forest and me... being laid up with runny nose without any strength =(
But!!! I have Google and it's new Street View mapping projects, which make it possible to travel to Amazon rain forest or the cities of Thailand. As I always wanted to visit Thailand, it's a great chance to make my weekend more colorful.
Viewers can comfortably take a trip through the Amazon basin or witness the reconstruction of Thailand after last year’s devastating monsoon. The string of 50,000 images taken along the rivers capture give us a beautiful 360 degree view. If you’re unsure of where to look, Google offers various locations for “sightseeing.” You can walk down the paths of the largest developed community in the Amazon, or float down the Rio Negro. If you’re feeling adventurous, feel free to navigate the jungles or plot the location and take note of where Brazil nuts are harvested. =)
With its latest Street View images, Google brings more attention to the Amazon rain forest and its issues, namely the effects of deforestation on a grand scale, despite the potential for beauty that lies within.
On the other side of the globe, the roads of Bangkok, Phuket and Chiang Mai have also received the Street View treatment, to much fanfare by The Tourism Authority of Thailand.
“We really want to show that Thailand isn’t still underwater,” David Marx, Google’s Tokyo-based communications manager, told Reuters. “People should see Thailand for what it is.”
So if you are bored at home and have no possibility to go outside, let's travel with Google!

ST. PATRICK’S DAY GOOGLE DOODLE. A MASTERPIECE!

New Google's Doodle impressed me a lot! Jennifer Hom, the author of the Doodle says that she wanted to go deeper than cliched shamrocks and leprechauns and wee pots o’ gold.
Her quest for the authentic led her to the “Book of Kells,” arguably the world’s greatest collection of illuminated manuscripts. Created by early medieval Celtic monks, the book now sits in Dublin, beheld and upheld as a national treasure.

Given the complexity of the Doodle, as well as her tight deadline, Hom knew she’d need to create the logo digitally. Working 40 hours over four days, she would sometimes zoom in by 300 percent to render those precise Celtic knots — closer than the Doodle artists typically work, she says, given their limited canvas of “300 to 400 pixels wide” and about “100 pixels tall.”
Here’s the Google illustrator’s step-by-step breakdown:

BRAVO!

Google services and applications. Alphabetically

A                     Google AdWords, Google Alerts, Google AdSence, Google Apps, Google Analytics B                     Blogger, Google books

C                     Chrome, Chromebook, Calendar, Google Checkout

D                     Google Docs, Doodles

E                     Google Earth

F                     Feed Burner (for Valia!) =) – connected with RSS

G                     Google Groups

H                     History of Google

I                      iGoogle

J                      Google Jobs

K                     Knol

L                     Google Latitude

M                    Google Maps

N                     Google News

O                     Orkut, Google Ocean (as a pert of Google Earth)

P                     Google Plus, Picasa, Panoramio, Google Apps Control Panel

Q                     Google Quick Scroll

R                     Google Reader

S                     Google Sites, Google Store, Google Storage, Google SketchUp

T                     Google Search Techniques, Google Translate, Google Talk, Google Toolbar

V                     Google Voice

W                    Google Webmaster, Google Wave

X                     Google X

Y                     Youtube

Z                     Google Zeitgeist

Russian hacker received $60,000 from Google for broken Chrome

Google has awarded the prize of $ 60,000 dollar for Russian student from Tyumen Sergei Glazunov, who first discovered the bug in the browser Chrome. Competition of hackers Pwnium was held in Vancouver.

As a company says, that guy managed to find the bug in browser associated with UXSS-attack and the history of navigation in Chrome.

Details will be announced later. Meanwhile, Google asked users to install security updates.
Earlier Google has promised a million dollars for information on bugs in Chrome. Also recent American journalists have found problems in the software of mobile devices from Google.

Google’s driverless cars are on the road: Hurray or Ooops?

Flying autos may still be something of a pipe dream, but letting you car conduct itself is coming closer and closer to reality.

March 1 (Bloomberg) - A California state senator arrived at a press conference at the Sacramento capitol in a Google Inc.-modified Toyota Prius that drives itself. He announced new legislation written with Google’s input at the event, timed to coincide with new regulations allowing the world’s first autonomous vehicles to be road-tested and registered in neighboring Nevada. This step has a goal to to show policymakers that while the cars of the future aren’t yet ready for public use, it’s time for laws to accommodate them.

Google’s autonomous Prius concepts, equipped with computer-controlled gas, brakes and steering mechanisms aided by GPS, cameras and dozens of other sensor systems, have already logged over 200,000 miles on public roads.

“I imagine a lot of people think of a self-driving car as science fiction or something out of The Jetsons and something that may not be available for a long time,” Padilla said after climbing out of the black Prius with a Google logo on the side and spinning sensors attached to the roof.
Of course there are a lot of things to develop in that driverless cars, but still it's a breakthrough!
New cars become like good horses, which draw their owners home even when owners are enable to drive =)

P.S. Maybe I've hurried to get a driver's license?.. =)