google earth rocks

last night, at the cal academy of sciences (awesome old museum with phenomenal new building where andy ng works occasionally dressed as a giant ant, and source of the trinity alps sojourn resulting in the steven b craig endowment fund), google earth launched v5.0, featuring ocean in google earth--see the Official Word from Google about the new bathymetry baselayer addition, and the layer content collected for the launch.

steve miller, who is a truly great person i was lucky to work with a few times at the goog (he, needless to say, was not so lucky), has been the product manager on this for over 2 years so mad props, as they say, to him and to the rest of the ocean team (including, it turns out, nate johnson who is also truly great, and a past cubemate to boot) . i give thanks that the goog's still good for the occasional spasm of pride.