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very cool: 5.000 VR-panorama-shots in more than 40 cities: 360cities.net …

(via Google Blogoscoped)

these days, the recently launched Universal Search is the predominant topic when it comes to Google. that, however, shouldn’t keep you from trying out some of the other very recent additions the search-company search, ads & apps-company has made…

launched today, Google Hot Trends feels like an - almost - real-time-version of the popular Zeitgeist periodical (edit: okay, seems like it’s calculated at several times a day). based on rather mysterious algorithms, Hot Trends highlights the most active search-queries, apparently localized to state/country, although localization currently seems to be restricted to the US (this morning, Hot Trends was filled with various queries on the ABC-show “The Bachelor”).

coming from Google Experimental is another nice feature, which algorithmically tries to display search-results in timelines and map-views - doesn’t really work perfectly on all kinds of queries, but still is an interesting idea.

MapLib is a very nice mashup allowing to view any uploaded bitmap through Google Maps’ AJAX user-interface. customized maps support markers and can be embedded on any website. interestingly, Manfred Wuits (yumyum) demonstrated a very similar technique a month ago at BarCamp Vienna (check the video-feed of his demo).