A few things that have been widely covered or discussed, but with enough "Wow" for me to react:

1) Amazon's new Yellow Pages service, which includes photos of the storefronts. It's an amazing concept -- but I'm skeptical of real value beyond the whizbang. While it can be neat to see a storefront before trying to get there, the truth of the matter is that the geo-location of the pictures and the actual address lookup leaves much to be desired, at least in NYC where I tested. Not that this stuff needs to be perfect in order to prove it's value, but still, if you don't know where you're going, you need a higher degree of accuracy that doesn't leave you half a block off target. Not Amazon's fault, really, I've found the same issue in NYC no matter who/what, even when I roll my own system.

Also, the nature of this stuff is that even commercial landscapes shift at an amazing rate. The storefronts I glanced at look incredibly different now, not only in winter, but with the natural attrition of businesses. While I'm impressed by the effort involved to accomplish this much, I have to wonder why I feel like it's such a commendible *near miss*....is it the fact that webcams and real-time viewing makes me feel like each shot should be a live picture?

2) Keyhole Systems, which was acquired by Google, and their amazing application for browsing satellite imagery. The images themselves are amazing -- rich, detailed, color photos. But the Keyhole application makes zooming, panning, and scrolling them an incredible experience. After plotting my work address, and my home address, and watching the view from Keyhole as it leapt 80 miles in the air to land at my doorstep -- a'la the Hulk jumping from place to place -- the train seemed like a hopeless method of transportation. Stunning stuff.

3) TiVo to Go. After days and days of checking to see if I'd gotten the update, it finally arrived. Does it do what they say? Yeah, but in a weird way -- and many of the noted shortcomings are true: transfers are slow, the resulting video seems a bit warped, the password protection is a shame. But, all that having been said, the set up for the desktop app was quite solid, and it works as expected, and the value of getting the files off the TiVo unit and stored onto other media is a huge step forward. I'm a long-time subscriber and a fan, so I'm not apt to chuck it all and run to a homegrown solution, or to the Windows Media thang -- but for a company that's been used to delivering miracles, this one is just a solid step forward, especially in an environment when their mere survival is a valuable asset alone.

And, since I've had blinders on with a J2ME project for the Blackberry, I missed what looks like a ton-of-fun: http://tivohme.sourceforge.net/ the TiVo developers SDK. Yummy, yummy.

4) maps.google.com. That trademark Google usability. Clean, smart, fast. The maps themselves are actually so much clearer without all the crap that MapQuest sticks in there -- and the user interface just so much more pleasent and clear. The matching of local data is amazing....now to figure out their javascript enough so that I can post a lat/lon to it and squeeze it onto a phone!