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Even though some text is strangely obscured, still a cool timeline infographic about the history of social media.

Major update to Google Maps now includes ability to "Check in" to home and see a history of how much time you've been at home/work/out.  

first-ever historical mapping and exploration of the full text contents of the English-language edition of Wikipedia, in time and space, with visualizations of modern history captured in under a day. Loading the entire English language edition of Wikipedia into SGI UV 2000, Mr. Leetaru was able to show how Wikipedia's view of the world unfolded over the past two centuries.

An animated summary of Wikipedia's history, narrated by Jimbo himself.

"I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United States1 up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down every update that was released for each device - be it a major OS upgrade or a minor support patch - as well as prices and release & discontinuation dates. I compared these dates & versions to the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The resulting picture isn't pretty - well, not for Android users:"

""All of these businesses can shift strategy," Colony said. "Every 10 years in tech, there's a big vendor who we think is dying who makes a big comeback. In 1980, it was Intel, moving from DRAM to microprocessors. In 1990, it was IBM [from hardware to services]. In 2000, it's Apple." In 2010, Microsoft is a candidate for reinvention, Colony said. And if history is any lesson, it will require a change of leadership."

Interesting Google Labs app for viewing new stories on a timeline

The 9/11 Television News Archive is a library of news coverage of the events of 9/11/2001 and their aftermath as presented by U.S. and international broadcasters. A resource for scholars, journalists, and the public, it presents one week of news broadcasts for study, research and analysis. Television is our pre-eminent medium of information, entertainment and persuasion, but until now it has not been a medium of record. This Archive attempts to address this gap by making TV news coverage of this critical week in September 2001 available to those studying these events and their treatment in the media. Explore 3,000 hours of international TV News from 20 channels over 7 days, and select analysis by scholars.

Use Google's ngram viewer to see how a word (or words) are used across time by searching for their prevalence in books.  

Google announces three new languages to translate on Android and this article summarizes just what's happened in the last year on this front.  

An update of Rober Shiller's famous chart showing value of home prices over more than 100 years with predictions extended to guestimate how much further home prices have to fall to get back to the historical average. 

Google's fourth and most ambitious attempt at social networking has set Silicon Valley abuzz, with membership soaring past 10 million people in just three weeks. Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, the two executives in charge of Google+, said in an extended interview that they closely studied Google's previous failures with Orkut, Wave and Buzz to find a better approach. They also found a close-knit team of engineers and designers willing to take a risk.

Google hopes that its slow rollout will encourage a steady momentum, and in the early stages Google+ will provide enough value to keep the early adopters engaged, and that it will motivate them to invite their contacts. No one expects an instant success. But even if this week's launch evokes snark or yawns, Google will keep at it. Google+ is not a product like Buzz or Wave where the company's leaders can chalk off a failure to laudable ambition and then move on. "We're in this for the long run," says Ben-Yair. "This isn't like an experiment. We're betting on this, so if obstacles arise, we'll adapt." "I don't really see what Google's alternative is," says Smarr. "People are going to be a fundamental layer of the internet. There's no going back."