One of the things I like about living in the city I grew up in (and I grew up in the inner suburbs) is the overlay of information and meaning I have for various areas. It's obviously partly personal memories ("that was where I saw chickens"*), and partly history ("here was the prison in the 1880s"). But it is also about current infrastructure ("this is the current boundary of the Rongotai electorate").
So perhaps you can understand why a map of the Citylink broadband and some institutions which use it makes me very happy. I'm especially interested in the end points. Obviously the one in Newtown ends at the Zoo. But the one at Karaka Bay in Mirimar - I'm thinking it is probably to Peter Jackson's place.
* Devon St in the early 90's. No idea why they were there, but they seemed happy and well fed. I suspect food politics was involved somewhere.
In other news, the Ministry of Transport has just won an international award for their Intranet site.
Google has just released a web browser (Google Chrome). It's still in beta, but I've seen people using just like a finished one. Having read their blather about it, I first thought they were advancing browsers so they could deliver apps better. That way they can take on Microsoft's Office quasi-monopoly. All good.
And then I read in the Economist that Google have been worried that Microsoft have tweaked IE to advance the MSN search engine.
Sadly, in looking for the original Economist article, I found this one which sums up my thoughts very well (and is clearly better researched). The point I think is most interesting is the potential for the browser to act as the user interface part of the operating system. If they did that, they make the actual operating system much less important and possibly put a small but fatal chink in Microsoft's armour.