This Way, Please

A few worthwhile links:

• How to spot an Apikorus by FrumSatire. Admittedly funny...
  
• Baruch retires, and will be missed...
• LoR has a nice video, great voice by this guy...
• and JugglingFrogs reminded me of something a couple other people pointed out in the past week - the editor of Yaldah magazine, Leah (Emily) Larson, a frum 17-year old girl from MA, is a finalist in a Wells-Fargo contest. If she wins the $100,000 grand prize, she could do even more with the magazine which apparently is a big hit among young girls (it's geared to girls ages 8-14).
  

Also...

Hat tip: Special Ed

Google is both amazing and scary at the same time. They do everything you'd want a company to do - constantly improve every product, come up with new products on a consistent basis, make life easier and more efficient... etc. It's also scary because so much stuff is all in one place, and they have access to it all. Your e-mail? (GMail) Sure. Your documents? (Google Docs) Sure. Your pictures? (Picasa) Sure - and now tagged with faces, too. Your online searches? (Google) Sure. Heck, even this blog (Blogger) and my feeds (I'm switching from Sage - which is great - to Google Reader, which is even better) are on Google. If Google ever had any bad ideas and wanted to use your information maliciously, you'd be screwed. People are wary of allowing government access to information we all readily give to Google, Inc. It's a little scary.

Nevertheless, we all hope that they won't do any of those things, and we keep using their products, because they're just darned good. Google Maps [which now shows traffic and street views almost everywhere - Little Brother is watching youuu...] now even tells people how to get places using the NYC transit system, and it's actually accurate. For those of us still stuck here in New York, this is not only extremely useful to get around, but it makes it much easier to give people directions on how to get here for Shabbos and the like.