GYM-free success!

well, i made it through the week without mentioning Google, Yahoo or MSN. fortunately i had bill o'reilly to bitch about and harry potter to look forward to. (totally excellent, by the way... but more on that later.)

it's late news, but hell, i might as well mention some of the big news that dropped last week. first up, Google Analytics. yup, google took urchin, souped it up with some ajax and a killer brand and made it free!

i have the "No Script" extension running in firefox, and i haven't "allowed" the google-analytics javascript yet just so i can see who is running it. nearly half of the sites i visit have already installed the service. hell, the first day it was announced most of the sites i visit on a regular basis were already running it. "like white on rice," as my PM guru larry used to say.

in other Google News, the bloginfamous (did i just create a word?) Google Base officially launched last week. we can officially move on from the "All your base are belong to Google jokes," and just dive right in. at first glance, the UI could use some major fixer-upping, but the depth of the app is pretty impressive. there have been rumours all around the blogosphere that this could be a craigslist/ebay/etc killer. i think it might be a bit too complicated for the average user to dive right in creating content. but as usual, the search aspect is definitely killer.

for example, search for "vegetarian recipes" and you're invited to narrow your search by clicking "recipes (94) cuisine (34) health (30) cooking (30) fitness (28) weightloss (28) more..." clicking cuisine lets you refine your search even more with links (recipes (33) main ingredient (24) vegetarian (20) vegan (5)) or a dropdown list of cuisine types (indian, italian, mexican, etc.). some killer search functionality, but in the end user satisfaction will be determined by content. and right now the content is pretty scattered and somewhat, dare i say, useless.

next up -- Google is officially in the WiFi provider market. they aren't admitting to plans of world domination just yet, but one bay area city council has approved their proposal to provide free Wi-Fi. no, it's not san francisco, but Mountain View, where google is headquartered.

"Essentially there's very little downside for us," [City Councilman Tom Means] said in an interview Wednesday. "It's an experiment. Google wants to do a test market here to see if they can do it, and they're going to pay us [for it]."

some experiment... "very little downside" is right. if GOOG pulls this off, mountain view is the flagship installation in a long line of GoogleNets. not too shabby.

and finally... have you looked at their stock lately?!?!? enough said. bubble 2.0 in full effect.