Google Apologizes for GMail Downtime

It was only a 2 hour outage, but that's expensive for any business that depends on this service for their email. So Google have taken a rare (according to them) step of publicly apologizing.
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/we-feel-your-pain-and-were-sorry.html

Well, a public apology would be a press release, something Google are quite adept at utilising. But this apology merely appeared in their blog. Google, in their hubris, expect that people would automatically:

1) Know the relevant Google blogs for the services they use
2) Subscribe to them

To their credit, a link to the post appears on the Gmail homepage. But if you are already signed in, you won't see that either...

Street View Australia Launched

You can see it here:
http://maps.google.com.au/help/maps/streetview/

All capital cities, most coastal cities and many regional & outback towns are covered but there are a few notable omissions, like Uluru. My home is there, and it works well.

There are still privacy concerns, but these have been lessened following the introduction of technology that can blur faces and number plates.