Liquid Galaxy is an outgrowth of an older project called Street View Holodeck, which grabbed Street View imagery from all angles to simulate the effect of driving down the road, albeit twitchily, as if you were slightly dosed on some kind of low-grade hallucinogen. Liquid Galaxy takes the same hardware—a rack of anywhere from four to eight HDTVs, mounted vertically—connected to a bay of computers, and lets you fly.

What's the experience like? You'll have to ask a Google's Jason Holt, one of the few people to man the controls of this not-quite-a-flight-simulator, uh, thing:

The effect was pretty stunning: all of a sudden, flying around in Google Earth really felt like flying, and exploring the ocean trenches was like piloting a submarine. When you splashed through the sea surface you cringed slightly, expecting to get wet. You could even command your own lander down to the Moon or Mars. It was amazing to all of us how much more impressive Google Earth felt when we were surrounded by screens and able to turn our heads to look around (and even walk around). It felt more like a ride than a computer program, something between an observation-deck and a glass-walled spaceship.

Sadly, the only way to try one of these things is to catch it while it's on the road, at a selection of trade shows that you aren't invited to. That said, if you were planning on going to the American Geophysical Union Conference later this month anyway, don't forget the dramamine. Or the beer. [Google]

While it's not pixel perfect in its judgment, what's impressive is its depth—unlike apps like ShopSavvy or SnapTell, Goggles aims to search everything, even if it admittedly isn't great at IDing food or pets or cars. Yet. Plus, it's got integrated augmented reality powers, so it'll show you nearby businesses without you having to touch anything.

Considering Google's rollout of QR codes to a bunch of places, clearly, they're planning to splash big with visual search before some upstarts get the ball rolling—I figure it's only a (short) matter of time before we see it on other smartphones besides Android 1.6. [Google]

The new search mode comes with partnerships Google announced today with Facebook and MySpace. Feeds from both sites, along with Twitter comments, blog postings, and other web sources will be rolled into Real Time results page for up-to-the-second updates. They've also added a "Hot Topics" section to Google Trends to show the most common topics people are writing about at any given moment.

Other news from today's event includes Google Goggles, which lets you search via any picture you take with your phone, and an automatic translator that lets you speak English into your phone and have it translated into Spanish in, again, real time. The translator should be available in 2010, and Goggles can be tried now in Google Labs.

Google's not exactly feeling Bing breathing down their necks, but it's nice to see competition driving some fast and furious innovation at the Googleplex. [Google via TechCrunch]

The businesses were chosen based on search rankings in Google and Google Maps, and each will be given a decal with a QR code that can be scanned with your phone to access reviews and coupons. You'll need an app to do the scanning (for iPhone users Google is magnanimously offering today's first 40,000 downloads of QuickMark for free).

It seems convenient enough, although presumably people with access to a QR scanner on their phone will also have access to Yelp or Citysearch. The main point seems to be giving Google's brand ubiquity a boost, with a Google Favorite Place sign acting as an egalitarian counterpoint to "Zagat Rated" or "Michelin Starred." And eventually, when we all have our QR codes tattooed on our foreheads, Google will let us know everything about each other right away, which will at least save us a lot of time on first dates and job interviews. [Official Google Blog]

Update: He's claimed his actual name, which boasts a "verified account" tag from Twitter. The tweets from the previous account have been moved over as well. [Twitter via TechCrunch]

While Google's always delivered customized search results to people logged into their Google account—that is, search results tailored to you, based on your web history (yes, even outside of Google, like Gizmodo), past searches and previous results you've clicked on—it's now going to be doing that for everybody. Even if you're not logged in, you're going to get personalized results and yes, more targeted ads, based on past searches, tracked by an anonymous cookie that stays on your computer for 180 days. (BTW, it's not like Google's just started keeping track of your searches, it's just now Google's using that info more directly, that's all.)

You can turn it off here, though I'm guessing that won't turn off the dirty feeling you've got right now.

[Google via Bits]

What do you think the future will hold (i.e.will Google end up creating sentient robots hell bent on destroying mankind)? [Image via BustedTees]

The generous explanation for Schmidt's statement is that he's revolutionized his thinking since 2005, when he blacklisted CNET for publishing info about him gleaned from Google searches, including salary, neighborhood, hobbies and political donations. In that case, the married CEO must not mind all the coverage of his various reputed girlfriends; it's odd he doesn't clarify what's going on with the widely-rumored extramarital dalliances, though.

Schmidt's philosophy is clear with Bartiromo in the clip below: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." The philosophy that secrets are useful mainly to indecent people is awfully convenient for Schmidt as the CEO of a company whose value proposition revolves around info-hoarding. Convenient, that is, as long as people are smart enough not to apply the "secrets suck" philosophy to their Google passwords , credit card numbers and various other secrets they need to put money in Google's pockets.

It's enough to make one pine for the more innocent Google bursting forth in the c. 1999 group picture at the top of this post, also gleaned from CNBC's special. The hair might have been sillier — dig co-founder Sergey Brin and VP Marissa Mayers' cuts, top center — but no one was yet audacious enough to argue against the very idea of a secret.

Whenever a Google has a hiccup, even if it's not search, our tiplines are flooded. Twitter becomes an unreadable stream of complaining. The world, online, stops. Bing? Despite capturing about 10% of the search market, not so much. We got a couple pings in our tips page, and exactly zero emails. Which is odd! So let's theorize:

1. Bing users don't report outages to tech blogs, because they don't read tech blogs. They're using Bing because that's what Internet Explorer tells them to use
2. Bing users don't bother complaining; they just use Google for a half an hour. They're natural switchers anyway—they switched to Bing, right?—so it's not a big deal to shake things up for a bit. Google users, they're stubborn.
3. People don't feel so bonded with Bing, because it doesn't seem as central to their lives online as Google. Google apps—Mail, Maps Docs, Calendar, whatever—all live under the same umbrella, in the same rough interface, and under the same branding. Bing feels like its own thing to a certain extent
4. Shut up you jerk, I was utterly beside myself between the minutes of 9:24 and 10:07 PM EST last night, because of the lack of Bing.

Now you go! What will it take before Bing starts to feel, as depressingly as Google, like some kind of digital phantom limb? Will it ever?

Though I'll probably keep doing what I usually do, and just plug words into my browser's search bar when I wanna know what it means—why bother going to a separate dictionary site? [Google via LA Times]

Here's a quote from Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's senior vice president in charge of online audiences:

What I would say is, our focus is on improving the user experience and driving our differentiation of user intent and decision-making. It's not to necessarily pay people to de-index our competition. That's not our focus. So, I wouldn't think of it that way. It's more about how do we build a better experience for people. If there's a way to share in the economics of search in that, then we're game to do that.

Note that this isn't exactly a denial, nor is it exactly a confirmation. Mehdi says paying people to delist from Google is "not our focus," but that doesn't mean they won't do it. It doesn't mean they will, either—matter of fact, it doesn't mean much of anything. Hopefully we get a clarification soon so we know exactly what "not our focus" means. [TechFlash]

The Android 2.0.1 update should be out by the end of the year, but Droid owners (the only ones lucky enough to play with Android 2.0 at the moment) will also get an OTA update with a few Droid-specific fixes. We're told these include improved camera autofocus (thank God) and better voice reception (although in my experience the Droid's reception is stellar). We'll let you know when it's released, which should be before New Years. [Android via Engadget]

Forgive me for taking this quote from Google VP BRadley Horowitz with a grain of salt, but it's a little ridiculous.

"I recently had a discussion with an engineer at Google and I pointed out a handful of people that I thought were fruitful in the industry and I proposed that we should hire these people...

But [the engineer] stopped me and said: 'These people are actually important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google.'"

"Sorry buddy, you're just too smart for this world. It just wouldn't be right for you to join the Google brain trust when you'd raise the average IQ over at Palm by a good dozen points." [The Register via Valleywag]

Feather is the name of YouTube's new lightweight version of the video streaming site. You can try it out now via Google's TestTube collection of beta trials.

What you lose with the lightweight option is the ability to view videos in High Quality, and most of the commenting and sharing options have been stripped out. But hell, that's a small price to play for being able to watch the above gem on your $249 netbook, right? [YouTube Feather via All Things D]

Oh, and man, OpenDNS is so, so screwed. Google eats everything it touches. [Google]

Google Might Build Super-Green Power Plants

Google's been investing in solar, wind and geothermal companies for a while, so it's not particularly surprising that the company is thinking about going a step further and directly financing some green power plants. This could be a move that could push other companies to delve deeper into greener energy tech, so all the more power to Google. Good God, did I just make a pun out of that? [Wired]

Apple Tablet to Be "Shockingly" Cheap

On the latest episode of Diggnation, Internet and television personality Alex Albrecht remarked that he was shocked about 'how cheap the price point" of the Apple tablet would be. No word on how exactly he got his information or just how cheap it needs to be to shock him. [Apple Insider]

Computers Don't Really Save Hospitals Any Money

Harvard did a study to see if using computers saves hospitals money or increases administrative efficiency. The answer to both questions was a resounding "no," but I don't think that should be a surprise. Using computers in an environment like that requires maintenance and training, which naturally cost both money and time. What surprised me about the study is that it didn't look at what effect the use of computers had on actual patient services. Does it make a difference there? [All Things D]

Photo by tahitianlime

TweetBookz Made My Inner Bookworm Crawl Into a Hole

Alright, I confess: I like books and I'm a bit of a dorky geek which means that nearly any new combination of geek and lit tends to appeal to me. Except when it goes oh-so-very-wrong like these TweetBookz.

The idea behind TweetBookz is that you pay about $30 to have a bunch of your tweets made into a nicely bound book. Initially I thought that this could be neat, but then I looked at my own tweets. I somehow don't think I or anyone else would want a book full of messages to creepy people or days of the week.

But maybe I'm just a bit of a lazy, boring Twitter user. [TweetBookz via Wired]

Guy Wins Beard Contest With a Hairy Bird Cage

Jason was particularly excited about this old clip of a beard contest of some sort. I was just plain terrified.

Samurai Mario Battles Bowser and a Dinosaur

I'm not entirely certain what possessed someone to make this illustration of Mario attempting to battle a dinosaur and Bowser while dressed as an ancient samurai, but I like it. [Geekologie]

Ikea Makes an iPhone App

Good news for those who want to deck out their rooms with Ikea items, but need to see the entire catalog on their iPhone before shopping: There's an app for that. [Fresh Home]

I'll Tell You About The Audi E-Tron as Soon as I Stop Drooling

Ok, I don't think I can stop drooling long enough to type, so I'll keep it brief: Wowza. This is the Audi E-Tron which was shown off as a concept at prior car show. She's still got the 3,320 lb-ft of torque we were teased about, but now she's been photographed some more and she looks oh-so-very-nice. Check out the bright-pumpkin-orange car-shaped eyecandy over at Jalopnik. [Jalopnik]