New from Google: Froogle

What exactly is Froogle? "Froogle is a new service from Google that makes it easy to find information about products for sale online. By focusing entirely on product search, Froogle applies the power of Google's search technology to a very specific task: locating stores that sell the item you want to find and pointing you directly to the place where you can make a purchase."

Grand Soviet Scheme for Water in Central Asia Is Foundering: " Forty years ago, when Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin ordained a colossal task: to turn this heat-puckered land and four of its neighbors, a swath of desert and scrub as big as Western Europe, into an irrigated cotton plantation. Improbably, it succeeded. From the mountainous Chinese border to the Caspian Sea, the Soviet Union remade the two grand rivers of Central Asia, building 20,000 miles of canals, 45 dams and more than 80 reservoirs. The government turned sand and dust into one of the world's great cotton-growing regions. But the Soviet Union is long dead. And here in western Uzbekistan and in areas of its four neighbors, one of socialism's most grandiose schemes is being sundered by capitalism, nationalism and a legacy of waste."

Google Labs has two new projects: "Google Viewer lets you view the web pages of your search results, in a slideshow fashion. Google Webquotes annotates results with quotes from other sites." via the Google Weblog.

Its a very googly morning...

Google 2002 Timeline: "The 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on more than 55 billion searches conducted over the past year by Google users from around the world. Whether you are tracking the global progression of the "Las Ketchup" craze or finding out who really is the queen of the Internet, the 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist enables you to look at the past year through the collective eyes of the world on the Internet."

The World According to Google: "What if you had a magic tool that let you find out almost anything in less than a second? Millions of people already have it-and it's changing the way we live"

Sites Become Dependent on Google: "Liane le Tendre does not work for Google, the operator of the Web's most popular search engine. But she depends on Google for her income."

New to me: "PEAR is a framework and distribution system for reusable PHP components."

Eminem back with ex-wife: "Eminem has got back together with his ex-wife... Betty Kresin said the singer's high school sweetheart Kim had moved back into his Detroit home." Ah, you see -- its all an act.