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Wow, sorry for disappearing on you. So much happened in the past few weeks, that instead of posting all those brilliant (aka: weird) thoughts I am having, I’ll just summarize recent events in my life:

• My Xbox 360 is back! Of course you don’t know that it was gone, but it was indeed a victim of well known Red Rings of Death. But, this is after at least a year of trouble-free use, and they replaced it within a week!!! Seriously, emailed us FREE shipping label for our old XBox. I dropped it at UPS on 9/25, and Oct 1st the replacement arrived! Completely Free and Fast! Mistakes Happen, it is all about how you bounce back and fess up to them that defines long-term success! So, I am a Happy Camper and Kudos Microsoft, big time!!!
• Went through rough patch at work, launching a new web site, enough said…
• We visited Consolidated Gold Mine, which is apparently only about 45 minutes north of here. Family had a good time! We’re definitely going back there in the future.
• Visited Panama City Beach in Florida, over the weekend. Pretty long drive from Atlanta, but nice beaches and weather was pretty good. Overall, fun trip also. And yes, all these trips were way before Gasoline shortage hit Atlanta…
• It’s been another month of iPhone and Zune and Blackberry, for my active daily use. We saw the release of all important iPhone 2.1 update, and Zune 3 software came out. I am working on summarizing my experiences in long post on Zune vs iPhone, promise!
• I have also been hard at work on my “secret project”, well, basically it is yet another website – stay tuned!

But enough about me, as you are likely wondering about the collapse of Wall street giants, and other such minor news happening out there… The world is undergoing changes in ever accelerating pace, and while mass media does dismal job of coverage, do keep in mind that I have a short list of articles that I share daily, for your reading pleasure, from the world wide ocean that is Internet. Don’t Clog The Tubes!!!

Creative titles aren’t my specialty… Anywho, today I decided to try something that really made sense, and strangely enough, it does exist! Perhaps this is not news to anyone, but I really don’t recall seeing such a handy Map and Photo mashup available on our beloved Flickr.com site, just try Explore feature!

We were thinking of finally taking a one day trip to the little mountain town of Helen, Georgia. So, I did regular searches on Google and others to find out tourism attractions and other things about the town. I must say, there was very little available in terms of entertainment for family, perhaps because the town is truly little. I did hear they have most wonderful nature and scenery, so that itself probably worth the 2 hour drive. Scenery led me to think of Flickr, so I went there and just typed name of town. It actually sent me to a screen with good geo-positioned photos, showing you the place in images! I recommend you try it out, before your next trip to anywhere.

I have been using similar handy feature on Google Earth Desktop software, but I was sure Flickr would have many more photos available for any given spot.

As I wrote this, I decided to dive back into Google Earth and play around with options. It is Astounding how deep that tool is and how it is improving every day! Not only was I able to find tons of photos and useful information, I was amazed to discover YouTube integration! This essentially allows to Click certain locations to see VIDEO popup from YouTube, related to that place! Now That’s a Mash-up! Perhaps this is their secret true reason for buying YouTube in the first place !

My next question is — when is this kind of functionality coming to my iPhone? Or will this be an Android-only feature, to try and win over iPhone early adopters?

Now, if only instead of all this site seeing on the Internet, we would actually get into the car and get going there! That, my friends, is a technological challenge of a different nature…

UPDATE: Flickr is your best source for breaking news-in-photos, as I forgot to mention. Take a look at this happening Documentary of Hurricane Gustav in Photos. Gives you chills and definitely brings us closer to the affected people.