More interesting, though, is the data required to drive such a service. Google Latitude is powered by the Google Gears browser plugin, which also facilitates offline access to Gmail and a variety of other web enhancements through its in-browser database component. Vaguely mentioned in passing is another, lesser-known feature of Gears: Google’s WiFi location database. Essentially, Google has wardriven major cities in the US and other countries, searching for wireless networks and plotting each wireless router it finds on the map by the geographic coordinates of the drive-by vehicle that detected the wireless signal. With a large enough database, this allows Google to pinpoint most laptop computers on the map by looking up the hardware address of the wireless router they are currently connected to and determining the approximate position on the Earth. Scarily awesome!

In the much kinder words of the Washington Post, “Mulholland Drive is an extended mood opera, if you want to put an arty label on incoherence.” The [continued] existence of this film is evidence that there can be no God, for no all-powerful being would allow anyone to be subjected to such an atrocity.