When I was researching something for that ad I was writing earlier today, google threw me right into google local!
I think that's what I find so interesting-- not even that there IS a google local, but that google itself is intuitive enough to know when I WANT google local, or froogle, or google news, or whether I want to know the equivalent of half a cup in teaspoons so I can make my square root of pi.
Strike that (don't bother, I just did)-- google cleverly avoids the problem of having to acquire a third-party database by using the web itself.
Smart. Very very smart!
Other nifty tricks, (like finding an airport's FAA status by entering its three-letter code and the word "airport," or picking up a phone number by listing a name and a city), can be found by navigating around googleguide.
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In completely unrelated news, GIMP 2.0 is out. If you want to know more about GIMP, go here. I haven't tried it yet, but they're officially supporting their windows version now (which is still technically in development, and available here).