Being a site where the purveyors of the Ask Jeeves search engine offer an in-depth look at the solar system’s eighth planet.
Not everyone at IAC’s new search engine acquisition made the trip from Oakland to SES 2005 in San Jose. It looks like some of the programmers (Michiel Frishert and Scott Grieder, according to the site’s source code) stayed behind to deliver Virtual Neptune.
We’ve seen lots of posts and blogs about Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth. The Ask crew has planted their tongues firmly in cheek and delivered a look at a more distant and challenging planet, Neptune.
The programmers obviously had to overcome serious challenges involved with rendering the remote world. And seem to have found those challenges a bit too insurmountable, as they have settled for a pleasant shade of blue with hints of clouds in the image.
However, they manage to bring forth some facts about Neptune that might be considered at best currently unverifiable, at worst completely made up over pizza and beer. Virtual Neptune includes hints at the final resting place of the monolith from 2001 as well as the presence of Martian pyramids on Neptune.
Virtual Neptune is all in good fun, and it demonstrates that Ask can pull off some of the technology tricks used by Google and Microsoft. Please remember this warning appearing in the source code for the site: “Do not try to use this for educational or travel purposes.” Well done.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
