Let's start with the first of my tech industry-related postings. This one's about the latest, most innovative applications available on the Internet: geospatial technologies and the newest photo editing tools. Both are based on articles from MIT's Technology Review (TR) magazine.

Computer mapping tools have been around for quite a while (even online ones) but it was Google that really revolutionized the way they were used, presented, and accessed on the Internet (through Google Earth) and on the web (through Google Maps). The TR article, Google Earth: How Google Maps the World, talks about how this system works on Google's side:

Technology Review interviewed engineers at Google and at ­DigitalGlobe, the company that supplies Google's satellite photos, and did a little bit of reverse-engineering to figure out how it works.

The other how-it-works type article from TR is called  New Tricks for Online Photo Editing. This one is about a really cool photo editing trick, known as seam carving, that went from being an algorithm created by a couple of researchers (from Adobe and Mistubishi) to a Flash-based implmentation of it on sites such as Rsizr and FotoFlexer as well a Photoshop plugin.

Both are interesting reads that tell you a bit about what goes on behind the new, funky stuff that you use on the Internet.