Google's self-driving car has been a curiosity that until recently has been limited to the company's Mountain View campus. But today two D.C. councilmembers got a chance to jump into one—and we were there to watch. more ›

In a continuing attempt to curry favor with state and federal officials, Google apparently brought it's driverless car to D.C. last week. more ›

The White House is certainly one of Washington's most-visited landmarks, and it's also one of the hardest to get into. But with Google's help, more people can sneak into the White House whenever they want—and at no risk to themselves from the watchful Secret Service. more ›

Apparently, the juggernaut from Mountain View is getting in on the local lifestyle blogging game. Google Places, the search giant's product that allows users to leave notes about various businesses, tourist destinations and other locations on Google Maps, is branching out into original editorial content. more ›

Google sure has made some controversial choices over the last few weeks, but here's one we can fully get behind. more ›

One of our favorite new Tumblrs, Petworthies, noticed that searching for Petworth on Google Maps directs users to a singular address: a "humble example of the Wardman-style row home" located at 4161 9th Street NW. This got us to thinking: where, exactly, does Google Maps peg the location of every other neighborhood in the city? more ›

Washington is a city who appreciates a good sign. So when the 15 or so folks who got together to protest changes to Google Reader outside the Google's D.C. headquarters this afternoon, we figured that they might try and put their thoughts on a few pieces of posterboard. more ›

Protesting appears to be all the rage these days. That said, we can't say we're surprised that a demonstration has been planned this afternoon aimed at protecting the public's inalienable right to an unchanged Google Reader. more ›

After failing to buy Groupon and lagging behind in the oddly burgeoning market for online deals, Google launched its own online coupon service, Offers, in the District and four other cities yesterday. more ›

Google's efforts to try and make leaving your house a thing of the past has taken yet another big leap with the introduction of Art Project, which allows users to virtually explore 385 gallery rooms in 17 museums around the world and peruse more than 1,000 high-resolution images. Art Project features some of the most foremost destinations for art lovers around the world, including Washington's very own Freer Gallery of Art. more ›

It's annoying when you're filling out online forms and under "state," D.C. is listed as "Washington, DC" instead of just "DC". But you get used to it -- it's just some lazy programmer on some website, and the world keeps spinning. Google, however, should know better. more ›

Google recently released its 2010 Zeitgeist, the dissertation of the search terms people were Googling most over the course of the year. While it's fascinating that Chatroulette, the iPad and Justin Bieber made the national top ten list while other, more substantive topics did not, here at DCist, we're a little bit more intrigued about what people around Washington were searching for. more ›

Our sister site Gothamist brought our attention to the above map, created by Very Small Array, which labels each American state and the District of Columbia with the first autocomplete suggestion that popped up when the name of the jurisdiction was entered into Google last Friday night. more ›

I suppose we can file this under "this has nothing to do with D.C., but is still a massively fun way to waste time at work, which is very important to D.C. office workers." Friend of DCist Laura Olin passed along a link to Globe Genie, which appears to be a product of one Joe McMichael, and is hosted under an MIT web address. The site allows its users to jump randomly to one Google Street View around the world -- you can select any combination of continents (including Antarctica!), hit "Teleport" and see where you end up. more ›

Google today unveiled its long-awaited bicycle directions feature for Google Maps. more ›

The year isn't over yet, but Google has gone ahead and released its Year-End Zeitgeist lists of the most popular searches for 2009. This year, they included top searches by city, and D.C.'s most popular Google search terms are listed below. Most of them, we get. Others, consider us baffled. more ›

Google announced today that it will provide free wireless internet access at 47 U.S. airports and on all Virgin America flights for the holiday season. Starting now through January 15, anyone should be able to log on to free Google WiFi at BWI, which is the only local airport included in the program. You can find the complete list of participating airports here. Naturally, Google says it plans to use the free service as a means to advertise its products, like iGoogle and Google Chrome, to potential new customers. Still, paying that extra $9.99 for a day pass for internet access at most local airports is a huge drag, so until every airport starts offering it for free, all the time, we'll take what we can get. more ›

Greater Greater Washington's Michael Perkins has been doing great work chasing down why, exactly, WMATA and Google can't come to an agreement and get Metro data into Google Transit. This post gets into the details, but the short version is that WMATA isn't inclined to play nice with Google, apparently because the agency thinks its schedule data might be worth something. No, they're not sure if they can get any money for it, but they'd like to find out: Metro has been talking about bidding out a half million-dollar contract for a consultant who can tell them whether they might be able to monetize their schedule data. Today Perkins saves them the trouble by reporting the likely answer: no. He's got Google on record saying that they don't pay New York for its transit data, despite a history of the MTA trying to extract money from those using its data. If the Big Apple can't shake down Google, what hope do our local transit bureaucrats have? It's looking an awful lot like WMATA is stonewalling developers, inconveniencing its riders and preparing to waste $500k for nothing. Maybe Metro should focus on moving people around the city and leave the dreams of internet mogul-dom to the Californians. more ›

Any fan of the space program should recognize quite a few faces roaming around D.C. this week. Last night, the biggest gathering of Apollo astronauts in years arrived at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum for the annual John H. Glenn Lecture featuring the Apollo 11 crew, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, along with NASA's first Flight Director, Chris Kraft, and of course, astronaut and Senator John Glenn himself. The audience was filled with other Apollo astronauts, as well as the STS-125 crew that flew the space shuttle Atlantis to repair the Hubble Telescope in May. more ›

Here's the statement we got back from a Google spokesperson about this morning's seemingly large outage in the Washington, D.C. area: "The issue affecting some Google services has been resolved. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we'll share more details soon." So basically, not really an answer at all. We'd press them on the issue, but today's outage really drove home how completely and totally this company appears to have taken over our ability to function on a daily basis. Angering The Google would be like hanging up a big sign in our yard saying "We Hate Oprah" in Chicago. You really shouldn't do that if you value your life. UPDATE: More from the Official Google blog: "An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions. We've been working hard to make our services ultrafast and "always on," so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens. We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again." more ›

It's not just you. It's all of us, too. Gmail, Google Reader, the entire Google family of products seems to be out across the region. Friends in other cities say they're not having the same problem, so who knows what's up. In the meantime, while you're waiting for the ability to do practically anything else on the Internet, consider leaving say, one or two or twelve comments on DCist! UPDATE 12:15 p.m.: We have Gmail! We have Gmail! International crisis averted. more ›

As Metro General Manager John Catoe promised earlier this month, Metro will finally make public its schedule and routing data, starting tomorrow. As the Washington Post reports, users in San Francisco used BART rail data to create an iPhone application. You can bet that work starts on an i-app for the District before lunchtime Monday. The Post gives credit where credit is due, highlighting the efforts of the crackerjack bloggers at Greater Greater Washington in organizing the petition drive to ask Metro to release their data. One enterprising software developer you can expect to make good use of the data now that it doesn't exclusively belong to Google: the incomparable Tom Lee. more ›

Last night, a friend explained to me something I already knew: This Facebook terms-of-service kerfuffle was much ado about nothing. What, exactly, did Fbers think would happen? Facebook would assume control of the world's supply of 25 things? And this move wouldn't pave the way for the next Myfacester? more ›

$68,000. That's how much money WMATA earned from web advertising in the last fiscal year. It's also, according to the Examiner, what the agency says is keeping Washington's public transit riders from being able to use Google Transit, a story which has picked up considerable steam since Greater Greater Washington got it started and we reported on it last weekend. more ›

The Red Line was an utter mess this last week. Track work caused delays of up to 30 minutes in many places last weekend. A fire on Friday at the Friendship Heights station backed trains up during the morning rush hour. And DCist's staff email threads were filled on Monday and Tuesday with complaints about Red Line trains being backed up for one reason or another, for reasons that remain to be discovered. more ›

Here at DCist, we pride ourselves on providing D.C. area residents with one of the best ways to slack off while at work -- reading and commenting on our web site! But today's best procrastination method has to be this Google Search 2001 tool that Google released as part of its ongoing 10th birthday celebration. The search page lets you easily find out whether you are you cool/lame enough to be found on the Internet in 2001. When searching my name in 2001, the first page returns a listing for my having been attending Vancouver Film School (true!) and a non-working link to a play review I wrote for the University of Arizona's Daily Wildcat in 1998. Not exactly a big web presence, but a presence nonetheless. How do you rate? more ›

It's been quite a week for the Orange line, with three long delays in three days (not to mention last week's storm-related delays). Monday's derailment of a train between the Rosslyn and Court House stations left people clamoring for a way to get home, but luckily, it wasn't as severe as it could have been. Of course, no one would argue that being stuck in a tunnel for a long time with air conditioning on one of the most oppressively hot days of the year isn't tough, but imagine what could have happened instead. more ›

Libertarian-leaning Republican presidential candidate and hero of the Internets Ron Paul has gotten himself a blimp, and it's headed this way. According to a just-released flight plan, the blimp, which will read "Who is Ron Paul? Google Ron Paul" on one side and "Ron Paul Revolution" on the other, will launch from Elizabeth City, N.C., Monday and flyover Washington circa 3 p.m. the same day, with a rally planned for 4 p.m. and another re-launch... more ›

If you've taken a D.C. taxicab since the stroke of midnight last night, you may have been surprised by a cab driver insisting that you pay an extra $1 gas surcharge. Didn't the gas surcharge expire in September? It did, but last week the D.C. Taxicab Commission quietly passed an emergency measure to bring back the $1 fee, beginning at 12:01 a.m. this morning and lasting until 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, January 29, 2008. “Prices... more ›