Red Planet

Actually, in the default view of Google Mars, it's far more colourful than that, being a colour-coded relief map.

Verily, today's intarweb contains many cool things

cavalorn sez:

If you're even slightly interested in computer games and you haven't yet seen the video of Will Wright's SPORE, then go see it.

You may wish to tie your jaw in place, because it's going to drop.

To repeat one of the comments: whoa.

It starts as SimAmoeba. Before long, you're up to SimEcosystem. By the twelve-minute mark, you're up to SimTribe. At this point, I was already blown away. There's another 25 minutes after that...

(Also: best use of cheezy porn music evah!)

This video is from the 2005 E3 - making it nine/ten months old. This is the next game from Will [SimCity, The Sims] Wright. Why on earth haven't I heard of it before?

For those who can't face a 35-minute video, the official game site has a much shorter flash intro animation which appears to summarise the basics of the first half of the video.

[edited to add: BoingBoing provides a link to an unabridged, 1 hour version of the talk]