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In Google's world, the 41.9-mile trip from Baltimore to Gaithersburg takes all of 48 minutes along the brand-new Intercounty Connector. Just take Interstate 95 south, hop on the ICC and you're virtually there. But on planet Earth, most of the ICC hasn't opened yet. The 10 miles between I-95 and the Montgomery County high-tech hotbed is largely a muddy track where bulldozers are still doing what bulldozers do. Oops. In a textbook illustration of the computer adage "garbage in, garbage out," Google and another popular Web-based mapping service jumped the gun on the opening of the longest segment of Maryland's new $2.6 billion toll road by about a year.

Google, the giant Internet search engine, wants to put the world's great art museums and their artworks online. This week, the company announced the launch of its Google Art Project, which presents virtual tours of 17 of the world's most prominent museums using the "street view" technology developed for its online maps. Not only can site visitors stroll through the galleries of New York's Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, London's National Gallery or the Uffizi in Florence, they can also call up high-resolution images that display selected works in such minute detail that every brush stroke, scrape mark and paint dab of the artist's hand leaps out at you. You'd need a magnifying glass to see the nuts and bolts of the painter's art so clearly on a work hung on the walls of a museum — if the guards let you get close enough to try. But, of course, they never would.

Millennial Media, a Baltimore startup that's a top player in the growing mobile advertising industry, said Wednesday it raised $27.5 million in new investments from several venture capital firms, which it will use to continue to fund its growth. The new funding round was Millennial's largest since it was founded more than four years ago. It has raised more than $65 million from investors. The new money comes from several existing investors in Millennial, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital, Charles River Ventures and New Enterprise Associates.

From the BaltyTech blog: Google today said that their Fiber for Communities project winner(s) won't be announced till early next year. The search giant had hoped to name a community to be the recipient of a massive pilot project where up to 500,000 people would be given access to ultra-high-speed broadband connectivity. But apparently the huge turnout overwhelmed even Google's capacity to pick a winner (or winners). Baltimore was one of about 1,100 communities across the country (and among several in Maryland)

I read Tuesday's rant from that un-American, left-wing socialist Marta Mossburg, criticizing the free market and capitalism, and I am outraged ( "Turns out Google's free e-mail is worth every penny," Nov. 23). How dare "comrade Mossburg" criticize Google for providing a free e-mail service! Doesn't she know Google is the biggest Internet company in the world? The free market has spoken, and Google is clearly divinely sent by Jesus and Ronald Reagan to deliver us from the evils of the socialist Democrats and their godless, secret Muslim leader Barack Hussein Obama.

Last Thursday, someone hacked into one of my two Gmail accounts. He or she sent a message to my contacts saying that I had been mugged in London, lost my money and credit cards, and needed $1,850 to pay my hotel bill. It asked recipients to kindly respond quickly with money so that I did not miss my plane (amazingly, without misspellings). I was flooded with calls, texts and e-mails (on my other account) checking on my safety, an inadvertent upside to the hacking on an otherwise dreary day spent changing passwords on bank accounts and other sensitive items that might have been compromised should the crook have chosen to cull through the 3,000 plus e-mails in my inbox.

The forecast for the East Coast is windy with a chance of 6,000 megawatts — or enough electricity to power 1.9 million homes. That's what a $5 billion offshore transmission line proposal unveiled yesterday could make possible along the Atlantic Coast, and it's an exciting prospect for the nation's energy future. Atlantic Wind Connection, the planned 350-mile underwater line located 15 to 20 miles off the coast, would provide a connection for multiple offshore wind power projects including Delaware's proposed Bluewater Wind.

A Maryland company proposed Tuesday a $5 billion transmission network that would harvest electricity from wind farms along the Atlantic Seaboard — a project designed to increase green energy sources and improve the reliability of the region's taxed electricity grid. Chevy Chase-based Trans-Elect Development Co. has the backing of some well-known investors, including Google Inc., which will buy a 37.5 percent stake in the development stage of the Atlantic Wind Connection project.

Workers are mapping Baltimore's underground telecommunications network, an effort that could help the city lure a billion-dollar project offering ultra-high-speed Internet connections to residents and businesses. Baltimore is one 1,100 communities to apply for the Google Fiber pilot project. On its website, Google Fiber recommends that applicants have a conduit system in place to lay the fiber optic cables. Winners are expected to be announced later this year. City workers have begun a survey of the city's 3.9 million-foot-long underground conduit system "using state-of-the-art GIS mapping technology," according to a statement from the office of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

Dajuan Marshall's convictions Monday for murder and gang participation — the first under a 2007 state law — could be thrown out because of juror misconduct, his lawyer said Tuesday. Defense attorney Roland Walker plans to ask for a mistrial during a hearing Thursday in Baltimore Circuit Court. The proceeding was scheduled after a juror told the judge that at least one jury member had Googled Marshall's background during the trial. The woman also said members of the jury lost relatives to homicide, which was never properly disclosed during the selection process, according to Walker.