And you thought the U.S. had deserts!

As beautiful as the maps turned out, Minar created the project largely just as a tutorial on how to make a vector-based map. (His code and more background on the process are on GitHub.) “It’s mostly a demo project with readable source,” he writes on his blog, “but it’s also kind of pretty.”

This particular map includes all flow lines, which is why you see a lot more blue than you might expect in desert areas–it encompasses seasonal water flow, like creek beds that are dry for much of the year. Down in Florida, the Everglades don’t have well-defined enough flow lines, so the swampy preserve isn’t included, and the state looks mysteriously white in comparison to, say, New Mexico.

And here’s California and some of the surrounding area (look how all the squiggles converge on the California Delta near the San Francisco Bay over at the left):

You can see the full zoomable map and pinpoint precise waterways here.

[Gear Junkie]

Walmart, Staples and many other retailers jump on the Chromebook bandwagon

In a major shot in the arm for Google’s cloud OS ambitions, Walmart and Staples have agreed to carry laptops running Chrome OS. What’s more, they aren’t the only ones, as several other retailers around the U.S. and 10 other countries where Chromebooks are already available will also be part of this massive retail push.

Beginning with Walmart on Monday and Staples over the coming weekend, Chromebooks will now be available in “over 3 times more stores than before, or more than 6,600 stores around the world,” the search engine giant has announced. For good measure, select Office Depot, OfficeMax, Fry’s and TigerDirect outlets will also be jumping on the Chromebook bandwagon over the next few months.

Retail availability is also set to expand in the 10 other international markets where Chromebooks are currently sold. “In addition to Dixons in the UK, now 116 Tesco stores are selling Chromebooks, as well as all Mediamarket and Saturn stores in the Netherlands, FNAC stores in France and Elgiganten stores in Sweden,” David Shapiro, director of Chromebook marketing, wrote in a blog post Monday  “In Australia, all JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman stores will be carrying Chromebooks for their customers as well. We’re working hard to bring Chromebooks to even more countries later this year.”

While the increase in retail availability is definitely great news for Chrome OS, the platform has a long way to go before its market share statistics are respectable enough to warrant a mention.

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Just a couple of weeks after rebuilding its iPad app as a universal app, Shazam has released another update, this time adding a music discovery feature called Pulse, a new-look tab bar, and more.

Pulse allows users on both iPad and iPhone to see and sample music that is being tagged the most by Shazam users in real time. Other improvements include the ability to easily delete Favorite tags from the iPad edition and a new tab bar with more information.

New look tab bar:

-Settings is now located on the top left of the home screen

-When a Friend tags, they appear in the tab bar

-Chart updates are displayed in the tab bar

Shazam is a universal app that is available in the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Shazam users that want an ad-free experience can upgrade from within Shazam or can download Shazam Encore for $6.99. [Direct Link]

Following the launch of the Jony Ive-led streamlining of the iOS user interface, the designer himself has seen his job title receive a redesign as well. Ive is now the Senior Vice President of Design at Apple; previously, he was SVP of Industrial Design.

Jony Ive’s Biography Page from Apple.com (Old: Left)
Ive received a promotion of sorts back in October when he was put in charge of Human Interface teams — software design — in addition to his previous duties as head of Industrial design (via 9to5Mac).

In Apple’s ongoing antitrust case with the Department of Justice, Apple’s SVP of internet software and services Eddy Cue once again took the stand today, where he revealed several small tidbits about Steve Jobs and the launch of iBooks.

According to AllThingsD, Cue told the court that Jobs was highly involved in the creation of Apple’s iBookstore, coming up with several of the features found in the app.

- The “page curls” in the iBook app, which show up when you flip an iBook’s page? That’s Steve Jobs’s idea.

– It was Jobs’s idea to pick “”Winnie-the-Pooh” as the freebie book that came with every iBook app. Not just because Jobs liked the book, Cue said, but because it showed off iBook’s capabilities: “It had beautiful color drawings, that had never been seen before in a digital book.”

– Jobs was also specific about the book he used to show off the iBook during his initial iPad demo in January 2010. He picked Ted Kennedy’s “True Compass” memoir, because the Kennedy family “meant a lot to him,” Cue said.

Over the course of the trial, the Department of Justice has argued that Apple colluded with book publishers to drive up the cost of e-books while Apple maintains its innocence. The DOJ has seen several weak links in its case over the course of the last week, after Apple refuted a partially composed email and a DOJ-called Google exec offered questionable testimony. Closing arguments for the trial are set for Thursday.