NIFarious Ideas: Google Cow

Unlike most major technology companies, Google is particularly known for pulling annual April Fool's days pranks as well as venturing into uncharted waters. This weeks NIFarious Idea, Google Cow, is no different.

Apparently a product in development in the Google Labs, Google Cow is an interactive, three-dimensional navigation environment to explore, you guessed it, bovine anatomy (shown below).



All joking aside, Google cow does provide an interesting example of how systems like this could work. I particularly appreciate the left-side slider that allows users to move back and forth including the skin, bones, organs and nervous system revealing and hiding different systems as you see fit. Additionally, users are able to pin particular organs (i.e. heart) and it will remain regardless of the level selected.

It is hard to say where Google is going with this, or any of their lab projects...and for that, we thank Google for thinking dangerously!

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NIFarious Ideas is a regular weekly column on the NIF Blog that appears every Friday. We seek to highlight the avant-garde, the dangerous, the progressive, the cutting edge in software tools, databasing, ontologies, searching, data collecting and distributing, and of course, neuroscience trends. Join us each Friday — Be NIFarious!