We've received several reports over the last few months that the search feature on our journal was pretty awful. In response, I've just implemented a new google-based search. The results aren't pretty-looking yet, but they are a lot more relevant.

I've also updated our photo viewer to a new format which shows an even larger image when you click on a picture in our journal. For people interested in seeing full size originals, a link back to flickr is prominently available near the image title. You can give it a shot by clicking the image below. Thanks must go to Jack Moore over at colorpowered.com for writing such a great jQuery plugin!

Also new, though a few weeks old, is a google maps integration for our journal entries. You can now see where a post was written, as well as the route we took to get there by clicking on Show Map and Statistics near the entry title. Eventually I'll get the statistics for each day under the map (distance traveled, amount spent, etc.) as well as an elevation profile graph.

Coming soon: country-by-country "table of contents" pages and a new gallery viewer for our main website that doesn't use flash (and shows larger images!) for those people who just want to look at pictures.

That's all for now!