Bytes · Google brain drain - little green hikers - 1 in 3 say resist ID

• Revenue and Customs has set up a podcast service. One of the first is aimed at helping employers to file their end of year returns. It leads them through the process step by step, telling them what options are available and providing advice on other sources of information.
  
  
• Google is suffering a brain-drain. Hundreds of the 2,300 Googlers hired before the Internet juggernaut's initial public offering in August 2004 are hitting their fourth anniversary. When they do, they'll be free to cash in the final portions of their pre-IPO options, collectively worth an estimated $2.6 billion before taxes.
  
  Stacy Savides Sullivan, Google's chief culture officer and a 43-year-old pre-IPO millionaire herself. "We anticipated more because we think it would only be natural. We worry every day about this and hope we can stay ahead of it."

• On A List Apart, Martin Kliehm looks at the potential of Accessible Web 2.0 Applications with WAI-ARIA.
  

• Directgov is now producing a 3G version with
  

  ' live travel information; quick guides to learning, money, homes and property; and the latest public announcements including terror alerts and severe weather warnings'.

  Doesn't this sound just like the BBC?
  
  
• Trimble Outdoors has partnered with Google to provide Google Earth viewers with GPS-based interactive hiking information.
  
  The Trimble Outdoors Trips layer is found in the Featured Content selection in Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/). The layer has premium GPS-enabled multimedia content (routes, waypoints, text/audio/video notes) from trips contributed by editors of the BACKPACKER, BICYCLING and Mountain Bike magazines, as well as trips shared by Trimble Outdoors users.
  
  To view the layer:
  
  * Start Google Earth
  * Go to "Layers" in the Sidebar on the left
  * Expand the "Featured Content" folder under "Primary Database"
  * Click the "Trimble Outdoors Trips" checkbox
  * In the main window, pan and zoom into the area of interest to you until you see red lines and dots indicating Trimble Outdoors trips
  * Continue to zoom in until you see little "Green Hikers":
  
  Depending on the zoom level and context, clicking a Green Hiker will open a popup window with detailed information about a trip or its element, for example a photo.
  
  
• Google has launched Checkout in the UK. Merchants get free credit and debit card processing.
  
  
• A programme to kick-start the use of internet communications in space has been announced by the US government. — The Department of Defense's Iris project will put an internet router in space by the start of 2009.
  
  

• OutLaw reports that one in three people say they will resist identity checks using the new ID Card.
  
  In 2004 Mark Oaten, the then Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs, asked for figures to be published on the assumptions being made by Government about ID cards' use.
  
  The Government refused.
  
  Oaten's request was backed by the Information Commissioner and an Information Tribunal and the figures have now been released.
  
  · NO2ID:stop ID cards and the database state