Speaking of Google, New Orleans might have an opportunity to participate in a trial of the search provider’s/Internet overlord’s anticipated high-speed fiber-optic broadband Internet connection. Google has ambitions of speeds of 1Gb per second in open-access networks, and if city officials and community members tell ‘em to bring it here, they just might. Check out the video (and Googleman’s awesome voice):

From Google:

We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We’ll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000, and potentially up to 500,000 people.

As a first step, we’re putting out a Request for Information (RFI) to help identify interested communities. We welcome responses from local government, as well as members of the public.

Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better, and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:

Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine.

New deployment techniques: We’ll test new ways to build fiber networks; to help inform, and support deployments elsewhere, we’ll share key lessons learned with the world.

Openness and choice: We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory, and transparent way.

Local governments and ordinary folks can submit nominations for their communities for the trial. There’s also a Facebook group. The deadline for nominations is 4 p.m. (central) March 26, and Google will announce the Chosen Ones later this year.

With the help of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Google Maps now offers biking directions on its maps. The mapping and directions functions follow the same process one would enter for walking or driving — but now users can choose biking from the drop-down menu and get the best or suggested routes.

The directions feature provides step-by-step, bike-specific routing suggestions — similar to the directions provided by our driving, walking, or public transit modes. Simply enter a start point and destination and select “Bicycling” from the drop-down menu. You will receive a route that is optimized for cycling, taking advantage of bike trails, bike lanes, and bike-friendly streets and avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible. Just like Google pioneered with driving directions, you can click-and-drag your route to customize it as you’d like. You can also access the other features in Google Maps, such as Street View, so you can tell exactly where you might need to turn on your route or preview how wide a bike lane is, and Local Search, so you know where you can take a water break or where the bike shops are along your route. Biking directions provides time estimates for routes based on an algorithm that takes into account the length of the route, the number of hills, fatigue over time, and other variables.

The new bicycling layer for Google Maps, accessible via the “More…” drop down menu at the top of the map, will display an overlay of the various bike-friendly roads and trails around town. The layer is color-coded to show three different types of paths:
- Dark green indicates a trail;
- Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
- Dotted green indicates roads without bike lanes but are more appropriate for biking, based on factors such as terrain, traffic, and intersections.

The RTC, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit working to transform abandoned rail lines into community-accessible biking and walking trails, has offered Google use of its 1,600 rail-trails, with information for more than 12,000 miles of trails. The group visited New Orleans last month to workshop the Lafitte Greenway, a three-mile linear greenspace linking Treme to Lakeview.

The only color-coded layers available to the New Orleans maps are the established trails in Audubon Park and along the River Road levee. You can, however, still get a pretty decent suggested route. For example, here’s the suggested route from Gambit to the French Quarter.

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found 33% of smartphone owners now read news on their cellphones — a number that’s bound to rise as more people adopt smartphones and more news orgs develop specialized apps to meet the need.

Leading the media market in New Orleans, smartphone app-wise, are WWL-TV and Fox 8 News, which are now offering free, ad-supported iPhone applications featuring current news content.

Which one is better? It depends. WWL’s is easier to navigate and seems more intuitive; Fox 8’s is a bit more stylish and customizable, and the font size and layout of the stories are definitely easier on the eyes. What may break the tie is WWL’s video offerings — you can watch selected stories or a weather forecast on the go over a basic Internet connection; Fox 8’s app doesn’t have that function.

The good news is: both apps are pretty good for keeping up with New Orleans news, and they’re both free from the iTunes Music Store. Why not try them both? Here’s a couple of screenshots for comparison, with more below the jump:

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Google is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’ll get. David Simon’s “Treme” trailer after the jump.

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Your day job is safe - unless you collect balls tossed into a miniature hockey rink for a living.

Those curious about robot sports and the engineering prospects of area high schoolers may want to catch the competition at the Alario Center this weekend. NASA staff from the John C. Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis provide mentors, coaches and referees to teams from 36 schools in Louisiana and Mississippi. Local competitors include New Orleans Charter Science and Mathematics High School, Lusher Charter School, McMain Secondary High School, Sarah T. Reed High School, John Ehret High School in Marrero, Mandeville High School and St. Paul’s High School in Covington.

This year’s competition is more like a soccer game involving teamwork. We’re not sure if the robots have become self-aware and learned how to take a dive yet, but keep a sharp eye on them. The finals of the Bayou Regional are Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

Watch highlights from last year’s regional set to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” after the jump. Or highlights set to Cascada’s “Every Time We Touch.” Your call.

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If the myriad forums and our rather extensive coverage for this year’s local elections still leave you yearning for more information about the candidates, you can get all of the facts about the mayoral and city council races on your iPhone. PolicyPitch.com creator and Gambit 40 Under 40 alum Zach Kupperman (along with Neel Sus) launched Election Hub, a free iPhone application that provides candidate biographies, news, platforms and financial information, at the beginning of the year.

The below video shows how it works. Among the excuses for not voting this year — inability to vote due to age or other factors, coma or paralysis due to extreme Super Bowl anticipation — being uninformed is certainly not one of them.

Questionland is a new place for Gambit readers to ask questions, get answers, and share your infinite knowledge with the New Orleans community.

Where is the best place to go for a birthday dinner?

Where would you take a crazy friend coming to town?

Where is the best place to watch the Superbowl besides Miami?

Gambit has our answers- but now we want to hear yours!

Coming soon: Prizes for the best questions, and the “know-it-all” who answer the most in a time period.

So ASK. ANSWER. And feel free to let your curiosity carry you away.

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I’m not sure what it is about perfectly excellent journalists producing questionable online videos, but NOLA.com seems like a breeding ground for it. Last week (and many before that, actually), it was the otherwise-commendable David Hammer’s Madden 10 highlights gracing the front page, and now we have Doug MacCash presenting us with Bill Harris a.k.a. “The Unknown Who Dat.“

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The video, which runs just under two minutes, shows Harris arriving…well, somewhere. Close inspection reveals that it’s Louis Armstrong airport, but the viewer not informed of this, nor why he or she should care that Harris is arriving. He shouts and people take pictures and he screams about the Saints and “waiting 43 years” for this and when it’s all over we know nothing more than the name of a loud, incoherent Saints fan. Somehow, the news hook is lost on me.

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A news hook, for the uninitiated, is what makes a story compelling or worthy for publication. I first learned of this concept on, and this is no joke, the Nickelodeon program “Nick News W5“. It simplified what all news should contain: a who, what, where, why, and when. Anyone who reads MacCash’s pieces in the Times-Picayune can tell he has a mastery for answering those five basic questions in every story, many times in compelling ways. “The Unknown Who Dat”, though, leaves many questions unanswered.

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Aside from his name, what do we know about him? Who is he? A Saints fan. OK, what makes him unique? He wears Saints apparel and waves a Saints blanket? Where is he coming? Where is he going now that he’s here? When did he get here? When did he first leave? Most importantly: Who the hell cares?

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Perhaps these are all to be answered by a companion article in Saturday morning’s paper. That’d be a clever device, though there’s no mention of that anywhere. The only apparent companion article is the one that runs to the left of the video on NOLA.com’s front page. The one about the old Miami Dolphins players not minding if the Colts or Saints have a perfect season (NOTE: Before I finished this post, the new lead article was this one about NFL Network and WGNO having extended pre-game broadcasts. No mention of the “Unknown Who Dat”). The one that has nothing to do with “The Unknown Who Dat” other than NOLA.com decided to run a picture of the man next to an article he has nothing to do with.

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Truly astounding journalism.

At the request of Liz Reyes from the John Georges campaign — who never saw the now-infamous “Mitch The Mayor” video — we’re reposting it here as a news item.

Edit: Liz called tonight to make it clear she didn’t request the video be reposted just so she could see it, and we apologize for saying otherwise.

Seen this? It’s a Web site called Mitch The Mayor (not to be confused with Mitch Landrieu’s actual Web site, Mitch for Mayor). The confusion doesn’t stop at the name, either.

Landrieu’s Web site:

Fake Landrieu Web site:

The parody Web site has a front-page message from “Mitch” to former candidate Leslie Jacobs, who withdrew from the race last night:

I’m sorry that I lied to all of you initially about this campaign. Especially you Leslie as I know that the only reason you decided to run for office was because I told you I wasn’t gonna. Thanks for warming up the crowd all the same and best wishes.

The fake-Mitch page also includes a “remix” of Landrieu’s actual You Tube announcement video, along with links to a fake-Mitch-Twitter account with messages like “If New Orleans had its own Vatican, I’d be running for pope. But I will settle for being your mayor” and “Thinking about ways to decorate my new office in city hall!”

The contact info at the bottom of the fake-Mitch page leads to yet another domain, www.perryforchange.com, which doesn’t have a Web site associated with it. (Email sent to the contact link on the page is returned as undeliverable.) Alex Morgan, James Perry’s campaign manager, vociferously denies the Perry campaign has anything to do with “Mitch the Mayor.”

“It is definitely not us,” Morgan said this morning, “and we’re in the process of finding out who it is so we can file a cease-and-desist order for using our name. Moreover, we have put in a request to YouTube to pull down the fake video.”

Mud is nothing new in New Orleans mayoral campaigns, but it usually takes the form of whisper campaigns and anonymous flyers. This seems to be the 21st-century equivalent. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of chatter in political circles about the person and/or campaign behind this, and from the calls we’ve already gotten, it seems the parodist will be unmasked soon.