Google Health has launched, but it is not HIPAA-compliant. This is not encouraging.

However, Google may only use health information you provide as permitted by the Google Health Privacy Policy, your Sharing Authorization, and applicable law. Google is not a “covered entity” under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the regulations promulgated thereunder (”HIPAA”). As a result, HIPAA does not apply to the transmission of health information by Google to any third party.

I just pulled a bunch of tech mailing list messages out of my spam folder. If you’re using Gmail and you don’t check for ham, now might be a good time…

Virgin Atlantic and Google have teamed up to announce Project Virgle: the first permanent human settlement on Mars. They are now taking applications.

Want to help improve Google Image searching? Go tag pictures. You’re matched up with someone else, and if you agree on a tag, it’s placed on the image, and you get points. Points for the day and all-time points are tracked if you have a Google Account.

In the session I just went through, I was paired both with people who were fairly creative in describing what they saw, and those who had no clue whatsoever. The points I least liked losing were the ones for a screencap of a first-person shooter game: the other user got “first-person”, but had a different noun.

Mark@BoingBoing points us to this 40-minute documentary about Richard Feynman, one of my heroes since I read his biography, Surely You’re Joking, Mister Feynman. I haven’t heard anything yet that I didn’t read in SYJMF first, but it’s neat to actually hear him tell the stories.

BoingBoing reports that Carl Malamud, getting tired of inconsistent releases of webcasts from Congressional committee hearings, is starting to rip them himself and upload them to Google Video and the Internet Archive.

Scoble tells us that Google has announced Google Apps Premier Edition. They’re pricing it at $50/user/year, which sounds like a reasonable price for people like me, not just enterprises.

It’s free through the end of April, so get it while it’s hot!

Google recently unveiled one of their secret weapons: they plaster testing tips all over their offices, including in the bathrooms.

Google Earth has a layer that shows the Congressional districts in the US. If you click on one, you get voter information.

I was just digging deeper into the reports that Google Analytics gives me, and it tells me that 11 people who visited this week have shown up between 26 and 50 times. I’d have to guess I’m one of them, so I’d just like to say “hi” to the other 10 of you. :-)

Did any of you show up during the Melanie furor and stick around?

(Oh, and I’d like to say “Hi” to whomever that was who dropped in from Kenmore. :-) )