wallpaper design award: Most life-enhancing item goes to ...

... Google earth!
well, we all know that google earth is an amazing application and worth lots of awards. but yet it surprised me that wallpaper - defining itself as 'the style bible' - gave a design award to one of the most unstylish brands of this century. just because it is an amazing application.

they state on the winner's webpage:
"The earth is getting smaller. And so there is something so perfectly right about Google Earth, the rapid zoom from space to your own back yard and off again, sweeping across oceans and continents to land wherever you wish (security concerns allowing), to see streets and beaches and the places where other people live, work and play. Thrilling and disquieting in equal measure, there is an idealistic charge to the Google Earth project. "

google is very inventive, is it so inventive that apparently nobody cares that it looks crap. not even wallpaper cares. as a designer i must admit that the purity of google applications is appealing. i like the no-nonsense policy. but yet what would be wrong with asking a designer to pimp up their applications? keep it as simple and functional but just in a *nice* way.