It’s no real surprise, although a little disappointing, the new Google Maps feature only covers the USA and the bits of Canada they could squeeze on the page. If you scroll east, for example, in order to locate the rest of the world, you just get lots and lots of blue.

I know the Atlantic is big, but it’s not that big.

Now, I know there’ll be lots of terribly valid arguments about why this is so, but I still think there’s a fundamental mental block regarding the rest of the world from a lot of American companies and developers. Ok, yada yada stating the obvious. And yada yada Google search localisation. Ok, so I can use Google in Welsh. That’s nice. But why can’t I set the time in Gmail to GMT? Why must all my emails be stamped PST? [UPDATE: Problem explained if not solved.] And why isn’t there at the very least a note on Google Maps to say that they know the rest of the world exists, they just haven’t quite got round to adding the data in yet?

So much for the internet being a global village.