Today is a day for reflection. Twelve years ago, the world changed in an instant when a cabal of terrorists murdered thousands of Americans, and destroyed the World Trade Center towers. In the decade since that fateful Tuesday, we’ve seen both the good and the bad sides of what humans are capable of accomplishing – two devastating wars and an invasive surveillance state, on one hand; on the other, a blossoming of technical innovations. Smartphones, tablets, apps, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other parts of a flourishing Web with features that would make the 2001 us drop our jaws.
Among these Web innovations is Google Street View, which remains an impressive endeavor six years after its launch – a reminder that the 21st century is still amazing, in spite of all the other insanity that’s going on around us. Which is why it seems appropriate to take a minute and use Street View to explore the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero from wherever in the world you are.
Google added the 9/11 Memorial to Street View back in May. Thanks to the company’s nifty backpack panoramic camera system, you can check out both the North and South pools of the Memorial, where you can browse the names of the victims who died in the September 11 attacks on New York City.
And if you look up, you can see the new 1 World Trade Center (which is now nearing completion – the Street View images are outdated at this point), which for this New Yorker stands as a symbol of where we’ve been and where we’re headed.
Image courtesy Google Street View
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?
Instagram is testing a new format for long-form videos called Features. It allows select creators to upload horizontal videos running up to 90 minutes long. Instagram has already tested the new format with creators in Brazil, and now, it's expanding to tens of thousands of creators across the US.
How will Instagram's new Features format work?