Thanks Coca-Cola!

Some say that we can thank the Coca-Cola company for the way we imagine the modern day Santa Claus.

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Originally Santa Claus was dressed in furs or cloth suits of red, blue, green, or purple. Each country portrayed him in a different color. At the beginning of the 1930's, the burgeoning Coca-Cola company was looking for ways to increase sales of their product during winter, then a slow time of year for the soft drink market. They turned to a talented commercial illustrator named Haddon Sundblom, who created a series of memorable drawings that associated the figure of a larger than life, red-and-white grabed Santa Claus with Coca-Cola. These advertisements of Santas holding bottles of Coke became a perennial Christmastime feature which helped spur Coca-Cola sales. The success of this advertising campaign helped invent the image of the modern Santa Claus that is now accepted across the world.

Google Maps

This is pretty cool. Starting at 10 a.m. today, Internet users who click on the "Street View" box on Google Maps (maps.google.com), will be able to peek at images from streets in Boston and surrounding communities. The views were stiched together from images taken by Google employees over the past year from cars and vans equipped with cameras..
Oddly enough they even included Nahant, but not Lynn, Salem or any other North Shore community...
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Check it out, and maybe u will see yourself walking down one of the streets in Boston!