Googled

We told you yesterday about a missile defense researcher outside the government using the free Google mapping software to create pretty sophisticated visualizations. But government workers themselves -- Navy folks, to be exact -- also are employing the software giant's technology.

On Monday, officials at the the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (NMOC) said they had entered a cooperative research agreement with Google that allows the two organizations to share unclassified data about the world's oceans.

Under the agreement, NMOC officials are making available bathymetric data sets, sea surface temperatures and ocean current information, which can now be viewed in the latest Google Earth application.

In return, Navy officials received Google Earth enterprise licenses, which gives them an easy-to-use way of visualizing their vast amount of data.