Google Maps has added post-Katrina satellite images of New Orleans which demonstrate pretty effectively why the Big Easy will be out of action for some time.

As well as the standard "map", "satellite" and "hybrid" views, you can now select "Katrina" to jump to a post-hurricane image. This is how New Orleans used to look:

And here's the same view after Katrina:

Zooming in, we can see the devastation close-up. This is a snap of Galvez Street Wharf (to the left) and the residential area opposite:

But if you add a natural disaster:

Impressive stuff, and somewhere in the middle of all that chaos is battling web hosting outfit directNIC, still hanging on in there despite the unwanted attention of the US military:

Sometime around midnight, a squad of 82nd Airborne guys accompanied by a US Marshall busted into our Data Center with their M4-A1s to investigate the lights and movement. Personally, I know they were just bored -- there's no way they honestly thought there was some kind of threat up here just yards away from several huge military and police presences....

That's the latest post this morning from the directNIC blog - proof, were it needed, that web hosting need not be the worthy yet ultimately humdrum career choice it is widely believed to be. ®