4:25 PM -- It's time for The Tubes to splash a new coat of paint on its Megamania jingle from the Atari 2600 era, and give us a reimagined version to pipe into our eardrums. Googlemania is here!

Today is the deadline for towns and cities to make their pitch to participate in Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s 1-Gig experiment, and, boy, did the drool flow.

The company revealed on its blog that it's already received more than 600 community responses to its request for information (RFI), along with 190,000 responses from individuals. (See Google's Gigabit Fiber Fantasy, Google's Pointy Stick , and Google Jumps Into Gigabit FTTH.)

Yes, the hype is firmly locked into overdrive. Even my unassuming town of Highlands Ranch, Colo., wants in on the action. I'll go ahead and say it now: We got no chance. But it made us look really cool for about 10 seconds. (See My Town Wants Google 1-Gig! )

Google's getting ready to enter the review process, whittle down its choices, and determine where it will make someone's 1-Gig dreams come true. "Based on a rigorous review of the data, we will announce our target community or communities by the end of the year," noted project manager James Kelly, reiterating that Google's plan is to connect at least 50,000 people to those speeds, and as many as 500,000.

And still no word of a theme song, which is why I mentioned The Tubes up top and why Google should consider enlisting the group (provided they're still kickin') to put a new 1-Gig twist on this little ditty:



You're welcome.

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable