Google have just released Version 2 of their Google Maps Mobile, with the most obvious feature being the ability to locate the user even if they don’t have GPS - using the current Cell ID.
From the press release “[GPS technology] is supported on fewer than 15 percent of the mobile phones expected to be sold in 2007″
Go get it now, point your phone to google.com/gmm
http://dev.svenlatham.com/friendcal/
Finally, I’ve found a use for Facebook 
This little tool will take all your friends’ birthdays and create an iCal file from them. The resultant URL can then be put into your favourite calendar program (I use Google Calendar), so you can see all your friends’ birthdays in one place.
This is very basic at the moment and I can’t guarantee it’ll be up and running for long (but I’ll try). It’s also very hacky, so expect nasty errors if something goes wrong!
Please give it a go if you have a Facebook account, and let me know if it works.
After this, FOAF extraction….
Google Reader has officially escaped its test tube and gone into the big wild world. It’s taken nearly two and a half years to do that, but the teary-eyed announcement yesterday officially moved Google Reader from its ‘Labs project’ status into prime time. Many would argue it did that a long time ago with or without the label. The system is already reported to carry 10TB of data, crawls some 8 million documents and grows by 4% weekly.
With the announcement localised versions of Google Reader were introduced on their respective TLDs, including reader.google.fr and reader.google.co.jp. Let’s hope for many more enhancements to this already excellent application in the future.
While we’re on the Google Reader subject. On the ‘Goodies’ tab (click Settings in Google Reader) you can now add the ‘Next’ bookmark.
Every time you click the bookmark you are taken to the next unread item in your browser, in its original context. So, for example, if you subscribe to a bunch of blogs, you’ll be taken to the new posts within the blogs themselves. This is an alternative to the “traditional” reading of feeds in aggregators, and was one of the lame complaints about aggregators I originally cited to Scoble ;-P
It means you don’t even need to load Google Reader into your browser before reading articles, which definitely scores points on my aggregator checksheet for speediness. It also means you can see an up-to-date list of comments and -if they’re your thing- trackbacks. Of course, you do have the page loading times, DNS, etc. to add on.
It’s going to be a preference thing, and the best way I can explore it is to load it up and give it the test of a few days.
Further down on the Goodies page you also have the Subscribe bookmark, which lets you subscribe to the current page in Google reader (assuming it has a feed). Firefox, IE7 and Opera (I think/am sure) all do this now, but it’s always handy to have.
I have another post brewing about all of this [sighs of restlessness from the back seats] but it’s taking a few days to brew. You could always subscribe to this blog in the meantime 
Google’s new feed reader is neat. Very neat.
Okay, it’s not new any more, but in the few weeks it’s been out I’ve been able to give it a real test drive. After my unnecessarily long rant about life, the universe and feed readers back in July I decided to give Google another go.
My main requirements for a decent feed reader are straightforward but demanding:
These sound like any web-based aggregator would do, but I could never get on with Bloglines and other comparable web-apps. Google Reader hits the sweet spot, and I can highly recommend it.
I have further thoughts on the Reader. As soon as these fall out of my head I’ll be sure to post them.
One of the interesting things that’s naturally been pushed to the back of the headlines is that this announcement comes very shortly after Google have announced an agreement with SONY BMG and Warner Music, and YouTube announced similar agreements with Universal, SONY BMG and CBS.
That’s a lot of content suddenly available for GooTube. Definitely a grade up from your average Shakira spoof video.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/google_youtube.html
For £1.65bn in stock
“When
the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and
complementing Google’s own fast-growing video business.”
Thanks to Google Analytics (free web stats service) which I’ve been running on this blog for a few months now, I can tell that I have a particularly high concentration of readers in Slough. Hello.
Unfortunately, IP address geo-location still isn’t brilliant. But you can hardly blame them. For every dynamic IP block there might be users from across the country using that IP at different times, so you may as well just say ’somewhere in the UK’. Usually it seems that the geo people just use the ISP’s headquarters or dial-in POP as a reference.
Static and ’sticky’ IPs are more accurate, since you know the user of the IP is not likely to change location. These tend to be quite precise (I have a few from Fareham and Gosport). If you look at NTL reverse DNS entries, for example, you can normally narrow it down to the local POP (so all Fareham IPs are based in Portchester, which is basically Fareham anyway).
Google Analytics by the way is now available for all - you can sign up here.
Fantastic. Google Maps finally supports the wheel mouse for zoom. They’ve also tidied up zooming a little - it seems faster and more responsive. When you zoom in, the current map is animated to zoom whilst the new higher-res map is loaded.
From the API blog, you can see Madurodam, a miniature model of a Dutch city (one lucky visitor to my flat will be treated to a day out at Scheveningen, including this - I want to see it but I’m not going alone :-). Zoom out from the image and the scale becomes a bit clearer.
New version of Google Earth out, featuring a nicer interface, textured buildings and streaming third-party KML.
Sven Latham is an IT consultant, programmer, and entrepreneur. He enjoys photography, travelling and squash.
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