Watching the Watchers #
Last night, Google released an update to its Street View system to include new locations across the UK, Netherlands and other European countries.
My home city, Portsmouth, is not on there yet but Southampton is so, clicking through my old university stomping ground I came across this little treat:
First shot: The Google Car may or may not have gone through the first red lights. Who knows... the lights ahead are already on amber.
Second shot: Lights are still on amber. Technically you should be preparing to stop ;-)
Third shot: They're red. Is the driver still going? Watch the two cars in front - a white one and a dark blue one. Also, note the two schoolkids walking under the tunnel.
Fourth shot: The two cars ahead are further away - either they sped up or the driver is slowing down... maybe he stopped after all? Note the two kids are closer too, so it's a continuous set of frames
Fifth shot: The two cars are well away now, already around the left-hand bend. There's no reason to believe from this particular shot that it's a few seconds after the last - the driver might've waited for a green and gone a bit later, right? Well, take a look for yourself at the car behind the driver, and the two schoolkids will still be there. In the distance, cars are starting to come towards our fearless driver...
Final shot: there are more schoolkids running under the bridge, and the oncoming cars are now having to wait for our Google Driver to get out of the way!
Conclusion: well, none really. This is a pointless, but mildly satisfying discovery. Enjoy.
Google Earth 5.0 #
Google's 3D world viewer, Google Earth has been updated to version 5.
The headline feature is the ability to view historic satellite photos, as in this picture of Cherque Farm housing estate, near Lee on Solent, Hampshire, UK.
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[caption id="attachment_720" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Housing estate nr. Lee on Solent, Hampshire UK"]
[/caption]
In the series of photos, ranging from 1999 (left) to 2007 you can clearly see the construction of the estate over time.
A303 Diversion #
Apparantly the big news in the Westcountry is that the A303 is to be closed some time early next year, with a 40 mile diversion. The BBC has more details and the Highways Agency press release is also available.
I wondered why neither the HA nor any of the press articles I'd seen bothered publishing a map. While they're happy to describe an elaborate route in text, it took me less than five minutes to knock this up.
The visual view is - I think - much more explanatory than any text, and it adds instant impact to the article.
Google Gears + iamnear.net Demo #
Finally, I'm back into doing something that I love - fiddling with new ideas.
Today, Google released Google Gears 0.4 with geolocation. For those of you not yet aware of Google Gears, it's an attempt by the big G to enhance the client-side with a variety of rich add-ons, such as local databases, offline services and smoother integration with the host OS.
Gears is also available for Windows Mobile devices and, with the addition of geolocation, adds some exciting spice to the mobile platform.
Previously I've made aborted attempts to use a combination of Navizon (a mobile tracking service), Fire Eagle (Yahoo!'s location "platform") and iamnear.net (Tom Taylor's very handy directory of POIs). It works to a point, but is a hopelessly elongated way of serving geo-aware content from a web browser.
With Gears 0.4 it's now possible for the browser to interrogate directly the user's location, through a combination of cell IDs and GPS (where available). The natural conclusion is to slap this tool onto the front of something like iamnear.net, et voila, you have a location-aware website puling information directly from the client.
Without further ado, check out my painfully basic demo - you'll need Windows Mobile 5/6 and Google Gears (if it is not detected, it'll prompt you to install).
As a bonus, the site will also work on your desktop, but I'm presuming that'd only be available with a GPS dongle of some kind?
I'd love to spice it up a bit - actually without presuming too much I'm fairly sure this is a natural upgrade to iamnear.net and other sites... if you have any thoughts feel free to post below ;-)
Google Reader Strangeness #
Google Reader always was a little odd with its unread posts count - sometimes not updating its post count until I "did" something in Reader (e.g. refresh), but more recently over the last couple of days it's been quite a way out. Is anybody else experiencing this?
All the refreshing in the world won't clear those 3 "new" items, but a couple of minutes later (since starting this post) it's all back to zero again.
Google Maps Terrain View - Now with Contours #
This looks like a new addition. Google Maps' Terrain View now has contour lines so you can see with better clarity which hills are steep and what the elevation is likely to be.
View Larger Map
Google Oversight #
Google's new OpenSocial.org website is the front for the OpenSocial Foundation, an attempt to gather support for open development of OpenSocial-y issues such as data ownership and APIs.
Naturally, being the omnipotent creature that Google is, they've used their own Spreadsheet and newly-added survey feature to gather supporters (myself included).
Unfortunately, while the email address is hidden, it's not gone completely. View the source of this page - a HTML output of the spreadsheet which appears on OpenSocial.org and behold: a listing of every email address submitted.
Work, Rest and Play #
Fiddling with Google Spreadsheets, and came up with this estimation of what my life will look like (umm, certain estimates included...)
Google Charts (API) #
New API from Google allows you to create PNG charts from your data - very nice [via Google Operating System]
Google Maps Mobile v2 - using Cell ID #
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
Facebook Friends' Birthday Thingymajig #
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 comes out of Labs #
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.
Google Reader Next Button #
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 Reader #
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:
- It's got to be FAST. And I mean fast. This thing is going to be used several times a day, every day. Any delay/slowness is a negative and will be noticed! Google's reader is quick, responsive and elegantly handles large numbers of feeds. We're assuming here that I already have a browser open (which I do, nearly always). Even better - because the application is always running (when you think about it...) it already has my unread items ready before I've even opened it. Compare this to desktop readers, where you have to wait.
- The less clicks the better. So showing all unread feeds in a single view is a plus. I just scroll down with Google (you can also use keyboard shortcuts).
- It needs to be reliable. No complaints here yet.
I have further thoughts on the Reader. As soon as these fall out of my head I'll be sure to post them.
Google + Youtube #
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.
technorati tags:google, youtube
Google Buys YouTube #
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."
technorati tags:google, youtube
Hello Slough #
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.
technorati tags:google, webstats, stats, geoip
Google Maps updates Zoom code; higher res images #
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.
Google Earth 4 #
New version of Google Earth out, featuring a nicer interface, textured buildings and streaming third-party KML.
Link Catchup #
Right, I haven't posted anything particularly interesting lately, so here's a bit of a catch-up:
- Google Spreadsheets is released, albeit to a limited group - looks like an interesting AJAX app. Bit on the thin side by the looks of things, but then how many people use Excel for anything more complicated than accounts or modelling?
- Portsmouth is set to become the first city in the UK to implement a city-wide 20mph speed limit.
- Windows Vista Beta 2 is now generally available - although it looks like their servers are swamped!
- The Tories could be offering spaces to bloggers at their annual conferences (nothing new - see also 2004 US Elections, but still something to keep track of)
- For those of you that are interested, the Blogtalk conference this year is Oct 2-3 at Vienna in Austria. I went a couple of years ago - it was a great conference and the city is gorgeous! Still in two minds about this year though.
- In other news I have just returned from a canal holiday. Photos soon!