Google Earth Is Just Plain Tasty

Google's at it again, taking the uber-cool satellite technology they ported over to Google Maps and putting it into a desktop application. And the consumer version of the tool is free. Now, it's purely eye candy (or a good tool to check out the house your boss lives in) but it's still amazing nonetheless.

Google Earth is the manifestation of Google's purchase of Keyhole in 2004. If you remember, Google bought this satellite imaging and database company, which sold several "flavors" of software to enable consumers and businesses to map out information using almost-real-time imagery.

Google Earth has a free version (that is just fine for personal use) as well as Plus and Pro versions that cost $20 and $400, respectively. They also have enterprise versions that probably cost tens of thousands of dollars for companies (like retailers) who use the data to scout out traffic patterns, neighborhoods and potential store locations.

Try it out. It's totally cool. For fun, check out the White House (1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower and more. This page tells you how to tour these pretty places.

And sorry Mac fans, it's only for PCs right now. No love for you.

-aB

Great Book

Everything Bad Is Good For You is a good book. It takes the premise that video games and today's multimedia culture are harmful and turns it on its end.

While I agree that violence and sex in the prime-time TV window and in video games targeted towards kids is out of control, I do believe that author Steven Johnson has a point here. The book describes how video games do more than just spur hand-eye coordination. Their multi-level plots, problem solving puzzles and deduction-thinking are certainly better for kids than watching a rerun of The A Team on Spike TV.

The book also goes into detail on how today's television programing is so different than that of a dozen or two years ago (and I'm not talking about violence and sex). Today's television shows include intriciate, multi-threaded plot scripts that are non-linear. Today's shows require you to assume a lot and sometimes include heavy amounts of content that you must choose NOT to understand (like the medical jargon in ER or the abbreviations and political references in The West Wing). Multi-level plots in prime time all started with Hill Street Blues in the early eighties, and today's shows like The West Wing or The Sopranos can have as many as 12-15 different plot lines working in parallel, weaving in and out and sometimes converging at several points.

And programs like The Simpsons and Seinfeld have plot elements that not only carry on from show to show, but sometimes from season to season. Seinfeld references like those to Art Vandalay (one of the examples from the book) can carry over six seasons, with 2-3 season delays between mentions.

While I don't agree with everything in this book, it is a very interesting read and definitely something that anyone on multimedia should pick up. I only wish there was a bit more to it - $24 is a lot for a small 250 page book.

-aB

Five Day Forecast, But We're Not Talking Weather

A television station in Sacramento is going to begin broadcasting five-day TRAFFIC forecasts today, according to this story on NewScientist.com.

Here's a snippet:

A traffic forecasting system capable of predicting traffic conditions seven days in advance will go live to the public in California on Wednesday.

Alongside the weather forecast, viewers of KXTV News 10 in Sacramento can now get 3D animations of their local road network, showing not only where the gridlock is but also where it is likely to be.

The system, called Beat-the-Traffic, is the first public traffic forecasting system that combines real-time traffic density and speed with historical trends on major routes.

It looks as though the system is from a company called BeatTheTraffic.com, who combines traffic sensor data (from the DOT) with their own predictive systems, based on season, previous traffic issues, sports events, etc.

This is totally cool. What I am waiting for is the convergence of this info on in-car screens. With so many cars now having GPS screens (as well as DVD monitors), how hard is it to display traffic info? I know the Acura RL has a traffic system on-screen in it's new car, can we expect to see this provided by others?

-aB

Sprint's New Logo

Via Gizmodo, here's a look at Sprint's new logo, updated from the red & white after their merger with NEXTEL.

I like the little logo and the typeface of the wordmark, but the logo is pretty blah. It really doesn't say too much about the company. It could be a logo for a software company, an airline or just about anything.



I think Cingular did a good job with their logo after the merger with AT&T. (Disclosure - I worked on the merger and on the Cingular brand launch.) They decided, correctly that the Cingular "Jack" (and they hate when you call it that) had more positive equity and personality than the AT&T globe. They simply changed the Cingular wordmark from it's Cingular orange color to AT&T Wireless blue.

I'll wait and see if the new Sprint logo grows on me...

-aB

DSL or Cable Modem?

VHS vs. Beta. GM vs. Ford. Pepsi vs. Coke. GSM vs. CDMA/TDMA. Cubs vs. White Sox. Yankees vs. Mets.

Our world is full of choices. We try to make the right one.

Right now, for me, the choice is DSL or Cable Modem at my house. As some of you know, I have recently moved from Atlanta to Pittsburgh, and even after being here a week I still have not hooked up the Internet access at home. (Shame.)

I have two welcome kits sitting on the kitchen counter. One from Verizon for DSL, one from Comcast for a cable modem.

Both sets of hardware were free. Both service plans are $40/month (with six months @ $20).

Now, I've had DSL for a number of years in Atlanta. No problems - probably only a half dozen failures in five years. I was getting 800k-1.2mb/s on my DSL at home.

I've never had an experience with cable modems. The guy who came out to install our cable said that the drop to my house had the capacity for 6mb/s, but that obviously that would slow down as other people on the street logged in, too. He said that they would generally guarantee 1.5 mb/s, which is faster than DSL.

So cable modems seem to win the speed issue. Then there is the issue of dealing with the cable company or dealing with the phone company when there are issues. Nothing like having two crappy choices to pick from.

Well, I'm going to research today and over the weekend and install at least one of them. I think it's honestly going to come down to where I put my desk in the office - close to the cable jack or closer to a phone jack.

-aB

Gump's Moved North

Where's Gump Been? We've misssed his thoughts and rants on gadgets, computers, Tiger and marketing.

Gump's been busy, moving north of the Mason Dixon line for the first time in my life. Over the past two weeks, I've sucessfully moved from Atlanta, which has been my home for the past eleven years to Pittsburgh, my new home.

So, goodbye Braves, grits and sweet tea. Hello Steelers, snow and Pepsi products.

I'm looking forward to writing here in Gump Rants about my move and the transition. So far, so good. The people in Pittsburgh are very nice and so far the weather has been incredible - absolutely incredible. (I do realize that it will change come November.)

So, until I get my DSL hooked up at home, expect more sporadic posts to the blog here. Which brings up a question - Cable Modem or DSL? I have welcome kits for both, now I have to decide which one to go with. That sounds like a topic for tomorrow.

-aB

Court Reporter Steno Machines...

Via Gizmodo, I've always wondered how those things the court reporters type on work. You would think that with all of the technology today, they would have found a way to update these things, but I guess if it ain't broke then don't fix it.

This Slate story talks about how the Stenotype machine works. Interesting. Snippet:

It's called a stenotype machine, and it's also used for captioning television broadcasts and general office stenography. The stenotype works a bit like a portable word processor, but with a modified, 22-button keyboard in place of the standard qwerty setup. Modern stenotypes have two rows of consonants across the middle, underneath a long "number bar." Set in front of these are four vowel keys: "A," "O," "E," and "U."

Now, the other thing I want to know is how surveying equipment works. Those little telescopes, the reflectors on sticks... Can't you do all of this with GPS now?

Enjoy.

-aB

PS3 + George Forman Equals...

Very funny.

Go to www.ps3grill.com.

-aB

Sony PS3 Officially Announced

This CNN story does a decent job of showcasing the new PlayStation, due out next spring. I've written here in this post about the Cell processor it will utilize, but this story goes into a bit more detail on the entire package.

Key Points:

• 35 times the power of the PS2


• More powerful than the current PS2, XBOX and GameCube combined


• Utilizes Blu-Ray disks


• Wireless bluetooth controllers - capacity to handle seven simultaneous controllers/players standard


• Ability to output two different signals to two different TVs (standard or high-def)


• Console will be initially available in silver, black and white


• Supports 1080p high definition format


• Supports interaction with the PSP handheld via wireless


• Supports Sony's Memory Stick Duo format as well as SD and CF cards

Pretty neat stuff. I was expecting it to look a bit cooler than the pictures show. Not necessarily disappointed, but not quite the "wow" I was anticipating.

But the specs do wow me.

-aB

Internet Explorer Falling Further Behind, In Several Ways

The gang at IBM dealt a blow to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser today, announcing that they were making the FireFox browser available to their 300,000 employees. Snippet from Information Week:

Microsoft's Internet Explorer continues lose market share as more consumers and businesses adopt alternative Web browsers. Rival IBM on Friday became the latest company to embrace Mozilla's Firefox browser, making it available to 300,000 employees.

"IBM recognizes a bandwagon when it sees one," says Andy Jaquith, an analyst at the Yankee Group. "Besides, it's migrating its whole operation to Linux."

Firefox clearly has momentum. It has been downloaded more than 50 million times, and members of the open-source Mozilla project have provided funds for advertising to promote the browser. Firefox has features that aren't available in Internet Explorer. And some experts think it's more secure than IE, reason enough for businesses to consider it as an alternative browser.

CNN noted a few days ago that IE market share had dropped to less than 90% for the very first time. Information Week gave Firefox about 8% market share, and interestingly Apple's Safari browser 3% of the market (or virtually all Mac users out there).

This Information Week story announces that the new IE 7 will include tabs, a feature that Safari has had for years and a big differentiator for Firefox. Microsoft IE product manager Dean Hachamovitch realizes the mistake to wait so long for tabs as he explains, "I think we made the wrong decision here [not including tabs] initially, and we're making the right one now."

Sounds like the new IE 7 won't be in beta until this summer. I'd thought that they were shooting for a lot earlier than that. Another big feature in IE 7 that many are waiting for is the built-in RSS reader. I bet that it's going to get a lot worse for Internet Explorer before it gets better. Plagued with security flaws, slower speed and fewer features, Firefox is the best choice on a PC. Safari's still my favorite overall browser, especially the one built into OS X Tiger.

-aB

Finally An iPod FM Transmitter That Doesn't Suck

I am not a big fan of the iTrip, or pretty much any of the current stable of FM transmitters for the iPod. Their signal is just too weak. And unfortunately, I have to use a transmitter in my BMW to be able to listen to my iPod. (In my Infiniti, I have a cassette player, so I can use that adapter, but my BMW is the model year before they added the iPod functionality discussed at iPodYourBMW.com).

Well, I have finally found something that works. It's the Monster iCarPlay Wireless Plus. It works.

It's not wireless like the iTrip, but it more than makes up for that with the quality. You plug it into the cigarette lighter plug, and it broadcasts a pretty strong signal on any FM frequency you want. Plus, it charges your iPod while it works (and it's a smart charge to prevent overcharging the iPod battery).

Another good thing is that it pulls the audio signal from the dock connector, rather than the top earphone jack, so it's a clean "line audio" signal. Nice.

It costs $80, so it isn't cheap. But it's definitely the most powerful of the transmitters I've tried. I put it on the same frequency as Star 94-FM here in Atlanta, and it blew that Star 94 (and it's great mix of today's top hits!) way back to Jessica Simpson-ville. And if that's all it did, it would be worth the $80 price alone.

-aB

Is Music Industry's DualDisc Too Late?

Bought my first DualDisc music CD tonight. It's Dave Matthew's new "Stand Up." Good album.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the DualDisc format, it's a regular CD on one side, and a DVD on the other. One disc - just two different sides sandwiched together. This means that there is no writing on either side - the name of the album is written on the plastic center of the disc.

It's a great idea and captures a lot of the points that I brought up in this post way back in July 2004. It was a rant to the RIAA and the music industry that they needed to do something to convince people to purchase albums again (as compared to stealing/pirating them or legally purchasing music online).

I commented about what the dance/electronica music genre was doing - with cool packaging for their CDs, bonus CDs and sometimes even DVDs included with the album.

Read my old post here if you want to see what I said.

Well, DualDisc does a lot of these things. The jewel box is different from a regular CD. It's curved on one side and has a button on the front that you push to open the box. Cool. The first discs have decent liner notes, and the CD/DVD has good content on it. Not only does the DVD side feature videos and other extras, it also includes a surround sound 5.1 mix of the same album that's on the CD side. So playing it at home (or on new car with audio DVD players like most of the new Acuras).

Well it save the industry? I don't know about that, but it is the first actual tangible music CD I have bought in months. It's been iTunes for 95% of my music for the past few years.

-aB

It Isn't The Frisbee Dog Nationals, But It's Still Funny

I'm a big fan of the Frisbee Dog competitions, a Frisbee + Dog competition where the dogs (and their masters) do all sorts of crazy tricks. Every year at the Dogwood Arts Festival in basically my front yard at Piedmont Park in Atlanta, the dogs go at it. I love it because the dogs are having fun, the owners are having fun, and the crowds can't help from loving it - watching all of the craziness.

Well, this isn't the Frisbee dogs, but it's still pretty funny. This week over at Georgia Tech, the 2005 RoboCup U.S. Open was being held. The compeition ended with a bunch of programmed Sony AIBO robot dogs playing soccer. Snippet from CBS News/AP:

Hugging the sideline, the robot dog waddled down the field and hit a ball with its nose. The ball bounced off the goal post.

It was one of the University of Texas' last chances to get back in the game, which it eventually lost 2-0 to the reigning European champs from Dortmund University in Germany.

Robot dog soccer is one of five games that teams of scholars competed in during the 2005 RoboCup U.S. Open, held Monday at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The aim of the three-day competition, which ends Tuesday, is to develop software for better robots with the long-term goal of fielding a robot soccer team good enough to play a human team by 2050.

The compeition was close, but the team from Dortmund University in Germany won the match.

Read the entire story here.

-aB

Mac OSX Tiger's Dashboard Compromised

Via Slashdot, this post discusses a slightly dangerous and quite annoying vulnerability for Tiger's new Dashboard feature, the Konfabulator-copying new OSX eye candy that I've discussed here. Snippet from Slashdot:

If you're running Safari on OS X Tiger and go to this website, a 'slightly evil' Dashboard widget will be automatically downloaded and installed and can't be removed without manually removing the file from the Library folder and rebooting the computer. The widget is called Zaptastic and is a demonstration by the author of how easy it is to exploit Dashboard for nefarious purposes. The essay, released under the Creative Commons License, goes on to describe the many ways users can be taken advantage of...

The Web site discussed is Zaptastic. DO NOT go to that link if you're using Safari on a Mac with Tiger installed, unless you want to delete the downloaded widget yourself. It's not a necessarily "evil" widget, as the author's main purpose is to demonstrate the vulnerability.

Hope Apple fixes this soon. The whole idea that you aren't supposed to be able to delete widgets once you download them is rediculous. While if you can navigate down to the Widgets folder in your Home > Library, it does require a restart or two to truly clean them up. And Apple's help documentation says "You cannot remove widgets from the Widget Bar or change their order."

Boo, Apple. This is awful. I hope they fix this (as well as several other things) in 10.4.1. How did this get through testing?

-aB

Got Multiple Monitors? Meet Mandolux.

Found a wicked site tonight. Mandolux.com. It's from a guy named Mando Gomez who's a photographer that has created desktop images for people with multiple computer monitors.

At home, I am blessed with two honkin' 19" LCDs on my main computer. It's awesome - dragging windows onto both screens and truly being able to multitask.

Now, I've cropped and placed some of my own images onto my screens, but for those not fortunate enough to have their own, check out Mandolux.com. The archive section of the site has plenty of cool images to use.

P.S. I would show you some images from Mandolux.com but Mando gets a bit upset with bandwidth hogs.

-aB

Great Book for Mac Geeks

As I write this, my copy of the new Macintosh OS X operating system, code-named "Tiger" is on it's way to me via FedEx. This morning, The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg said about Tiger:

Overall, Tiger is the best and most advanced personal computer operating system on the market, despite a few drawbacks. It leaves Windows XP in the dust.

The new OS includes Spotlight, a very powerful search function that will change the way people manage their documents and data files, a new iChat video conferencing application that you need to see to believe, a RSS-enabled Safari Web browser that I blogged about here way back in June 2004 and Dashboard.

Dashboard is a great idea. Unfortunately, it's not a new idea. A piece of software called Konfabulator (one of my personal favorite shareware apps) has been doing the Dashboard thing for several years. Apple decided to "borrow" the idea without compensating Arlo Rose, the Konfabulator creator. Good news for Konfabulator is that it is now available for Windows and is more than worth the $24.95 they ask for it.

So sorry for the rant. Got carried away there. This post is about a book, "Revolution in the Valley - The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made." Andy Hertzfeld, one of the major brains behind the Mac compiled this book from stories on his Web site Folklore.org about the Mac, written by the actual people who built the original Mac. It's a pretty, coffee table-like book with lots of pictures and nice design. For those who have read the stories on Folklore.org, some of the chapters will be second-time reading, but even for me it was great the second time around. And it $24.95, it's actually a good deal for a hardback book with quality paper and spot color on every page.

I'm not sure if Steve Jobs has taken this book off the shelves of the Apple stores.

More on Tiger tomorrow...

-aB

Two Interesting Stories on Google

Via Slashdot, here are links to two interesting stories on Google and how it's impacting the Internet.

Snippet from The Globe & Mail:

Although it may seem that Google is already well-along the path toward such an information-rich Utopia, the truth is that the current state of affairs is only a first foray into the world of information retrieval. Today's smartest search algorithms still only read words as text strings, failing to make much sense (at least in the way a human would) of the ones and zeroes churning through their distributed server clusters. This lack of semantic connection is something being worked upon by the founder of the Web himself (Sir Tim Breners-Lee, at MIT) in a radical re-design of how the Web is structured and an update of the communication protocols that hold it all together.

And a snippet from Fortune:

Microsoft was already months into a massive project aimed at taking down Google when the truth began to dawn on Bill Gates. It was December 2003. He was poking around on the Google company website and came across a help-wanted page with descriptions of all the open jobs at Google. Why, he wondered, were the qualifications for so many of them identical to Microsoft job specs? Google was a web search business, yet here on the screen were postings for engineers with backgrounds that had nothing to do with search and everything to do with Microsoft's core business—people trained in things like operating-system design, compiler optimization, and distributed-systems architecture. Gates wondered whether Microsoft might be facing much more than a war in search. An e-mail he sent to a handful of execs that day said, in effect, "We have to watch these guys. It looks like they are building something to compete with us."

He sure got that right. Today Google isn't just a hugely successful search engine; it has morphed into a software company and is emerging as a major threat to Microsoft's dominance. You can use Google software with any Internet browser to search the web and your desktop for just about anything; send and store up to two gigabytes of e-mail via Gmail (Hotmail, Microsoft's rival free e-mail service, offers 250 megabytes, a fraction of that); manage, edit, and send digital photographs using Google's Picasa software, easily the best PC photo software out there; and, through Google's Blogger, create, post online, and print formatted documents—all without applications from Microsoft.

Good stories on a company who's corporate mantra is "Don't Be Evil." It's hard to put a fence around what Google is...today as well as tomorrow. It's certainly more than a search engine.

-aB

Scratch my back and I'll, wait a minute, do I have to?

Colleague of mine added 'ole GumpRants.com to his BlogRoll. Alan's a pretty nice guy, so I will reciprocate.

By the way, you gotta love the name - DogBrainCentral.

It looks so pretty down there in the BlogRoll, between The Onion and DPReview.com. There's juxtaposition for ya.

Kumbaya, my friend, kumbaya...

-aB

I Want One. No, I Need One

I have a little trouble getting up in the morning. I know how to divide by nine, which is number of snooze minutes my Sony clock radio "Dream Bar" will give me. I snooze for about 40-50 minutes (or actually 45-54 minutes to be precise) every morning.

Clocky from this MIT student is the solution to my problem. An alarm clock on wheels. Here's a snippet:

Before you hit the snooze button a second time on this alarm clock, you'll have to hunt it down.

The shag carpet-covered robotic alarm clock on wheels, called Clocky, rolls away and hides.

The clock is the invention of Gauri Nanda, a graduate student -- and a person who occasionally oversleeps -- who works in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Looks kinda freaky with the shag carpeting. Make sure to keep all ferrets away from this device.

Read the entire story here.

-aB

Braves' Turner Field to Get World's Largest HDTV

Turner Field is about to get a new TV. 71 feet tall by 79 feet wide, it's a biggie.

Here's a snippet from DesignTechnica:

The world's largest outdoor high definition display (56,000 square feet) will greet and entertain Atlanta Braves fans at the newly renovated Turner Field this season.

The 5,600-square-foot Mitsubishi Electric Diamond Vision screen, which will be recognized by Guinness World Records at a special ceremony on March 23, is 71 feet tall and 79 feet wide, weighs 50 tons and has more than five million LED lights.

The new display consists of 266 panels that each contains 20 lighting units, resulting in a screen with nearly 5,200,000 LED (light emitting diode) modules that can faithfully reproduce 1 billion colors, and be clearly seen from almost any viewing angle.

When on, it needs about 400,000 watts of juice to keep it going. Let's just hope that the Braves have something good to put on the new screen this year.

Read the story here on DesignTechnica, via Gizmodo.

-aB