Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

I was trying to plan a route in Google Maps on my iPhone this morning, only to discover that even though I'm in the US, I can only get distances measured in kilometers...

After some googling I discover that there's a bug in the 2.2 and 2.2.1 OS releases that treats the UK regional settings as metric (not as a mix of metric and imperial). It's an odd approach, and not one I'm happy with. Surely mapping conventions are to use the distance measurement prevalent in the country that's mapped, not the regional preferences of the user?

What I want is a mapping application that uses kilometers where they're used on the roadsigns, and miles where they're used. After all, it's those roadsigns that will help me make the actual journey.

Is that too much to ask?

Ah well, the Windows Mobile device we use as a GPS is charged now, so I'm going to use a real mapping tool. Time to fire up CoPilot.

Suffering from a bout of jetlag-induced insomnia, I spent some time in the wee small hours browsing Google Earth on my iPod. That's where I found this evidence of a secret teleportation upgrade to the Eurostar cross-channel trains.

Here we see one beaming in just outside of Waterloo...



I wonder if the same singularity can be found outside St Pancras?

Yes, I know it's one of many image blending errors in their satellite and aerial photography. It's still amusing...

...you can't.

While LJ lets most media sites that use an OBJECT tag to embed in an entries HTML, Google is using an IFRAME to host its maps. As part of its defence against cross-site scripting attacks LJ blocks IFRAMEs from any entry HTML.

So no Google Maps for you...

(also no Popfly, nor Google Mashups, nor - the list goes on...)

Google's just added the Sky to Google Earth, using images from various sources, including the Hubble. Sadly it doesn't just switch on - you'll need to download a new version of the application first.



There's some fantastic imagery there, and it's well worth exploring the bundled KML files. I rather enjoyed the "User's Guide to Galaxies"...

Goggles bills itself as a Google Maps flight simulator. It's not really, but it;'s a nifty bit of AJAX mashup work, putting a small 3D plane in your browser, and using it to control Google Maps.

Here I am flying over Park Lane.



Fly the little plane around the map, using your keyboard, as aerial photographs from Google Maps scroll by underneath. It gives a whole new look to Google sightseeing. Only a few cities so far (including London and New York), but fun!

Just don't crash the plane...

The Google Blog points at a new radio button on the Google Earth download page.

Yes, it's out for OS X 10.4. No word if it's a universal binary...

Time to get rid of your illicit copy of the beta!

Researching a Guardian piece, I came across Tripods.

It's a multi player game running over a Google map of New York. Click the buttons to move your piece and attack the invading tripod blobs, while moving the map around. Just don't get squashed by the tripods. You can even talk to other players to set up a strategy, all by the magic of AJAX...

Why yes, I am working!

Who needs to go to Mars to see faces in the landscape? You can find them via Google and they're so much better...

(Somewhere in Peru)