Month: June 2005

Google’s latest release is Google Earth. After aquiring Keyhole last October they put their aquistition to use immediately. You may remember hearing about Google released Google Maps, and later added satellite imagery to Google Maps. Now they’ve released a very powerful tool.

Google Earth is an interface to satellite imagery and Google’s vast information about the world. You can view the world in 3D. You can do everything you can in Google Maps and more. Local Search and Directions. Also view information of school districts, zip codes, etc. Search for schools, parks, gas stations.

View 3D terrain. So you can see the Grand Canyon in 3D. Some cities have 3D buildings. You can also save placemarks, images, and print.

There’s so much more that this thing can do, but I suggest you try it out yourself. And besides it’s FREE!

Google Earth

That’s right. I made science. Or rather I’m a statistic. If you have a weblog, whether it be Blogger, Livejournal, Xanga, or whatever you can participate in this survey for MIT.

MIT Weblog Survey

It’s time for another session of my web service roundup, so go ahead and giddy up.

Audioscrobbler
Keep track to what your listening to, and get recommendations based what you’re listening to. Discover new music defined by your tastes. And find new people with the same music tastes. Audioscrobbler uses a plugin in your media player of choice, whether that be Windows Media Player, Winamp, iTunes, and many more. It keeps track of what you’re listening to, what’s played the most often, etc. Share it with the world. Also, after a while, you can listen your favorites from within your browser where ever you are with Last.FM.

Vimeo
Share those little video clips that your digital camera takes. 8 MB of space a week. You can tag and label your videos.

Backpack
Do you take a lot of notes, or are you just trying to be more organized with your information? Well Backpack is a service that will keep notes, tasks, links, and reminders. You can have up to 5 pages for free, and 10 active reminders. The reminders can be sent via e-mail or SMS. This is a great service if you are working on a small project, or even large ones. Keep track of information online, so that you can access it anywhere. You can even share pages with everyone, or just a select workgroup to manage your project.

Ta-da List
Brought to you by the same people who made Backpack. Create free unlimted to-do lists. Multiple lists for multiple categories, such as things to do today, things to do before I die, and so on. Completely free. You can share these with the world too, or keep them private.

Flickr
I’m bringing this one up again because I haven’t seen many of my friends sign up for it. Flickr is quite possibly the best in sharing photos online. You can set privacy on your photos, tag them, put them in sets, create groups, and much more. Free accounts allow for 200 photos, 20 MB a mnoth, 3 sets, and permanent storage of your photos. All photos are saved, but only your current 200 will show within Flickr. A pro account is only $24.95 now which is for 1 year and allows for 2 GB of space per month, unlimted photos, and sets. Great if you take a lot of photos and want to share them. So if you have a digital camera, this is almost a must.

Some of these you may already know about, other you may not. They are all worth taking a look at. So check them out. More to come so stay tuned.

I’m all over the Internet trying new things, and experimenting as I go. Here are some “projects” I’m working on.

Geotagging My Photos

I’ve started an account at Geobloggers.com which is linked to my Flickr account. I’ll occasionally “geotag” photos, which essientially means I’ll add latitude and longitude data of where I took them. I’m not going to do this for all photos, but maybe one out of a set so that they show up on a map, and then you can see other photos from the same place. It’s an interesting concept. And it’s using the Google Maps engine which I love. So now I can really show you where my favorite bridge is.
You can check out my map of photos here. I’m probably going to add a link on my website soon.

Video Blogging

I’m not too sure how far I’m going to go on this one, but I have a Vimeo.com account and I can upload those little movies that every digital camera can take now. I’m going to try to take a video or two when I’m shooting photos to keep it updated. We’ll see how it goes from there. Plus, right now, you can see a video of Mark saying mean things to me. Check that out here.

Note: Make sure you have a video program such as Quicktime associated to play .avi within your browser. If you don’t know what that means… learn what it means.

That’s all for now folks. If you’d like to know more about those two things, and are interested in them, let me know.

(UPDATE 6.24.2005) – For those having problems watching some of my videos in Vimeo, watch this!

I thought it would be good to post a few web services that are worth taking a look at.

Upcoming.org
This service allows you to view concerts, gatherings, and other major events based on metro areas. You can sign up for multiple metros and even add events yourself. Includes feeds, tags and more.

All Consuming
Keep track of what you are consuming and what you’ve consumed. I’m not talking about food, but media. Let people know what you’re reading, or watching. Add entries, tags, and ratings based on what you’ve consumed.

Furl
The best in terms of bookmark online storage. Save bookmarks to website. Rate them, tag them, share them, organize them. Includes importing and exporting from Firefox. Never lose your bookmarks again. Include them in your blog. Definitely worth checking out. Keep all those accounts organized.

Plaxo
Reminding everyone about this one too. Keep all of your contacts online. Members are automatically synchronized with each other as information is updated. You can choose whether to show personal or business information or both. Choose who can view what. List old e-mail addresses so people can find you easily. Very expansive. You can also keep Calendar events, Tasks, and Notes. And it syncs with Outlook. Check this one out.

Rojo
This is a web based feed aggregation service. It’s very similar to Bloglines. It has some cooler features and organization options. It also has a nicer interface in this authors opinion. A super easy to read all of your blogs without leaving the page. It’s a little slower than Bloglines in terms of speed and aggregation of the feeds.

If anything, check them out. I recommend them. They’ll help you keep a more organized Internet.