MSNBC’s newsreader Mika Brzezinski shreds the stupid Paris Hilton story.
a personal website slash blog
Monthly Archive for June, 2007
Who needs ArcGIS Network Analyst and TeleAtlas Multinet when you can ask Google Maps with a few lines of JavaScript?
The new Google Maps feature adds drag&drop to routing: adjust start, end or any point on the route as you like and Google Maps recalculates your route on the fly.
Apart from the amazing usability, I think for small and middle sized companies who are dealing with the traveling salesman problem, the Google Maps routing API is in the meantime quite an interesting option to licensing and maintaining full GIS routing applications and the databases behind.
The Austrian automobile club ÖAMTC now publishes traffic information (road works and traffic jams) about the Austrian road network as KML file. Originally designed for desktop applications like Google Earth, but faster and more convenient viewed online as Google Maps overlay.
Anyways, by its nature I would consider GeoRSS as the format of choice for publishing that type of information: a frequently updated news feed containing geocoded items. If KML is taking over that ground too (after heading towards a de-facto standard for online geodata), what’ll be left for GeoRSS then?
The point is that I don’t really see the need of KML and embedding styling information, etc. in this case. The value lies in the information rather than the representation. A syndicated GeoRSS news feed, for instance, I can receive on my mobile news reader too. Even though my mobile news reader doesn’t provide any features for mapping geocoded items yet, but at least I’m be able to get traffic information on the way, when traffic information is essential. On the other hand, how many potential users are able to view KML on the way?
Andrew Turner provides an excellent further read in this KML & GeoRSS context.
Update
An extra traffic information RSS feed is on the site available too, but with less items and not geocoded. However, the initial question remains: why prefer KML for publishing frequently updated location aware content over GeoRSS?
Mr Evil and SEO mastermind John Chow is bombing Google again and explaining in that post how his blog really helps him to make money online. Generously he offers a pagerank 7 backlink from his blog to every following sheep convinced reviewer site in return. [via nonsmokingarea]
Some event venues in this city do have nice vistas…
Since a few weeks Google includes user generated content in Google Maps search results. Basically it’s a good idea and useful data because some places or place-names aren’t collected by commercial mapping companies, who provide services like Google Maps with data. Jesuitenwiese at Prater for instance, a nice picnic spot in Vienna, now shows up in Google Maps search results because it got mapped by a random user on some site on the internet.
However, I’m not quite sure of how many people are really aware of that marked spots in their Google “My Maps” are available to a broader public audience through Google’s search functionality.
A search for picnic in Vienna for example links to the wedding route of a Google user (identified by a real name), or a picnic a woman (again, a real name is showing up) went to last Sunday.
To make sure private things remain private, well, at least not shown as Google search result, the flag “unlisted” in Google “My Maps” has to be set. Regarding KML or GeoRSS you can tell Googlebot how to handle the content by editing either robots.txt or sitemap.xml.
Naschmarkt, the famous market in the heart of Vienna, offers a wide variety of delicious food. Antipasti is one of them. The problem, especially in case of buying Antipasti, is, that if you’re not used to market trade habits you’re going to pay a price for your Antipasti that’s probably higher than if you would ship it from Southern Italy by yourself.
Most merchants act very clever and Naschmarkt is not only a tourist trap, but a huge trap for locals too. People easily end up spending a fortune on food and that is, even though the food still is excellent, sort of a frustrating Naschmarkt experience.
A few observations I made during my last Antipasti buying adventure:
- Whenever you hear the phrase “take another 2 and get one for free”, don’t believe it. It’s a trick to increase the order. Nobody there is giving you anything for free, you’re going to pay every piece.
- If you want to avoid a bad surprise at the end, ask after every second ordered piece the current total price. It’ll drive the merchant crazy but helps you to keep an eye on the money you’re going to spend.
- Antipasti conserves better if it’s put into oil. But don’t let them put oil into your box, they’re going to weigh and prize your food together with the oil. You can fill the box up with oil at home too, no problem and way cheaper.
- The first price they tell you is very likely the double of the real price. After a first shocked sounding “You must be kidding me?” the price drops easily by a third, the rest depends on negotiation talent.
- Needless to say that they try to sell as much as possible and continuously offer you other food and start putting things into your box you didn’t ask for.
Naschmarkt shopping can be quite stressful, especially on Saturdays when the market is packed with people, but the food is still worth it.
Apparently the spelling of my name is very similar to an English expression for a, in some parts of our society, popular activity. Certainly not my preferred free time activity but popular enough that search engines suggest the term when I do an ego-search looking up sites containing my name and probably the reason for some really strange search terms referring to my site. [via The Blowfish Blog]
What a mess after the storm. Just arrived at home and I really had to watch out riding my bike to not run into parts of trees lying all over the streets.
Even worse is that the storm literally destroyed – yes, chairs took off and were thrown into the water! – our nice little company event at the Adria, including the outdoor barbecue.
Kudos to the Adria team who managed the messy situation quite well and made a pleasant evening possible, including indoor barbecue.