Unlike Pedro, Google has made “all [my] dreams come true”. Just recently, Google announced a public beta of a new sync product for mobile devices. Not only do they have cool online services, but now my iPhone can easily take advantage of those services.
Some of you may wonder why this makes me so happy. Let me explain.
I’ve always wanted to go to Italy. It don’t know what it is exactly, but the place just seems cool. Rome intrigues me with all the history and amazing sites. I’ve always dreamed of a month-long European trip with at least a week in Rome.
But now I don’t have to go. I’ve already been there. Recently, Google updated their Street View feature with images of Rome. And now with additional features just released today, Google allows me even more of a feeling of “being there.” The only thing better than this for exploring Rome is to actually go there (which I must admit, I still dream of).
Remember to view the original post if you can’t see the above embedded Google Maps Street View.
Have you ever wanted to see what Rome was like in ancient times? Time travel would be nice, but until that happens, you can use Google Earth. Google recently announced a new layer in Google Earth that allows you to “go back in time” to see what Rome was like in 320 AD — in 3D.
Check out the Colosseum or the Roman Forum or any number of ancient structures. For you architects, this is a great opportunity to see what these old buildings really were like. They even have full interior on some buildings.
View the following video for a fly-by as well as more details on the project.
In celebration of the Olympic Games that start today in Bejing, China, Google has created a widget that contains a medal tracker as well as event and venue information. All built on their mapping technology.
And here it is:
[If you don't see the embedded map, view the web original post on the site]
Be sure to come back often to see how the medal tally plays out.
Have you ever been on vacation and wanted to know where the closest LDS Church is? How about moving to a new area and wondering to which ward you belong, to which building you should go and what time are services?
The IT team for the church has just released a beta version of their new mapping application. This will eventually replace the current “Meetinghouse Locator.”
Check it out. It’s nicely done. Even if you don’t know an address, you can “Place a Marker” (click the icon on the top left of the map and then click on your desired location) and it will figure it all out for you. It provides surrounding meetinghouses and all the wards that meet at each location as well as contact information. It will also identify to which ward that location is assigned (even gives you language and YSA wards).
Under the hood, it can either use Google Maps or Microsoft’s Live Maps.
Well done guys!
It’s kind of become tradition in the technology industry to put out a fake announcement on April 1 of some cool experimental technology that will revolutionize the industry and is usually completely implausible. Google always leads the way. Today is no exception as they have already started pouring in.
And there are so many more that I am unaware of. It seems everyone is doing some type of April Fool’s joke in the tech community.
Google has been the king of these pranks. A few past Google announcements from April 1:
Checkout a list of all Goolge’s Hoaxes.
Ratchet up the stocker fears. Google has just released Street View for Salt Lake (including Utah and Davis Counties).
Some of you may recognize the following locations. I’ll post about the fears and privacy concerns later.
Recently, I got a new server. While trying to get the email handling installed, I became very frustrated. Not only did managing the email consume a majority of my server administration time, but it took a lot of bandwidth just dealing with the spam I received. Because I’ve had my main domain (acucore.com) for over 7 years, it gets a large amount of spam.
But with the introduction of IMAP for Google Email (including their free gmail.com email service), Google has opened up a whole new world for me. In addition to the gmail.com service, Google has a service called Google Apps (previously Google Apps for Your Domain). It allows you to use several Google services (including email, calendaring and docs) with your own domain. This is ideal for small businesses.
Ever wanted to know exactly where Santa is on Christmas Eve? Well, usually you would have to wait for the news or something similar. But this year, the traditional Santa trackers (NORAD) and Google have teamed up to give you the best way to track Santa.
Santa can now be tracked through Google Earth. If you don’t have Google Earth installed, click that link to download it. Then visit NoradSanta.org to download the tracker link. It will open in Google Earth and a nice 3D graphic of Santa and his reindeer will display and he will continue to move throughout the world. If you don’t want to download Google Earth, then NoradSanta.org has an embedded map that will update when Santa moves. But Google Earth updates much more often and is far cooler.
He’s already started and is in Ethiopia as I type. Not only is this a lot of fun for the kids, but it’s a great world geography lesson too!
Enjoy!
PS. For an interesting history on how NORAD started tracking Santa, check out the Wikipedia article.
Google just released a new feature for Google Maps. It’s an enhancement to Street View, the feature that allows you to see a 360 degree view of the streets in select cities. Now, you can embed the street view panoramas within your own web site. So I figured, I would try it out. Here’s one of my mission apartments in San Francisco: