A day early, but good to see the Google holiday treatment isn’t confined to just logos on google.com.
While trying to find a good cafe in SF today I noticed something a bit different in google maps street view mode.
It appears to be a witch on her broomstick in place of the normal icon.
Click over to google map and select “Street View” (upper right corner) to see it in action.
The newest version of Mac OS X “Leopard” is out in the wild, but my Amazon.com order has an estimated delivery date for next week.
Not a big deal, but made me think: In today’s world of broadband and on-demand user behavior, why doesn’t apple offer a digital download option ? On top of it, it’s environmentally more responsible to do away with all the extra packaging, fuel costs for shipping, etc.
As far as expertise and DRM issues, Apple has the experience with it’s iTunes store and .Mac service to offer this kind of option and make it secure.
In the gaming space I’ve seen Valve‘s digital efforts evolve over the last few years into a really impressive offering. They have a service called Steam (gigaom review) which essentially allows you to purchase games and download them instantly. They also use the service to foster online gaming, do auto patching, premier game trailers, and fight against cheats. It was initally conceived because they had trouble with 3rd party distribution, and ironically today Steam is used as a distribtuion platform for other game publishers.
The other company that could also facilitate this would be Amazon themselves. They distribute music digitally with their new amazon mp3 store — so why not do the same for software ?
The New York Times Sunday Magazine is one of the few things I still read in print. Something about the weekend and a 5,000+ word cover story makes for a perfect combo.
The West is the fastest-growing part of the country. It’s also the driest. And climate change could be making matters much, much worse….
Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers
This week’s cover story was fascinating, and what stood out for me was the great cost of inaction, but also the exciting challenge of a big problem that has to be solved.
With a quick copy & paste I now have gravatar enabled on this blog. I’ll tweak the look & feel a bit later, but you can see it in action on this post.
Matt has also enabled gravatar on his blog and has posted his implementation here. You can see other examples, including code examples for other blog platforms, by reading the “implement” page on gravatar.com.
Don’t have a gravatar yet ? Signup — it’s free and takes 2 seconds.
Interesting to see the latest September 2007 report from comScore.
WSJ.com talks about Google’s Orkut success internationally, but also the challenges in monetizing Orkut:
In the third quarter of this year, 48% of Google’s revenue came from outside the U.S., up from 43% in 2006 and 39% in 2005. Thanks partly to the fact that Brazilians are some of the most active Internet users in the world, Orkut now has about as much global overall traffic, or “page views,” as Google’s top-ranked search engine, according to data from comScore Inc.
And SeekingAlpha points out the changing landscape in the blogging world.
The avatar service Gravatar was acquired by our company Automattic today.
What is a gravatar?
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?
Overall it’s a real good fit for us, and I’m excited about our future plans. More details here.
Gotta love GPS !
After using various GPS units in car rentals, and thinking about next generation p2p GPS devices like the Dash, I finally decided to go out and buy a GPS device for myself. The market for these devices is in a phase where innovation is accelerating, adoption rates are picking up pace, and expectations for the “next thing” dominates product coverage.
My research for this purchase included googling around and finding a good review of the Nuvi 350 on the Signal vs Noise blog (Dec ’05 review) . And also consulting with my buddy, and GPS expert, Wilson Rothman.
It’s been about two months since I chose the Garmin Nuvi 350 after looking at various models. Overall it’s very solid and gets the job done, and for around $350 ( bought in Aug 2007 ) it’s hard to beat.
The good:
– A crisp display that does well in all light conditions
– The maps are easy to read
– Directions are accurate 🙂
– The voice prompts are helpful and well timed
– If you miss a turn or want to hunt for an alternative route the device “recalculates” very quickly
– The price point was spot on for me
The bad:
– Bootup time could be better — takes about 10 seconds
– Locating the satelite on bootup can take 20-30 seconds – would be nice if it just remembered the last place you were at and asked if that’s where you were.
– Looking up a business name seems too slow to be useful
– In theory it’s portable enough to take on a hike or any other use outside the car. In reality the battery drains so quickly after a charge, that when I go and check the device after being in the car overnight, the battery is almost always completely empty.
The ugly :
– No complaints of anything terrible
Wish list:
– No easy way to transfer address info from my desktop machine to the device. Many times I’m on my macbook pro usually using google maps or yelp to find something, and I would love to be able to email-in or via SMS send the address to the GPS unit. Instead I email myself, and then punch it in when I get to the car
– Certain highways always get selected even though you know better roads are available. Not a big deal, but would be nice if it “learned” my preferences.
– Having to punch in the city name just seems weird. It knows what city I’m in, and should simply show the 5 nearest cities by default.
– Needs to be two way. The other day I had it find the nearest gas station and it found a 7-11 store that had no gas station ! Not a huge deal, and an easy mistake, but I should be able to flag that, and inform all other users of this mistake.
– More two-way options. Would be nice to have the ability to sync all the data back to the web, so I could review past trips, and mark places of interest for future trips.
– More sharing. Would be cool to see (anonymously) what were the most effective routes to take at certain hours based on what other people did, the most scenic, the one with the least amount of traffic, etc. Lots can be done in this area.
So overall The Nuvi 350 is a solid mid tier GPS unit, and I’m personally looking forward to the next generation GPS devices.
One of the great things about WordPress is seeing how it’s being used around the world. From the various language translations to hosted versions the level of engagement and creativity is super impressive.
A great example is what’s happening in Israel. The WordPress community in Israel is now organizing a WordCamp (english blog) on Oct 25th, 2007 in Tel Aviv. I’m sure it’s going to be a great event, and looking forward to seeing when the next one will be held — I’d love to attend 🙂
From their blog:
About WordCamp Israel
WordCamp is coming to Israel on Oct. 25 in Tel Aviv! Lorelle is the keynote speaker, and the lectures and panels will be covering topics like WordPress installation, blogging for business, and more.
Raanan Bar-Cohen 