With Spring almost upon us, millions of people will start to dust off bikes that have been idle all winter, and set out to get some air in the lungs. (Or if you are one of the hardened few who make it through the winter on a bicycle, you will merely rummage around for the mud guards.) But mapping out a route for a nice ride isn’t always easy, even though free web-based satellite-coordinated maps have been available for years. Programmed for maximum automotive efficiency, MapQuest and Google Maps will sooner give you directions to the highway than the bikeable scenic route. Thankfully, there are better ways to map a bike route.
Map My Ride is a great service which utilizes the Google Maps API to overlay custom bike mapping features that can automatically calculate elevation changes, start and stop points, loops, and caloric burn. (They also created Map My Run if jogging is more your forté.) What’s more is that you can save routes, maintain a training log, and they’ll even calculate your CO2 offset based on the mileage you’re not driving. Another indespensible feature is the ability to stray from roads and continue mapping coordinates, which is essential for mountain bike mapping, or loops through parks which don’t have mapped roads.
Today Google itself announced bike mapping is a new feature in Maps, allowing you to select “Bicycling” when you map directions, just as they now offer public transit (in limited areas) and walking directions. The features are more pronounced in major cities they chose to focus on (think California), where bike lanes and bike trails are specially color coded. One nice feature is the travel time estimation like driving directions have, though it doesn’t take long to figure out that they use 10 MPH as your rate of speed, which is on the low side for regular road riders.
All in all, picking out new bike routes just got a lot easier and more exciting, so get out there and get some fresh air!
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By now, everyone has heard of Apple’s new iPad. Google quickly followed up with an announcement that they would bring the ChromeOS to a tablet. Tablets are really nothing new, since even Apple in the 1990s had the Newton, which was far too large to be considered a PDA by recent standards. Even touchscreens, the darling wonder of the iPhone and iPod Touch, have been in use with restaurant and checkout point-of-sale systems for years–sometimes in conjunction with computers running DOS! Sure, everyone wants colors and games and music, but are ebooks really the defining feature of tablets?
One thing is for certain: without innovation on the part of the greater community, tablets will remain a static way to consume information, and serve as an entertainment kiosk. One Lifehacker editorial pointed out the Achilles’ heel nicely–the iPad is a completely closed system. Gone are the days of kids at home programming apps and hacks for their computers. All roads lead to the app store, and sure you can sign up for the developer’s program with a little help from your parents and a lawyer, but you still have to program apps on a separate computer and sync constantly or use a simulator to see what you’re getting. In order for tablets to bring something new to the table, innovation needs to continue outside of a closed system.
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Happy new year! Now that 2010 has been rung in, it’s time for some reflections on a year of search, and a year in search.
Google has compiled the popular Zeitgeist statistics for 2009, which shows Michael Jackson, Facebook, and Twitter as a few of the most popular rising searches of the year. One of the most surprising statistics of the year was caught by TechCrunch, which reported that for the first time ever, Facebook surpassed AOL in monthly traffic volume. What is shocking is not that Facebook is continually spreading across the planet, but rather that AOL still commands a huge amount of viewers (and subscribers). It’s a battle of Web 2.0 versus Web 1.0, and it should be pretty clear which will ultimately prevail.
2009 also brought us a Yahoo wiffle-waffle on search, with Shakespearean wails of “to be (a search engine) or not to be.” But moving forward quickly was Microsoft, which brought Bing into the field as a replacement to Live.com and the awful MSN search. Spending copious amounts of cash on nationwide, offline marketing (at times it seemed that every cab in NYC had a Bing ad atop it), Bing was able to become a formidable force in search.
But ultimately, it was the 800-lb. gorilla in the room, Google, which stole the show. Playing with realtime search, product search, and blog search, while developing a phone, operating system, browser, and a bevy of other services, Google proved that it is a force to be reckoned with. Even if Google was officially launched in the late nineties, 2000-2010 could officially be pronounced the Google Decade.
What’s in store for the coming year? To soon to tell. If Google’s near-acquisition of Yelp is any indication, location-aware services may be the next big thing.
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Will Google’s latest pet project be an OpenDNS killer? Google just announced that they are now providing free public DNS, leveraging their global network of server farms, and while the details are vague, providing security filtering as well. All that is needed to upgrade to lightning-fast DNS is to put two Google DNS servers into your TCP/IP configuration–8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Privacy concerns aside, the performance so far is stunning, cutting some latency times in half. This will likely change as more netizens adapt, but for now it is a DNS slice of heaven.
Interestingly, OpenDNS recently changed their website design to make it more difficult to find their two nameservers (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) and making it look like you have to sign up for a paid or free account to use their services. As of yet, Google does not redirect malformed requests (such as domain typos) to any paid search-result landing page like OpenDNS and ISPs like Verizon and Comcast do.
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Posted by Paolo | Posted in google | Posted on 10-04-2009
Google finally revealed their plans (literally) for the infrastructure that comprises their data centers. Shipping containers packed with rack-mounted computers (motherboards by Gigabyte) that each have a 12V battery as a UPS. The batteries look like the ones you find in emergency lighting units above EXIT signs, so they probably come pretty cheap. I am a bit wary of their water cooling system, as it seems there should be a much better way to dissipate heat than running it through chillers (which use massive amounts of energy). Heat exchangers and ground water feedback loops come to mind, but then I don’t know the specifics of the volume and temperature. Very interesting stuff for geeks though!
Google Datacenter Tour
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