Google Maps - Not only a Website nor only a Service - It's also Developer Platform.

I'm in the US doing a consulting assignment at the moment. As previously mentioned Adelaide, South Australia is home. So I'm a long way from home and this is only the second time I've been to the States. The last was in 1997.

So image how important Google Maps is for me. I can whack in my hotel's address and then that of my client site and bam! I can find the way there with ease.

But I haven't limited my use of Google's maps to just using the service. I've been reading Blogs about it. I found some interesting links all over the place regarding how it works. Here's a good one: http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-google.html

But “mini-app“ that I thought was very neat is a little tour of Keene (a small town in MA, USA). The final comment made in the screencast about GPS being the tool to “annotate the planet“ is really quite funky.

Bring on the future - oh, and Google Maps for Australia please!

I'm currently a long way from home. I'm in the United States of America. Right now I'm on a flight from Dallas-Fort Worth heading to Denver and then on to San Francisco before arriving in Sacramento to do some business there for the next couple of weeks.

Home is Adelaide, South Australia.

The US is an interesting place for me. Being an Aussie it's a lot like home, but with some differences. Let me give some examples.

English is the lingua prima - although we tend to spell words the international way and not the US way. "Colour" instead of "color" (which in some ways is annoying because my spell checker - even though it  is set to "English (Australia)" in Windows many programs just only seem to work in "English (US)". But I can get over it.

The cars (or automobiles) we drive are similar, although we drive on the left-hand side of the road. US cars are larger - much larger - and get filled by the gallon and we fill by the litre (which, of course, must be spelt "liter" in the US as my spell checker just bitched about my normal spelling).

The when the weather forecast in the US says it's 32 degrees it's cold. When it's 32 degrees in Australia it's hot. It seems that in both places we forget the add the "F" and "C".

But one area where things are more than a little different is the growing ubiquity of wireless internet access. Australia has hotspots, but most are not free. My home town has "Citilan" which has free access, but you must be a client of one of around half-a-dozen or so internet service providers to get these invisible bits of data.

In the US it seems that free access is free. I just spent half-an-hour waiting in Dallas-Fort Worth airport where T-Mobile provides free access Wi-fi (although it didn't work - I got an IP address but received no data).

I'm lead to believe that Starbucks, McDonald's and numerous other companies are providing free access just to get people in the door. Even entire cities, like San Francisco, provide Wi-fi clouds for free roaming access.

So here's the question of ethics: when I turn on my laptop and Skype automatically connects should I expect this wireless benefactor to be free or do I need to perform due diligence to determine the difference between a public service and a poorly or unsecured private network?

I ask this question because for the last three days I've been connecting to a wireless network called "linksys" in Lewisville, TX. Who is providing that link?

So where's the line drawn on free access and theft?

If began littering the local neighbourhood (aka neighborhood) with a handful of cash should I cry foul if people take my money? Is it my money or I have I made it public domain? Is there implicit permission given when one doesn't secure their Wi-fi?

Are "they" breaking the terms of their ISP contract by allowing others to share the connection? Does that change anything?

Over time will the ethics change? I mean three years ago Wi-fi hardware defaulted to open and you had to explicitly secure it. Now the default is closed and you must explicitly open it. So does that mean that when there is an open access connection that the owner has explicitly opened it or are they just using old technology?

Ah well, I got to get my email and to make some Skype calls thanks to "linksys" in Lewisville, TX. Thank you, whomever you may be.

Blogging heck! The power of the blog comes hitting home.

My post Infotriever & Check My Trip: Pain in the Proverbial... has had an immediate effect on the folks at http://www.infotriever.com. They've extended the number of characters available for comments from 255 to 4095.

It's nice to know that a blog in a public place can make another site change to save face.

An open feedback message to Infotriever as their feedback page - http://www.infotriever.com/feedback.asp - doesn't allow comments greater than 255 characters! So, yes, this is an open bitch about their product.

This is what I wanted to post to their feedback page (now they'll get a brief message and a permalink):

This app is a pain in the proverbial...

I had all sorts of issues getting it to install. I use Windows XP SP2 & Firefox.

Even using IE and allowing pop-ups it never gave me the install option. Finally I had to get the app directly from your site.

Then when I did the "Add to my Calendar" from www.checkmytrip.com it put my appointments all as GMT+10:30 despite the fact that I'm travelling to the US.

I found the option in the preference to make sure it used local time, but it wasn't smart enough to move the already imported appointments. Why wouldn't it just do that? What use-case would be valid to leave the existing ones?

Nevertheless, I tried to re-add the trip details and it told me if was done, but everything was still in GMT+10:30.

Finally I had to manually delete the incorrect entries and try again. Still it put everything in the wrong times.

I exited the system tray icon, deleted the appointments and tried again. Same deal.

I'm a power user and I have had huge issues. 99% of everyone else would just give up. In fact, I'm about to uninstall unless you can provide an easy fix.

There, I feel better now.

I was listening to the latest Dot Net Rocks! show on Windows Server where they talked about 64-bit Windows and addressable memory was discussed.

It was said that 32-bit Windows can address 4 GB of memory. Now that's 2^32/1024/1024/1024 = 4.

But they said that 64-bit Windows can address 16 TB (Terabytes). However, when I do the same calculation as above I get this:

2^64/(1024^6)=16. That's not Terabytes, that's Exabytes!

The sequence is Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte, Petabyte, Exabyte, Zettabyte.

Now, what's right? The quoted Terabytes or the calculated Exabytes?

I've run out of space on my Dell Precision M50 laptop so a few weeks ago I purchased an external 2.5" USB2 drive case (A$22) to use with a spare 20 GB drive I had lying around.

 

I soon discovered that my Dell was only USB1.1. The difference in speed with using the drive on my home PC (which does have USB2) and the laptop is painfully obvious.

 

My network guy showed me a new firewire/usb combo external drive case that was only A$44. So I snapped one up.

 

However, it didn't work in firewire mode. I kept getting time out issues. I knew that's what it was because when copying large files the drive kept "powering down" for a minute or so before resuming the copy. I'd get about 100 MB chunks of data copied for every burst of activity before the next time out.

 

Even worse Windows Explorer would completely lock up during a scandisk (started from the Tools tab).

 

I did the normal search for new drivers/firmware. The Microsoft site said that Windows Firewire support was up-to-date. Looking up the device name in Device Manager gave me "Dotop 1394 USB COMBO IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device". The company site, http://www.dotop.com.tw, doesn't even list the device so no drivers/firmware there.

 

I searched Google, but it returned very few pages and nothing relevant.

 

My Event Viewer had the following two numerously repeated events:

 

 

Details

Product:

Windows Operating System

ID:

25

Source:

sbp2port

Version:

5.2

Symbolic Name:

IO_ERR_BAD_FIRMWARE

Message:

The driver has detected a device with old or out-of-date firmware. The device will not be used.

   

Explanation

The driver received incorrect configuration data.

Possible causes include:

• A faulty device.
• An old device that does not conform to the Serial Bus Protocol 2 (SBP-2) device specifications.

   

User Action

To resolve the problem, try to reset the device by turning it on and off. If this action does not resolve the problem, the device is probably not supported.

 

Pasted from <here>

 

 

Details

Product:

Windows Operating System

ID:

9

Source:

sbp2port

Version:

5.2

Symbolic Name:

IO_ERR_TIMEOUT

Message:

The device, %1, did not respond within the timeout period.

   

Explanation

The device did not respond within the ten-second time-out period.

The device probably could not handle the amount of data read from or written to it. Some devices time out when you attempt to read or write more than 128KB in one request.

   

User Action

If the device not responding is a disk drive, limit the maximum transfer size on the device.

To limit the maximum transfer size on a device

1. Using Regedit, navigate to the following registry value:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SBP2
   A list of manufacturers and models is displayed.
2. Double-click the folder for the device.
   You can determine the manufacturer, model identification number, and Logical Unit Number (LUN) by running the Disk Management tool or Device Management tool and then viewing the properties of the disk in question.
3. Double-click the folder for the NodeID for your device.
4. Right-click the Device Parameters folder, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5. In the right pane, type LegacyFlags, and then press ENTER.
6. Double-click LegacyFlags and then type 1 in the Value data box.

Caution: This bit flag key should only be set to 1.

The SBP2Port device driver must be unloaded and then loaded again. To unload and then load the driver, unplug the device. Wait 30 seconds, and then plug the device back in. Alternatively, you can restart the computer.

If this problem is not caused by a disk device timing out, contact the device manufacturer for a firmware upgrade.

 

Pasted from <here>

 

I applied the registry "hack", but no good. I'm still down for the count (pardon the time out pun.)

 

If anyone knows the answer I'd love to hear it.

I'm a huge fan of Groove Virtual Office (http://www.groove.net.).

 

This excellent app let's me collaborate with others (or myself on multiple PCs) whether I am or they are online or not.

 

It stores data on my local hard drive, all nicely encrypted and compressed, so that I don't have to download the files I want to work on. When I make changes, though, the changes are automatically uploaded as soon as possible to a Groove relay server so that all the other users sharing the same data can get those changes too.

 

 

(If I have the same data on my various PCs then the data is synched up between them.)

 

It's a solid app that just works.

 

The biggest issue I find is that getting people to adopt Groove is hard. For some reason, despite the great feature list, people just don't seem to want to take it up.

 

That is apart from the Groove zealots (like myself) out there. I mean, once converted you're converted.

 

Anyway, case in point today. One guy I had using Groove on a particular project has ceased using it when the project finished. That is despite his enthusiasm to buy Groove for his department. He saw the value, raved about it, used it, and then stopped.

 

Maybe because our joint project finished he just wasn't "in there" everyday and the magic wore off.

 

I would really love to know why Groove doesn't get the following that it deserves.

I recently installed a few games on my Dell M50 laptop only to have them fail to run, to crash out or to just completely garble the display. So, I made sure I was running the latest Dell drivers for graphics, bios, etc. Still no good. I keep reading that it is recommended that I install the Dell versions of drivers, rather than go for the Nvidia drivers. I decided to go against this advice and guess what? It all works now. The Nvidia drivers were almost a year more up-to-date than the Dell. I'm now happy, but I'm waiting for something in my laptop to melt down in recompense for breaking the "dell drivers only" law. We'll see.

I've just started to use OneNote. Seems pretty good.

 

This blog entry has been rendered using it.