Our time is not short on technological innovation, but from time to time something just leaves me awestruck. In this case I'm talking about Google Maps Mobile, which gives you the full functionality of Google Maps on a cell phone. You can search for a location and it would give you a high quality map. Then you can tell it to give you directions to any other locations, for example, what's the fastest way from New York to Los Angeles (it's 2,787 miles). Sure, it's not a GPS, so you have to tell it where you are to get the next instruction.
Now one could say that portable GPS devices are around for quite some time, but the nice thing with Google Maps Mobile is, that it literally comes out of thin air. You don't need any special hardware, just a cellphone (and you want to have an unlimited data plan). Imagine being lost in a big city: in that very moment you could download Google Maps Mobile, search for your current location and find the way to your destination. And from this moment on, you'll never be lost again, wherever you are (provided you have Internet connection and Google Maps covers the area).
You even have the satellite view, so you can view your current location from space (of course it's not a live picture) - a couple of years ago this would have been material for a James Bond movie.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Thursday, October 12, 2006
The Way To Go for Office
Yesterday Google released a new version of its spreadsheet and word processing application and again everybody is talking about how Google could force Microsoft Office into submission. One can imagine that the guys in Redmond will count features and start laughing if the score comes out at something like 53,738 to 56 or so in favor of MS Office. No, Google won't defeat Microsoft just now, but they're opening up some interesting perspectives.
First of all, as everybody knows, most users only use very few features of MS Office. Recently a co-worker, who works with Excel every day, asked me, how to add values in a spreadsheet. Well, such formulas are why spreadsheets were originally invented, but most people are using them as table-oriented word processors or simple databases. In many of those cases Excel is cumbersome to use, but people got used to it
Second, the idea of having a spreadsheet and word processor working in a browser is compelling. Talk about the "thin client" is as old as the web and so far nobody really has realized it, but the Google applications (and similar approaches by other companies) show an elegant way, how it could be done. Imaging, when you buy a new PC: instead of installing applications and copying your data, you just open the browser and you're already there.
Third, if you want to publish a document in the web, it's easy because they are already in the web. We certainly will take advantage of that feature for NYDiscovery.
First of all, as everybody knows, most users only use very few features of MS Office. Recently a co-worker, who works with Excel every day, asked me, how to add values in a spreadsheet. Well, such formulas are why spreadsheets were originally invented, but most people are using them as table-oriented word processors or simple databases. In many of those cases Excel is cumbersome to use, but people got used to it
Second, the idea of having a spreadsheet and word processor working in a browser is compelling. Talk about the "thin client" is as old as the web and so far nobody really has realized it, but the Google applications (and similar approaches by other companies) show an elegant way, how it could be done. Imaging, when you buy a new PC: instead of installing applications and copying your data, you just open the browser and you're already there.
Third, if you want to publish a document in the web, it's easy because they are already in the web. We certainly will take advantage of that feature for NYDiscovery.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Redefining NYDiscovery
Our website NYDiscovery is now more than 5 years old. It's a fun project, mostly to show some pictures and share some of our experiences in New York City. We're doing this mainly for our friends and family, but apparently there are people out there, who are enjoying what we're putting on the site and we totally appreciate that.
Over time the technology (and the language) of the site changed. We started by building each and every page manually with an HTML editor (HTMLKit) and then uploaded the files by FTP. Then blogging became more generally more popular and we turned NYDiscovery into a blog site by using the excellent open source systems Nucleus CMS and Gallery.
Since this time the web evolved (some call it Web 2.0) and it's time for NYDiscovery to adapt. Why running our own software on our own webspace, if there are so many excellent sites out there, many of them free. For blogging we can use Fotolog and Blogger. For uploading gigs of pictures there's Flickr. The glue between all this is RSS, which allows to syndicate all of our content on our own homepage (we use SimplePie for that). That way we're not just doing our own stuff in our little corner of the Internet, but we're integrated into various communities.
We hope that our visitors continue to enjoy clicking around on our site, even if they are more an more directed to other websites. After all this is what surfing the web originally meant.
Over time the technology (and the language) of the site changed. We started by building each and every page manually with an HTML editor (HTMLKit) and then uploaded the files by FTP. Then blogging became more generally more popular and we turned NYDiscovery into a blog site by using the excellent open source systems Nucleus CMS and Gallery.
Since this time the web evolved (some call it Web 2.0) and it's time for NYDiscovery to adapt. Why running our own software on our own webspace, if there are so many excellent sites out there, many of them free. For blogging we can use Fotolog and Blogger. For uploading gigs of pictures there's Flickr. The glue between all this is RSS, which allows to syndicate all of our content on our own homepage (we use SimplePie for that). That way we're not just doing our own stuff in our little corner of the Internet, but we're integrated into various communities.
We hope that our visitors continue to enjoy clicking around on our site, even if they are more an more directed to other websites. After all this is what surfing the web originally meant.
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