June 3rd, 2008
by
Brett Bumeter
Remember that kind of cool feature in Google Maps that also makes your skin crawl every time you think about it? I’m not talking about the spy satellite view of your backyard that was just detailed enough to prompt Dick Cheney to have his own house pixelated out of existance.
No I’m referring to the Street View program that gives something that feels like a 360 degree view from any position on many streets in America.
Well, some cities apparently have some laws against this creepy, nifty feature and so they are being removed.
The city of North Oaks, Minn., can no longer been seen using Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps Street View.
Minutes of the City Council’s Jan. 10 meeting indicate that Google sent a driver in a camera-equipped vehicle to record images of the city’s streets last summer, in violation of the city’s trespassing ordinance. Mayor Tom Watson then contacted Google representatives and asked that they remove Street View of North Oaks images from Google Maps.
“All data files will be destroyed and not used by any Google companies or subsidiaries,” the meeting minutes states. Google was not immediately able to confirm that removed North Oaks images have actually been deleted.
“Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” said a Google spokesperson via e-mail. “While the Street View feature enables people to easily find, discover, and plan activities relevant to a location, we respect the fact that people may not want certain images featured on the service. We provide easily accessible tools for flagging inappropriate or sensitive imagery for review and removal.”
Minnesota Town Vanishes From Google Street Images — Google Maps — InformationWeek
I suspect that there might be a pair of PhDs and the lawyers from their department looking for work some where in Boston soon over this screw up. Maybe Google hadn’t heard of due diligence before or maybe they don’t mind shuffling a few people out of the company and adding to the available pile of Boston resumes.
June 3rd, 2008
by
Brett Bumeter
Just last week I signed up for Time-Warner Internet access looking to drop at&t DSL which was not performing and because I have a decade long dispute with at&t after they stole $1000 from me in 2000, by slamming me into a $2 a minute long distance calling plan for a month without telling me, but I digress.
Time-Warner wants to limit the amount of video people watch and share on the internet.
The goal is to limit average data usage, allowing Time-Warner to get more customers into their existing fiber infrastructure. Since there is little or no competition for Internet connectivity, they don’t have to worry so much about losing customers.
The entire model lies in stark contrast to the competitive markets set up in South Korea and elsewhere, and it’s going to hurt innovation in the U.S. Many new startups, particularly those focused on video and online gaming, rely on their customers having access to high bandwidth, all you can eat connections.
Going Medieval: Time-Warner Begins Metered Bandwidth Testing -
That’s not very surprising for two basic reasons.
1. Time Warner wants to charge as much extra money for usage as possible
2. Time Warner also owns a lot of movies and if people start sharing their TV and movie content online, Time-Warner wants a share of the pie if they can get it.
So it looks like if this metered system actually makes it from its current testing location in Texas all the way to North Carolina, I will drop Time Warner like a cold fish and they can go back to making money off of luxury vacations tour packages when people visit their theme parks.
I’ll be sure to miss those as well!
June 3rd, 2008
by
Brett Bumeter
Much of last week for me was spent using and learning a piece of software that I expected would save me weeks of time. I thought I was buying a solution that would assist me in creating dynamic CSS menus.
I have coded CSS menus by hand before in the past. I know how to do it and it is a pain in the neck. :) So I was looking for a $100 solution that might save me at least $101 if not more.
I ended up investing about $700 in time learning to use the software and even more importantly learning how NOT to use the software. It comes with a lot of kNOTs which I had to unravel out of my head.
Once that was accomplished I realized that the software could not be used the way I wanted. It was not a solution and definitely not the solution I was looking for.
However, it did have a redeeming quality. That quality even justified the price and possibly my unintentional investment.
The thing is when I test things or when I learn them the best, I usually do it by breaking the rules. By using something in a way that it was never intended to be used. For me it is tolerance measurement.
When I tried to make dynamic css menus with CSS Menu Writer with the menus built on Word Press dynamic posts and pages it did not work.
But after learning the ins and outs of the program from a tangent, I learned at the very end of things how to accomplish the trick.
It is possible to do and without having to go through half of the work and endless numbers of nested loops that would normally be prescribed by the very helpful WebAssist tech that ultimately helped me clear up the last few areas of doubt. I spent all week answering my own questions as this new software was not terribly well documented.
Plus, the documentation it did have (a pdf doc) would not load correctly on my system despite the fact that I have almost all of the Adobe programs and every other pdf I have works fine. So I had to approach my efforts not knowing how things worked or what to expect if I tried something.
I captured about 20 minutes of 30 second clips showing the software breaking down when I tried to make it do something that it shouldn’t or could not do.
Now I have a bloggers paradox to deal with. Should I share the know how that I found by writing up a tutorial, should I drop it in a white paper, or should I exploit the potential with my own design work for however long it takes other people to figure out this method or find an actual software solution for dynamic menus in word press installations.
For right now, I am going to ponder it for a while before I make my determination. Its not like I’m sharing information about travel supplies on a travel blog. It is something that once shared rapidly loses its value.
