Recently in google Category

Last May 2007, Google launched Street View which you can view the photos in every street (not always) in limited selections of cities including San Francisco, New York City and Miami. I wondered myself; will this coming to my city home, Pittsburgh?

Five months later today, my dream came true. Goggle launched new city-local areas including Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Portland, Tucson and Philadelphia, brings the total of 14 cities.

The picture above shows the reflection glass building window in PPG Place in downtown Pittsburgh, as you see the car from reflection window; used some kind of special equipment to shoot the 360 degree panorama photos on streets. I can tell myself those shoot were taken in month of July 2007.

I am much over hyped to browse the most familiar streets I have been there, and couldn’t get any much more fun and excitement to eaten up my time to find me and my relatives’ and friends' homes, dad’s home where I grew up*, deaf school where I graduated, and am current working.

I am very delightful that Google Street View have landed in Pittsburgh.

By the anyway, if you find Street View not listed in your big downtown, and don’t worry about this; I am expecting that Google is working hard to take photos in your local city in near future.

*NOTE* I couldn’t send the link of sensitive information (such as my home, for an example) here in my blog, so feel free ask me if I know who you are!

I stumped into reading Official Google Blog, Map-making entry – and killed my spare time playing around with Google Maps this morning today. So far, I really, really like what I see. Essentially, the service lets you create quick and surprisingly elegant Google Maps mashups includes icons, shape drawings tools and integration with YouTube/Google Videos, among others.

I created my first personalize map in North America - list few spots I have been into vacation in last two years, every place marks collects several my Flickr images and my few YouTube in Google My Maps.

I have a little dream that I would like to see in Google Maps:
- pin point of all deaf schools / colleges
- deaf bloggers by city
- list of all restaurant for lunch in downtown Pittsburgh
- deaf organizations / clubs across USA (as update of 4/6/2006)

I would like to do this, but I don’t have so much time, and I would love to see somebody out there willing do this, which would be great!

UPDATE (4/6/2007 10:45am): I forgot to mention that I had my Flickr photos into Yahoo maps since Sept '06, total of 427 pictures geotagged on my Yahoo maps. You need to zoom into location where the pictures are taken, the location expand more numbers of photos found in specific location.

OMG! Google released their newest addition of web application, Google Calendar.

I might ditch 30boxes.com, a web-based calendar application, if Google Calendar support RSS feed with only my public schedule rather than private.

UPDATE 4/14/2006: Interesting Google Calendars allows to share the public calendars such as Celebrity Birthdays, DVD Releases. The community can literally tap onto agendas and information in a format to share the public calendars. I created my personal 'birthdays' (personal private), public 'Nintendo DS release date' and 'Pittsburgh Steelers 2006 schedule games' in my Google Calendar.

My co-workers and I chatted about cool features in Google that really help us for searching the answers. He had a older teenager son and daughter and each one of them have own computer in their bedroom. He taught his two kids how to use Google, whenever they need to ask for search their specific questions and it could help them to search the answer on their own.

Here are some question to ask Google, don't be afraid to ask stupid questions:
Why hasn't my package arrived? To find out, type in a tracking number for any major shipping service.

Is my father's flight on time? Enter the name of an airline followed by a flight number to check on a plane's status.

Is it going to snow? Type in "weather" and any city and state or zip code for a quick (illustrated) report.

How can I find someone's phone number? Enter the name and address of a person or business into Google's search box for a phone listing.

2 + 1 equals what? Type in any math problem to get a quick response the calculator. Result

What is bamboozle? Learn what a word means by typing in, for example, "define: bamboozle" in dictionary.

Can you point the map for street address? Get maps and driving directions by punching in any street address.

How can Google alert me when specific new information comes up on web? Sign up Google Alerts, and I also explained about this.

That explains why Google is your friend!

Source: TIME.com

I like Grant Laird's idea about giving Google logo in American Sign Language fingerspelling in honor of Laurent Clerc's birthday on December 26th. (Dang, this date, a day after Christmas, will Google care?)

If they listen, post away, and the world our country will be curious what deaf community is all about.

Remember, this image I made with Gallaudet fingerspelling font, does not affiliate with Google in any way.

Today I watched the Pittsburgh local television news - Google will set up to open new offices and hire over 100 job positions in Pittsburgh sometime in 2006-07. Google is the one of brightest economic growth in United States, topping the Pittsburgh's top corporations headquartered in Pittsburgh: Alcoa, Bayer, Heinz and PPG Industries.

Why Google Pittsburgh? The reason is because Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), one of the oldest computer science school and one of best along with Information Technology and Software Engineering majors. The CMU graduate students could not necessarily to leave the Pittsburgh area to find their jobs in western states (such from state of Washington to California) where there are hottest computing position jobs available. Instead, they can be feeling lucky to stay in Pittsburgh and get Google job - not need to leave the Pittsburgh area after they done with CMU.

Go read the official press at CMU relationship with Google. Pittsburghers are feeling lucky!

Since Google Map Beta (now called Google Local) launched back in February 2005, and Google Maps API in June 2005, has grow frenzy for web developers to develop this on their web sites for information mapping network.

Google Maps Mania, a blog that tracks the list of link of websites. Most of sites such as ideas and tools are also influenced by Google Maps. You name the place - where are high school and college? Find cheap gas nearest your local? Find fast food resturtants? Looking for funny city and town names (e.g. Intercourse, PA)?

Another cool blog site, Google Maps API Blog, only for web developers who are interest building Goolge Maps on their web pages. It could be much easier for me as web developer to learn the tips, examples and techniques before writing the code.

Happy Googling!

Source :Wikipedia Google Map

I got my email message from Google Alerts (see entry #832), the alert message finds the topic of my friend's name pointed a link to show my friend's name in web site: Frapper.

Frappr as Friend Mapper, powered by Google map, it is an online tool that lets you map out the zip code where you live, work, vacation, or cool stuff you can have. It's much like social networking + Google Maps = Frappr. It allows people to create groups and have them mapped to location on Google Maps to pin on your own by using valid zip code.

Frappr also have several diversity & personal group names such as Deaf America, which lists more than 150 deaf people posted themselves on the map where they are from. Another deaf group, Deaf Bloggers (thanks, Grant & Kokonutpundits for the link), find the location of Deaf Blogger.

UPDATE: (9/21/2005) There's more deaf groups in Frappr search results, thanks to Kokonutpundits again.

Google Alerts. I had been around with this for more than a year.

I received email alerts few times every week from Google Alerts when there are new Google results for the search terms, which I received the topics that I am forwarding to see the news on the web. Here is some of my most useful tool to have Google Alerts:

• I used Google code to see who linked to my blog recently from other sites. Few times, I caught the bloggers linked to my blog site, and I am curious to see their blog sites.


• I put the alerts of the full names who I know. I might never know if they getting married, obituaries and their highlights from local news story on web sites.


• And, I put my full name to search external web sites like my old high school web site or deaf organization site, if they mentioned my name on web site as it happens.

I have been avoiding using the simple word of topics, that can cause the huge junk of alert emails sent from Google Alerts, and I have be very carefully to using the Google Cheat Sheet to use advance operators and using Google Hacks to create the specific the topics to narrow the search results.

Be warned, I am googling you, as we do.

In: Google Reader

Out: Bloglines

Expired: Blogrolling

Google Reader web interface and keyboard shortcuts impressed me, making my job life much easier! For more info about Google Reader, visit FAQs what you need to know more about this.

If you still not sure what RSS Reader is all about, I explained and showed examples in entry #734, You Gotta Love RSS.

Google kept us alive and well!

UPDATE 10/14/2005: I lost motivation with Google Reader because of bug/glitches which I am unable to explain, and Bloglines has added few new features since after Google Reader released. I am going to stick with Bloglines.