July 20, 2005

Google Moon

So you've been using Google Maps for a while now, right? You love the interface, the quirkiness and the satellite images. But have you ever wanted to travel to another body?

Today in 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. In honor of that, Google's gone and put moon images into the maps interface and created Google Moon.

Be sure to click on the various landing site, and zoom all the way in to see the truth about the moon. Oh, and read their FAQ, too.

Posted by Samer at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2005

Skype Calling

I've just used Skype to make two international phone calls -- one to Lebanon and one to the UK. The quality was passable, the Lebanon call was a bit choppy, though the other side didn't complain of anything. The UK call was fine and I didn't notice anything at all wrong with it.

The best part is the cost: just over $1.50 for many many minutes of talking. Their rates are pretty damn good. I think the service is great, and I'm going to use it a bit more. And calls from one Skype user to another cost nothing.

Posted by Samer at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2005

Sudden Motion Sensor

In the latest PowerBooks, Apple has added a sudden motion sensor. The idea is if the machine senses that it is falling or moving erratically, it will park the heads of the hard disks so as to prevent damage to your data.

Well, Amit Singh over at Kernel Thread, has taken a long hard look at the software that runs this sensor and has come up with some interesting proof of concept programs to use this information. One of the programs creates a "stable" window that stays aligned properly when you rock your PowerBook back and forth.

He admits that these concepts are just teaching tools, but does posit one very interesting idea for actual use: map the movements to keyboard keys, like the right and left keys. Using something like this, you should be able to rock your laptop and scroll web pages or large images or Google Maps.

Almost makes me want to go get a new PowerBook so I can play with it.

Posted by Samer at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2005

I'm Sorry!

Google B0rked

I'm sorry. It seems I've broken Google. Well, Gmail. Still, I'm really really sorry.

It'll be back. I hope.

Posted by Samer at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2005

Turn Signals

Seems that people in this area really have a hard time figuring out how to use a turn signal. It's almost to the point where I wonder if some dealers have turn signals as an option on cars.

There's no information up on their web site, but Nissan has demonstrated technology that will control cars that swerve out of their lanes and pull them back into their own lane. I'm sure Nissan's thought through the various possibilities for foul ups there, but my favorite part of the article was this quote:

Lane Departure Prevention combines a camera and computerized devices that control braking for front and rear wheels that nudge the car in the right direction. No decision has been made on when the new system will be available.

The feature turns off when you hit the turn signal, so you will be able to change lanes or make turns without the system kicking in.

I'm guessing that if you move the car deliberately, it won't pull you back into your lane. But the system will, it seems, set off a buzzer to warn you of drifting before it pulls the car back. Perhaps with this we can train people in a Pavlovian way.

Posted by Samer at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2005

How do they do it?

Following yesterday's post about Google Maps, I ran across this website where a web developer takes apart what Google is doing and shows how they do some of the magic they do. It is pretty damn impressive, if you can follow along.

Thanks bOINGbOING.

Posted by Samer at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2005

Maps

Google is going to take over the world, and as further proof I present the latest from their incredible Labs, Google Maps.

I'm sitting at home, sick, playing around with it because it amuses me. It's really well done. Click on it and drag the map around, or use the plus and minus keys, as well as the arrow keys to navigate. Type in an address, then type in "pizza" for a list of pizza places near by. Try doing a directions search, too.

You want to know how good this is? It does not work with Safari, yet, but I will launch FireFox just so I can look at these maps.

Simple and elegant. Another impressive offering.

Posted by Samer at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)

Trackbacks

So, the spammers are winning. I've turned off trackbacks until I have the time to configure my site to de-spam them. It really is out of control.

And, I'm going to try to post a few times a week, again...

Posted by Samer at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2004

Comments

Well, I've just about had it. Comment spam is insidious and annoying. I've banned over a hundred IP addresses from posting to my blog, and this morning I've deleted over 200 spam comments from this blog and another 50 from pictures.

I've seen one after the other of my friends blogs lose comments, and it disappoints and saddens me. There are technical solutions out there, including some good ones built into MovableType 3, but my hosting provider seems to not support them.

For now, I'm killing comments. Once I move to a different, more technically savvy host I'll re-enable the comments.

Posted by Samer at 11:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 12, 2004

WarDriving

I was headed to meet up with a friend of mine and I wanted to show him something on my laptop, so I took it along for the ride. I decided that since the laptop was driving with me, I'd do a little wardriving, using the MacStumbler program. Some interesting results...

I hacked up a program to take the output and crunch some numbers. Here's what I found:

The difference is pretty striking.

Posted by Samer at 12:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 04, 2004

Google Tech

Everyone uses Google. It is ubiquitous, just like the dial tone. You always expect that it will be there, and always expect that it will return some results of interest. Urs Hölzle, Google's VP for Engineering, was in London and ZDNet UK's Matt Loney wrote a really interesting article (even for you non-techies) about "The Magic That Makes Google Tick".

When Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, he was alluding to the trick of hiding the complexity of the job from the audience, or the user. Nobody hides the complexity of the job better than Google does; so long as we have a connection to the Internet, the Google search page is there day and night, every day of the year, and it is not just there, but it returns results.

I really like that Google's stated mission is to "organize the world's information", and not just as a search engine. The distinction may be lost on some, but that's clearly part of the magic. The interesting bits, for those propeller heads out there, is how they do what they do. And the answer, more common every day, is in the software.

Google's hardware is standard, no-name, failure-prone computers that any other IT department would refuse to even consider. But the thing the folks at Google realized is that there were going to be failures and that the only way to deal with them is to write software that will work around it. So, in a cluster of 2000 computers, a couple of hardware failures in a day mean nothing. They just route around it.

Their need to create software that manages the mess of computers led them to develop their own file system as well as systems management software that makes rolling out a new data center painless:

A new data centre can be up and running in under three days. "Our data centre now is like an iMac," said Schulz. "You have two cables, power and data. All you need is a truck to bring the servers in and the whole burning in, operating system install and configuration is automated."

Go read the article, it is quite fascinating.

Posted by Samer at 01:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 24, 2004

Internet Access

"Is there internet access in the rooms," I would ask. "Unfortunately there is no broadband in the rooms, sir," was the reply. "But you can use dialup," she said helpfully.

Listen up hotel operators of the world: it is 2004. There is no excuse not to have free wireless internet access. None. It costs pennies and is a valid criteria by which a hotel will be judged. In fact, for me, it is going to be the number two criteria after location.

Your hotel needs internet access anyway, so that broadband pipe should already be there. Share it. I know, you make some money off idiotic $10/day internet access, but that does turn off a not insignificant number of people.

Then there's the business center. At the Crowne Plaza in San Francisco, internet access could be had there on an old computer that cost $3 to set up and $0.89 per minute. What are you people thinking?

The Homewood Suites in Seattle was the only place to have free broadband. It rocked. The only downside to that hotel was that the windows don't open. I'll take that tradeoff. But there really is no excuse for the likes of a four star hotel like Le Soleil to not have it. Inexcusable that the Double Tree in Portland, probably the most wireless city in America, has $10/day wired access.

Get your acts together, people.

Posted by Samer at 01:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 17, 2004

Live from the Cascades

I'm on board train 504 Cascades from Portland to Eugene. I'm posting this live using Bluetooth to the phone and the phone's internet connection.

It is slow, but how cool is that?

Posted by Samer at 12:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 14, 2004

Sloooooow

I'm in a hotel that does not seem to understand what it means to do business in the 21st century. I mean, not only do they not have high speed internet in the rooms (WiFi, what's that?), they don't even have access for free in the business center. They charge $3 to set up the connection and 59 cents per minute. To use the internet. In the most wired city in America. Really guys, it might be time to pack it in and see if having something your clients want and use might make them come back.

Luckily I've got plan B. What's that you ask? Well, a GPRS connection over my GSM P800 phone. Enough acronyms? Using Bluetooth, I can make a wireless connection to my wireless phone. The phone has internet connectivity, and the computer can use that. Unless, of course, the stars are not just so.

The problem with this solution is that it is slow. S. L. O. W. That makes blogging pictures a tad difficult. Roundtrip times between me and some servers here and there are all over a second, and most over two. That makes FTPing a picture to the server very difficult, if not impossible.

I am blogging offline (I'm writing this as I wait for a friend to show up so we can go drink), and as soon as I get me some high speed, I'll post. So look for a flurry of stuff on Monday morning.

Posted by Samer at 02:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 10, 2004

Keep up with my travels

Okay, so you don't read the blog all the time, but you want to know when I post something new... I've got just the solution for you...

Over on the left hand side of the main page is a "Stay Updated" box. Enter your e-mail address and this nifty software called Notifier will, well, notify you of any new posts I make.

Posted by Samer at 09:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Digs

As you can see, I've made some changes to the blog. The changes were precipitated by moving to GoDaddy for hosting. Yeah, I know it is a silly name, but they have good deals and a reasonably good and responsive staff.

In addition to moving up to MovableType 3.1, changing the look of the blog and renaming it to 'samer/thoughts', I've created a photo blog. 'samer/pictures' will be the place to look for the latest pics from my travels (more on that soon).

Drop me a line if you like what you see.

Posted by Samer at 07:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Bluetooth posting

I'm sitting outside, using a wireless Bluetooth connection from my Mac to my P800 and surfing the web via the phone's internet connection. Sweet. I'll hopefully be using this to post pictures and blog entries while on the train.

Posted by Samer at 07:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack