Working in a NOC, I often consult the two Maine power companies that have online outage information (there is a third that does not have such a feature). If I see many circuits go down at the same time I'll check to see if there is an outage in the area by checking both those websites, then going to Google maps to see how far away the sites are from the current outages. This is a tedious process and I finally decided to do something about it by creating my own Google map with their wonderful API. I'd never used it before so this proved a great way to learn how to use it as well. After setting up the screen scraping to pull info off the power companys' websites, getting the app to do just what I wanted, and working around some minor speed bumps, it's done!
Google's API is quite easy to work with, and I'm very pleased with the results. For most people this map isn't very useful, and at any one time there are only a few markers plotted on it, but for myself it will be quite useful, and it was a great learning process. You can view the Maine Power Outages map at http://euicho.com/power
Today I was 3 computers deep into remote desktop (RD to one computer, then use that one to get to another, etc). Navigate through that sort of setup long enough, and you start to question what is real, or at least what is actually the machine you are physically sitting in front of. Quite existential, that.
At any rate, on the drive to work today I was doing a little casual geo-wardriving with my new bluetooth GPS receiver and netstumbler and I came across 2 access points within about 100 yards of one another that I found very interesting. They had two distinct names that told me a lot about the persons that set them up.
The first AP was secured and named "Da Internets". This one made me literally LOL, but beyond that, shows that the user was familiar with the silly internet jargon we love to use (the internets, the intarwebs, the interwobbles...) and was therefore smart enough to know they should secure their wireless to prevent theft of their personal information. That, and they probably are stingy about bandwidth usage.
The second AP was unsecured and named "FREE WIRELESS HERE!" There are actually at least 2 types of people that could have set this up. The first would be a generous person who embraces the movement to provide a network of open wireless across America, and knows to not send private info across their wireless, using a wired connection instead. The second type of person is someone dumb enough to not change the DEFAULT PASSWORD for their access point and also not secure their AP. Then some 31337 h4X0r with the default password list saved on his/her laptop connected to the open AP, saw it had a default SSID of "linksys" or "default" or "belkin" and went to 192.168.1.1 and proceeded to log in with the default password and change the SSID if they were lucky, and infect their computers with backdoors or trojans or sniffed their traffic if they were quite unlucky.
Moral of the story: Be generous or be stingy, I don't care. But please secure your AP's admin account!
If you're interested, here are some of the APs I hit before getting onto the interstate last night on the drive home. Red nodes are secure, green are unsecure, and the size of the node is how close to it I was when I picked it up. If I drove around I could pinpoint an individual AP, but as it is the locations are where I was when I first got the signal.
In other news, I'm excited for what may be announced at Mac World next week. Steve Jobs' keynote, or "Stevenote" is 90 minutes long, and new laptops and a video-rental area in the iTunes Store is not enough to cover that! Or is it? Perhaps he will talk about those for 15-30 minutes, rip his shirt-mic off, and say "Thats it bitches! Keep buying iPhones! BAAAAH! BAAAH! and throw a smoke bomb, cackling as the vapor disperses leaving and empty stage. We'll see.
Oh, speaking of DRM free, apparently Amazon is going to start selling Sony mp3s without DRM! Pretty cool stuff if you ask me. This basically us breaking the dinosaur record lable's balls until they're forced to concede un-copy-protected music so we'll start buying it instead of stealing it. Kudos to them, despite their monetary motives, and hopefully it will last.
Remember, Artists wont go hungry if you don't buy their albums. Labels give them next to nothing for their music, and many artists have spoken up about it (Trent Reznor, Courtney Love, NOFX, to name just a few). Because of this, I'm much more likely to pay for a Fat Wrech Chords or Fueled by Ramen album than I am a Sony or RCA one.
Artists go hungry when you don't go to their shows and don't buy their merch. Support your favorite bands by going to some shows and buying t-shirts! You may even fall in love with the opening band you hadn't really heard of and thus further your own happiness.
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Welcome to Google Earth.
Google Earth is a 3D globe on your pc. It allows you to type in any address, or coordinates, and it zooms from space down to the address. On my PC (and 4Mbps cable connection) it takes several seconds for the image to come into focus as it streams the data from Google's vast satellite image aquisitions, but it's well worth it when done, especially in metropolitan areas where the resolutions allow you to make out the models of some cars on the streets (sort-of...).
With the controls, one can zoom, rotate, and change viewing angle. I personally like to hold down a rotate button and get vertigo until I fall out of my chair.
To get to places, there are Fly To, Location, and Direction searches. Once viewing an area, one can toggle pointers for lodging, road labels, terrain, dining pointers, borders, and building pointers. Once can also set custom placemarks to mark areas of interest for future reference.
Local search lets you search for restaurants, hotels, and driving directions. Layers make it easy to layer multiple searches, save results to folders, and share them with other users. Some current layers show parks, schools, hospitals, airports, and shopping.
Google touts the program as being useful for planning a trip, getting driving directions, finding a house or business, or just exploring the world. I've used their satellite imaging on maps.google.com in the past to find NIKE and GLOBECOM sites around Maine, and this will definately make it easier and more fun to do things like that.
These are just a few of the features in the program. I strongly suggest downloading it now (completely free, no registration).
The idea is simple. It's a globe that sits inside your PC. You point and zoom to anyplace on the planet that you want to explore. Satellite images and local facts zoom into view. Tap into Google search to show local points of interest and facts. Zoom to a specific address to check out an apartment or hotel. View driving directions and even fly along your route. We invite you to try it now.
Google Earth is free for personal use. You may (optionally) choose to upgrade to Google Earth Plus.
Google Earth Plus gets you:
- GPS integration - read tracks and waypoints from your GPS.
- Higher resolution printing (greater than screen resolution).
- Customer support via email (not just web).
- Annotation - adds draw/sketch tools for richer annotations (can be shared as KML).
- Data importer - read address points from .csv files.
Google Earth Plus is aimed more at cartographers and map enthusiests.
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