Essential Resources for Google Maps

If you haven’t made the switch to Google Maps, then you are seriously missing out. Not only does the site work great for directions, but there are a ton of “hacks” that people have come up with to utilize the Google Maps API.

Essential Resources for Google Maps

Of particular interest I think is the CheapGas link that’s first on the list. It’s not up to the second accurate, but checking Ann Arbor’s area this morning yielded results I know were accurate as of Monday.

Finally, a few tips…

  • Finding addresses at Google Maps. If you wanted to map out Big Bird’s address for instance, you’d type the following line in the “search” field:

    123 Sesame Street, New York, NY, 10012

    The street address and zip code (without the city/state) also works most of the time.

  • Click the “Satellite” button at the upper right of the map to access satellite imagery of the area if it’s available. Click the “Hybrid” button to overlay the main streets with their names on the satellite images.
  • Click and drag on the map, it will go where you want it to go without reloading the whole page.

    • “Warp speed now, Mr Scott!”

    Need to know how to get every little ounce of energy out of your warp engines? Well, the following article from howstuffworks.com explains the basics of the antimatter engine (this is real folks, no science fiction here).

    Howstuffworks “How Antimatter Spacecraft Will Work”

    It won’t help you break that warp 10 barrier, but hey, an interesting read nonetheless for the modern day space explorer in all of us.

    Face lift

    Take a good look. Because in several more days this house won’t look the same.

    pre siding

    A trailer with our new siding arrived yesterday. We’re excited to have our new exterior look, especially since we actually get to enjoy it for a little bit and we’re not doing it just to sell the house. A friend of our’s father is doing the work for us. He delivered all the goods and took down the gutters yesterday. Today he’s putting the new back door in. We’re thinking it will take a little more than a week to finish the whole thing.

    So in the mean time, you all can take a look at the picture above, imagine what colors you would use, and leave a comment with your guess. Then when it’s all finished, I’ll post another picture of the exterior.

    It’s going to look great when it’s all finished. Now maybe we won’t get anymore flyers in our screen door offering an estimate to paint or side the house for us.

    Konfabulator

    I was talking to Mom last night and she was mentioning her new eMac at the school. She said Matt was playing around on it and had really liked the Dashboard feature of Mac OS 10.4 (aka Tiger). Well, Dashboard was most likely born from a previous widget concept made popular by a program known as Konfabulator. I believe that Konfabulator used to be about $25. But it was recently bought by Yahoo and as a result is now free. It runs in Mac OS 10.2 or greater, Windows 2000, & Windows XP.

    Konfabulator

    Konfabulator ships with several useful widgets like Analog Clock, Calendar, and Weather. But here is a list of some other interesting/useful/fun widgets.

    iPlayer
    iTunes widget for Konfabulator based on iPod shuffle design.

    Sing that iTune!
    A lyric fetcher Widget for iTunes which can also handle radio streaming titles. The lyrics are saved in “Documents/Sing that iTune!” folder and you can also add your self-made lyrics in there. Sync the folder with iPod’s Notes folder to bring it.

    NCAA Football liveSchedule
    An updating desktop football schedule for NCAA division 1A schools. Schedule will update as game-times and scores become available.

    mini iTunes Remote
    The eighth Widget in the mini Widget series. mini iTunes Remote is a complete redesign and coding effort of the iTunes Remote that ships with Konfabulator. This version features a compact design, the ability to change your ratings, and and set your iChat status to your current playing track.

    HAL9000
    A novel Widget where HAL9000 periodically speaks.

    Stack ‘Em!
    A classic time waster is now available for Konfabulator! Can you keep pace with the falling blocks? Good luck! (Basically it’s Tetris as a widget)

    Finally, get more useless and useful widgets from the Konfabulator Widget Gallery.

    Chewing On Mindfulness

    Parents of the world will cringe as they read the following article. It looks like there just might be something to chewing gum. I personally can’t last much more than 15-20 minutes with the stuff.

    Gum Is Your Secret

    However, despite the positive affects, it’s still pretty tough to get out of hair.