We look like two cops.
More Map Stuff
So today, while house hunting I decide to try something new. Well mostly new, new to me. After the failure of Roadee I wanted to try and redeem myself to Johanna. When we go looking for houses we will offten email ourselves a list of addresses, then when we are driving around we simply go down this list. Now our vehicle of choice, a 1998 Ford Explorer, gets about 14 miles to a gallon of gas. Needless to say we do what we can to conserve gas and minimize driving. That is until we started looking for houses. Its not uncommon for use to get driving around, using the above stated email list, and have the following events take place.
- Drive to house number 1 on our list, we decided we hate the neighborhood and take off for house number 2.
- Arive at house number 2 only to find its more Wiskey Tango, then the first house and decided to jump to house number 3.
- Drvie to house number 3, THAT JUST HAPPENS TO BE 1 BLOCK AWAY FROM HOUSE number 1.
And that there is our problem. We don’t have a way of seeing all of the houses that we want to look at, at once, on one map. Until today. So I did a little noodling and a lot of cut and paste work and was able to make a “my map” in google maps called “Fav Houses”, that has all of our proposed houses on it. It was everything that we were looking for in a map.
I quickly hit the send button. Emailed it to our iPhones and headed out the door to gloat make up for yesterday’s Roadee mishap. I jumped into the running Explorer and whip out my phone and said to Johanna some cocky line about how great I am and them I hit the link in the email from google to show off my new map and got this bullshit.
I was like “What the H?” So with the car still idling in the driveway. Cole fully strapped into his car seat. I went back inside to fix this. Apparently you can’t send “Feature Map’s” to the iPhone. They just give you the city your in and none of the waypoints that you added. But I did find out that you can get the KML data from your “My Map” and manually input that into the google maps app on the iPhone. So it turns out a guy by the name of Andrew de los Reyes build a little web app that does this for you, called MyMapsHelp. You simply right click on the “view in google earth” button in google maps and copy the link then past it into Andrews web app. Then it will generate a new link that you simply email to your iphone and wham. You get this:
Success! I made a bookmark for the link, then added it to my home screen. So now any time I want to see a map that contains all of our favorite houses I just have to hit a bottom on my home screen. I might be losing the war with my tech, but I feel like I’ve won this battle.
Roadee, I should have passed.
I loved my old iPhone, as most people that know me will attest. It was a very loved and well used phone. I traded up from a reliable, but lame blackberry 7000whatever to the iPhone. I waited in line for the this phone, just 21 days after I hurt my eye. I spent a lot of time on the couch face down after my injury and the iPhone was a great tool for keeping me occupied during my recovery. So when they announce the 3GS it took me a little time to decided to upgrade (about 4 days). One of the main reasons that I upgraded was the GPS. I dont have a GPS in my car or truck and we dont have a Tom Tom or a Nuvi. The KU are GPSless or at least we were until we both got 3GS’s (?).
When Apple announced the 3Gs, they had Tom Tom demo the up and coming app. I was sold. I rationalized getting the new phone based off how much money I would save NOT buying an stand alone GPS. So I waited, and waited, and waited. There has been a few nav apps available on the App Store. But I passed them up waiting for the Tom Tom app. And I wait. And waited. Then two days ago the Tom Tom app dropped…. for $100. And suddenly my entire rationale for getting new phones was out the window. For $100 I can buy a Tom Tom unit, that comes with a suction cup mount. If I buy the iPhone app I still would have to hold my phone in my hand and like it idiot. So getting to the point, I’ve started testing GPS app alternatives. Starting with a $1.99 app called Roadee.
I had high hopes for this app. I mean I spent almost 2 dollars on it. And its kind of open source, and I think that’s cool (I live in Portland, so I kind of have to). It uses OpenStreetMap.org maps, so I figured that if it could not give me good directions at least open source way finding could possibly be exciting. I have to admit I got kind of smiley when I first launch it and pulled out of the driveway. I mean it figured out the best way for me to drive and them recalculated the route for me as I decided to go east instead of west (still pulling out of my driveway). However after the 3rd intersection I was ready to throw it out a window. The problem was that it was having to download the map while giving directions. So it was not able to keep up with my driving in normal traffic. I kept missing turns, much to Johanna’s delight. The quote form her tonight, as I tried to incorporate Roadee into out evening of house hunting was: “You alway rely on new technology, and it alway lets you down”.
Story of my life.
I’m going to find a $5 GPS app and try it next. Baby steps.
This Is Why People That Use Computers Rule The World
Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail account was hacked, and some of its contents posted on the internet Wednesday.
The internet griefers known as Anonymous took credit for the intrusion, and screenshots of e-mail messages and photos belonging to the Alaska governor have been published by WikiLeaks. Threat Level has confirmed the authenticity of at least one of the e-mails.
I’m not saying that I endorse breaking into someone’s email. That being said, I believe that email should never be considered private. It’s just not the way it works. I dont know all the interworking of the current email infrastructure, therefore I try to not take it for granted. That being said people don’t care about that kind of stuff, luddites, have it coming to them. Palin was doing something shady as Governor, and to cover her tracks she forwards emails to her persoanl account “gov.sarah@yahoo.com”. Can you imagine if this person was trying to run this government. “I dont want the Iranians to find our bombing plans. Better send it to vp.sarah@yahoo.com to keep it on under raps. Oh, I better forward it to 2nd.husband@snowmachineracerdude.com. So we can talk about it when I get home tonight from banning books”
I really hope that this does not happen, I’m not sure that I can take it.
Also, for some reason I cant load Wikileak.org. I wonder if its Comcast. The site might be down, can’t even connect with a proxy server.
Via: dvorak.org/blog Via: Wikileaks
Where to find the good stuff
We are constantly taking pictures of the little man and you can look at all the pictures by choosing the “Photo’s and Video” button and selecting “Cole’s Pics.”
This will be updated nearly daily. Everything he does is so cute, we have to take pictures!
Thank you all for all the love and support. Hope to see you soon.
Where to find the good stuff
We are constantly taking pictures of the little man and you can look at all the pictures by choosing the “Photo’s and Video” button and selecting “Cole’s Pics.”
This will be updated nearly daily. Everything he does is so cute, we have to take pictures!
Thank you all for all the love and support. Hope to see you soon.