Jon Lowder

Google Maps Street View Hits Lewisville

For the longest time Google Maps' "Street View" hadn't been available in this area and then today I logged on and found it live...here on my own corner!  That pic to the left (click to enlarge) is a screenshot of my monitor with the street view for my address shown.  Kind of wild that it's available here, and it's cool being able to notice that the pictures had to be taken at least a few weeks ago due to some items that appear in my yard that are no longer there and to notice that the pictures had to be taken in the morning because of the angle of the sunlight and the shadows.

Actually street view is now available in a large swath of the Winston-Salem/Greensboro metro areas.  The area of the map to the left that is in blue is where the street view is available.  I'd love to know how Google does this...oh wait, here's an article in Popular Mechanics with pictures of the camera they use at $45,000 a pop!  Way cool.

Pedal Powered Tennis Ball Launcher

Some smart people invented a tennis ball launcher that's powered by pedaling a bicycle.  This speaks to me on so many levels, including my love of tennis, the great deal of time I've spent on stationary bikes recently and my love of gadgetry (although I myself struggle to even put together IKEA furniture).  Readers of this blog may remember that I partially tore my LCL about six weeks ago and part of my rehab is pedaling my butt off on a stationary bike.  Well with this gadget I could satisfy my rehab requirements while getting back on the tennis court sooner than planned.  If only I had even an ounce of engineering acumen I'd give this a go.  Here's the video:

Pedal Powered Tennis - Ball Launcher - video powered by Metacafe

Annoy-a-tron. Oh, the Fun I Could Have

Esbee sent me the link to the Annoy-a-tron so you can thank her if your ears are tortured any time in the near future. Here's the description:

The Annoy-a-tron generates a short (but very annoying, hence the name) beep every few minutes. Your unsuspecting target will have a hard time 'timing' the location of the sound because the beeps will vary in intervals ranging from 2 to 8 minutes. The 2kHz sound is generically annoying enough, but if you really really want to aggravate somebody, select the 12 kHz sound. Trust us. The higher frequency and slight 'electronic noise' built into that soundbyte will make a full-grown Admin wonder where his packets are.

Applications I'm considering for this ingenious device:

1. Next PTA meeting.
2. Car dealership show room, sales area.
3. Forsyth County Commissioners meeting, behind the commissioners' table.  Set for loudest setting during the sectarian invocation.
4. Anywhere that teenagers gather en masse; they bug the hell out of me all the time so I think I'm due some payback.
5. Anywhere that pompous, self-important blowhards congregate en masse; see reasoning in item 5. (Yes I'm aware that this could be considered redundant to item 3).

Yes, yes, yes.  Much fun.

Testing GOOG-411

I just saw the video about Google's 411 service on bookofjoe (I've added it below) and decided to give the service a try.  I called the 1-800-466-4411 number and when prompted asked for "Winston-Salem, NC" and then when asked for a business name I said "Cicciones" which is one of my favorite pizza joints.  I figured you couldn't get much harder than that for voice recognition.  The results?  A+

Google gave me four choices and after each one I could either press the key for what I wanted or say the number.  Option 3 was the Cicciones right down the street from me and when I said "three" it automatically dialed the number for me.  Best of all is it's FREE.  There's also an option to have the restaurant's info text messaged to my phone and since my Blackberry is web-enabled it can send a map to me as well. These folks continue to amaze me.

Where Jon's Readers Live

A couple of days ago I wrote about the new "forms" function that is available with the Google Docs spreadsheet program.  I decided to test it by creating a simple survey for readers of this humble blog, and when I say simple I mean simple.  I asked one question: "Where do you live?"  The pie chart below was generated using the Google spreadsheet program and it was as easy as, well, pie.  Very cool.

Rules of Thumb

I've always loved rules of thumb, but if you pressed me to define what they are I'd just flubber out something obtuse.  That's why I was very pleased to find this on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:

(Tom) Parker has refined his explanation of what rules of thumb are, and why they are cool tools. He writes: "A rule of thumb is a homemade recipe for making a guess. It is an easy-to-remember guide that falls somewhere between a mathematical formula and a shot in the dark. Rules of thumb are a kind of tool. They help you appraise a problem or situation. They make it easier to consider the subtleties of the topic at hand; they give you a feel for a subject. A rule of thumb is not a joke or a ditty. It is not a Murphy's Law. Murphy says that things will take longer than we think; a rule of thumb says how much longer. While a proverb says that a stitch in time saves nine, a rule of thumb says to allow one inch of yarn for every stitch on a knitting needle."

Kelly also links to Parker's new website dedicated to rules of thumb which I think might be one of the most interesting sites I've ever come across.  What makes it REALLY cool is that he solicits rules of thumb from readers and then asks other readers to rate the rules so he's probably going to amass an even greater treasure trove of wisdom in the near future.  Here's a couple of my favorite rules from just a five minute perusal of the site:

• If you can't adequately and clearly explain a concept to a neophyte, you don't understand it clearly enough yourself. -- Adam, CIO, Perth   
• For fatty foods, leave 40 percent of the grill exposed to avoid flareups. -- Gerri Willis, USA   
•   When you're playing blackjack, assume that any unseen card is an 8.
•   For marketing purposes, elderly consumers think they are 15 years younger than they actually are. --   Tracy Lux Frances,  Bradenton,  Florida   
•   Advertising costs should not drop below 10 percent of sales until a business has been around 20 years. --   Captain Haggerty,  animal trainer, actor, author, and philosopher,  New York,  New York   
•   The year you start growing dark hair on your chest is the year that the loss rate of your head hair exceeds its growth rate. (I must be the exception that proves the rule, because if this was true I'd be bald twice over by now; Jon). --   Mark Ryan,  Dallas,  Texas   
• You are middle aged when your high school and college days are featured as nostalgia on TV. You are at old age when your wedding presents are sold as antiques. --   Margaret M. Day,  Locke,  New York   
• When forced to estimate an adult woman's age in her presence, take the figure you think she is, divide by two and add 15 (add 20 for a woman presumed over 50) --   Jim Veihdeffer, PR pundit, Phoenix, AZ, US
•   If you can touch the ceiling of your house with the palm of your hand, your ceiling is too low.  -- Bob Horton,  consultant and writer,  Largo,  Florida
• If friends ask you to help them move, remember that the work will begin an hour after you get there, you'll finish an hour later than expected, the pizza will be colder than the beer, and the beer will be in lesser quantities than promised. --Tom Sacco,  West Des Moines,  Iowa
•   It takes as much time to paint the trim in a room as it does to paint the walls and ceiling. -- R. A. Heindl,  design engineer,  Euclid,  Ohio   

Best 12 Days of Christmas You'll See This Year

Considering the fact that the following video has been viewed over 3 million times on Youtube there's a good chance you've already seen it, but if not you need to check out these guys from Indiana University doing the 12 Days of Christmas.  I know, I know, we're all burned out on Christmas music but take my word that you'll enjoy this. (Hat tip to Lex for pointing to this).

Chris Paul on NPR

NPR taped its show Wait Wait....Don't Tell Me at, uh, Wait Chapel on the campus of Wake Forest University last week and it features a guest appearance by Lewisville native and former West Forsyth H.S. and Wake Forest basketball star, and current NBA standout Chris Paul.  Apparently Paul was the first pro athlete to ever appear on the show and he did a great job.  Listen to it here.

Wii Wee

I got my first look at a Nintendo Wii last night at a friends house and all I can think to write is "Cool!" and "Finally!"  I'd pretty much given up on video games because I just couldn't invest the time to familiarize myself with the controllers, with the plots and the bouts of vertigo that a couple of them can induce.  To me what's brilliant about the Wii is that it gives the kids (and gamers) something different than what they're used to and it gives the adults (and other non-gamers) something that's approachable and doesn't require hours of practice just to get started.

For those not familiar with the Wii the biggest difference between it and the PS3 or Xbox 360 is that the controllers are wireless and the games are designed so that the players must physically move to play them.  So if the game is boxing the players are essentially throwing punches at the TV, if the game is tennis or golf the players are moving the controllers with motions similar to those used when playing the real sports.  Watching the boys play it last night I saw them literally break into a hard sweat and end the games panting as if they'd just run a mile.

Another difference between the Wii and other current game systems is that the Wii went with less processing power so the emphasis is definitely not on graphics.  It was a risky, but brilliant move by Nintendo to focus on interaction and approachability rather than hard-core graphics.  They're going to own the non-hardcore gamer market unless Sony and Microsoft do something soon.

We hadn't even discussed getting one of these for the kids since we figured the X-Box was enough, but now this thing is going on the wish list if for no other reason than I want to play it myself.  From what I understand the backlog on delivery is long enough that if I put it on my x-mas wish list I might just get it in time for the holidays.

Got $250? Have I Got the Beach Bag for You!

A company called Reware is selling a beach bag called the "Juice Tote - Solar Beach Bag" (see picture to the left).  The idea is that you can re-charge your phone, camera, PDA, etc. while baking on the beach, or at the pool.  While I was reading about the bag on their site I came across this little bit of verbiage:

Reware is a firm believer that globalization can have very positive effects for people around the world by connecting people through international trade, creating jobs and lifting economies. It can also have crushing effects on local economies and the environment. So the goal around here is to try and figure out how to use the benefits of globalization positively, while remembering that local production matters.

Oh yeah, and we want to make high quality products that bring attention to environmentalism while reducing environmental impact.

It's all a complex and fascinating challenge. The reality is that most Virgin fabrics are coming out of China, which is good news when doing business in Japan, Korea, or into the Chinese market. When that happens, our Carbon Footprint is astoundingly reduced.

At the same time, we love the recycled fabrics we use because many of them are produced in the US. We then manufacture those bags in Texas or North Carolina, we reduce our carbon footprint further and help local economies.

When it comes to the environment, we all need to think about the most efficient way to make and distribute our goods. That's why we like the concept of localization, the idea that when you can, you buy materials and use factories as close to your customers as possible, when possible.

We don't have it all figured out yet (no one really does), but these issues matter, and we're having a good time doing our part to do things outside the box.

Have you seen a localized production process that works, or have thoughts on this concept? Get in touch: info (AT) rewarestore (DOT) com

Who says the textile industry is dead in North Carolina? And who knew we'd be in bed with a bunch of tree huggers?  Seriously though, if we can get more efforts like this going there might be a future for one of the Tarheel states venerable industries.