Indika’s Web Log

Google on Monday unveiled a new Web-based tool, Map Maker, that lets people add roads, lakes, businesses, and other features to unmapped regions of Google Maps.

With the tool, people can using tracing tools to build maps in Cyprus, Iceland, Pakistan, and Vietnam, according to the Google LatLong blog. Also open for cartographic contributions are several Caribbean nations: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, it’s great that this kind of activity can be crowd-sourced (please excuse the jargon) so the community (please excuse the jargon again) can contribute to a project that reduces the amount of digitally uncharted terrain. Google has given us a way to help make a difference that, while small, could collectively become quite large.

But on the other hand, I can think of worthy causes in greater need of charity or free labor than Google. If we’re all going to be augmenting Google Maps with user-generated content, wouldn’t it be nice if we could do it through a more neutral mechanism that lets others benefit from the work, too? Geotagged entries in Wikipedia show on Google Maps, but not Google Maps alone, at least theoretically.

Overall, I think my first reaction will carry the day for me.

That’s because, fundamentally, Google Maps is a service not just consumed by many but also repackaged by many through the availability of the Google Maps API (application programming interface). So until the day Google flips its Don’t Be Evil switch to the “off” position, Google Maps is in effect a public utility, and many can benefit from contributions to the service.

Google Map Maker looks slick, but it would be slicker with better satellite imagery. Parts of Iceland, one of my favorite places on Earth, are too coarse for any tracing.

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Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest computer chip maker, said today it has developed a new solid state drive which is expected to replace hard disk drives in laptop computers.

Samsung said its 256-gigabyte solid state drive (SSD) for data storage is 2.4 times faster than traditional hard drives. The company plans to begin production of SSDs this year.

The new SSD “represents a bold step in the shift to notebooks with significantly improved performance and larger storage capacities,” the company said in a statement.

Samsung described the new SSD - which is 6.35cm long and 9.5mm thick - as the world’s smallest of its kind. It can read up to 200 megabytes of data per second.

It said, citing market research agency iSuppli, that 35 per cent of notebook computers would use the SSD by 2012.

Wow so when we get in to the SSD world we can do this (see below) with our old harddrives

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Today I will be attending the  Las Vegas PHP User Group meeting held at UNLV. This is my fist time at this user groups and eager to meet some cool coders.

Also if there are any interested guys gals here is the link to the usergroup meetup page.

 Meet PHP Developers near you! Come to a PHP Meetup to exchange ideas and talk about code, architecture, innovation, and open source in general. Anyone interested in PHP is welcome!

UNLV Student Union Building

Map to the Student Union Building. There is parking infront of the building.

Most food stalls are open till 8:00 pm. check the exact times here. 

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Moonlight, an open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight for Unix systems, is now available in both Silverlight v1.o and 2.0 builds.  Silverlight, while it still has a long way to go to become as widely adapted as Adobe’s Flash, is leading the charge for Microsoft to become a more open eco-system for development.  Moonlight is not a Microsoft project, but Microsoft has been working together with Mono,  an open source project sponsored by Novell, to develop and run .Net client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix, to make a Linux version of Silverlight happen.

While many pundits seem to be stuck in a “Microsoft isn’t open” mode, many indications are that the company has turned a corner, and with Silverlight, and Live Mesh, and the Windows Live platform, seems to be moving toward, if not actually embracing, a more open attitude.  Recent announcements by Google, Yahoo,  MySpace, and Facebook also indicate a general trend toward opening up the software world.

Moonlight Downloads

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Wine and Mono are great project that enable windows applications to run on linux plattform. Wine also enables windows apps on FreeBSD,Mac OS X and solaris.

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix

Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris.

More information can be read in the articles Why Wine is so important, and Debunking Wine Myths. If you are wondering how well a particular application works in Wine, please examine the Applications Database. For installation instructions and step-by-step help with running Wine, take a look at the User Guide.

Wine is free software. The licensing terms are the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1.

Mono provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix. Sponsored by Novell (http://www.novell.com), the Mono open source project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development  of Linux applications.

Operating Systems

• Linux
• Mac OS X
• Sun Solaris
• BSD - OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD
• Microsoft Windows

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It’s my 3rd Christmas in US and the first in my rented apartment. 

Today the small ones had fun decorating and setting up the Christmas tree.

Wow this 1500 light tree sure keeps the living area warm. We could actually off the heating.

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The i’m™ Initiative from Windows Live Messenger™ makes helping your favorite cause as easy as sending an instant message. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft share a portion of the advertising revenue with some of the world’s most effective social cause organizations.It’s simple. It’s free. You IM, we give.

Video: The Benefactors

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Google has a neat utility to check the value of keywords. Just enter the keywords.

https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

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School: A place where Papa pays and Son plays.
       
Life Insurance: A contract that keeps you poor all  your life so that you can die Rich.
               
Nurse: A person who wakes u up to give you sleeping pills.

Marriage: It’s an agreement in which a man loses his bachelor degree and a woman gains her masters.

Tears: The hydraulic force by which masculine willpower is defeated by feminine   waterpower.

Lecture: An art of transferring information from the notes of the Lecturer to the notes of     the students without passing through “the minds of either”

Conference: The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.

Compromise: The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the   biggest piece.

Dictionary: A place where success comes before work.

Conference Room: A place where everybody talks, nobody listens and everybody  disagrees later on.

Father: A banker provided by nature.

Criminal: A guy no different from the rest…. except that he got caught.

Boss: Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early.

Politician: One who shakes your hand before elections and your Confidence after.

Doctor: A person who kills your ills by pills, and kills you by bills.

Classics: Books, which people praise, but do not read.

Smile: A curve that can set a lot of things straight.

Office: A place where you can relax after your strenuous home life.

Yawn: The only time some married men ever get to open their mouths.

Etc.: A sign to make others believe that you know more than you actually do.

Committee: Individuals who can do nothing  individually and sit to decide that nothing can be done together.

Experience: The name men give to their mistakes.

Atom Bomb: An invention to end all inventions.

Philosopher: A fool who torments himself during life, to be wise.

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