Hi-Res Street View

I've noticed that the upgraded Google Street View cameras (or the images being served, at least) are sporting a much higher resolution. So very cool. In the image below, click on the arrow to "drive" towards the toll booths to see the difference.

View Larger Map
And, for extra "wow," click on the full-screen button on the upper right.

User-Generated Animation (and Sound Effects!)

For whatever reason Hatena Haiku had attracted a lot of illustrations. I'm really looking forward to all kinds of animators to come out of the woodwork for this new launch!

(Even better with audio.)

[Trailer Trash]

Every Halloween, I check to see how an errant party photo from a few years back is doing on Yahoo's image search for the query [trailer trash]. Ah yes, here it is, firmly entrenched above the fold.

From Russia with face recognition love

PhotoFunia = Brilliantly fun. Someone please liberate them from the godawful "Pimp Your Myspace Profile" ads.

Separated at Birth

Google Chrome


Simon

One Perfect Day

Amidst the general bankruptcy that is the state of inflight experience, I actually enjoy reading the Three Perfect Days feature on United Airlines' inflight magazine. It's written by a local resident, which to me is important for credibility.

My friend Josh is now at it again with this site: www.your24.com . Would be nice to have an authoritative repository of locals' recommendations...

Tokyo Streetview

Google Map's Streetview feature lands in Japan (via nobilog) and I'm floored at the coverage. They've driven down some seriously narrow streets. Time to find my kindergarten!

大きな地図で見る

Google's Whip on My Street

The Google Streetview coverage is looking mighty impressive these days. Lots of signage visible from the most recent election.

And of course, Los Banos!

And, you know, songtitle.info for BGM ideas

Google TV Ads now available to all US advertisers. Nice work!

English-lang Google Maps

... for non-ISO Latin-1 charset places like Bangkok. Brilliant.

I sold it on eeeeeBaaaaay!

Wow. Maybe I should take up daytrading in YHOO stock.

Manga Society

A company that I'm working with recently launched a pretty neat mini-blogging/social bookmarking service and I'm struck at the number of illustrations & doodles being created:



Reminds me of the whole episode with the Forza craftspeople; seems quite appropriate for the country that invented manga.

Rogers Out of HTML

Cable companies acting like... a cable company.

Consider the Subdomain Possibilities!

I wonder if they often get asked if their domain name is for sale.

We Didn't Start The Bubble

Humans Serving Machines

First, humans tagged online content.

Now, we will read captchas for the machines.

The Captcha Trojan disguises itself as a stripper game that offers voyeurs the chance to see images of a model getting undressed. In order to get "Melissa" to lose an item of clothing, the user must identify the letters or numbers found within a scrambled text image that forms the basis of a captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). Providing users identify the letters correctly, Melissa shows a bit more skin.

Gmail + IMAP

w00t.

Hotswap.com Sucks. Oh yes they do.

I don't care if their business seems ill-conceived and prone to failure; that's their problem.

But sending out emails posing as legitimate buyers and wasting sellers' time -- that's just wrong, folks.

Tesla Girls, Tesla Girls

The fine folks at Tesla Motors let me take a stab at a product review. I didn't say "badass" once!

In defense of Josh's honor, the Outback *was* making a very illegal pass going into a sketchy corner!

Badass Batteries

I've been really impressed with the set of Sanyo Eneloop NiMH batteries we bought in Japan earlier this year. Happy to report that Costco is now carrying a starter set for around $26, 8 AAs + 8 AAAs + charger. Holds useful charge for a long time. Highly recommended.

Is Hotswap.com spamming Craigslist users?

Mighty annoying if true.

To: porsche@rchen.net
Date: Aug 6, 2007 6:04 AM
Subject: Old Craigslist Post

Hi. I'm interested in your car if it's still available, but I'd like to see a video first. Could you post a video of your car on
hotswap.com?
-Irene

No.

Hella good UI

Our kid doing her first product demo. I fear for the day she discovers the YouTube feature...

Harvest This, AT&T

WTF UI message is this? I absolutely hate the mobile phone carrier-industrial complex.

Knock knock!

From NYTimes this morning...

OAKLAND, Calif., May 31 — For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.

Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building.

OK yeah, let's go ahead and take this New York Times interview about my privacy concerns, so they can show the street intersection where I live:

One Thumb...

Via Oreillynet. Moving.

On Da Street

Google Maps now offers street-level views. Nice implementation.

They drove through Rockridge. Cool.
They skipped West Oakland. Sigh.

More Amazing Deliveries

We've been sourcing the baby's diapers from Amazon Japan, and the delivery times are just staggeringly fast. Free shipping means next day delivery. And for an extra JPY 600, you get same-day delivery. Hats off to the distribution system!

The Google 15

Oh yeah, I definitely could've used this module back in February...