So you want to meet a few friends at a trendy restaurant in downtown San Francisco. Trouble is, you don’t remember the exact location or even the name. How are you going to tell your friends where to meet you?
Solving this dilemma used to require a long quest to track the place down. Now you can make that journey virtually, by clicking on Google Maps’ new Street View feature.
Street View is available for dozens of major cities across the U.S. It doesn’t cover all of each city. But in covered areas, it provides access to a 360 degree street-level view from almost any point on the block. All you need to do to locate your restaurant is to take a "stroll" down the street and check out the surroundings until you find it.
Here’s an idea for your next vacation: In order to capture everything you see, keep a camera rolling every time you walk down the street. That way you’ll have a virtual record of every intersection, every market, every coffee shop you pass.
That’s essentially what Google has done. They hired Immersive Media Corp., out of Calgary, to provide their high-resolution digital photographs. This meant mounting a camera on a car and driving down every single street that is covered.
It’s hard to deny that this is a really useful feature. Knowing what your surroundings look like is invariably helpful in finding your way. Everyone from the average citizen to local police officers can find a use for this.
But not everybody is so thrilled about the idea.
Suppose you find that restaurant by noticing the sign out front. But that’s not it. You can also see the people sitting at the outdoor tables, including one who looks a lot like your significant other. And who is that sitting suspiciously close to them…?
You get the idea. In addition to shots of the street, the images also capture people, cars, windows, yards, and all sorts of things that opponents say constitute a huge breach of privacy. And since there’s nothing we love more than privacy breaches, there are a bevy of blogs on the Internet where users have posted "items of interest" found on Street View. These show possible drug deals, people caught in embarrassing positions, and views of homes through windows.
Google defends its venture by saying that it offers protection for the embarrassing lack of privacy. Compromising images can be reported, after which they will be removed or altered. And of course, the images aren’t live; they were collected many months ago.
The bottom line? Lawsuits are inevitable. All it will take is a "discovery" on Google Maps that leads to a divorce, loss of job, or a burglary. Will this remove the Street View feature forever? Or will it simply force Google to be more careful about what it shows in its virtual Universe?
As energy explorers become even more creative, they look even closer to home. The human body is almost always in motion. As you race around town conducting business or relaxing with friends, your personal possessions join you in this state of perpetual motion. Why not take advantage of this motion as an energy source for your personal electronics? M2E’s new battery technology promises to do exactly this.
But with M2E technology, your cell phone could recharge just by using the slight motions that are part of everyday life. Every time you turn your head while you talk, or move the phone across the room by pacing, you get a little bonus in your battery’s energy storage. Your phone will recharge even while you’re not using it; just carry it around with you and it will continually recharge.
A friend of mine was recently working on his laptop in a coffee shop. Preparing to shut off his MacBook, he closed the iTunes window. Surprisingly, the background music that had been playing in the store suddenly stopped. Confused, he reopened the program and the music picked back up. Why? The shop attendants, using wireless technology to pick up music from an iPod, had mistakenly tapped into his iTunes database.
This kind of occurrence is becoming common as new technology focuses on improving wireless connections and shrinking the size of portable music devices. Who gets the most from these improvements? DJ’s are the latest group to benefit from the mind-boggling advancements in the silicon realm. New devices like the pocket-sized Pacemaker make it easy for a DJ to take his or her show on the road.
But for the amateur song mixer, this could be a really useful device. You can create your mixes at home on your Mac or PC using the free software made available by Pacemaker. Then take your toy with you to parties, plug into the sound system, and do your thing. The mobility and flexibility of this device will even help aspiring DJ’s get their music heard and develop a following.
The introduction of the new ultra-thin MacBook Air at the Macworld convention is the talk of every town. Some people are thrilled. Some people are disgusted. Like any computer, this new edition has features that will work fantastically for some and will be a big hindrance for others. Here, we take a case-by-case look at whether the Air is right for you.