June 17th, 2008 by George
GOOGLE MAPS - Traffic, Photos and Local Information
Ever want to avoid heavy traffic and traffic accidents during your daily commute (or wherever you’re going)? Ever want to see photos related to the locations at or near where you are traveling? Well evidently the folks over at Google maps figured out we do!
GOOGLE MAPS: Traffic Button
Ok, I’m going to call them new because I just noticed them tonight and the first one is the Traffic button. To the left of the customary Map, Satellite and Terrain buttons you will now see a Traffic button (see screen capture below). According to Stuck in traffic? posted on the Official Google blog, you can get traffic info for over 30 major US cities - certainly more now since that post was made over a year ago! Even if you can’t get specific traffic info in your area concerning the flow of traffic you should be able to get at least some information about blocked roads, traffic accidents and road construction. Below left to right are some thumbnails from a Google map of Atlanta, Georgia showing traffic conditions (live traffic, reporting expected travel speed) Road construction and Blocked Road notifications. Don’t just go to and from work - go with as little traffic as possible.
Google Maps Traffic
GOOGLE MAPS: More button (photos and local info)
You can even see pictures people have taken and information from Wikipedia about many places. Especially if you are going somewhere you’ve never been and even if you have been they you are likely to find these pics and information interesting.
Wikipedia is a great source of info even by itself, but when connected to Google maps they are truly a winning combination!
Pictures taken by people like you and me can be uploaded to Panoramio and connected to the place where they were taken. Photos on Google maps were added last year and I’m sure at this point the issue isn’t finding enough photos in some places, but choosing which ones Google wants to show.
Traffic, Wikipedia information and local pictures make Google Maps more useful and interesting than ever before - check it out!
Category: Computers |
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June 10th, 2008 by George
Last Thursday OpenOffice.org, Google and others in the world of open source got together to present “…a new model of technology training…”. I heard of OpenOffice.org years back when I had a copy of Office 2000 and ignored it. Then Office 2003 was announced and when I first heard about the activation process and projected cost I thought to myself, “Gosh that OpenOffice stuff sounds suddenly really cool.” I used my Office 2000 until it was worn out and then switched to OpenOffice.org and I’ve been using it on ALL of my computers ever since.
Well, anyway if you use OpenOffice.org, love open source or just love Google you might want to read the Google OpenSource blog’s OpenOffice.org Training at Google New York and see how the event went, and what to do if you are interested in organizing an Open Source ‘untraining’ (click and read to see what untraining is).
Category: Computers |
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June 9th, 2008 by George
Gmail has recently added a new tab to Gmail settings, the Labs tab where us Gmail users can offer feedback on proposed Gmail features.
In Introducing Gmail Labs the Gmail Team says:
The idea behind Labs is that any engineer can go to lunch, come up with a cool idea, code it up, and ship it as a Labs feature. To tens of millions of users. No design reviews, no product analysis, and to be honest, not that much testing. Some of the Labs features will occasionally break.
If you are trying out any experimental Gmail Labs features and are having trouble read Disable Labs . Happy Labbing!
Category: Email |
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June 4th, 2008 by George
Another promising Google download the Gmail Notifier (beta). I’m looking forward to seeing how it performs. Here’s a bit from the download page:
The Gmail Notifier is an application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.
DOWNLOAD + MORE INFO
Download Gmail Notifier
About Gmail Notifier
Gmail Notifier Terms of Service
Gmail Privacy Policy
Google Privacy Policy
Category: Email |
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June 3rd, 2008 by George
Working in Gmail yesterday I got the errors below. I don’t know what the error codes meant (yet) but I know what got rid of the errors and got me working right again. These are the errors I got in Gmail yesterday in Firefox 2:
Oops… the system encountered a problem (#6502)
Oops… the system encountered a problem (#717 )
I didn’t notice the error at first when it showed up on the screen, but I think I was archiving emails when the Oops… the system encountered a problem (#6502) message showed up, then send an email I got the Oops… the system encountered a problem (#717) error. I went to the Gmail Help center and ended up reading the ‘Oops…’ errors article, which didn’t list error 6502 or 717. A quick search on Google was not useful. Here’s what I did next….
I logged out and tried logging back in and could not get in. I closed Firefox and opened Opera 9 and tried logging in and still coudn’t get in. I switched over to my other Windows XP computer and logged in using Firefox and got in fine. I found the email I was working on earlier when I go the 717 error and re-sent it. I closed the browser and moved back to the original computer I had been working on and logged into Gmail using Firefox again and everything’s been fine since then. I think time was the real fix, and the Gmail servers got temporarily busy and couldn’t handle my requests.
Anyone had Gmail oops error 6502 or Gmail oops error 717 and know the cause?
Category: Email |
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