I saw this over the weekend and saw it as marginally more useful than traditional package tracking…. This is called packagemapping.com and is a mashup of package tracking and google maps. I don’t know, I mean, when I read that a package is in Cincinnati, I have a pretty good idea of WHERE that is, Knoxville, etc…. the idea of an RSS feed for your tracking number is interesting – that could be useful. (Although I wonder how quickly that feed would be updated.)
Tag: Google Maps
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Real time Global strategy game using Google Maps?
Some time back, there was a Risk clone using Google maps which was interesting, but taken offline due to a legal letter. Well, I have had a long interest in strategy games…. (Risk/Axis&Allies and variants as well as the civilization/freeciv variety and Age of Empires/etc….) Anyway… saw this last week… Online strategy game using Google Maps. Upon visiting, I found out the site has moved under heavy load to a new location…. Here’s the new site gmworldwar.com. I don’t know, I’m not terribly eager to strategize world war right now – it seems a bit too much like reality seem to be shaping up for right now… Anyway – it’s called Endgame and uses Google Maps as the back end. It’s currently limited to beta testers due to high demand so, the general public will have to wait.
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Google Maps upgrade
I’ve seen a couple places referring to some improvements in the way google maps handles zooming and so I decided to take a look in Firefox. The zoom handling of Google maps is the one thing that I’ve wished for an improvement in for some time. After noticing MSN’s virtual earth had the capability of scroll wheel zooming, I really wanted it in Google Maps.
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French competitor to Google Maps
Sometime last week, the news story of a French competitor to Google Maps called Geoportail.fr caught my attention and I took a look at the page. It caught my eye because the initial article boasted 20 inch resolution in some areas (???) But, as of today, all I’ve been able to get is an error message along the lines that there is too much traffic and that I should try again later. It’s in French – it’s been a while…. anyway, I’m not the only one that’s noticed – The Register has noted the painful launch as well. Really, it should be interesting when it’s up.
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Konqueror and Google Maps
After I did my “Kiosk” upgrade to KDE 3.5.2 I was really interested to see if Konqueror would finally work with Google Maps, of course, the problem isn’t with Konqueror it’s with the browser detection. Konqueror uses something called khtml to render web pages. It’s really a fairly good/standards compliant ACID test passing engine. So much so that Apple thought they would base Safari on it. The problem is that some websites recognize “Safari” in the User agent and say, “sorry, we don’t support you” if the browser user agent claims Konqueror….
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Microsoft (MSN) virtual earth becomes Live Local
The Virtual Earth project at MSN will become local.live.com competing with other local search tools from Google and others. There will be some new features. It looks as though one is a 45 degree angle view of most large cities. Directions to a point by just clicking on the map (no address needed). It sounds like there are some interesting features here. Good to see some competition happening in the maps/local search space.
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Risk using Google Maps shut down.
I’m afraid it was something I expected would happen, *(although you always hope a company will look on such imitation as a form of flattery and be cooperative/excited about the new application of an old game idea…), but the implementation of the strategy game Risk using Google Maps has been shut down by a cease and desist letter from lawyers retained by Hasbro.
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MSN Virtual Earth neat tricks
I’ve spent some time covering some of the neat implementations of Google Maps and Google Earth, I’ve just come across a site that has similar uses for Microsoft’s MSN Virtual Earth. The site is called viavirtualearth.com and not only links to examples of neat things people have done using Virtual Earth, but also articles and how-to’s on implementing some of your own neat-tricks.
At this point, I still find Google maps easier (more intuitive?) to navigate in some of these (I tried a Ufo-maps link which offers both virtual earth and google maps overlays.) That could just be because I’ve used Google Maps more at this point.
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Risk – type strategy game using Google Maps
This one caught my eye as I’ve spent many long hours playing different variations on the old strategy board game Risk. It appears that using Google Maps, a group has managed to write an API that let’s you Play Risk with Google maps as the backdrop.
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AJAX threatening Windows?
Long ago there was talk about the desktop not meaning anything anymore and that software would be delivered through the web. Well, it looks as though AJAX has brought that closer to reality. Wired news takes a look at where things are in the arena. Explains what Ajax is and what makes it so meaningful. ( Google Maps is one site that uses “AJAX”).
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