Microsoft made a major update to Live Maps this week that introduces a number of new features and improvements to the online mapping service. Users of the service can now export their maps in various GPS formats, see improved 3D renderings, and subscribe to RSS feeds for a certain region, among a plethora of other things. The improvements make it a stronger competitor to other popular mapping services (namely Google Maps), although Live Maps could still benefit from more mindshare from the general Internet-using public.
Seeing the world in 3D
Like Google Maps, Live Maps has offered a bird's-eye/satellite view for some time now (in addition to standard 2D view). But one thing that Live Maps has over Google Maps is 3D view, complete with pretty 3D renderings of buildings and roads. The Live Maps team rolled out "version 2" of 3D view with this slew of updates, which is currently limited to a few select cities: Las Vegas, Dallas, Denver, and Phoenix.
According to the Virtual Earth/Live Maps blog, version 2 includes higher-resolution textures and even rendered trees, in addition to "thousands more buildings" from inside the cities all the way out to the suburbs. "Hundreds" of cities will get the improved 3D view before the end of the year, although 3D compatibility is still limited. On every Mac browser I tried to use 3D view with, it told me that my browser was not compatible—in fact, it is only compatible with IE6, IE7, and Firefox 2 under Windows.
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
Increasing browsing productivity
As my search for methods to increase my browsing productivity continues, I have come across some excellent keyboard shortcuts for Firefox (my preferred browser) which I will discuss here .
I am sure you’ll benefit from it if you use Firefox as your browser .
1: Automatically complete .org and .net addresses
Yes, we know that if we type ‘google’ in the address bar and press Ctrl+Enter it directly goes to www.google.com . But what about .org and .net addresses? . In Firefox, Shift+Enter takes you to .net and Ctrl+Shift+Enter takes you to .org addresses automatically . So if you wanna go to Problogger , just type the word in firefox address bar and press Shift+Enter .
2: Alt + D
You can use this to navigate directly to the browser address bar of firefox. Very useful.
3: Ctrl+T and Ctrl+Shift+T
Ctrl+T helps you to open a new tab and Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last closed tab.
This comes quite handy in case you accidently close a tab. Another way to do this would be go to History -> Recently closed tabs.
4: Alt+Enter
This can be an extremely useful shortcut. It automatically opens a website in another tab when you highlight it in the autocomplete list. For example you want to go to Facebook and you start typing www.face…, in the address bar and it starts showing the list below. You just need to use the down arrow key to highlight the selection (facebook.com in this case ) and press Alt+Enter so that it opens in a new tab.
5: Use of Delete Key
The Delete key can be pretty useful because it helps you delete specific addresses in browser history or autocomplete forms. For example in the diagram below, when I type ‘a’ in google search I get 3 entries . If I want to delete the 2nd entry from autocomplete history , I’ll just point to it and press Delete key . Simple,isn’t it .
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I am sure you’ll benefit from it if you use Firefox as your browser .
1: Automatically complete .org and .net addresses
Yes, we know that if we type ‘google’ in the address bar and press Ctrl+Enter it directly goes to www.google.com . But what about .org and .net addresses? . In Firefox, Shift+Enter takes you to .net and Ctrl+Shift+Enter takes you to .org addresses automatically . So if you wanna go to Problogger , just type the word in firefox address bar and press Shift+Enter .
2: Alt + D
You can use this to navigate directly to the browser address bar of firefox. Very useful.
3: Ctrl+T and Ctrl+Shift+T
Ctrl+T helps you to open a new tab and Ctrl+Shift+T reopens the last closed tab.
This comes quite handy in case you accidently close a tab. Another way to do this would be go to History -> Recently closed tabs.
4: Alt+Enter
This can be an extremely useful shortcut. It automatically opens a website in another tab when you highlight it in the autocomplete list. For example you want to go to Facebook and you start typing www.face…, in the address bar and it starts showing the list below. You just need to use the down arrow key to highlight the selection (facebook.com in this case ) and press Alt+Enter so that it opens in a new tab.
5: Use of Delete Key
The Delete key can be pretty useful because it helps you delete specific addresses in browser history or autocomplete forms. For example in the diagram below, when I type ‘a’ in google search I get 3 entries . If I want to delete the 2nd entry from autocomplete history , I’ll just point to it and press Delete key . Simple,isn’t it .
More...
Friday, April 11, 2008
Eat more and get thin
Mr Perry, 59, can eat whatever he likes - including unlimited pies, burgers and desserts - and never get fat.
He cannot put on weight because of a condition called lipodystrophy that makes his body rapidly burn fat.
Mr Perry regularly eats Chinese takeaways, chips, chocolate and clotted cream, but his weight has remained stable at 11st 12lb.
He told the Sun that he used to be a chubby child, but at age 12 the fat dropped off "almost over night".
Doctors thought he was refusing to eat or had a stomach ulcer, he said.
He initially tried to eat more to gain weight, but it had no effect.
“I didn’t like being slim at first. As a teenager playing football I was so thin I got embarrassed taking my shirt off," he said.
“I used to eat loads of chocolate to try and put on weight but I couldn’t.”
Mr Perry, of Ilford in Essex, endured a decade of tests before the illness was diagnosed. It finally emerged that his body produces six times the normal level of insulin.
Full Article
He cannot put on weight because of a condition called lipodystrophy that makes his body rapidly burn fat.
Mr Perry regularly eats Chinese takeaways, chips, chocolate and clotted cream, but his weight has remained stable at 11st 12lb.
He told the Sun that he used to be a chubby child, but at age 12 the fat dropped off "almost over night".
Doctors thought he was refusing to eat or had a stomach ulcer, he said.
He initially tried to eat more to gain weight, but it had no effect.
“I didn’t like being slim at first. As a teenager playing football I was so thin I got embarrassed taking my shirt off," he said.
“I used to eat loads of chocolate to try and put on weight but I couldn’t.”
Mr Perry, of Ilford in Essex, endured a decade of tests before the illness was diagnosed. It finally emerged that his body produces six times the normal level of insulin.
Full Article
Racetrack Memory
The prospect of iPods that can hold millions of songs and PCs being able to turn on instantly, rather than taking minutes to "boot up", comes much closer today.
A Californian team has developed a new generation of memory that combines the high performance and reliability of solid state "flash" memory, stored in microchips, with the high capacity of the PC's hard disk drive, which is cheap but contains moving parts and is slow.
In two papers in the journal Science, Dr Stuart Parkin and colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Centre in San Jose describe a revolutionary technology dubbed "racetrack" memory, or RM memory.
The team believes that it marks a milestone that could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with lightning-fast boot times, far lower cost and unprecedented stability and durability.
Full Article
A Californian team has developed a new generation of memory that combines the high performance and reliability of solid state "flash" memory, stored in microchips, with the high capacity of the PC's hard disk drive, which is cheap but contains moving parts and is slow.
In two papers in the journal Science, Dr Stuart Parkin and colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Centre in San Jose describe a revolutionary technology dubbed "racetrack" memory, or RM memory.
The team believes that it marks a milestone that could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with lightning-fast boot times, far lower cost and unprecedented stability and durability.
Full Article
How to fight radiations
A drug that can protect against the effects of radiation, whether from cancer treatment, a nuclear accident or an atomic bomb, is unveiled today.
The drug is to be developed for the US military to protect troops and is already undergoing tests to help improve cancer treatments.
The new drug protects animals' bone marrow and gut cells from being destroyed by radiation therapy, without reducing radiation's effectiveness against tumour cells, say today's studies.
Although radiation is an important weapon used by doctors to blast cancers, drugs that limit radiation's devastating effects on healthy cells are needed to reduce the potentially severe side effects.
Radiation induces damage in healthy tissues not by directly killing cells but by prompting them to commit "suicide" through a process called apoptosis.
The new drug, called "Protectan CBLB502, tested in mice and monkeys, protects radiation-blasted tissues by shutting down this cell death programme, which the body normally turns on in cells with damaged DNA to keep them from multiplying, says Dr Lyudmila Burdelya, who worked with Drs Vadim Krivokrysenko and Andrei Gudkov at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and colleagues at the company Cleveland BioLabs, also in Buffalo, New York.
Full Article
The drug is to be developed for the US military to protect troops and is already undergoing tests to help improve cancer treatments.
The new drug protects animals' bone marrow and gut cells from being destroyed by radiation therapy, without reducing radiation's effectiveness against tumour cells, say today's studies.
Although radiation is an important weapon used by doctors to blast cancers, drugs that limit radiation's devastating effects on healthy cells are needed to reduce the potentially severe side effects.
Radiation induces damage in healthy tissues not by directly killing cells but by prompting them to commit "suicide" through a process called apoptosis.
The new drug, called "Protectan CBLB502, tested in mice and monkeys, protects radiation-blasted tissues by shutting down this cell death programme, which the body normally turns on in cells with damaged DNA to keep them from multiplying, says Dr Lyudmila Burdelya, who worked with Drs Vadim Krivokrysenko and Andrei Gudkov at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and colleagues at the company Cleveland BioLabs, also in Buffalo, New York.
Full Article
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