Tag: googlemaps

KML in Live Maps

The CNET author comments that the map loads slowly in Live Maps. To compare I loaded the same KML file in Google Maps and it was indeed much quicker (15 seconds and 5 seconds respectively). But then I noticed something interesting – on Google Maps the polygons representing the parks didn’t load at all. Live Maps took longer as it was reading, parsing, and displaying the entire KML file. Its nice to see Live Map’s KML support coming along as quickly as it is!

ha. ms boasting how they do better with KML than we do on maps. that should get things fixed quickly, i presume

Apollo 11

Those guys didn’t move around very much at all

2009-07-14: Remembering Apollo 11

40 years ago, 3 human beings – with the help of many 1000s of others – left our planet on a successful journey to our Moon, setting foot on another world for the first time. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the July 16, 1969 launch of Apollo 11, with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard. The entire trip lasted only 8 days, the time spent on the surface was less than 1 day, the entire time spent walking on the moon, a mere 2.5 hours – but they were surely historic hours. Scientific experiments were deployed (at least 1 still in use today), samples were collected, and photographs were taken to document the entire journey. Collected here are 40 images from that journey 40 years ago, when, in the words of astronaut Buzz Aldrin: “In this 1 moment, the world came together in peace for all mankind”.


2009-07-24: Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages

May the high courage and the technical genius which made this achievement possible be so used in the future that mankind will live in a universe in which peace, self expression, and the chance of a dangerous adventure are available to all.

2019-06-14: The Biggest Nonmilitary Effort in History

The Apollo computers had a total of 73kb of memory. If you get an email with the morning headlines from your local newspaper, it takes up more space than 73kb. … They hired seamstresses. … Every wire had to be right. Because if you got it wrong, the computer program didn’t work. Even on John Glenn’s famous orbital flight — the first US orbital flight — the computers in mission control stopped working for 3 minutes out of 4 hours. Well, that’s only 3 minutes out of 4 hours, but that was the most important computer in the world during that 4 hours and they couldn’t keep it going during the entire orbital mission of John Glenn.

2019-07-19: Margaret Hamilton tribute

With the anniversary of that moon landing approaching, Google set out to shine a light on Margaret’s influence on Apollo, and on the field of software engineering itself. The tribute was created by positioning over 107K mirrors at the Ivanpah Solar Facility in the Mojave Desert to reflect the light of the moon, instead of the sun, like the mirrors normally do. The result is a 3.6-km2 portrait of Margaret, bigger than New York’s Central Park.

Geowiki

you can log into your Google account to edit a place on the map. You can even mark that a business has closed to save someone an extra trip. Of course, we’ve taken steps to help protect accuracy — for example, you’ll still be able to see the original listing information along with the history of changes made.

edit those maps, people

The new Google Maps feature to allow every user to create a new business listing is now live. Here is a comprehensive slideshow detailing the process step by step. Some items of note about the process:

The option to add a place to the map is available at the bottom of the page on ANY Map’s search. In my case I searched for 8th & Sullivan, Olean NY as it was the location of a shop that I utilized but had a very low profile. Login is required and will be used to track changes per user. Google allows a business to be added without an exact address but by dragging the marker to the location. Not all details need be available to create an entry. Google uses a much more flexible categorization in the “Type of Place” entry than currently exists in the Local Business Center. While you type, it makes suggestions as to existing categories. As you type suggested categories appear but if you continue you are allowed to enter a category that is not in the suggestions. In this case, I added “Used Computer Parts”