Here a map – there a map

I came to the United States in early 2002. I was a newcomer, without a car or an international drivers license and no credit history. I was lucky enough to be in a city with a good metro system, so I did not feel the pain as much as some others.
When I did manage to get my drivers license and a credit card, and was finally able to rent a car to drive, I found that the internet provided me with a quick easy way to get maps to go wherever I wanted to go.
I had two main choices Mapquest and Yahoo Maps. There were other options, but they were either not free or not popular. I loved the convenience of these tools. All you really needed was 2 zip codes and you could get maps to travel from one end of the country to the other. However, anything else, like a map of the location at various zoom levels or panning around, meant having to re-loading an image multiple times and that on a dial up line was painful.
Time passed and Google came along and changed everything with Google maps. Not only did they bring rich-client interactivity to the maps, they created and distributed an api built around their service. This quickly became the revolutionary tool. With the google api as their base, anything requiring location based data could be displayed in an entirely new way. Interesting ways to use the api have cropped up all over the internet. Here are some of them:

• Google Planimeter
• www.dudewheresmyusedcar.com (Bonus points for the movie reference in the title)
• www.gmap-pedometer.com
• If I dig a very deep hole, where I go to stop
• Housing
• ATM Locator

Update: For more complete lists you can find a directory here. This is an Indian site that uses Google Maps api.

Web programming – Reloaded

For some time now (even before I started this weblog) I have been reading about and seeing the revival of the web. It (the hype) started out with the arrival of Google Maps and Google Suggest and their use of client side programming to provide a very different user experience for a web application. The underlying set of technologies used was termed AJAX . There is nothing new about AJAX. Indeed, it used languages (Javascript), standards (XML) and technologies (xmlhttprequest) that were already in place and available. What was unique, was that these technologies finally stitched together in a way that provided what the end user was desperatey seeking – rich and responsive experience when using web-based tools.
Again, there is nothing new in what Google did, the genius was in the applications that they found for these technologies. In addition to Google Maps and Google Suggest they used it in Gmail . These applications, e-mail and maps are extremely complementary to a web-based model. By improving their usability Google essentially opened the eyes of a world weary of unresponsive and simple web applications to the possibilities of the web once more.

Rest in Peace – Telegraphy

I saw this article today : LiveScience.com – Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegram
When I first saw the topic line, my first reaction was – Who would still be using this method of communication in this day and age? Here we are looking at the demise of regular telephony now, who would have thought the telegraph still existed out here It was the first technology to ever use wires to communicate (correct me if I am wrong) instantly and for a long time it was the only way to communicate. I have never sent a telegram in my life but there it is.
Western Union isn't going away however, it's doing very well with its money order business and the loss of the telegraph doesnt affect it much.

Update: Userfriendly picked up on this bit news too. They have a more humorous take on the matter