Google Street View

I just discovered this the other day when I was trying to get directions to go somewhere. I was on google maps and had just typed in an address in London. I clicked on the location, then it asked me for street view. I had no idea what it was so i decided to click on it. To my huge surprise, I was looking at a street view of the store I was looking for. What surprised me even more was that this was not an assortment of pictures, as they have on Google Earth, but it was an actual flowing view of the street, as if i was there in the middle of the road. I first thought Google Earth was the most amazing thing ever. On Google Earth I could travel the world from the comfort of my desk chair. Yet I was only able to see an areal view of the place, I could never actually see the buildings and other things on the street level. Yet now, I can literally go anywhere and see anything from the street. Google Street View is a function of Google Maps. When you type in an address in google maps you can sometimes have the option of seeing street view. You can then view the map on satellite mode which allows you to better see the actual world. Unfortunately there are some drawbacks to Google Street View. One of them is that you can not see every street view in the world. The way Google gets its Street Views is that they send a car down a road with a bunch of cameras on the top. These cameras take high resolution videos of the street. The car drives down every road it can and records the "Street View" of a place. Obviously these videos are taken during the day. I actually encountered one of these cars one day when my and I were walking back from lunch at Abbey Road. The car was a regular car, yet it had a ridiculous amount of cameras on the roof of it, pointing in every direction. At the time I had no idea what it was for, yet the other day I finally figured it out. Unlike Google Earth, I can't really see any security risks that Google Street View could cause. I mean, they only take pictures of public roads, roads that anyone can walk on. So, unlike Google Earth, they don't show images of secret army bases in the desert. Google Street View is really cool and I am sure I will use it a lot in the future, not only to find directions but also to explore the world.

Virgin Atlantic? No, Virgin Galactic

Have you ever dreamed of taking a ride around in a space ship? Being able to see the entire earth from space? Well, until now you had to be a trained astronaut to do that. You had to join the Air Force (or be an extremely smart scientist), take difficult exams about science and math, and possibly be selected to go on a once in 5 year space mission. The odds were definitely against you. Yet now, for the meager sum of 121,000 pounds, you can take a two and a half hour space ride. And have around five minutes of zero gravity. How is this possible? Well, the innovative Sir Richard Branson has done it. His company, Virgin, has now created a branch called Virgin Galactic. The prototype was unveiled yesterday in the Mojave desert by Branson and the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenager. A small, sixe seater space craft will be attached to a bi cockpit airplane, with the space craft attached in the middle. The airplane will carry the spacecraft to around 50,000 feet above the earth, then it will release the spacecraft. The spacecraft will then turn on its turbo engines which will propel the spacecraft into space, 100 miles away. The spacecraft will then travel for a while, then come back into the atmosphere and land as a normal aircraft would. The first international spaceport is being set up in the desert in New Mexico, and Virgin Galactic is spending 400 million dollars on a fleet of six planes. There is already a long list of bookings especially by famous Hollywood actors. This is definitely the way of the future. Though it may seem strange now, and expensive, this could be our generations airplanes. Just like our grandparents, we think of this as weird, but I'm sure this will be the norm in a short while.

Tech n'vironment

Recently in class we talked about this X-Factor type show that had, instead of singing, a competition to determine gadget of the year. The show worked similarly to X-Factor in that there were three judges who rated the "performance" or presentation. Also, the audience got to vote on which gadget was the best. However, this competition is not the main focus of this blog post. One of the gadgets presented really caught my eye, even though it did not end up winning. The gadget that really caught my interest was a solar powered mobile phone. These phones are now starting to be produced by brand name companies such as LG and Samsung. One of the technology judges claimed that these types of phones should be the norm now, so that is the reason he did not think it was that cool. I agree with the judge in that I think these types of phones should be the norm in our society today. We don't realize it, but a lot of energy goes into powering a cell phone, especially phones like iPhones and similar products. More and more people of almost all ages are getting cellphones in developed countries. This means more people who need to charge it. Also, in a majority of lesser developed countries, mobile phones are preffered because not many people are able to keep or a fford landlines. In 2008 around 4.1 billion people in the world had mobile phones. That means 60% is taking up a lot of power to charge their mobile phones almost every day. This sole action greatly contributes to the rising CO2 emissions and affects the climate change. However, there is a solution to this problem, at least for many of these mobile phone users: the solar powered phone. These phones have small solar panels on their backs which directly feed to teh phone's battery. That means, people in semi-sunny weather (not England) can charge their phones without using any of the earth's precious resources. And, the great thing is, these phones are about the same price as most current mobile phones. Hopefully people will start to pick up on the solar powered cell phones and can help the earth. See, technology and helping the environment can go hand-in-hand.