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.

Personal Information

I just read an article on BBC.co.uk about how some T-moblie employees sold the personal data of millions of its customers. This information was sold to list brokers who then sell the information to telemarketers or rival companies. This is a big problem because it is not only these employees who do this. Everytime you use you nectar points card, that infromation about what products you bought is recorded then sold by the nectar company to other companies. These companies then sell the information to outside sources who use the info to get you to buy different things. sainsburys can buy that information about you then uses it to send you emails or call your house to try and get you to buy their products that your normally buy. This is crazy because it seems that everytime you write down your telephone number or email somwhere, someone else is getting you personal data and using it to sell you something. For now it is just annoying telemarketers calling up, but later on this personal data could be used in a bad way, to harm you. That is what will be very bad.

Google Earth

Google Earth is really cool. It's basically like a giant world map that you can zoom in and out of. The great thing is that it is not just a map, but an interactive one. Many countries have all the roads marked, and you can use it for directions. Also, Google Earth is linked with Wikipedia. This is really helpful because a lot of famous sites are marked to their Wikipedia page, so you don't need to go back to the internet. Also, many people have loaded images they have taken at different places, and have put it on the corresponding places. So you can look at the zoomed in map, and see a picture of the place. The great thing is, a lot of places have really good satellite images so you can zoom in really close and even see people on the road. Now, on Google, they have Google Maps which is basically the same thing as Google Earth without the Wikipedia links and photos. Yet on Google Maps, you can type in an address and get directions. This is a great tool for fun and for work.

eBooks

I recently saw something interesting online. eBook. An eBook is a book that you can purchase online, and read on your computer. I don't know if I like this. I like to read a lot, and I've always been fond of having physical books around. Amazon now has this thing called Kindle. Kindle is a wireless reading device that you can upload books on for a small fee. I can see some reasons to get this, but there are a lot of drawbacks. One of the good things about it is that you can have many books on one device, that can be carried around almost anywhere. Yet physical books have abeen around for a long time. I've always been a fan of having a book to hold and then keeping it on my shelf for a later time. Also, imagine if you were on the tube or the bus late at night. Your more likely to get robbed if you were holding a Kindle, that retails around $200, rather than holding a book. I prefer good old books rather than eBooks. Maybe I'm just old fashoned.

eMoney

I was at the corner store the other day and realized that i was few pence short. Luckily the guy behind the counter said it was ok and i left the store with all my purchases. This got me thinking about money and technology. Is it possible that governments will start issuing electronic money? I know we have credit cards and bank cards, but theres only so much you can buy with that. I mean, try to go to a corner store and buy a pack of gum with an American Express card, it just doesnt happen. Maybe governements will issue cards that are directly linked to your bank and ll stores had a machine that you swiped your card on and it took out money from your account. Yet I can see so many flaws with a system like this. Firstly most developing nations would not be able to do something like this due to lack of infrastructure. Also, governemnts could easily monitor the exact products we buy, which will somehow infringe on our right to privacy. And also, people who engage in "shady" businesses will no longer be able to do so because they deal in all cash so it could not be traced back to them. I guess there really is no upside to eMoney except convinience.