Status-Q

I don’t know about you, but I’m always sending Google Maps locations to people who are coming to visit. I usually type in my postal code and send a link to the resulting map, with a bit of explanation:

“Here we are. Well, actually, we’re not quite here, we’re at the end of the street and on the other side of the road, but this should give you an idea of how to find us.”

I wanted to do something better than this, and while I knew all kinds of sophisticated things were possible with a bit of Javascript and the Google API, I just don’t have the time to play with this at present, much to my chagrin. So here’s my quick guide on how to create a useful, short URL that will really tell people where you live, and will take them to something like this:

Here’s how I got this:

1. If searching for placenames or postal/zip codes doesn’t give you a good enough location, you need to use latitude and longitude. If you have a GPS handy, you can just step outside your front door and take a reading.
2. If not, then you need to find your location some other way. In the UK, I suggest going to Streetmap and getting an approximate fix using your postcode. You can click on the map to move the pointer to the right place. Then, at the bottom of the page, find the little link saying ‘Click here to convert/measure coordinates’. This will give you the location in a variety of forms. Make a note of the decimal version of your Lat and Long. For me these were 52.194421 and 0.107796.
3. If you’re in another part of the world, or Streetmap doesn’t work for you, you can find your Lat & Long on Multimap.com at the bottom of the page. Click to zoom in and it will show the position of the last point you clicked.
4. OK, now you’re armed with your approximate location, head back to Google Maps and in the search box type the lat and long separated by a comma or a space. This should take you to something that looks pretty familiar.
   
5. I wanted to get a more accurate fix, so I switched into Satellite view and tweaked the numbers until the arrow pointed pretty much at my front door. (We’re blessed with nice high resolution images here in Cambridge.) Remember, increasing the frst number will move the pointer up, and increasing the second will move it to the right. Keep your changes small – you probably want to play with changes around the 4th decimal place or so.
6. Now, add the label you want, by putting it in parentheses after the coordinates:
   52.194405, 0.1074 (Quentin and Rose)
7. Choose the view you prefer. For this purpose I like the Hybrid one, which overlays the road names on the satellite view.
8. When you’ve got it how you want it, use the ‘Link to this page’ link at the top right of the map to get a URL that represents the current state. On my Mac, I just right-clicked it to copy the link.
9. For a final neat touch, go to TinyURL and paste this URL, which may be rather unwieldy, into the box on the TinyURL front page. That will give you a nice short address like this: http://tinyurl.com/ps2xw, which does the same thing. Make a note of it, or store it as a manually-created bookmark.

After this you have a handy URL short enough to memorize, that you can email to friends, dictate over the phone or even send in a text message, and that will bring them right to your front door!

Here’s a site which does a simple job but does it rather nicely:

World Meeting Planner

It helps you work out the best time for phone calls or videoconferences which span multiple timezones. You just enter the location of the participants. It’s not too hard to do this in your head for a simple phone call, but when you get more participants and you don’t know the timezone of some of the countries, it can be more challenging!

Thanks to Mike Pearson for the link. He’s in New Zealand.

In the UK, every vehicle has to display a tax disc which generally needs to be renewed once a year.

This year, for the first time, I could pay for the replacement online, and it was posted to me. Very convenient. The details are also printed rather than handwritten, and are rather more legible than last year’s one!

But in the past you had to go to the post office taking both evidence of your insurance and your vehicle’s MOT (road-worthiness) certificate, which would be checked by the cashier before you could get the disc. In theory, then, the police or the traffic wardens could look at a car and tell that it had appropriate insurance and mechanical condition.

With the online process, you just have to tick boxes affirming that you have these. No other human is involved. Somehow this doesn’t make me think that our roads will become safer…

Actually, if I remember correctly, the MOT test database is checked as part of the process, so that bit is covered. But what about the insurance companies? Is there a central service that can be checked for that too? I think uninsured drivers are more of a problem than unreliable cars…

I’ve never used Microsoft’s Mappoint mapping service in the past, but it has a rather neat option when requesting directions, called LineDrive™ – this attempts to produce more useful directions, such as you might sketch for someone on the back on an envelope.

This is the route from my house in Cambridge to my brother’s in Southampton, 130 miles away:

I think this is rather nice, and an efficient use of screen space; ideal for mobile devices. Just as long as you don’t ever stray off the route…

Thanks to Christine Herron for the link.

Regular readers will know that I helped start a Seattle-based company called Exbiblio, which is based on some quite interesting technology and business concepts.

What’s also interesting is that Exbiblio have decided to blog about as much of their life as possible. Some of the blogs are for internal use only, and those are proving to be quite an effective communications mechanism. But there’s also a public blog which is written both by people on the inside and an outside observer, Hugh Fraser (no relation!), who has been brought in specifically to document the building of this somewhat unusual company.

Exbiblio, the company, is about changing the way we interact with paper documents. But it may also be about changing the way startups do business.

If you think you’re confused about the Net Neutrality issue, you should read what Senator Ted Stevens had to say.

Or you can listen to him. No need to listen to the whole thing. I’m sure you can gain enlightenment by scrolling around and listening to a few snippets…

Here’s a web service I’ve always valued: TinyURL.com.

Have you ever wanted to send a web link to somebody and discovered that it has a long and unwieldy URL like this one?

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=trinity+college+cambridge
&ie=UTF8&ll=52.204329,0.115727&spn=0.003925,0.007972&t=k&om=1

It really messes up your email formatting, some email programs fragment it so it isn’t clickable, and it’s impossible to dictate to somebody over the phone or to send in a text message.

If you hop over to TinyURL.com, though, you can just paste it in and get back something like this:

http://tinyurl.com/nmcsk

which does the same thing and is much easier to hand around.

There are other services like this, but TinyURL has been around for a long time and seems to do a good, efficient and quick job.

A few days ago, I had the great pleasure to be at John Naughton’s inaugural lecture as a Professor at the Open University.

For those who are confused about the timing, I should point out that while John is loved and celebrated for many things in this world, promptness is not always one of them, and his inaugural lecture came just four years after he was awarded the chair. 🙂

In stark contrast, however, he has been very efficient in getting a transcript of his lecture online, and The Social Life of Networks comes strongly recommended. The webcast will be even better.

(For international readers unfamiliar with the British academic system, a ‘Professor’ here is an honorary post granted to very few. John has been a lecturer at the OU for over 30 years and is also a fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.)

There’s been much debate here in the UK about whether the BBC is giving too much coverage to the football (soccer) World Cup. On their web site, they’ve come up with a neat solution: you can choose whether or not to put the site into ‘World Cup mode’.

It probably won’t be long before we’re able to do such things with our TVs and radios as well. The concept of discrete channels is so 20th century; soon your channels will be hierarchical. (‘Tonight I’m going to watch cnn.sports.hockey’). Or maybe you’ll simply tune your TV to a set of your favourite keywords…