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My favorite Google Maps API tutorial

Mike Williams has written what I consider to be the best Google Maps API Tutorial. It's very simple and to the point. I'm sure with a few months of time I'd be an expert on the Google Maps API per Google's documentation, if I quite my job and did nothing but work with that API.

But luckily Mike's tutorial makes the Google Maps API accessible in about 30 minutes.

Google Reader's Automated Recommendations

Fresh from Google Reader (I think) is some documentation. Wow! It's nice to see some documentation. In particular, the kind folks are Google Reader talk to us about their automated feed recommendations ("How do feed recommendations work?"):

Your recommendations list is automatically generated. It takes into account the feeds you're already subscribed to, as well as information from your Web History, including your location. Aggregated across many users, this information can indicate which feeds are popular among people with similar interests. For instance, if a lot of people subscribe to feeds about both peanut butter and jelly, and you only subscribe to feeds about peanut butter, Reader will recommend that you try some jelly. This process is completely automated and anonymous; your personal information will be protected in accordance with our privacy policy.

Two things to note:

Automated feed recommendations are based on current feed subscriptions, web history and geographic location
Optimizes based in part on things you don't know but should know

An 8.9" ASUS Eee PC is theoretically possible

While Asustek has confirmed an 8" ASUS Eee PC, there are rumors over at Gizmodo that they'll pack an 8.9" ASUS Eee PC into the little case. Now, given that the ASUS Eee PC's case dimensions are 8.9" by 6.5". Thus, at a maximum, the screen size could be up to

sqrt(8.9^2 + 6.5^2) = 11.0"

Of course, the screen size won't take up the full diagonal. So let's leave 1" diagonal for the margins, then the ASUS Eee PC could have a screen size of 11" minus 1" minus 1", or 9".

In short, a diagonal of 8.9" is theoretically possible.

Japan and India agree to currency swap

From the Japan Times, Japan and India agree to $6b currency swap:

Japan and India agreed Friday to launch a bilateral currency swap arrangement in the spring that allows the two to provide up to $6 billion to stem financial crises, Japanese officials said.

Currency swaps typically benefit both parties, with each "winning" what is important to them. Haven't delved into them since my MBA program.

McCain now the Republican front-runner

Per Rasmussen, McCain is now the Republican front-runner nationally.

Rasmussen says Obama 80% likely to win in New Hampshire

Check out the following chart from Rasmussen that shows Obama is 80% likely to win in New Hampshire:

The price represents the likelihood to win a given state. Obama gained support after winning Iowa. Also, the trends are supported by a Rasmussen weekend poll in New Hampshire that shows the following results. Second table below shows the data from above.

ASUS Eee PC to launch in Mumbia, India

Per Saptarshi Purkayastha, the ASUS Eee PC will launch in Mumbia, India, sometime in the next few weeks.

One day later... New Google Reader recommendations

I just updated my Google Reader recommendations yesterday, but now I have new recommendations from the kind folks at Google Reader. Wow! Obviously, I'm a big from of Google Reader. The recommendations so far have been quite good.

Typically, the recommendations have come out either once per week or once per two weeks. Since I just wrote yesterday and have to wrap things up here at Panera, I don't have time to look into this right now - so I'll just take care of looking at the Google Reader recommendations later. However, upon a quick peek, they look quite good again. Good means the automated recommendations from Google Reader are relevant and are things I probably wouldn't discover on my own.

Google Reader recommendations
January 4, 2008 - 13 new subscriptions, 7 no thanks
December 13, 2007 - 3 new subscriptions, 7 no thanks

So that's an improvement. I thought I'd blogged at least one other time about Google Reader recommendations, but perhaps not. I'll update this if I come across any prior posts.

The MyBlogLog profile makes no sense

Trying to make sense of the MyBlogLog profile. It won't let me upload a picture. C'mon Yahoo!

Asustek's ASUS Eee PC: The Twitter of Laptops

Asustek's ASUS Eee PC mini-laptop is the Twitter of laptops. It's small, affordable and people love it. Well, not all people according to "The Most Hated Company In the PC Industry". The article in 47 words:

Microsoft hates Asustek because the ASUS Eee PC uses Linux
Apple and Dell hate the Asustek because it brought the first flash-drive mini-laptop to market
Palm hates Asustek because they gave up on the Foleo (inferior, bigger and more expensive than the Asus Eee PC)

But Intel loves Asustek because Intel powers the ASUS Eee PC.

Google Reader crashes/freezes a lot, but I still love it

Google Reader crashes a lot on me, perhaps because I have 480 feeds. Perhaps this makes the Javascript crunch and hang. This problem mainly happens when I click a button while Google Reader is obviously trying to do something.

My Google Reader recommendations for January 4, 2008

The folks (or autobot) at Google Reader really did a good job this time around. Out of 20 recommendations, I subscribed to 13. That's 65%.

Newly subscribed Feeds (13)
LibrarianInBlack (http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/librarianinblack/atom.xml)
Tame The Web - Libraries, Technology and People (http://tametheweb.com/atom.xml)
elearning-reviews.org (http://www.elearning-reviews.org/news/rss/)
timlauer.org (http://tim.lauer.name/index.xml)
an englishman in osaka (http://anenglishmaninosaka.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default)
Tokyo Times - Notes from a small group of Japanese islands (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wwwtokyotimesorg)
Mari - diary (http://smt.blogs.com/mari_diary/atom.xml)
2719 HYPERION (http://booksearch.blogspot.com/atom.xml)
Mickey News (http://www.mickeynews.com/XML/Feed.asp)
Passport to Dreams Old & New (http://passport2dreams.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default)
Marshall Kirkpatrick (http://feeds.feedburner.com/MarshallsWebToolBlog)
Ben Metcalfe Blog (http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/feed/)
Napsterization (http://napsterization.org/stories/index.rdf )

No Thanks (7)
Inside Google Book Search (http://booksearch.blogspot.com/atom.xml)
Google Gears API Blog (http://gearsblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml)
Official Google SketchUp Blog (http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default)
Forbes.com: Travel News (http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/travel/index.xml)
PR 2.0 (http://briansolis.com/atom.xml)
Librarians' Internet Index: New This Week (http://lii.org/ntw.rss)
Clagnut - A blog by Richard Rutter (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Clagnut)

Trended Democrat Iowa Caucus Results (January 3, 2008)

(Updated throughout the night. I love online polls...)

11:59pm Obama 38%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 29% (1781/1781 reporting)

11:52pm Obama 38%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 29% (1774/1781 reporting)

10:41pm Obama 38%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 29% (1725/1781 reporting)

10:36pm Obama 38%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 29% (1720/1781 reporting)

10:26pm Obama 38%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 29% (1713/1781 reporting)

10:18pm Obama 37%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 29% (1691/1781 reporting)

10:11pm Obama 37%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 30% (1679/1781 reporting)

10:05pm Obama 37%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 30% (1660/1781 reporting)

9:54pm Obama 37%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 30% (1604/1781 reporting)

9:41pm Obama 37%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 30% (1562/1781 reporting)

9:37pm Obama 36%, Edwards 30%, Clinton 30% (1448/1781 reporting)

9:33pm Obama 36%, Edwards 31%, Clinton 30% (1369/1781 reporting)

9:28pm Obama 35%, Edwards 31%, Clinton 31% (1262/1781 reporting)

9:21pm Obama 35%, Edwards 31%, Clinton 31% (1173/1781 reporting)

9:15pm Obama 35%, Edwards 32%, Clinton 31% (1030/1781 reporting)

9:06pm Obama 33%, Edwards 32%, Clinton 32% (750/1781 reporting)

9:00pm Obama 33%, Edwards 32%, Clinton 32% (586/1781 reporting)

8:53pm Edwards 33%, Clinton 32%, Obama 32% (367/1781 reporting)

8:38pm Edwards 33%, Clinton 32%, Obama 31% (176/1781 reporting)

8:28pm Edwards 37%, Clinton 31%, Obama 28% (53/1781 reporting)

8:23pm Edwards 38%, Clinton 35%, Obama 26% (24/1781 reporting)

Source: IowaCaucusResults.com

Iowa Caucus: Clinton 36%, Edwards 35%, Obama 27% (7/1781)

Senator Hillary Clinton : 35.52%
Senator John Edwards : 35.15%
Senator Barack Obama : 27.12%
Governor Bill Richardson : 2.21%
Precincts Reporting: 7 of 1781
(Percentages are State Delegate Equivalents.)

Better File Storage: Going advanced by acting remedial

On my personal laptop, I'd like to get a better handle on where I store my files. Unlike being at work, I don't store files on my laptop each day. Thus, the folders I create on occasion sometimes get lost and I don't always do things consistently. Thus, I'm wondering if my best bet is to just store on Google Docs or to just dump everything into My Documents. Can't wait for GDrive to come along!

Google helping with Iowa Caucus results: My Predictions

Here are Iowa Caucus updates on Google Maps. Caucusing to begin any minute now (Thursday evening, January 3, 2008). For other results see: Democrat Republican

My prediction for the Democrats is Obama over Clinton by 1 point with Edwards 7 points behind Obama.

My prediction for the Republicans is Huckabee over Romney by 1ppt with Ron Paul coming in with 9% of the vote. Update: AP declares Huckabee the Republican winner

Expect some outages as servers get flooded. Also, this is the first time such polls will go online so quickly. For other sources, you may want to try Iowa newspaper and TV stations (try a search like "des moines newspaper").

User Participation Score at Download.com = 0.0005% (or 1 in

After downloading the PDF reader Foxit Reader from Download.com, I got a nice reminder email to stop back and provide my rating. I image most people Download.com visitors aren't registered, so most don't rate the products.

In fact, out of 636,221 downloads of Foxit Reader, only 31 people have left a rating. That means that just 1 person out of every 20,523 downloads left a rating, or 0.0005%. You can see the user feedback here.

That's not a lot, but it's better than nothing. And Download.com is still the best site to go for software downloads. In any case, here is a case for a new experimental metric, the User Participation Score (UPS). For Download.com, we could give it a score of 0.0005% based on this once case.

Now, in the practical world, Download.com could work on increasing their User Participation Score (UPS). Some thoughts:

The only people who would register at Download.com are those who really, really, really want to share feedback (like me).
Download.com needs to give visitors a reason to register. One somewhat diabolical way would be to require all downloaders to register. Makes sense. Download.com is providing a service after all. But then again, they could just insert an offer to register in the download process.
The holy grail is social features. It would be great to find people similar to you. At the very least, let me see user profiles and what they downloaded and voted on.

Read PDF Files More Quickly: Replace Adobe Reader with Foxit Reader

Just posted an article over on my SquirrelNet blog called "How to read PDF files quicker (ditch Adobe Reader in favor of Foxit, a free PDF file reader)". Here's some gossip that Google wanted to include Foxit Reader in Google Pack admitting that

Marissa Mayer explains that Google introduced the option to view PDF search results as HTML because Adobe's PDF reader was pretty big and slow.

A Better ScreenCap Than Windows PrintScreen

For the most part, I always go to Download.com when I need to grab some new software. I search, then refine my search to show only free programs. They are great because no software on Download.com will have embedded advertising trojans or spyware ("Safe, Trusted and Spyware-free").

Now, one thing I do frequently that is frustrating is making PNG (picture) files from screencaps. My process to date has been to:

Hit PrintScreen
Go to Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> Paint
Shift-insert into Paint, then cut out the relevant portion, then File >> New, Yes, then another Shift-insert, then Save As as a PNG file.

That's a lot of steps. So I went to Download.com and discovered Screen Print & Capture 32 3.5. The editors at Download.com (which is owned by CNET) like it and so do the users. I'm now one of them. It's a real time saver. It's nice that I can define the screen area and have the file auto-saved as PNG.

Importantly, I haven't been able to tell a difference in quality between my old method and this new generically-named gem. See below. Differences seem to be based solely on the area I selected.

Kongregate is Games2.0

Kongregate is a Web2.0-like game site, so let's just say it's Games2.0. Haven't quite given it a full test ride, but I have good confidence in this site. It just feels right, as this screencap shows:

Kongregate is great for gamers.

By wrapping user-submitted Flash games with various community features, Kongregate's site serves as a unique way for users to play great web-based games alongside friends.

And Kongregate is also great for developers.

Kongregate operates with an understanding of how difficult it can be for talented game developers - from the aspiring gamesmith to the independent studio - to get the recognition and compensation that they deserve. That's why Kongregate shares microtransaction and advertising revenue with contributing developers, who retain the full rights to their games.