Google Street View

What's new guys? Right now I'm just chilling a bit after spending over 8 hours in a bus, kinda tiring, the movies were alright, but there's always a certain point where you get all tired up of looking at the screen and for whatever reason, you spend way more time looking at the road outside… trees, rocks, clouds, whatever you can find and you immerse in your own thoughts, to the extreme where you may not remember a thing you saw, since all looked so familiar. Maybe an iPod might be our best friend in such experiences.

Anyway, I had a meeting in this building, which I never saw before, and in certain city I never visited, but believe it or not I knew exactly where to go, what to do, where to eat and finally visited one or two tourist spots around… but how did I do it? I knew exactly how the building looks like, needed no further directions to get a meal or to snap a couple of good shots. A new best friend helped me out… Google Street View.

Probably you've heard about this free service provided by Google, if not, let me break it down for you: Street View is a service seamlessly embedded to Google Maps, and what this service does is to provide you with fully detailed pictures of the surrounding as if you were driving on the street. Whatever public place you can see from you car in real life, you can see it from your computer… pretty cool huh?

Just go to google maps, grab that yellow fella from the zoom scale in the upper left and drag him to the exact spot you want. I showed this to my dad and he, for the lack of a better word, sort of freaked out. He understood right there the full potential (both good and bad) of the Street View. No need to say all the kindness this service brings to our lives… need to go to a friend's house you hardly remember the address to? No problem, just follow the streets and as soon you recognize certain details, you'll see the porch and the door in no time. What about the other way (sort of my case)? I just had an address, just type it down and you're there… is that easy? Yes, it is.

And, like you've heard before, is like taking a tour without standing from your seat. Wanna visit other countries? No problem, you can ride the streets of Spain, England, France, Canada and many others just dragging and clicking on your mouse. Downsides? Well, from my point of view what this does is simply making public knowledge, well, more public. I mean, if you have directions or an address (which are public) you can view now with no effort the real place (again, which is public). People who mean harm to us might take advantage of this tool, but is just like -for example- a hammer, which it's also a public tool (you can go and get one from the store) and you can either build a house or hurt someone… decision is up to you. Same with Street View.

Regardless is a fantastic tool you can access from you computer and you should definitely give it a try (if you haven't already). What's your favorite place on Earth? You can watch it as if you were right there! Leave all your comments right below and you can also attach the links to the places you like the most there… keep enjoying your week and see you next Monday!

Superpowers… in the Real World

What's up? So… another Monday, is alright, we've discussed it before and now we gotta start our week. All I gotta say regarding last week is… what's going on with the weather? I know you know what I'm talking about, these heat waves are growing bigger, let's hope nature isn't trying to make up for the cold winter we just had.

Now… topic of the day: Superpowers. What's up with those? Well, I don't need to throw at you the whole 4-1-1 of them since you pretty much have the knowledge… flying, x-ray vision, super strength, you know them all, of course, in the science fiction. Maybe you've picked up a comic book or watched a cool movie and you wondered at least once what would be like to have one of these superpowers, but what if I told you that some of these abilities are being performed by real people in the real world? And I'm not talking about using special lenses, an airplane or a suit, I'm talking no devices here.

It turns out science has made possible some dudes and gals to have certain abilities we consider -for the lack of a better word- amazing! Not sure exactly how we can explain some of this, but it's real and they live among us. The first example I can think of is this german baby I heard some time ago with a strength beyond ordinary, he was born in 99 and his nickname is 'Das Uberboy', and what scientists say is that there's a real genetic mutation (sort of X-Men) and his muscles are all ripped.

There are less 'obscure' cases (since that german kid has never been seen), such as Ben Underwood, his superpower is called 'echolocation' (for me the best new name for a superpower). It turns out he can't see, but it looks like we could, since we plays ball, skates, writes and all using and incredible techniques involving the echoes on things bouncing back at him, pretty much as a bat… that's a superpower Batman would be dying to have! An incredible note, Ben also can play videogames… but how? Don't ask.

As a final example are some Buddhist monks, who apparently are some sort of Pyro from the X-Men (second time I quote the comic), since the generate heat energy from their bodies to the point when they can put on fire certain objects. They do so with a meditation technique called Tum-mo, that way they lower their metabolism and control their body temperatures. Researchers still can't say how this works, but it's known the practical implications and even astronauts can benefit from all this.

What do you think? Sure there are many more examples, but how do these occur? Is not like science cannot explain it, more like scientists can't, because all has an explanation. Do you know anyone with any cool abilities? Any sort of explanation you may have about any superpower? If you could have one of them… which one would you like? (Please don't say something like: the superpower to have all superpowers) So many questions! Leave all your comments downtown and if you want to know more about it check out the vid! See you next Thursday!

iAds

Hey! What's up guys? Enjoying life so far? Recently I've been very active checking out readings, programs, music and the likes, so I guess is fair to say my week has been great… sort of waiting for a phone call and a response from one or two applications, so that keeps me intrigued. I can't wait the time to relax a bit, maybe doing nothing on the internet or maybe just watching the TV and have a laugh. And that is exactly what I did yesterday!

You know how it is, after a long day of work, you just get home and the first thing you want to do is to take those shoes off, lay down in that nice couch you have there, grab the remote and simply submerge on that big box called TV, you don't want to know nothing about life for a while, so you  find your favorite program and… what? Oh yes… advertisements. And I don't mean one or two, I'm talking about a marathon of those… +10 ads between shows, don't you just love them?

To be honest with you, I don't. The thing is, I don't mind one or two to pop up between the show I'm watching, but sometimes things get out of hand… a lot. And not just by quantity… oh no… I'm talking quality too. Little by little the ads guys think the audience is getting dumber every day and some ads are practically an insult, all just to buy their products or services. Thankfully not all ads fall into this category, there are some ads that I really like and they sell their product quite well, but these are rare and sadly not enough.

And keep in mind I've just talked about TV ads, but they're the tip of the iceberg. Ads are now everywhere. Let's talk about what could be our average day. Wake up, turn TV/radio (ads), take a shower, breakfast, drive to work (ads on the radio, street, bus stops), get to the office, check the post mail (paper ads), get a magazine (more ads)… and that could be just our morning. But we've adapted to all this bomb, to the point of reaching the fact that, we don't care what we hear/see anymore, nothing connect to us and we get things we've consumed since always. Now another form of propaganda is hitting our way… web ads. They seem to be less intrusive, less interactive, but they're there and sometimes they don't look very pretty, others are great and you expect to see them more often, sadly they're minority.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying ads are all hideous and should be banned for life, but I guess what I'm trying to say is, mostly all ads are not made in a way the audience connects to the product, advertisers just want to sell, sell and sell at any expense. Sorry, I don't bite that anymore. Gladly there are few ads out there that dare the audience, make them think and, as I said earlier, they click with the public and, even if it sounds corny, people fall for their product or service. Hopefully as technology gets more powerful we also get a bit smarter and take advantage of it… just saying!

Well, guess that sounded like a harsh letter, but I bet you fell the same like me in some ways. What's your favorite ad? Is it in TV, radio, internet… maybe a magazine? Do you think hi tech can do something about it to make it better? Leave all your comments below and hope to see y'all next week… in the meantime… have a great one! 

Happy Internet Day!

Happy Monday everyone! (yeah, right). I think we all know how mostly all mankind feels about the beginning of a brand new week. Since the dawn of men the first day of the week has had a sort of bad reputation since it's seen as the 'same beginning of a different journey', I sense we can do something different about it, you know, try to embrace it as any other day (hard to do so when thinking in Friday), but always keep in mind this: 'What would be of Fridays without their Mondays?'

Just imagine, what's the first thing you do a Monday morning? Turn off the alarm clock? Or maybe turn on the TV to check out the news or maybe your computer to check out your mails? Bet you have some sort of connection with technology and internet at some point, sometimes it even feels like it's been there forever: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google… the list goes on and on. We keep in touch with family and friends and all seems right in the world.

Well, if you feel thankful in any way with this let me say: 'Happy Internet Day!' to you. That's right, today -May 17th- has been entitled as the 'Internet Day'  around the world. I mean, if there's a Taco Day, why in the world can't it be an Internet Day? Now, a real question… who decided to have an Internet's day, and why in such a date?

Well, it turns out both questions have answer. In 2005 in Tunisia there was this Information Society gathering, and there it was proposed and approved the creation of an Information Society day (less fancier words: Internet's day) by the UNO. What about May 17th? You got me there… maybe all other days were taken, I don't know. As a side topic, May 17th's also YouTube Anniversary… coincidence? And what's done today? Well, apparently it's a chance to boost and enhance the Internet to all places (most important to the people who don't have access to it).

And, just think about it, you have access to internet probably most of the day, your life depends greatly of this service, watching news, sending e-mails, checking the forecast, talking to friends and much, so much more. How do you and Internet get along? Are you best friends or do you have struggles from time to time like most marriages do? Today may be a good day to start a healthy relationship with it!

Probably you'll hear about this in YouTube channels, blogs (such as this one), news sites and related, maybe for us it won't be much of a difference, but for many others this day may be their first one getting to know what could potentially be their new best friend… the Web. What's your story? Do you remember what was your first experience searching the web? Do that website you were watching still exist? Do you remember how slow it was just to download a single photo or a song? Don't be shy and leave all your responses in the comment section and have fun reading the rest! Here's a small taste about how things were in the past… hoping the future will bring better! See y'all in 3 days!