Archive - Nov 2008

Way back at the end of March I read a post on Duane's blog about RAID 5 - Raid 5 & Cheap Storage - and I remember thinking at the time that it was a great idea. However, I didn't really have any 'spare' cash to pick up some extra drives to implement it in my server. I made a mental note to come back to it when time / money permitted.

Back at the beginning of the year, I was considering purchasing a GPS unit for my car, a TomTom or something similar, after having seen a friend's TomTom in action on a trip to Syracuse. I thought it would be nice to have, but since we didn't have any car trips planned for the next little while, I wasn't in too big of a hurry to go buy one. Then the announcement of the iPhone 3G (with GPS) coming to Canada happened. I had pretty much decided that I was going to be picking up an iPhone when they were available in Canada, and the fact that it had GPS had me dreaming... Surely someone (TomTom maybe) would be writing a GPS driving directions application that would be available in the App Store. In fact I think I remember reading something to that effect on TechCrunch. Well here we are, nearly 6 months after the App Store opened and I don't see any GPS driving directions apps available yet. Is Apple blocking them because they have something up their sleeve? That's too bad really.

P.S. Shown in the photo is the 3G iPhone windshield mount made by RAM that finally showed up (ordered it on July 29th). I bought it with a driving directions application in mind.

I've been eyeing the Apple TV for a while now, thinking I'd like to get one, but since I have a perfectly good media streaming device already (the MG-35), I haven't been in a big rush to purchase one. A buddy of mine from work picked one up a few weeks ago and I convinced him that he should let me borrow it for a couple of days so I could try it out. I wanted to try it out first hand before deciding if I wanted to drop a couple hundred bucks (plus) on it. In the end, I still think I'd like to get one, but I'm not rushing out the door to grab it right now. I felt it came up a bit short on some of its functionality, but I think the flaws I saw could all (easily) be fixed with some software tweaks.

When it comes to online mapping, I've never looked anywhere else but Google. I've been waiting for them to update their "Satellite View" of my neighbourhood so that my house would finally show up, but that hasn't happened yet - currently it shows a lot of empty lots that are actually no longer empty lots.

Just this morning I found out about Microsoft Live Maps and it turns out they have some pretty cool features. One of these is the option for a "birds eye" view of the map. As you can see by the photo on the left, the birds eye view is much more up-to-date than what Google has for their satellite view. They also have an aerial view which is also more up-to-date than Google. What's up with that?! Time to catch up Google! From the looks of the picture, it was taken last summer when my lawn wasn't doing so well. :)

One of the cool things about the birds eye view is that it gives you 4 different view angles of the same location - you just need to click on the rotate button. With this, you can get a really good look at a particular location. Impressive! Obviously not all locations have this view available.

Just for fun, here are some links to birds eye views of a few different places:

Parliament Hill

Disney World

Trafalgar Square