For a good time.. open up terminal or a shell and telnet into miku.acm.uiuc.edu….gotta love the old school implementation of an old meme.

While there are probably a good number of apps that I use on a daily basis, there are only a few dvelopement companies behind these tools that I actually have a strong admiration/nerd-crush for. One of these companies is Panic, creator of my all-time favorite FTP client and Web Development tools Transmit & Coda. On their blog they typically show-off upcoming features, status updates on various projects and just all-around random shit that they find interesting online. Trust me, while it’s definitely a company blog they’ve got a loyal following thanks to the interesting posts that pepper the typical product/marketing dev. updates. This is a prime example. They just posted a pic/feature-list on a new project that they’ve been working on that’s an easy-to-digest project status-board, or as they’ve called it “the panic board.” Primarily using AJAX this status board will give any team member privy to their internal network a one-screen update on where in the development cycles any number of projects might be in. Not only that but according to the blog it also incorporates streaming twitter updates, email announcements, the company calendar and even the local Tri-Met Bus Arrival calendar for employees who rely on the bus to get to and from work (hey, they’ve got an API, why not use it?!). The blog post then goes on to make any data nerd squeal with the admission that they’re using a 46″ Samsung LCD Video Wall Display to keep the team within eyeshot of the status board. Very cool.

Now by no means is this the first or even one of the first examples of global ‘status board’ type pages that have been setup for both internal and external use. One of my favorite examples of a public project status page is the one featured on the right in the header image, found over on the Culture Code company website. These are the guys behind the OSX & iPhone to-do application called “Things.” They’ve created a project status page in the form of an airport arrival/departure screen. What’s cool about this is as the user you’re able to see not only the status on various product updates, but also see who in the company is working on that particular issue and when they last updated the sheet.

Other notable one-page project update tools is one recently put in place by the Boulder office of ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, shown below.

It’s a quick way of seeing how far along any given project is in the office, sorting by account, due date, job-type, Creative Director or Producer assigned to the piece. It’s also got a status bar so if you’re across the room you can see at a glance whether or not something has already started (or is about to be finished). They apparently have this sucker projected on the main wall in the inner-depths of the office. Having been forced to deal with so many archiac ways of managing projects at advertising agencies, this is definitely a step in the right direction (if you’re a project manager/producer/in the traffic dept.). I’m sure the creatives will hate this visual reminder of what work they haven’t done yet….so bonus points are awarded there. What it needs though is some color, maybe even little avatars/graphics to help people find specific types of projects without having to scan the entire board…just a thought.

Now you can embed Google Earth into your website or even any pre-existing Google Maps using their recently updated API. With just a simple line of Javascript you can take any existing map and make it 3D using the parameters already in place, thus over-laying your map markers onto the actual satellite view of the area.

This is a pretty cool new feature, imagine someone mapping out all the disc golf courses in the US, then when you select one from the large map, it goes into a google earth view letting you actually SEE the course itself. A very nice addition to the Google API library.

To incorporate it into your site, either go to the Google Earth API page, or the Google Maps API site. Either one will explain how to properly embed the service into you page/application.

They’ve got a whole gallery up of cool ones (which is where I pulled the above example from), plus you can register to upload your own photos to be sent through their computer algorithm.
To Make your own 3D photos, or to just learn more about the science behind the process, visit the stanford site here – http://make3d.stanford.edu/ or just for the quick (i.e. layman’s) version of how it works, here’s a link directly to their FAQ.
Pretty cool stuff.

Here’s something similar that also passed my way, 360Cities.net – 5.000 VR-panorama-shots in more than 42 cities…. all integrated in a Google Maps mashup.. if you live in a big city, chances are you can get a 3D view of your town, for instance, here’s a 3D Atlanta…..and of course, you have to check-out their page for Egypt…. simply amazing.