Atlanta Now Included In Google Maps Street View!
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 | Mashup, News, google, photo-manipulation | No Comments
You read that correctly, apparently Atlanta has been added to Google Maps street view in celebration of their service turning one year old! The above picture is the street-view of The World Of Coke (located downtown) but it has worked well with every other location i’ve thrown at it so far. Go check it out by going to http://maps.google.com and search for an address in Atlanta. Clicking on the street will bring up the box you see above, or select the “street view” link. Live traffic is also up and running so you can also use google maps to check how bad I-20 is before heading out to work.
If you’ve ever wondered about the technology behind Google Maps Street View, here’s a quick diagram taken from Popular Mechanics:
That’s about as basic as it gets, so if the above info-graphic seems like common sense to you and you’d like to know more behind the actual specifications behind the process, checkout this great article on their website. It even includes a ride-along with the google street view truck in action.
Get Better Open Rates On Emails – The Easy Way
Friday, May 30th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Tired of poor open rates on that email newsletter you send out? The problem might not be the subject content, but actually it’s length.
Dela Quist, CEO of Alchemy Worx (a London based agency) claims that through massive amount of analytics that he has discovered the perfect length for your subject line to increase the open rate.
In an article put out by MediaPost, he states that having your subject line be close to 50 characters is the primo length – claiming to have found this after going through over 250 million messages sent over the past two years with over 660 different subject lines. “A 50-character subject line touting a ‘powerful’ offer is appealing (30% off Spring Getaway flights to Florida on Delta).”
He also says that the longer, 80 character-plus subject lines result in higher open rates as well. The example he gave when delivering his findings last Saturday at MediaPost’s Email Insiders Summit was a subject line used to describe the contents of a newsletter – “Find out Secrets to Spice up your Barbecue this weekend and all Summer Long and enter to win a New Weber Grill.”
Having a subject line thats less than 50 characters, or between the 60-70 character range, resulted in a decrease in delivery as well as open-rates.
He was quick to admit that this theory goes against “traditional” wisdom used to optimize email campaigns but cites his research as proof. Either way, it is an interesting theory to check out. Any comments or first-hand experience with this phenomenon would be appreciated. Was this coincidence or is 50 really the magic number?
Embed Google Earth Into Any Map On Your Website!
Thursday, May 29th, 2008 | API, Mashup, News, visual effects | No Comments
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.
Win An Ipod Shuffle By Donating To A Good Cause!
Monday, May 19th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments
Remember how I got that ipod shuffle from Startupschwag.com? Well, if you hurry and donate now in the charity drive that Brandon Barr has embarked upon, growing a Picasso mustache for the entire month of May, you could win that ipod shuffle! If at the end of May he reaches his goal of $1000, the ipod will be given away to a RANDOM donator. That means even if you only donate $5, you still have a chance to win the ipod!
Go checkout my post on brentter.com for more details or go directly to the donation site!
UPDATE 5/29/08:He’s reached his goal of $1000!! Thanks to everyone who donated, the drawing for the free ipod will occur on June 1st and we’ll contact the winner via email/phone.
OpenSolaris and OpenBlueDragon Both Released!
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 | Business, News | No Comments
Ok, well Open Blue Dragon officially was released 3 days ago, but who’s counting…. it’s the first freely available, enterprise level JAVA CFML server released under the GPLv3 open source project. They plan to release a pre-configured version for both VMWare and Amazon’s EC2′s service, however in the meantime you can head on over to their download page and grab the actual source files, the J2EE WAR distribution, or a pre-reconfigured jetty instance (easy install). There’s also already an instructional video on how to install it on your mac in their forums. Released by New Atlanta, this is a big move to keep Cold Fusion developers from having to learn a new language (let the flame war/hate mail begin)… although the way that they’re releasing it is pretty-cool. It’s designed to run seamlessly with even the ‘soon to be released’ Windows Server 2008 ensuring those wanting to switch over to becoming a .net shop/provider, now don’t have to give up any cold fusion apps that might be in place. By the way, Blue Dragon is used to help host power-social-networking site myspace.com…. so this isn’t your small-time server engine.
Also released (today though), was the long awaited, much talked about Open Solaris enterprise server as well. Easily integrated with virtualization software like VMWare or VirtualBox or even installed by itself via the live-cd, you can find all the various methods of download on their site as well as you have the opportunity to get an official cd sent to you via mail (if you act fast that is). They do admit to leaving out a few install options that are present in the current Solaris 11 update, however they claim that might change in the near future. What they did not leave out of this release were the best parts (in my opinion) – The ZFS file system, DTrace as well as their patented Solaris Containers which make virtualization a breeze. I think they skipped out on the SPARC integration but last I checked I didn’t have any type of mainframes lying around here, so the versions provided work great on my machine!
It’s been a big week for open-source releases of once expensive server software. I get the feeling this can only make things harder for companies like Microsoft, who still haven’t released the latest Microsoft Server 2008 from beta yet, to compete when similar enterprise level resources are available at no cost. It’s only due time until they go open-source as well…. although I’d say it’d still be a few more years.
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