ThinkLemon

Category: Utilities

Utils

  • Pizza in Europe?

    Google Maps Logo Lately there has been some news surrounding Google Maps. As a result I’m obliged to sum things up. ThinkLemon style, surely.

    First, it was called Google Maps (beta), then Local, and now Maps again. Probably because everyone was calling it Maps anyhow. The Google Blog explains more.

    Second, Maps has expanded to continental Europe. Finally I’d say.
    Not only are there more high-res images available, but also streetlevel maps where there used to be ‘greyness’. Take for instance this spot on the Dutch coast (Scheveningen). One could almost spot the make of the cars. Btw, Earth also features these high-res aerials and you can zoom in a wee bit more. 🙂

    And now for *drumroll* the pizza-test! (more…)

  • Photoshop + Fireworks: Where to from here?

    John Nack on Adobe: Photoshop + Fireworks: Where to from here?:

    Now that Adobe and Macromedia have come together, we’re busily planning our next moves, and it would be great to get your input.

    If you’re a webdesigner/-developer this is an interesting read. Lots of thought for food here.

    (BTW, John Nack is the Senior Product Manager, Adobe Photoshop. So let him have it. ;-))

  • Extend Firefox Contest Winners

    The grand prize winners of the Extend Firefox competition are in. One of them is the one I use on a daily basis. In fact it’s the biggest reason why I’m using Firefox as my main browser. Props to Chris! 🙂
    But IMHO the Web Developer toolbar is only usefull for us web developers (and people who are affiliated to them). Anyway, here are the three winners:

    Grand Prize Category Winners:

    I’ve installed Reveal and am evaluating as of writing. Can’t say I like it. It’s … just bizarre. 🙂

  • Ask.com Maps & Directions

    The latest addition to the online mapping frenzy comes from none other than ask.com (that search engine that fired its card-bored butler remember?).

    At map.ask.com you can find maps and directions. A first glance may remind you of that other mapping solution. But … this one is aware of roads in the rest of the world, outside of the U.S.A. (& UK), as Tagzania found out before me. Kudos to them. 🙂

    Playing around with it though, this one caught my eye. An obscure censoring of a piece of The Hague, The Netherlands.
    Ask.com censored part of the Netherlands.

    As far as I know there aren’t any military, civilian or government installations in that area. Why anyone wants to censor a normal residential area with a kindergarten inside? Beats me.
    Google does show the contents BTW.

    Come to think about it. Currently there’s a lot of construction work going on in that park that’s being obscured… ahemmm

    Update (2006-04-24): It seems that the latest image update of Google (Maps & Earth) also censors this specific block. Albeit in a more gentle way. Nonetheless, it still baffles me why. Maybe it’s a trap street?

  • Google Page Creator (Beta of course)

    Googe Page Creator BetaNormally I wouldn’t blog about yet another new Google product release. Now would I? 😉 Hey, I’m not the Googleblog you know.
    But this time they’ve released a product that lets my mother create webpages in no-time, although I doubt if anyone’s waiting for another bridge-site. (Sorry mom. :-))

    So what is it?

    It’s an easy-to-use webpage publishing system. It’s easy as point & click to start creating pages, all with the familiar Google GUI as used in GMail/Base/Reader/etc. The site is currently coupled with your GMail account, meaning your mail username is also used to address the site. You’ll get a 100MB of space, so that should be enough to build a photoalbum or the likes. Uploads are handled beautifully by the way. And linking to other pages or sites is automatically checked, so it’s hard to make a mistake there.

    (more…)

  • PocketMod, Hipster PDA or Ductster PDA

    The PDA* market is becoming quite competitive it seems. Once a small niche, it looks to be ready for main-stream. There have been no mergers, buy-outs or busts … yet. But hey, it’s still an emerging market. Here’s the short-list:

    • PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer: Nice pocket-sized, folding design, but takes a while to ‘install’. Comes with a multimedia instruction video and even offers a PDF-converter. Somewhat active userbase.
    • The Hipster PDA: Easy clip-on design. Multitude of organising possibilities. Active user community.
    • Ductster PDA: Spin-off from the Hipster PDATM. Improved (weather-)durability. Excellent for more extreme environments than just the office. Rather complicated ‘install’.

    Not convinced? Take a look at this Yahoo! Finance article.

    An expanding market makes choosing rather difficult. How much effort is one willing to take to ‘install’ his/hers PDA*? Oh what the heck, I’ll take’m all then!

    Contributions to expand the short-list are welcome. 🙂

    *PDA meaning ‘Paperbased Diary Assistant’.

  • Finalists for the Extend Firefox Contest announced

    Extend Firefox Contest Finalists :: Mozilla Update:

    We are happy to announce the finalists in our Extend Firefox Contest, a contest held to award the best and brightest extension developers in the Firefox community. The contest asked entrants to create Firefox Extensions that are innovative, useful, and integrate with today’s Web services. Over 200 Extensions were submitted to the contest. Many thanks to everyone who entered and everyone who helped spread the word about the contest.

    Rather, this is a test post with the ‘Deepest Sender‘ blog extension. Like the ‘Performancing’ one quoted in an earlier post. Just to see how this one fares.

    Update: The post got through allright… 🙂

  • MediaWiki & Google Sitemaps update

    Just to let you know. I’ve done an update on the MediaWiki:Google Sitemaps script. So if you’re running a MediaWiki installation take a look at the script.

  • RE: Adobe looking for a Gecko expert

    Adobe, formerly Macromedia That is what the below job offering says. But I’m not quite sure what it is they’re building. Remember the Adobe & Macromedia merger? So it’s quite obvious that the the product lines of both will be merged. Meaning Flash and PDF …

    (more…)

  • WordPress 2.0 Cache Is Broken!

    WordPress takes a bite. As of version 2.0 of WordPress you’ll get a caching feature, which means it’ll ‘remember’ the most frequent accessed static information from your blog. This way it’s supposed to not bother the database but make a ‘fast trip’ to the server to fetch these pieces of info. In the end this should make your weblog go faster, because the information is already there to present.

    Unfortunately it’s broken. (more…)