Feed Sift

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Skyscraper Slums: Insider Tour of World’s Tallest Tent City - This is fascinating, video is totally worth watching. (WebUrbanist)

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Disney Research makes paper cool again by turning it into a generator - This is pretty neat. Another short video worth watching. (Engadget)

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Feed Sift

Here's five things I've come across recently that I wanted to share.

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An End of Books - Seth Godin explores an end. A longer piece, a good read.

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Death and Taxes FY2014 - They'll sell you the poster, but they'll also let you see it in all its meticulous detail on this page. A breakdown of the entire federal budget. (Timeplots.com)

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40 Awesome Maps - This stuff is just fun - from the 22 countries Britain hasn't invaded to what the moon would look like if the United States were located there. (Twisted Sifter)

-4-

Thoughful Design - Why GM cars sound like they do - a brief look into what goes into today's sound engineering. (Medium.com)

-5-

Niagara Falls - some angles you've probably never seen before. (Yeah, you'll probably want to go full screen.)

Worth Repeating: Eric Sanderson

Video:


New York - Before the City: 400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta's fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife -- accurate down to the block -- when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn't get delivery. More on TED.com...

Why I'm Posting: This is fascinating. Moreso probably if you've ever lived in New York.

Control: @Waze vs @GoogleMaps & hi to @WSDOT (A Work-Related Post)

So in May, a bridge collapsed. As soon as I heard about it, I headed to Waze where it had already been removed from the map and Google Maps where the best I could do was submit a report.

Just got this email from Google Maps in response to an update I submitted in late May...

Worth Repeating: Parag Khanna (@paragkhanna)

Video:


Mapping the Future of Countries - Many people think the lines on the map no longer matter, but Parag Khanna says they do. Using maps of the past and present, he explains the root causes of border conflicts worldwide and proposes simple yet cunning solutions for each. More on TED.com...

Why I'm Posting - While slightly dated now (amazing how quickly the world moves), it's a really interesting look at what's going on now and how history repeats itself. Also, further proof that we should really be wary of China. Everyone says it, but then I think everyone goes right back to their business. Seriously, those who teach their children Chinese are going to have a leg up on everyone else in a generation or two.

The Problem with the Internet

So last night, the internet once again captivated me in the strange way it does.  It's such a good example of how dangerous it can be to someone like me, inately curious, especially when the one thing I wish I had more of was time.  The internet can so quickly rob me of that.

So last night I started on the homepage of MSNBC.  And then Arab League threatens sanctions against Syria. So then I had to look up Syria on Google Maps.And then I wandered around the Middle East until I ended up in Tarsus in Turkey.  And then I was puzzled by street names ending with the abbreviation "Cd" and "Sk" 

So, off to Wikipedia and then it was all rabbit trails from there:

• Street Names
• Streets and Highways of Washington, DC
• Malbone Street Wreck - a subway crash in New York that claimed the lives of 93 people, thanks to a train going to fast with an inexperienced scab driver on a brand new tunnel
• Circus - a bigtop misdirect, thanks Wikipedia
• Drake Circus Shopping Centre
• Charles Church - the shell of a very old church, bombed in 1941

And then just like that, more than 30 minutes was gone.  Reminds me of this NSFW xkcd.

Never did figure out what CD or SK meant.

Why I Drive

This is a cool site - Mapnificent.  I saw this a few months ago and have been looking for it ever since.  You give it a starting point and it will show you everywhere you can get by public transit in a timeframe you select.  So I live on one side of Federal Way and work on the other.  It's less than 7 miles.  About 14 minutes to get to work, 20-24 to get home.   

It I slide Mapnificent out to its furthest (175 minutes), I can get to the far reaches of the map - Snoqualmie, Enumclaw, Everett, Tacoma (it only covers King County transit options, apparently) but I can't get to my workplace in the same town.  Despite the fact that there's a bus stop right across from the campus.

Worst Street Name Ever?

Good job, North Anson, Maine.

View Larger Map
From Failblog.org

Quirk of Heaven

Ok, ever since I was a little kid, I always hoped that one thing I'd get to do when I got to heaven was to see a path on a map of everywhere on earth that I'd been. I know that's a little weird, but I was curious. Especially as it related to years on the school bus. Would I ever do a commute more than the five years to and from the same elementary school? (I think I came close with my last job and all signs point to it being a pretty good likelihood with my current job.)

I know, that's extremely weird, or the product of a young mind who didn't quite understand the point of heaven, or whatever you want to call it.

Well, Google (of course) this week released "Latitude History," an extension of a the Latitude feature. (An opt-in service that lets you plot your current location on a map and share that with someone else.) For instance, when I was in Arizona last February, I was chatting with Lori on my Blackberry from the shuttle and she was watching my location on a map on her iGoogle (still a dumb name!) page. Anyhow, a few days ago, they added a new feature that lets you track, over time, where you were. (Only capturing stuff since you turn it on, so Arizona's not on my map.)

Soon enough I imagine it will be used as an alibi to exonerate falsely accused of a crime, and not too long after that, to exonerate someone who had their friend carry their phone for them for the night as a way to create a false alibi.

Anyhow, yeah, with poor precision (it makes guesses based on which cell tower the Blackberry is connecting to), it records every ping. So mostly there's this giant loop between home and work. Makes me anxious to go somewhere else just to add some variety to the map.

That part about poor precision? Apparently all night while I sleep someone steals my Blackberry and travels back and forth about 15 blocks, sometimes in a matter of seconds. It makes the playback a little nauseating as the map keeps bouncing back and forth.

Read more on Mashable

Map, Schmap

This is cool. Schmap discovered one of our photos on Flickr and included it in their listing. (They asked first.)

Where Was That Filmed?

Yeah, that site seems to have died.  Why not check out The Sift instead?
Spammers keep linking to this article trying to post spam comments.
It's not working, but they keep trying.  

Original post:

This is a cool new site. http://www.movielandmarks.com/ - allows you to add pins to a map to show where something was filmed.

Show Me the World

Google announced today that they added streets to a mess of new places (Afghanistan, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei Darussalam, Bhutan, Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Mexico, Myanmar (Burma), Mongolia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Timor-Leste, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen) today.

I ended up jumping to Mexico City and then coasting south, arriving in Roatán, a beautiful island in the Honduras that Lori and I had a private day-long tour of a few years ago. To see it again, from such a different perspective made me think... (1) it would be fascinating to go back and (2) much of the world is probably far more spectacular than what you see as an average tourist and (3) I will miss out on much of that beauty.

It's not something I can get depressed over, but it's one of those "bummer realizations." I guess it also suggests that with the limited traveling I will be able to accomplish in my lifetime, that it will be far better to go someplace new than to try to go back somewhere I've been before.

I guess this is a good philosophy for when I want to go to the same place to eat that I've eaten at nearly every week forever.

The Next Step in Mapping

Pure brilliance. Google, you paying attention? This is awesome. Yahoo's just released what they're calling "MapMixer" - finally those campus/park/event specific maps locked away on websites can be overlaid on top of a bigger map to show context. I did my college campus. My second attempt, adding my former church in Pasadena, failed. Twice. But the potential of this is very cool. I suspect some Google and Microsoft programmers are gonna be extra busy the next couple of days playing catchup. Nice job, Yahoo! (I still hate your name and therefore refuse to use any of your offerings, but serious kudos on a most excellent leap forward.)

If I had one suggestion, it would be to allow you to pull from an existing URL, instead of having to download the image and then upload it again to your service.

I (heart) Israel

Or, more specifically, I'm a big fan of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Whether you're complaining about their destruction of homes and structures as they withdrew from certain areas of the Gaza strip (turns out that the Palestinians wanted the cement structures destroyed; they were planning to use them as an artificial reef in a marina project) or thanking the country for giving animals to a Palestinian zoo (they sent a few other articles on cooperation back), they respond, and quickly. They never give their names so that's a little bit rough, but they reply quickly and professionally. Great public relations!

MSNBC Article that mentions Israel's gift
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19683583/

Israel, Jordan and Palestinian Authority working together on large environmental project
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Israel+beyond+politics/Environmental%20concerns%20bring%20Israelis%20Jordanians%20and%20Palestinians%20together%209-Jul-2007

Israel, Palestinian Authority team to clean regional rivers
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Israel+beyond+politics/Israeli-Palestinian%20team%20cleaning%20up%20regional%20rivers%2001-07-2007

Bad Water

CONSUMERIST.COM -- And in Fiji, a state-of-the-art factory spins out more than a million bottles a day of the hippest bottled water on the U.S. market today, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have safe, reliable drinking water. Which means it is easier for the typical American in Beverly Hills or Baltimore to get a drink of safe, pure, refreshing Fiji water than it is for most people in Fiji. More...

What The World Needs Now...

These are kinda clever. I may have posted about this first one before... Twittervision displays people's twits as they tweet, but on a map so you can kind of see what people are thinking around the world. At least the inane thoughts of the technologically bored.

The second is a little more fascinating... Flickrvision does pretty much the same thing, but it's as people add photos to Flickr and put them on the map, this map updates, showing the photos.

Famine? Again?

CHRISTIANITYTODAY.COM -- To my eye Nairobi, Kenya's capital, looks good, leafed out in tropical vegetation. After three years of drought, rains came in May 2006. And the government shows signs of doing its job. The streets are cleaner than they have been in years. Shops and supermarkets are full of food. It's hard to believe that the drought has pushed Kenya into a food emergency. Yet 3.5 million people survive on emergency food aid in Kenya, part of the 6 million people who suffer likewise in the Horn of Africa, a vast region sweeping north from Kenya into Ethiopia and Somalia. You have probably heard about this crisis. And you have probably forgotten. It is easy to forget when this emergency feels like just one more in a never-ending series of African crises. Will we be feeding these people forever? More...

In Middle Eastern News...

MSNBC/REUTERS -- Iran has banned "Western" haircuts, plucking of men's eyebrows by barbers and the wearing of makeup by men. Apparently the metrosexual craze was sweeping Tehran? But on the topic of Western haircuts, what does this mean for their President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who looks like he just stepped off the bus from Anytown, USA, circa 1986?

In other news, a tribe in Saudi Arabia held a beauty pageant for camels.

What is that?

Maps and views from satellites and low flying planes are great, but sometimes you're still left wondering "What is that???!?"

Thanks to Dave for this link to http://www.wikimapia.org/ which lets you identify what things really are, all by drawing squares around them on the satellite map and then adding some text.

Just another way the world is becoming smaller and more well known.

Google Maps - Buildings

In what Google Earth Blog is calling "2.5D," Google has added wire-frame images to 35 cities.
Here's the Convention Center in Seattle that sits atop I-5, since the Space Needle is pathetically incomplete. And here is the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. How long before we see GPS systems in cars, powered by Google?