Google Maps now has biking directions

Yesterday it was announced that Google Maps will now be featuring bike directions. Which is great.

But how are biking directions different from regular driving directions?

Well take where I'm located for example, Issaquah, WA. Say I am feeling ambitious one morning and want to bike to Seattle. Well the driving directions would be straight down I-90. Can't do that on my bike.

The feature, called Bike There, gives you directions and routes that are either trails, roads with dedicated bike lanes or roads that are good for biking and allows for riders to avoid hills whenever possible.

And Bike There is really easy to use. Just head over to the Google Maps page, and just like you used to be able to pick between car route, public transporation route or walking, you now simply select "bicycling" from the drop down menu.

The official Google blog also had this to say about the feature:

We've also added information about bike trails, lanes and recommended roads directly onto the map. This can help you get a better sense of your route, or let you find trails nearby for a recreational ride. When you're zoomed into a city, click on the "More" button at the top of the map to turn on the "Bicycling” layer. You'll see three types of lines appear on the map:

-Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
-Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
-Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes

You can head over to Google Maps and try it out for yourself. Now what's your excuse for now biking into work?

(This is from Just Northwest)

Bing becoming an internet monster

Bing is continuing to grow with its market share in the search engine market, taking most of its traffic from Yahoo, which is something that brings up an interesting dilemma since Microsoft will be entering into a partnership with Yahoo. Akkkkkkwwwwaaaarrrrd.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Once the world's online search leader, Yahoo's share has sharply declined, putting it in danger of losing its relevance in a market increasingly dominated by Google.

Yahoo's search market share in November fell to 17.5% from 18% in October, according to a monthly comScore report released late Wednesday. It's the lowest share ever recorded for Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500).

Cannibalizing Yahoo's market share is Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), whose new Bing search site gained 0.4 points of the search market to 10.3% in November. That was the first time Microsoft owned more than 10% of the market since September 2007.

Now keep in mind that Google still rules the world, but Bing keeps creeping along.

(This is from Tech Rave)

Are you ready for the Microsoft-Google Clone Wars?

Well this whole Bing-Google search engine war just took an interesting twist. Look for the cannonballs to start flying after Microsoft is in discussions with News Corp to stop indexing their content with Google News. That's the same News Corp that owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and The Sun. Uh-oh.

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.

News Corp and Microsoft, which owns the rival Bing search engine, declined to comment.

One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan “puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them”.

Things just got really, really ugly. We're about to see an all-out brawl. And I think newspapers are really kidding themselves if they think that selling the rights to their stories is going to save the industry. That's like saying a sports league could survive on TV rights sales alone. Not gonna work.

(This is from Tech Rave)

Video of Google Chrome OS in action

Here's a video of the Chrome OS, kind of gives you a better idea of whats going on (and you don't have to slog through my writing).

The lowdown on the Google Chrome OS

Google unveiled its plan for its new operating system yesterday and I'm sure nobody is still sure what to expect. Since I'm a huge nerd, and Google actually plays a large part in driving traffic to this website, I had to take a long look at it. Here's the basics about the Chrome OS...

1. Google Chrome OS is essentially a web browser on 'roids - This is something hard to get my brain wrapped around but essentially the Chome OS will be based largely on web applications (meaning no desktop apps) and a tabular navigation system much like the Google Chrome browser already in existence. This may seem weird but considering how much work people already do online and how many applications are online these days, this is just another way to be speedy on the computer (a webpage opens up quicker than a program). However, despite it's browser roots, it still will be able to handle multiple tasks at once, you'll just have to get use to the navigation.

2. It will update and fix itself constantly - Tired of those "Patch Tuesdays" that Microsoft always rolls out? Chrome OS will always be updating itself to the latest version for security and convenience reasons meaning that everybody will have the most up-to-date versions. If it does find some malware or other problem in the operating system, it will basically just re-download the latest version of itself, bug-free.

3. All your data is online - Everything will be stored online, not locally on a hard drive. While this seems scary at first, if your computer is stolen or broken you can just get a new computer and access all your old files. However, if you're not connected online, that's a different story. This is how they'll be able to pull of the constantly updating and re-imaging of the operating system since your files will not be on a hard drive, hence they wont be swept away when you OS refreshes itself.

4. Chrome OS will only work on Google-approved PCs - Google is looking for very specific types of machines for their OS. They're also going to do away with traditional hard drives and move on to "flash" or solid state hard media, meaning no moving parts. This would mean a boot-up time of around seven seconds on the machine.

5. It should work offline, but I'm not sure how well - You might be able to play games, but if you're not connected and can't access files, I could see this being a serious issue.

(This is from Tech Rave. Modified for Just South of North - of course)

Rupert Murdoch does not like Google News

(From Media Chow)

Just to show you how stupid the news business is, I'd like to present to you the case of Rupert Murdoch, who built himself quite the empire in information. Fox News, a plethora of newspapers (including the Wall Street Journal) and MySpace. In other words, he's probably burning actual stacks of money to keep his mansion warm. Anyways, seeing Google News (which it is not) as a stealer of information, Murdoch is now contemplating blocking his newspapers from Google News and similar features from Bing and Ask.

Google has argued that its news aggregator simply points users to content online and actually helps drive traffic to news sites. Murdoch was not impressed by Internet traffic and said he was more interested in finding loyal readers.

"What's the point of having someone ... who likes a headline they see in Google, come to us?" he asked. "The fact is, there's not enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the Web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web site but paying."

At this point, users can see the first paragraph of most articles in the Wall Street Journal, but to read the rest of the story online, they must sign up for a subscription. Murdoch was not sure that that is the approach he'll take with all his publications.

One thing Murdoch is touting is the subscription-based service as opposed to an ad service for the money-making model on his newspapers websites. Problem is, with the subscription-based service, any schmuck can come along with a subscription and then post it for free online and then people will go and read that instead of your actual newspaper site. At least Google drives traffic to your site, as opposed to just copying and ignoring the source altogether.

If Murdoch blocks his newspapers, something tells me Google News will just go to other places.

Google becomes Big Brother and lets you know about it

In a rare move in big company history, Google is actually letting everyone know how much information they have on you. Now if only the CIA would do the same...

"Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users. Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data," said Google in a blog post today. "In an effort to provide you with greater transparency and control over their own data, we've built the Google Dashboard."

The company said the Dashboard is set up so that users can control the personal settings in each Google product that they use. Google said the Dashboard tool supports more than 20 products and services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Web History, YouTube, Picasa, Talk, Reader, Alerts and Google Latitude.

I took a peek at my Dashboard and basically Google knows everything about me, which is kind of creepy. It's like a spouse but without all the arguments about who left the toilet seat up.

(From Tech Rave)

Turkey will now go to war with the Googlebots

Turkey is not happy with Google, saying that they owe $47 million in back taxes. Look for that country to be eradicated from the face of the planet by Googlebots.

TechCrunch reports Turkey is claiming Google owes them 71 million Turkish Lira or 47 million US dollars in back taxes.

In fact, the Turkish government is fining Google for the money. Google claims all the funds are through their Ireland branch and Google does not owe Turkey any taxes. Google technically has a company in Turkey named Google Reklamcılık ve Pazarlama Ltd. Şti. but the company is technically set up as a ‘liaison’ branch. If set up properly, TechCrunch reports Google would owe little to no taxes to the Turkish government.

I know what you're thinking... Turkey has taxes? Yeah they do, they have a government and everything. It's quite fancy. This also isn't the first time Google has been accused of evading taxes. Should be interesting to see how this thing pans out.

(From Tech Rave)

Epic Video: The Google Street View Guys

I'd imagine this is exactly how it went.


via videosift.com

Let's GOOGLE it

Today we're going to play a little game. As most of you know Brandon is an epic photographer. And he taught me everything I know.

And it has been said time and again that prospective employers will GOOGLE possible employees names and see what comes up.

So today I GOOGLED "Brandon Hansen". Go ahead. Try it. I switched over to IMAGES just to see what I found.

The first photo is some kid. Have no idea who.

The second photo is one of Brandon's awesome Spokane Shock photos. It's actually hosted by KHQ in Spokane.

But the third photo is priceless. The third photo is this:


And what a photo that is! Looks just like him. Sword and all!

Ok, ok. Now it may seem like I'm picking on my buddy. So let's see what GOOGLE finds for me in images when I search "Casey Knopik."

The first two photos are photos that I took for The Easterner. A sign that read 365 days, the US Department of Agriculture Secretary, and third, a photo I posted on JustSON about Seattle traffic.

But the fourth photo was this:


Yes ladies and gentlemen, that is me and Brandon posing on the cat walk for our short stink as professional models.

In other words. Search Brandon's name, get a scary lady, with a sword, posing on a stage. Search my name, get the "group formally known as the Eastern Rangers but now known as the Northern Rangers" posing on a stage.

So, in either case I think neither of us would get the job. For Brandon they would be scared that he (or she as the photo would show) would show up at the job interview and crush them.

As for me, they would take one look at the above photo and know what a dork I am.

Thank you GOOGLE.

Crap.