Follow this link to Google Maps, then try to find places you’ve lived in the past by zooming in (and not turning on any of the navigational aids). My current residence was very easy, but finding Bethlehem, PA and Avon, CT were rather challenging. There are some useful strategies that make the task manageable. Enjoy!

Another update in the iPod saga…

One of the things that I didn’t like about the iPod Touch was the fact that it didn’t include the maps and email apps for no good reason (er, ahem, “business reasons”). With a little bit of quite easy hacking, I was able to install those apps along with a bunch of 3rd-party applications.

Since the iPhone and iPod Touch are so similar, you can literally copy (some) apps from one to the other. Maps and mail were the only ones I really wanted, but there’s a lot of other interesting stuff to play with. Once the system is unlocked, you can installed lots of core unix stuff, such as an SSH server, a surprisingly polished terminal app, programming languages, web servers, etc. I have no need for some of those right now, but it leaves the door open for a lot of cool things. If they didn’t have an annoying signed music database, I’d be able to make it sync via the wireless network automatically whenever I got home. That’s how it should work in the first place…

The Google Maps app for iphone, which I hadn’t used before, is quite awesome. Highly recommended.

I’m waiting for my gmail account to get IMAP enabled before I put the account on the ipod. Hopefully the wait won’t be much longer…

A short video about how Gmail blocks spam:

.. complete with a shout-out to Google OCR.

I finally experienced an earthquake in California. There was a 5.6 magnitude earquake west of San Jose tonight while I was working. There was a fair amount of shaking for a brief amount of time, but not so much that anything fell over in my office.

Many thanks for all the music recommendations. I’ll try to track some of them down later this week. More posting
coming tomorrow.

I typed this on my iPod… I’m getting better with this keyboard.