[Paleopsych] NYT: An Update on Stuff That's Cool (Like Google's Photo Maps)

Sun Apr 17 15:42:07 UTC 2005

Business > Your Money > Techno Files: An Update on
Stuff That's Cool (Like Google's Photo Maps)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/business/yourmoney/17techno.html
April 17, 2005

    By JAMES FALLOWS

    THIS is a "where are they now?" report on some products and
    innovations previously described in this space.

    Let's start with Skype. This is the system that allows anyone with a
    computer and a broadband connection to call mobile or land-line
    telephones almost anywhere on earth for pennies per minute. When two
    people are at computers running Skype, they can talk to each other
    (using a headset or microphone) as long as they want, with sound
    quality far better than that of telephones, absolutely free. Skype
    conference calls can include up to five participants - I have used
    this feature to talk simultaneously, from Washington, with people in
    England, New Zealand and California, at no cost to any of us. Working
    out the time zones was the real challenge.

    Skype resembles [1]Google, the gold standard of modern computing, in
    several ways. Its adoption rate has been phenomenal. When I wrote
    about it last September, it had been downloaded a total of 21 million
    times. Now the total is 100 million, and at any given moment more than
    two million Skype conversations are under way. Like Google, Skype
    keeps introducing new features - for instance, "SkypeIn," released two
    days ago, which allows users to create a local phone number and have
    all calls to that number forwarded to the user's Skype connection,
    wherever in the world that might happen to be. As with Google, once
    you get used to Skype, it's hard to imagine doing without.

    Also as with Google, Skype's problems mainly arise from its rapidly
    growing worldwide reach. For Google, the problem has been how much to
    tailor its results to varying political sensibilities: its versions in
    Germany and France, for instance, screen out many neo-Nazi sites.
    Skype has had to cope with the abundance of fraudulent credit cards.
    For the time being, it declines most credit cards and prefers payment
    via PayPal.

    Next, Google itself. In February, it introduced Google Maps, a faster
    and better-looking alternative to MapQuest and other online mapping
    sites. Last month it added a touch that made Google Maps different
    from any competitor: high-resolution aerial photos of the area covered
    by the maps, which visitors can zoom in on for a closer bird's-eye
    view. (These photos came from Keyhole, a company Google bought last
    year.) Go to [2]www.maps.google.com, enter a ZIP code or address, and
    then click the "satellite" button to switch from map to photo. In
    either view you can get driving instructions from one point to
    another, as with other map sites. But when the route is traced in the
    photos, the turns and waypoints are much more vivid.

    But don't try this until you have an hour or two to spare. It is
    difficult to resist the temptation to zoom down to your own house,
    then your childhood elementary school, then Honolulu, then Disneyland.
    Not all of the country is shown in super-high-resolution: in general,
    the greater the population density, the sharper the image. After a lot
    of prowling around, I've found only part of the American landmass
    where the aerial view is deliberately obscured - and it's not the
    White House. (Answer next time.) If you click on the screen, you can
    pan from place to place, as if flying. A waste of time, perhaps, but
    fascinating.

    The real importance of Google's map and satellite program, however, is
    not its impressive exterior but the novel technology, known as Ajax,
    that lies beneath. About that, and its implications for Google and
    other companies, there will be more to say in a future column.

    Next up, public access to publicly financed data. Previously I
    mentioned the Bush administration's admirable decision to let the
    National Weather Service keep distributing its data on free Web sites,
    rather than funneling it through commercial services. But now the
    administration is proposing an enormous step in the opposite
    direction.

    The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or N.G.A., is the main
    map-producing office in the Pentagon. Its detailed topographic
    studies, produced at public expense, have for decades been the basis
    of many other products; in particular, virtually every chart used by
    the nation's airlines relies on the agency's data. Citing security
    concerns and a few other reasons, the administration now proposes to
    withdraw all of its aeronautical material from public use on Oct. 1.
    Through June 1, the N.G.A. will accept comments on this proposal at
    its Web site, [3]www.nga.mil. Check out its arguments, plus the case
    for continued openness, made at the press-release portion of
    [4]www.cartographic.com, and let the agency hear from you.

    Finally, mind mapping software, the focus of last month's column. Most
    of the correspondence about that column addressed an apparent anomaly:
    if mind mapping is so great for putting ideas in visual form, why was
    there no mention of programs designed for the leader in visually
    intuitive computing, the Macintosh?

    The narrow answer is that the two programs I praised, MindManager and
    ResultsManager, will (like most other Windows software) run on the Mac
    under the Virtual PC utility that [5]Microsoft sells for $129. Also,
    Robert Gordon, chief executive of the company that makes MindManager,
    says that it is "seriously considering" producing a native Mac
    version. (Impatient Mac users: write to him, not me.)

    BUT the broader answer is that programs to collect information and
    organize ideas are so numerous, varied and rapidly proliferating that
    a list of the good ones soon grows very long.

    Want a mind-mapper designed specifically for the Mac? There's
    Inspiration ($69 from [6]www.inspiration.com; PC version available
    too), which is mainly marketed to schools but is also useful for other
    writing projects. Or FreeMind, which lacks a few advanced features,
    but is free (from [7]freemind.sourceforge.net). Or ConceptDraw Mindmap
    ($149, from [8]www.csodessa.com), which runs on the Mac and is made by
    a company in Ukraine. MindGenius - yes, the names do get sort of
    creepy - is a mapper for the PC that costs $59 and comes from
    [9]www.mindgenius.com in Scotland.

    NoteTaker ($69.95 from [10]www.aquaminds.com) is an attractive and
    powerful Mac-only data organizer. Axon Idea Processor is an
    unattractive and powerful PC-only organizer. It is $135, from
    [11]web.singnet.com.sg/~axon2000 in Singapore.) I hope to say more
    about these in the future - along with the likes of: BrainStorm ($75,
    from [12]www.brainstormsw.com in England); ADM or Advanced Data
    Manager ($129, from [13]www.adm21.net in Canada); Tinderbox ($165,
    Mac-only, from [14]www.eastgate.com/tinderbox in Massachusetts); Omea
    Pro ($49 from [15]www.jetbrains.com in the Czech Republic); Zoot ($99
    from [16]www.zootsoftware.com in Florida); and whatever promising
    newcomers have appeared by then, from whatever odd corners of the
    world. In the meantime, try them yourself.

    James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.
    E-mail: tfiles at nytimes.com.

References

    1. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=GOOG
    2. http://www.maps.google.com/
    3. http://www.nga.mil/
    4. http://www.cartographic.com/
    5. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=MSFT
    6. http://www.inspiration.com/
    7. http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
    8. http://www.csodessa.com/
    9. http://www.mindgenius.com/
   10. http://www.aquaminds.com/
   11. http://web.singnet.com/
   12. http://www.brainstormsw.com/
   13. http://www.adm21.net/
   14. http://www.eastgate.com/tinderbox
   15. http://www.jetbrains.com/
   16. http://www.zootsoftware.com/