Google Earth v5 gives you access to the past

Google Earth v5 has new features that gives you access to the past. I have used it to view the areas around Banda Aceh, Indonesia where the great tsunami (Dec 26, 2004) hit hardest. The images below are of June 23, 2004 (6 month before the disaster); Jan 28 (1 month after), 2005; and Feb 23, 2009 (recent image). As a matter of fact, Google Earth always and will always show you the past. But now it can show you images from several epochs of time in the past.

Six month before the tsunami

One month after

Recent image

I am a Linux User and its Advocate

I have been interested in Linux for many years. Eight years ago, I gave it a first try on my old PC when it was phased out for the place of newer and more powerful one. Installing Linux was a daunting task in those days, after a few installation failures, I gave up and realized that it was not ready for me yet. Two years ago I gave it another try with Ubuntu 8.10 on my out-of-date PCs. This time it was a breeze, I succeeded in installing Ubuntu Linux on those machines on the first try. During the past two years of my regular use of Linux (on both old and new computers, single and dual boot OS), I helped and urged many people to use it with some success. Today I have just registered as Linux user #506201 with the Linux Counter.

Useful links: Linux advocacy how-to | FOSS advocacy

Google Feedburner and URL Shortener for my Twitter postings

From now on, each new topic in this blog will be posted on my Twitter automatically. This is done by services provided by Google Feedburner and Google URL Shortener. Feedburner will monitor the content in this blog, if new topics are added it will post them to Twitter for me. I configured my Feedburner service to post only the topics' titles and links pointing to the blog's pages. Google URL Shortener handles that links to make them short so that the texts to post on Twitter are always within 140 characters limit.

From Google Squared to Google Spreadsheet through Yahoo! Pipes and the result is ...

I'm always eager to try new services on the web, especially those concerning web mapping. I first tried Google Squared several months ago and couldn't figure out what to make use of it for my mapping projects. Recently I learned that the Google Squared result can be exported to Google Spreadsheet. And Google Spreadsheet can create and serve that data set as RSS feed and several other formats. So that, I decided to give Google Squared another try. This time I used it to generate and export result to a Google Spreadsheet. That spreadsheet can be used to serve the data as RSS feed for any purpose. Here is the whole process of my experiment:- firstly, Google Squared was used to search for "Thai restaurants in New York" and the result exported to a Google Spreadsheet in my collection; secondly, I published the spreadsheet and allowed it to serve as RSS feed; and ultimately, a Yahoo Pipes was constructed to consume the feed, manipulate it through several Pipes' modules, and generate a maps mash-up of Thai restaurants in New York as the final result. On this map, you can zoom/pan to look around the target area which contains several markers signifying the Thai restaurants. If you click a marker you will see some description, picture and link concerning the restaurant at the marker's location.

Original "Thai Restaurants in New York" data: Google Squared
Intermediaries: Google Spreadsheet | ATOM | CSV | HTML | PDF | RSS | TXT
End products: Yahoo! Pipes | JSON | KML | RSS

Current Tropical Storms on my Yahoo Pipes

Here is my Yahoo Pipes application that uses regularly updated data from www.wunderground.com to generate markers on Yahoo Maps showing the current tropical storms. Links are provided for each storm to its detailed information such as tracking, coordinates, 5 day forecast, and public advisory. I create this Pipes while Typhoon Parma is hitting the Philippines.

To add this Pipes to your page or blog as a badge/widget just click "Get as a Badge" on it and follow the instruction on the popup window.

Useful data from this application: JSON | RSS | KML

South-East Asia Weather Stations

My newly created Yahoo Pipes application shows the locations of major weather stations in South-East Asia on Yahoo Maps. You can click a station marker to open popup balloon that provides a link to detailed weather report for that location. This is my response to the severe climate condition we face this week.


This app.: RSS | KML | JSON
Thailand's weather stations/report: | RSS | KML | JSON

Recent Earthquakes Around the World

I spent a few hours exploring for needed source of data and then creating a Yahoo Pipes application that shows the most recent earthquakes around the world. On the maps you will see several markers that you can click to get details of each earthquake.
See also: Largest earthquakes in the world since 1900.

Useful links: recent earthquakes | archives | feeds & data | animation