I've never used Google maps in anger before

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,18877af8-a7b1-4e24-9fe6-1454de247668.aspx

But this evening I have to drive across London and am lucky enought to have a navigator. Ideally I would have a TomTom

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BYUN34/qid=1151571296/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/026-8787779-9446068

but I haven't got round to ordering one yet. Google can be used to plot a course for the navigator to use.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=old+street&daddr=Houndsditch,+City+of+London,+Greater+London,+EC2,+UK&ie=UTF8&t=h&om=1

Pretty useful.

I was planning a route to a restaurant and saw this on Google. I don't recall any fire of this size being mentioned in the paper so I can only guess it must be a cloud

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=wandsworth&ll=51.461173,-0.200844&spn=0.019546,0.053172&t=h

Trying to work out when the photo may have been taken is more difficult

Putney Wharf is completed

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=wandsworth&t=h&ll=51.465351,-0.212965&spn=0.001221,0.003323&t=h

http://www.homedesignawards.com/homebuilder/homebuilder_2005/Category5/tower/tower.htm

Wikipedia says the photos are between a year and five old

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps

I originally thought that the reason that the resolution on the maps had been upgraded was because new photos had been taken - obviously not.

http://www.noelwatson.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,ed517dd5-120d-4fb7-9021-ab210b3ee7a3.aspx

http://www.betanews.com/article/Google_Zooms_In_Satellite_Map_Imagery/1138126874

Tried this out for a rural area in Portsmouth on Google Maps and where before you got the message that they didn't have imagery for this zoom level, now you can zoom in another two levels.

I was looking at Windows desktop search this morning

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx

or if you want the toolbar as well

http://toolbar.msn.com/

Google have released this in the last few days

http://pack.google.com/

The pack includes (I've only looked at the things I will use day to day)

• Mozilla Firefox

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

I use this for aggregating RSS feeds via the Sage plugin.

http://sage.mozdev.org/

RSS isn't natively supported in IE6, although you may be able to use a tool such as

http://rssexplorer.planet-hood.com/

along with a news aggregator.

IE7 will have better support for RSS

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/08/02/446280.aspx

• AdAware SE Personal

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

I used this a while ago before AntiSpyware came out

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=321CD7A2-6A57-4C57-A8BD-DBF62EDA9671&displaylang=en

• Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition

6 month subscription - not sure how much after that. The Microsoft equivalent is still in beta

http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/scanner/wlscEula.htm?safety&/site/en-US/center/howsafe.htm

• Google desktop

This enables you to search for anything on your machine (emails, photos etc) from one place. The link for the MS equivalent (Windows Desktop) is above.

 

If I were Microsoft I would be getting concerned. Although there is nothing here that stands out over it's MS equivalent, the fact that you can download it as one coherent package is more than Microsoft are able to offer at the moment. If I were MS, I would be pushing "Windows Live" more, and placing all these offering under the "Live" banner.

http://www.live.com/

I will be downloading Windows desktop search this evening to discover how efficient it is.

Google announced the other day that they are launching a downloadable video service

http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39155442,00.htm

I think this idea is the way forward -  I believe rental using DVD's by post is a flawed idea, as the supplier only has a finite supply of discs. For example, of my top 10 DVD's on Amazon's rental list, only 4 are available. Some DVD's have been showing a long wait for months. Perhaps this is a problem with Amazon, but I think the ability to download films on demand is a good idea.

There are a few problems

• Broadband speed - this is increasing, but typical users may not want to wait for a ~700 Meg film to download - streaming may be a solution to this
• Picture quality - Can a good enough picture quality be offered while keeping file sizes down. Improved decoding technology may make this easier
• Piracy - Is there a 100% method to prevent copying downloaded content.

I've played with Google Maps for a while but haven't got round to installing this on my laptop. The 3D element is pretty impressive, but the effectiveness of the application (as with Google maps) depends on which area of the country you are looking at. London has very high resolution - you can see the individual cars crossing Putney Bridge.

http://earth.google.com/

I can really see this taking off in the future. For example I'm off to Ireland to watch them play Wales in the Six Nations next year - it will be useful to see where the hotels are in relation to the ground and the city centre before booking.