As the video above explains, moving around panoramic views of a street is great if you can go "bubble to bubble" of a panorama, looking for what you want. That is, a panorama with up and down info is much like a bubble. But if you want to "slide" down the street, you want a more linear view of that street, and what's in the sky or on the ground really isn't that important.

Microsoft Research is really onto something here, allowing you to zoom out of a street view and enter a linear representation of that street, complete with signage for businesses and street names, etc. As with all competition (in this case obviously Microsoft is going after Google Street View), the battle for online supremacy is going to be awesome for the consumer. I can't wait for this to be available! For now it's just a presentation at SIGGRAPH.

[via Switched]

How much does Google hate the iPhone? Well, I can count two ways. One is in the pisspoor shape of the Google Mobile app for iPhone. I begrudgingly use it because of the insta-local searches. Yeah, Google on Safari is supposed to work this way as well, but more often than not I have to add a click to get local results. But seriously, have you used the Google Mobile app lately? Gotta love that jump from previous searches to search bar, often causing a misfire when you really wanted to search for something recent again. Back in March there was a nasty push notification issue as well.

Then today I ran into a particularly nasty thing using Google Calendar. In theory you can sync more than one calendar with the iPhone using Google Sync. Of course, on the iPhone it isn't an app itself, so you go to m.google.com/sync in mobile Safari and set which calendars you wish to sync (by default only your "primary" calendar is included). So that's great except this particular page, for iPhone users and iPad users alike are being routed to the dead-end pages (see photo above). There's a link for "How to setup Google Sync on iPhone" which comically then refers you to go to m.google.com/sync. That, my friends, is what we call a loop or dead-end and is very, very bad web design. Not to mention it effectively breaks Google Calendar sync for anything but your primary calendar.

What makes me think this is a bug? Well, I don't have an Apps account, so I don't know how the other half lives, but in the "Setup" guide I get it refers to my device as "null." I realize Google has little love left for the iPhone, but has it really come to this craptacular performance? Must we mice be trampled as elephants joust? Pipe up in the comments if you see a fix or are having the same issues.

UPDATE: It's a frickin' documentation error. Google changed the URL but didn't document it. Here's the proper URL for adding calendars to sync with iPhone: https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect
This still doesn't eliminate the loop I documented, but maybe their intern in charge of this will stop playing Pac-Man one day and fix it.

When Steve Jobs fires off a missive on the Apple site he's usually making a specific statement around a larger issue that we've all been discussing for months. Remember his rant against DRM when all the world called foul on FairPlay? Today Steve dropped a big ol' bomb into the Flash pool by stating Apple's frustrations with Adobe, Flash and their view of the mobile space.

In the letter, Steve points out Flash is a closed system, there are H.264 alternatives to Flash video and HTML5 and JavaScript are true open standards that Apple has embraced, while Adobe has continued to pour the juice into their proprietary systems. Yes, Steve points out that OS X is a proprietary OS. But despite Adobe's claims to have a proper, non-battery-sucking version of Flash on mobiles by 2009, they have yet to deliver and Steve calls them on it.

In a nutshell, Apple chastises Adobe for clinging to the past. In many ways they are right -- remember when Flash was a simple animation tool that created animations that were lighter than GIF animations?

Yes, at one point Flash was a simple, streamlined tool designed to bring balance to the Force. Instead, it has grown into a full platform when you factor in AIR, and I doubt Adobe has any intention to back down after spending a decade and billions on its continued development and success.

No matter how crufty the tool becomes, I'm sure Adobe will find a market for it for many years, like VRML or the Beatnik player. Either way it'll be interesting to watch these two elephants dance.

As I was on my way out the door today the friendly postman drove by and shoved a familiar red envelope in my mailbox. Knowing what was coming, I skipped back to the house with the Netflix streaming disc for Wii... My video missed the startup chime, but it kinda sounds like a THX startup sound, low and dramatic.

Browsing on the Wii is pretty basic, but at least more functional than a Samsung I had been using. You can add movies, browse by category, play individual episodes, and enjoy most of what you get on the Xbox but with less resolution. Having seen the 360 version, it's a bit of a bummer to see the fuzziness on my HDTV, but hey, unlike my Samsung (the WiFi dongle died) it works. Yes, you have to keep the disc in while you run Netflix, but that's not really a big deal unless you mistreat the disc.

The video below is a quick taste of our first experience with Netflix on Wii.

BrewaTalk is a form of ad hoc conversation platform where you make a blog around a topic, then invite others to come have a conversation around that topic on your blog. What's different than starting something on Blogger, WordPress, or what-have-you? The BrewaTalk conversations are more akin to Twitter or Facebook conversations, as they are short (typically a sentence or two, maybe just a question). However, they are categorized, public, and shareable on Facebook and Twitter. So, if you're looking to have a focused conversation in a semi-public way, BrewaTalk may be for you.

Here's the quick video intro to their service:


SnapPages is for the impatient web page builder. A web-based (and Flash-powered) WYSIWYG page builder, SnapPages does offer some attractive options and a very slick interface.

Video with SnapPages after the click...

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