Go to Source

Techniques for identifying groups of features in an online geographic view of a real property and replacing and/or augmenting the groups of features with advertisement information are described. The techniques include providing a geographic view of a property within an online property management system, identifying a region of interest in the geographic view, analyzing the geographic view to locate one or more promotional features within the geographic view positioned upon a real property region, providing a user-selectable link associated with the region of interest in the geographic view, receiving a request for the region of interest in the geographic view via the user-selectable link, receiving data to alter at least one of the behavior or the appearance of the region of interest, storing the data in association with the geographic view, and updating the region of interest within the geographic view based upon the received data.

Signs, posters, banners, and billboards are frequently mentioned throughout the Patent. So is "street view". The patent is fueling a lot speculation about plans from the company to sell advertising on billboard imagery throughout Google Maps Street View.

ReadWriteWeb who appears to be first to report on the actual patent says, "it looks like Google could potentially identify some billboards and banners in Street View images and then replace these real-life billboards with virtual ads from the highest bidders".

Interestingly, Tom Krazit at CNET talked about this concept briefly in a recent article discussing a Google presentation in Europe in which Google talked about Street View advertising.

"In the presentation, Google tossed out the notion that ads may one day appear in Street View, the feature in Google Maps that lets searchers navigate down an ever-increasing number of city and town streets around the world," writes Krazit. "Those ads would be tied into the listings in the Google Local Business Center and the Google Favorite Places program, which lets participating merchants put signs in their windows with bar codes leading to additional information or special offers."

Here are the areas where Street View is currently available:

The patent raises a lot of questions. We don’t even know for sure that Google will do this, but it certainly does seem like a possibility. Google did recently start incorporating AdSense into Google Earth, seemingly sidestepping its own guidelines for AdSense on desktop applications.

How would the advertisers of the real-life billboards feel about this? Of course billboards change over time, and likely much more frequently than Google’s imagery is updated, so there is a good chance that advertisers will find others advertising on the real estate they currently hold in the real world in Google Street View as it stands now. Still, it is hard to imagine this scenario going down without any hiccups and possibly legal challenges. It’s something to keep an eye on, and potentially a very interesting new way to advertise.

Related Articles:

> Google Ignoring Its Own Policy on Desktop AdSense?

> Google Headed To Swiss Court Over Street View

> Google Street View Hits Hawaii, Mexico

Go to Source

I didn’t see any further information but I am amazed at how dominant haters of conservatives are on Twitter. They seem so proud to voice their rather baseless opinions. Most Twitter posters seem to hope Limbaugh dies! They seem to think Limbaugh (and all conservatives) are full of hate. I know that is untrue because I am a conservative and conservatives I know are about individual freedom and less government, not hate. But, that’s besides the point. 

The real issue to me is why can’t Twitter posts be about information, informed opinion and thoughtful disagreement instead of bashing, group think and hate. This kind of knee jerk twitterism is useful for nothing and makes a great service like Twitter less great.

Here are a few sample hate tweets taken from thousands about Rush Limbaugh:

Key_Air_Uh: Rush Limbaugh might be dieing? My Christmas wish came true!

MaxCJensen: PLEASE USE HASHTAG #DIERUSHDIE IF YOU HOPE RUSH LIMBAUGH DIES. DONT BE ASHAMED, IT IS FOR THE GREATER GOOD OF AMERICA.

DevinBlake: Rush Limbaugh in the hospital with chest pains, please let this be the end of his reign!!! This would be a great end to the decade!!!

aramina: FOR THE RECORD, UNIVERSE, IT WOULD BE FANTASTIC TO START THE NEW YEAR WITHOUT RUSH LIMBAUGH AROUND. JS.

Bane117: Rush Limbaugh rushed to hospital w/ chest pains. Santa actually listened this year.

———

What do you think about hate tweets? I won’t delete your comments even if you bash. 

Go to Source

Norad has been working with Google for several years by way of Google Maps and Google Earth. Last year, they started using Google Analytics as well. Google is now sharing a video of last year’s Santa tracking:

On the YouTube blog, Jeff Martin writes:

Oooh, it’s almost Christmas! And that means that Santa is about to leave his digs at the North Pole to embark upon his ’09 World Tour, placing presents under the trees of good little girls and boys all over the planet. Where will he be, and when will he make it to your house?

You can find the answer at www.noradsanta.org . You see, every year, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, tracks Santa’s journey from the time he lifts off from his Arctic village to his final stop in Hawaii at the end of a looooooooong night. You can join the ride at Noradsanta.org or try m.noradsanta.org if you prefer to do your Santa tracking on a mobile phone. You’ll also want to subscribe to the NORAD Tracks Santa YouTube channel , which will contain videos of many of his stops around the world, all captured by NORAD’s Santa Cam network.

Check out the related articles below for our coverage of Santa tracking from years past. If you go to NORAD’s site, you can see a live countdown leading up to Santa’s flight.

Related Articles:

> Tracking Santa’s Web Analytics

> Google Teams With NORAD To Track Santa

> Google To Track Santa With NORAD

Go to Source

Howard Greenstein is a Social Media Strategy and Marketing consultant, and President of the Harbrooke Group. He’s also a national board member of Social Media Club.

Google Wave is an innovative new way for people to communicate and collaborate. But as Gina Tripani, author of The Complete Guide To Google Wave, noted in her recent keynote at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in New York, Wave is designed for power users. Wave is hard. There are a lot of features, all bundled together, and it can be intimidating for anyone to just look at it and decide “this is a great project management tool” or “this is the way we’re going to manage our notes about the proposal.”

But taking the time to understand Wave and how it works might be a worthwhile investment for business users. Here’s what Wave could mean for the future of business communication and collaboration.

One App to Rule Them All

---

Wave is already being used for projects and collaboration among many small groups and organizations around the world, in large part because of its strength in combining familiar communication platforms. Author of Content Nation and frequent “Wave Rider” John Blossom noted that Wave is “a unique blend of real-time messaging, applications and online documents. While it can be frustrating at times dealing with Wave’s flexibility, the ability of Wave to support a number of styles of publishing and communications simultaneously in a single document is perhaps its greatest strength.”

When people use Waves, it is helpful to think about communications theory. Daniel Levi’s Group Dynamics for Teams classifies our modern communication methods when it comes to project-oriented work:

“Same Time, Different Place (STDP) meetings are distributed meetings in which team members interact through a combination of telephone, video or text … Different Time, Same Place (DTSP) meetings are useful for work teams that exist across different shifts … or whose members who travel frequently or telecommute. The information technology serves as a storage system so members can pass on information as needed… Different Time, Different Place (DTDP) meetings are those in which team members share the same virtual space on an intranet (i.e. internal communications networks.) Technologies such as online bulletin boards, chat rooms, and databases help support a team’s operations. This allows team members to participate in the team process whenever and wherever opportunities arise.”

The table below illustrates how our current communication tools facilitate STDP and DTSP communication, and where they overlap.

Most of these systems are disparate, don’t always work well with each other, and generally require us to bridge some connection gaps.

Enter Google Wave and its ability to cover all of these quadrants at once, within one application. This is the main reason why Wave is so game-changing. It has the potential to phase out other disconnected means in favor of one consolidated communications tool.

Real-World Applications

---

Let’s think about how this works in the real world. For a Same Time Same Place team meeting for a client pitch, Wave can be put up on a screen or projected, and each person can contribute his or her own notes to the discussion. Unlike a Google Document or other shared medium, it is quite clear who’s typing what, and two people can be working on a similar thought in a similar space at the same time.

At the end of the meeting, what’s left is the thread of the discussion with the captured notes. Each Wave is made of “Wavelets,” i.e. threaded conversations spawned from an initial wave. These wavelets contain one or more messages, known as blips. This makes it possible for each Wave discussion to spawn separate Wavelets for follow up after a meeting. (See also Google Wave: A Complete Guide for more details.)

The team leader assigns owners to the key areas for the pitch, and the meeting breaks up. The follow-up that happens can be thought of as Different Time, Same Place. People can asynchronously add to the conversation that started in person, fleshing out the points and expanding on them. Others can contribute or be brought into the discussion as needed.

Say the New York team needs creative for the pitch, but time is running out on the East Coast. They call a creative shop in Hawaii they’ve worked with, and add them to the wave. This is Same Time, Different Place communication, showing the remote team what is needed in real time. The teams can share pictures so everyone is on the same page. New York assigns Hawaii the work and goes home.

The Hawaii team creates their mockups and posts them to the wave. The New York creative lead logs on later in the evening, and leaves a follow up note – Different Time, Different Place – and the Hawaii team reads the feedback and edits their deliverable.

As you can see, Wave clearly exists in an area that touches all of these methods of interaction. And it lets that interaction shift from one mode to another very fluidly as a project progresses and group needs evolve.

Adding, Customizing, and Scaling

---

Anything Wave can’t do on its own, can be accomplished via plug-ins, which make Wave highly customizable and let users gear a Wave for a specific project or need.

For example, there’s a real-time conference call plug-in from Ribbit.com, and a plug-in for video conferencing from 6 Rounds that can be used to initiate a call as well.

Since Wave can show the entire thread of a conversation, all the document artifacts that have brought a group to a specific point of discussion are available. This is useful and, while not unique, it is presented differently than other collaboration systems.

The Future of Wave for Enterprise

---

Would an enterprise consider the Wave model? About two months ago I produced a podcast call with the Google Wave team on behalf of the Supernova Conference, and the team mentioned selling Wave as a product as they do with Google Apps for Domains.

At a recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Novell, SAP and Thoughtworks all announced ways they were connecting with or innovating on top of Google Wave.

With Wave, Google is looking to expand beyond their mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and start doing the same thing for corporations. Inside companies, tools like Wave make it easy to see who has contributed, what they contributed, and when they contributed it.

However, while Wave may eventually turn out to be easier than a wiki, Sharepoint, Lotus Notes, or other collaboration systems, it is not quite there today. Google Wave needs substantial development and usability improvements.

As Blossom told me, “there are a lot of tools missing in Wave, and some of the challenge is just the chaos of it being a new program. But I believe Google is allowing culture to develop. If they implemented ‘draft mode’ or some of the admin and moderator tools, this might prevent new types of community driven moderation or norms from being created.”

This is why the product is being cast wide and tested by many. Google is counting on evolution to favor the strong features and remove the weak ones.

How has your Wave experience been? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

More Google Wave resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Get Started with Google Wave
- Google Wave: A Complete Guide
- 4 Surprising Google Wave Uses
- Testing Google Wave: This Thing is Tidal
- The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave
- Google Wave: 5 Ways It Could Change the Web
- Google Wave Extensions: An Inside Look
- Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?

Tags: business, Google, Google Wave, List, Lists

Go to Source

The first real customer experience we have when we get a new product is the package. Of course you might say that with the internet we can buy online and see the product before buying it, I know I get it, but the package design is a very inportant part of the customer experience. The unboxing process is exciting, Apple has shown us that it really matters, and whe have been seeing more and more companies following that wagon.

In this post I decided to look for really cool package designs, but not randomly or super famous pacakges such as the awesome Apple boxes. Therefore, I will list only dark package designs. Some could be described as product designs, such as the "Salt&Pepper Cell", but they are so cool that deserved a spot in the list.

Steve Jobs has always been fascinated by packaging, believing the unboxing routine to be a crucial part of the customer experience. All of Jobs’s products have been carefully packaged going back to the original Mac in 1984. Jobs believes unpacking a product is a great way to introduce unfamiliar technology to the consumer — they explore the components as they unbox them. – Cultofmac.com

Mehmet Gozetlik’s Portfolio

I’m not a battery!

Created by Antrepo Design Industry as “Salt&Pepper Cell” and it is like a D size battery also the dimensions too. Material used is stainless steel and glass, the power indicators on the sides correlate to the amount of spices left in the shakers, before refill time. The color options are Red&Turquoise or Black&white.

Studio43′s Portfolio

Aaron Willard

Kon•verse: Logo and packaging design for a California wine company. The packaging uses a minimalist design approach to capture the essence of the brand.

j Kaczmarek’s Portfolio

Smay Design

ACDC Backtracks Box Set

Packlab

Pop-Up Popcorn

“In 2008 Anni Nykänen [of Packlab] won four awards for her Popcorn concept. Three of them European student design awards at the IOP: Student Starpack Awards. The Gold, Best in Show Award, Marks & Spencers / Korsnas Frovi Sponsored Award as she helped PACKLAB. Lahti Institute of Design to win the Eric Dickens Award for the second time in 2008. Months later her packaging picked up a 2008 Honorable Mention at the Worldstar Student / Packaging Design Competition (International) Award.”

Studio Kluif

A humourous take on copy paper sold by international European retailer, HEMA.

DHNN (design has no name)’s Portfolio

Undoboy’s Portfolio

Furry Utopia – create a new brand called furry utopia selling conceptual design merchandise

Greig Anderson’s Portfolio

Cassette Badge Sets

Being a child of the eighties I have fond memories of cassettes and I have created these limited edition badge sets as a reminder of this past format. There is currently 12 different cassette types by some of the mainstream tape manufacturers that I remember having in my childhood. Each set consists of 6, 25mm button badges which are created as circular crops of the actual cassette artwork. These are attached to a printed cassette back board and sealed in a classic cassette box with a custom inlay card giving a brief history of the cassette format…

Good Creative’s Portfolio

Didac Catalán’s Portfolio

Branden Tintiangco

“Introducing 12 new bottles designed by up-and-coming artists from New York to Hawaii, the 1800 Tequila Essential Artists series celebrates a dynamic range of original artwork on a unique and unexpected medium – bottles of 100% Agave Silver Tequila! Showcasing eleven designs gathered from over 15,000 online submissions, selected by 1800 Tequila, and one special edition “celebrity artist” bottle, this new line is a vibrant example of the undiscovered, yet soon-to-be-recognized talent residing across the country.”

jkr

kr were challenged to produce an eye-catching can which evokes positive associations to the iconic brand – simply, to make a good pack great.The team elected to do this via a full-blooded use of the traditional harp emblem. This approach has resulted in a single-minded design which better acts as a “badge in the hand”

Nuria Herrero’s Portfolio

Isabela Serta

The idea of this project is to promote a more healthy food consumption and, concurrently, to also promote sustainable local agriculture, which involves methods that do not harm the environment, respect workers and animals, provide fair wages to farmers and support farming communities…”

Nanospore’s Portfolio

HOMOGENY is collaboration between Nanospore and Royal Elastics – set for a Fall ’08 release. it features our little nameless friend, which serves as a symbol of the similarity in structure between organs or parts, possibly of dissimilar function, that are related by common descent. Light and dark. Color and monochrome. Land and sea. Love and hatred. Joy and pain.

FIRMA’s Portfolio

We are involved in all stages of a brand development and there is one that we call PACKMAN. PACKMAN means packaging that connects our clients with their customers and sets them apart from their competitors.

Amelia Roberts’s Portfolio

Michael McDevitt’s Portfolio

Client: Mission Product Holding, Inc.

Background: To create a range of packaging that demonstrates a high level of performance and social responsibility while remaining linked to the skin care category.

Kristeen Wegner’s Portfolio

Thorbjorn Ankerstjerne’s Portfolio

A selection of designs for carrier bags for the danish pharmacy chain Apotek. I worked on this project during my placement at Kontrapunkt, Copenhagen.

Miguel Ramirez’s Portfolio

Markus Schaefer’s Portfolio

Transformer Studio’s Portfolio

Isse is a luxury mobile phone brand, producing exclusive jewell phones. Precious metals and gems are used in phone decoration as well as more than sixty techonological processes are applied.

Jeremy Mlodik’s Portfolio

Nuria Herrero’s Portfolio

Michael Freimuth

Michael Freimuth continues his amazing work for Azita’s, this time for their limited edition dry rubs…

David Garcia’s Portfolio

Evan Geltosky’s Portfolio

Sources

• Behance – Package Design
• LovelyPackage

About the author

My name is Fabio Sasso, I’m a graphic/web designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I’m the founder of Abduzeedo. I hope we can share lots of information, tips, and ideas through Abduzeedo. Also you can follow me on Twitter or my personal site at http://fabiosasso.com.

Sponsored Links:

Go to Source

A post on the LatLong Blog announced, "We’ve added some exciting new features, including the ability to view maps that you create on your desktop computer right from your iPhone, explore the app in new languages, and improved icon selection and performance."

Then the other big difference is that this release of Google Earth for iPhone is available in 13 new languages (for a total of 31).  Impressive.

Still, this development raises an interesting question: Where’s Google Earth for Android?  Google Earth for iPhone was first released over a year ago, and for Google to upgrade it prior to acknowledging its own mobile operating system seems odd.  Especially since there is (and has been) a demand.

Ah, well.  The official Google post concluded, "We hope you enjoy our latest release.  Please note that the app will be rolling out around the world over the next twenty-four hours – if you don’t see it immediately, be sure to check back soon.  You can download Google Earth for iPhone here."

Related Articles:

> Google Street View Hits Hawaii, Mexico

> Google Earth Users Get A Way To Build Architecture

> A Year Of Google’s Big Eye In The Sky

Go to Source

, still isn’t happy with Google.  Thür

has argued that the Street View program doesn’t do enough to protect individuals’ identities, and despite receiving a concession or two, is now taking Google to court.

Street View was introduced in Switzerland about three months ago.  Roughly one week later, Thür

complained that certain faces and license plates weren’t indistinct enough.  He met with Peter Fleischer, Google’s Global Privacy Counsel, Google agreed to make portions of its photos blurrier, and the problem was resolved.  Or so we thought.

It turns out that Thür

also objected to the height from which images had been taken, arguing that a normal person wouldn’t have the same vantage point.  He felt that people in more rural areas could be identified even if their faces weren’t visible, too.

So, as announced in a formal statement, Thür

"has decided to take the matter further and to take legal action before the Federal Administrative Court."  According to the BBC, Thür

wants a tribunal to make Google immediately take down all Swiss Street View images, as well (since the case won’t start or end soon).

This situation could have a big impact on how other countries respond to Street View in the future.

Related Articles:

> Google Street View Hits Hawaii, Mexico

> Street View Coverage Of Two More Countries Goes Live

> Street View: Soon With More Blurriness

Go to Source

This post features awesome free iPhone wallpapers that are created by artists/designers from all over the globe to give a special touch to your iPhone. Get the ones you love and enjoy!

<!–break–>
These wallpaper were provided by poolga.com to find out more visit their website.

“We love our iPhones and we love customizing them, but we hate the cheesy wallpapers available everywhere. That’s why we create our own, and thought it would be nice to share them. So here they are. Enjoy!” poolga.com

poolga.com has more over 400 wallpapers. Make sure to check it out!

68 by Mark Weaver

Total S by Brock Davis

Snow Apes Portrat by Alex Mathers

Folie à Deux by Sougwen

Cassettes by Hollis Brown Thornton

Bad by Jon Contino

Frigg by Carolina Torres

Obsesión Naranja Victim by María Simavilla

The Creator by Jolby

Thug by Rubens

Workanight by Luke Séguin-Magee

Ric Magic Body by Ricardo Cavolo

In tune by Netherland

Hush by Stefan Joch

La Búsqueda by Emmanuel Rovere

Live what you love by Hijiri K. Shepherd

Por los siglos de los siglos by Emil Kozak

Hawaii by Kittozutto

Colmado by Pancho Tolchinsky

Pyra Vastu by Adrian Fleet

Hello? by We Made This

About the author

Hi! I’m Paulo Canabarro and I’m here to post some really cool stuff for you, if you have any ideas or any requests please get @ me – paul0v2@abduzeedo.com you can also Follow me on twitter!

Sponsored Links:

Go to Source

Remember the LCROSS project, the one in which NASA plans to fire a huge exploding rocket into the moon? The goal is to eject debris from the surface of one of moon’s craters and discovering whether there’s frozen water there.

Well, the time to sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and watch the mission as it unfolds is drawing near. Early tomorrow, on October 9, 6:15 a.m. EDT/3:15 a.m. PDT, NASA will start a live TV broadcast that will include live footage from the spacecraft camera, real-time telemetry based animation, expert commentary, and possibly some live footage from the 88-inch telescope located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

You can also follow the mission on Twitter and on Facebook, as well as read the latest info on the official blog. NASA claims the final stage of the mission will be “spectacular”, so we’ll set our expectations to “crazy high”.

Tags: facebook, moon, NASA, twitter

Go to Source

Go to Source

The new local search for mobile lets you find business listings on Google Maps while you’re on your computer, where you can "star" them. Once you star them, you can easily find your starred listings grouped together from your phone, making it easy to keep the listings you need while you’re out, together. This can potentially make errand running a lot easier, as demonstrated in the video below.

This could be incredibly useful for traveling as well. As Google’s Mobile Local Search Product Manager Joshua Siegel explains, "Before I left, I researched places to visit on Google Maps. I signed in to my Google account and starred the places I wanted to go. Once I got to Hawaii, by signing in on my phone, I was able to see the places I starred on desktop Maps under "Starred Places". I could then click through on place names to visit mobile-optimized versions of Place Pages for Google Maps that include opening hours, reviews, photos, and more."

It appears that the real plan for Google Place Pages has been revealed. They certainly would fall into the better user experience category when you think about mobile browsing, which is increasing rapidly. These pages have been the subject of some controversy, in that they can possibly dissuade people from going to actual business websites, but there’s no question that they would be useful to users in scenarios like this.

Another feature of the new local search for mobile is the ability to browse categories. This reduces the amount of typing you have to do on your phone, which is always a good thing. You can just browse through categories like restaurants, shopping, lodging, etc.

To use the new local search features, just go to google.com/m/local or click the local tab on google.com. Right now, the new local search for mobile is only available in the United States and China, but the company says more regions will be on the way soon.

Go to Source

Frank Chimero is an illustrator, graphic designer and writer based in Springfield, Missouri. In his website he has an awesome little shop that sell t-shirts, prints and posters. One of his project is called The State Series in which he makes an illustration in the shape of an American state as you will see on the images.

<!–break–>
For more from Frank visit frankchimero.com

The States Series

All prints are 8×8″ and printed on Hahnenmühle Museum Etching paper. Quarter inch border for framing and shipped flat. They each cost only $20.

Louisiana

Tennessee

California

Arkansas

Nevada

West Virginia

Wyoming

Kansas

Okahoma

Idaho

Missouri

Delaware

Colorado

Texas

Illinois

Hawaii

Florida

About the author

Hi! I’m Paulo Canabarro and I’m here to post some really cool stuff for you, if you have any ideas or any requests please get @ me – paul0v2@abduzeedo.com you can also Follow me on twitter!

Sponsored Links:

Go to Source

At first glance, this seems to be a great new tool to streamline the flow of information between our online and offline worlds. But how well does Google’s new local mobile search work in reality?

Sponsor

On the Google Mobile blog, project manager Joshua Siegel writes about using the search functions on a recent trip to Hawaii. “The new category browse feature made it easy to find a place to rent bicycles for a quick tour of the coastline. I just tapped on ‘Entertainment & Recreation’ and then ‘Bicycles’ to execute a search – no typing necessary. When it was time for scuba diving, I didn’t see an appropriate category, so I started typing ‘SCUBA’ in the search box and clicked on a suggestion for ‘Scuba Tour Agency.’ A few hours later, I was petting a white-tipped reef shark!”

This video from the Google team shows more about how to star certain locations in Google Maps while at a computer and use the different features of local search for mobile:

Sounds great, right?

But when we tried to use Google’s local search tab on a mobile device, some of the results we got were strange and disappointing. We were searching for “coffee” and “WiFi” in southeastern Virginia, and the top result was for the Hotel Taj Bengal Kolkat in West Bengal. And although we do enjoy the Cafe de Paris in Monte Carlo, we do not think this was an appropriate second result for local search in Virginia.

When we narrowed our search to just “coffee”, we got better results, but who wants just coffee with no WiFi?

Next, we tried browsing the categories, again with mixed results. The ability to access saved and recent searches, however, was stellar and is probably users’ best bet for getting around to local businesses while on-the-go.

Discuss

Go to Source