For those of you who are plagued by the random french characters in Vista, simply hold down Ctrl and Shift for a few seconds and they disappear. From searching around the internet it seems that it’s only effected us Canadians up here in the northern land.

Hope this helps somebody. It’ll help me next time I forget how to get rid of it.

I’m a big fan of Google Maps.

When I see people using MapQuest to get directions to places, I cringe. I ask them – “Have you ever used Google Maps” to which most of the time they reply – “Google has maps?“. I then show them the awesomeness that is Google Maps. The responses range from “Cool” to “That is unbelievable”.

This week, Google Maps came out with a new enhancement – something they are calling StreetView. Basically, they’ve taken a van, equipped with a 360° camera, and drove on streets, taking a full panoramic picture every few feet. They then added these pictures into Google Maps to allow you to view actual pictures of streets as if you were there with them.

For example, I looked up “Late Show with David Letterman, New York” and it shows me the view below.

You can then “stroll” down the street by clicking on the arrows inside the map.

So how is this actually useful? Well for starters it allows you to see landmarks in real pictures. Say for example your going to visit New York, but don’t know how to get to a restaurant or a hotel. Street View can show you what building down the street, next door, etc look like. By allowing people to see what actual buildings look like from your view point (instead of the top of the building from satellites images, you can more easily find your destination. Like Miami Ink for example!

Currently this is just in a few US cities. There’s been some concerns about privacy, catching people “at the wrong time”, but hey it’s a public street.

Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated nor work for Google (I wish I did), I just like their products

-Kiazyk

So I’ve been tagged by Shane.

Now it’s not one of those shit chain letter type deals, where you give one word answers to questions like “Favourite Ice cream“, this one is more of a challenge brought on by fellow developers. The basic goal is to better yourself as a programmer, by challenging you spend the time to learn new philosophy’s, new techniques, languages, or API’s. It’s something we need to constantly do, but don’t as life (or in most cases laziness) gets in the way.

Well Shane, I accept your challenge. Here’s my starting list:

1. Learn ASP.NET AJAX

OK, I’ll admit it, I’m a little behind the times when it comes to the whole AJAX – Web 2.0 thing. Ever since Dr Dueck’s Web Technology Class, I have enjoyed building scripted webpages. So I figure it’s time to get moving in that direction. I’ve heard nothing but praises for Microsoft’s AJAX libraries.

2. Blackberry Programming using the JDE

MNP (work) has over 200 Blackberries in use across Canada. Our firm has turned into a mobile environment where users are constantly requesting to have data at their fingertips at all times, no matter where they are.

To start with I programmed the Blackberry using their Mobile Data Services. It is basically a thin programming environment where it uses web services to push data down to itself. They could not make it simpler. In a matter of hours I had a working example, connecting to our Lotus Notes 7 web service (created using Lotusscript). My hat is off to them. The only downside using it, is you are limited to what you can do. Hence the JDE. Blackberry has it’s own library that will allow you to do anything using their libraries. It uses Java (or a lite version of it). This ones is going to be a challenge for me as I haven’t dabbled in Java since the days of George McMaster Brandon University Days *shiver*.

3. Eclipse, Lotus Notes, and Composite Applications

We use Lotus Notes at work for email, calendar, etc. Some people hate it and some people love it. Personally, I absolutely love it. My only gripe with it, they have not changed their basic UI in 10 years. They still use the same look and feel as they did when they first came out with R4 (back in 1999).

But things are about to change with Version 8.

The next version of Lotus Notes FINALLY has a new User Interface. Based upon the Eclipse open source framework, IBM is moving in a whole new direction. I won’t go into too much detail, but by moving to an Eclipse Framework, they are now allowing you to create your own Eclipse applications, which can just plug right into the Lotus Notes application. Again this is based on Java, so the challenge is a little tougher with this one.

4. Books to read

Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not a reader. I’d rather get my hands dirty in code then to read about it in a book. Plus that’s what the magic of Google is for!

I think that’s a good list for now. I may add on it to it later if a new technology grabs my attention.