Archive for September, 2006

20 September 2006

Scrolling into Google Maps

September 20th 2006 Posted to Tech

I just discovered that Google Maps supports zooming with scroll-wheel mice. This is fantastic and makes the browser-based Maps much easier to use.

It works in IE6 and Firefox on Windows, and in Firefox, Safari and Opera on Mac. Well done, Google!

One thing though: the scroll wheel direction in Google Maps is opposite to that in Google Earth. In Maps a forward (up) scroll zooms in and a backward (down) scroll zooms out (this feels natural to me). But in Earth (as it is in Heaven?) a forward scroll zooms out and a backward scroll zooms in.

Are there competing software development camps in Google, like in Microsoft?

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4 September 2006

News services overload

September 04th 2006 Posted to Society,Tech

Many Australians found out about the death of Steve Irwin today around 2pm local time, about three hours after he died. Word spread quickly around my office after one person found out via a phone call.

Like very many Australians (also in offices, I guess) I jumped on the Net to find out more. After reading a quick report on ABC News Online I looked further. I was amazed that for over half an hour all of these Australian online news services were overloaded:

ABC News Online quickly put up an apology page, followed 20 minutes or so later with a Steve Irwin news page. It had a message stating that their servers were overloaded and that other features of ABC Online would be restored soon. The other services simply didn’t return pages.

It’s quite concerning that when this story broke, not one of the major Australian online news channels could cope with the load. What would happen if some really serious news broke during the day? Something like an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel?

Or wouldn’t as many Australians clamour to find out more as quickly?

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