Web Links May 13, 2008

• gethuman
  Are you fed up with wasting your time in annoying automated voice-mail systems? Help undermine this technology with gethuman.com. This site shows you how to get past voice-mail and speak to a real person at various companies.
• XML in 10 points
  A really good explanation of XML. Although it is not quite a house-hold term yet, XML appears in a lot of conversations. If you are curious, here's a nice, simple ten point list that explains what it is and what it is used for.

Web Links May 12, 2008

• Splashup
  A web based photo editing tool. This program works as as flash application within your browser. You get powerful picture editing functionality in a completely web based application. Access and edit Publish Post from anywhere!

New Google Earth Beta

An amazing new version of Google Earth is now out. It is version 4.3 but it is still in beta. There are some excellent new features that include:

• Time of day. You can select the time of day and the program will adjust the lighting and even create shadows on mountain terrain and buildings.
  
• Weather and clouds. You can turn on layers to show cloud-cover and radar images. When you are at ground level these are realistically rendered above you.
  
• 3D buildings. These are best in US cities. As soon as you zoom to a city simple models appear and then they are rendered with more detail over time. They look very realistic.
  
• Street View. In some cities there are now interactive panoramic photos that you can jump into all along city streets.
  
• Flight simulator. You can now fly around in a jet! I managed to crash mine into the ground.
  

Here is a great video of what it looks like. The original source is the
Google Earth Blog. Thanks to the folks at My Tech Opinion where I first found this.

I installed this and my experience was not quite as smooth and seamless as in this movie. In particular I had some issues with the streaming of the images. Detailed images did not appear as I zoomed in. This is still a beta. I would recommend waiting to upgrade until it is fully released.

Space Database Stacking Plans

The Space Database stacking plan is a back-end service that supplies content to many commercial real estate websites. It is one of our key technical innovations that facilitate getting marketing drawings out to prospective tenants as quickly and easily as possible.

Our stacking plan is a website tool that seamlessly blends into a clients leasing and marketing site. This can look any way clients want it to look:

Here is a sleek and cool version that includes a tabular report as well as leasing contact information:

And here is a version that gives you a great sense of what the building is actually like. In this case the vacancy information is semi-transparent and 'floats' over the building image:

In both of these cases the diagrams are integrated with live data from the Space Database drawing management application. Any changes made within the program are automatically and instantly updated. Links in the stack will pull up PDF file drawings of the available space.

In addition to measuring buildings, creating re-usable CAD files and calculating areas in accordance to BOMA 96, Space Database also provides the software and services to make all of this information accessible and useful. Our software and services streamline and speed up the leasing process. We help landlords find new tenants and we help speed up the process of getting them moved in.

Web Links May 7, 2008

• Gliffy a free, web based diagramming tool similar to Visio
  This website offers a web based tool that allows you to create flowcharts, floor plans, org charts and network diagrams. Think of it as a Google docs version of Visio! The free version allows for up to five diagrams a month. You can upgrade for a modest fee
• HTML Playground, html, css reference by example
  A great tool for web design. More than a list of tags and their meanings, this site lets you play with the code right on screen and instantly see the results. A great reference tool.

New Del.icio.us Links

A new feature of this blog is that I will be sharing my Del.icio.us web links as blog posts. These will appear as a daily compilation on any day after I have added these links. At the bottom of the blog you will find a tag cloud of topics in my Del.icio.us account.

Tech Note - how I set this up:

Del.icio.us has a tool called a 'Thingy' that is supposed to publish a link compilation automatically to a blog - but it does not seem to work for this platform (Blogger). But if you know of a way - let me know!

Here's the work-around that I used. It is based on a solution by
Anand Kishore. Here's what I did: How to get Del.ico.us daily blog posting to appear in Blogger:

1. Set up a new blank blog in Blogger. This blog won't be used for anything so it does not matter what it looks like. It's only role is to be the root of an RSS feed.
   
2. Configure the blog where you want these posts to appear to receive posts by email. (i.e. not the blank one you just set up) You can find this under "Settings/Email". Click on "Save emails as draft posts" you might want to edit what these look like before the world sees them.
   
3. Next pick up the feed in Feedburner. This is a feed from an empty blog so it will have nothing in it.
   
4. Under the "Optimize" tab, I turned on the "Link Splicer" feature. This allows you to tap into your Del.icio.us account and add your new links as an item in the feed.
   
5. Open up the RSS feed in your browser (the RSS icon at the top left of the page) You should see a compilation of your Del.icio.us links.
   
6. Click on the "Get … delivered by email" link. Enter in the email of your blog. If you add any links to Del.icio.us, you should see this as a draft post the next morning!
   

Again, if you know of a simpler or better way of doing this, please post a comment!

Web Links May 6, 2008

Links for 2008-05-06 [del.icio.us]

Posted: 07 May 2008 12:00 AM CDT

• Semantic Void » Blog Archive » Post Del.icio.us Links To Blogger Now
  work-around for delicous link into blogger
• FLARE-facade
  called a 'kinetic ambient reflection membrane' this is an interesting architectural facade treatment that allows for the creation of dynamic patterns using reflected light. Check out the video.
• The Web Credibility Project: Guidelines - Stanford University
  How can you boost your web site's credibility? We have compiled 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included over 4,500 people.
• Canadian Architect - 5/6/2008 - Switch Building
  A Refreshingly Innovative Spec Building On The Lower East Side. interesting small condo development in NY. Several cool design ideas. nARCHITECTS