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.

Any Password

Like everyone else these days, I have a ridiculous number of user names and passwords. I have passwords for a bunch of websites, email accounts, services, network accounts and software. It's really hard to keep track of all of them and next to impossible to remember.
One strategy would be to make all of your user names and passwords the same, but this would not be advisable. What if a website somewhere turned out not to be as reliable as you thought? What if you had typed in the same information as you use for online banking? It is a very good idea to use as many different user names and passwords as possible to keep all of your accounts 'firewalled' from each other.

So how do you keep track of everything? For the last two years, I have been using a software called AnyPassword. There are several versions. The most simple and basic one - which I use - is free.

The program consists of a simple directory structure of user names and passwords. For each log in, you can store your user name, password, a URL, as well as notes. All of this information is protected by a single password. Now you only have to remember one thing. To keep the information safe, the file is encrypted using IDEA/MD5 algorithms.

A word of common sense advice: keep a backup copy of the installation software and always backup the data file!

Speedtest

Here's a great little tool to test the quality of your internet connection. Go to http://www.speedtest.net/ . You will see a map of the world. The pyramids are points on the internet to which you can test your speed. The yellow pyramid is the node closest to you.

Once you click on a pyramid, the application will first test the download connection and then the upload connection. Give it a try. Is your connection slow, or is it your computer? Find out what your internet service provider is actually giving you!