Google Earth 7 with tour guides and 3D imagery

By Martin Brinkmann on November 1, 2012 - Tags:mac software, Windows software

Google released a new version of Google Earth, the company's "world exploration" software yesterday.  The new program version is already available on the official website where it can be downloaded for Windows, Mac and Linux.  The two major changes in the new version of Google Earth are tour guides and 3D imagery of select cities.

Mobile Google Earth users already know the feature as it has been added to the mobile version of the application for iOS and Android several months ago.

The tour guide feature aids you in the exploration of places of interest. You do not have to be nearby to use the feature, but it certainly can be useful if you are visiting a foreign country or city and have some spare time for sightseeing.

You will notice the tour guide thumbnail bar at the bottom of the main window of the Google Earth desktop application. It automatically updates the list of available tours when you change the position, either by rotation or zooming. You can alternatively use the search at the top left to zoom in on a place or location you are interested in. Each tour is visualized with a thumbnail, a play time and the name of the place, object or location.

A click on a tour zooms in on it which may take some time depending on how fast your Internet connection and processor is. The default view mode is 2d only, and you need to select the 3D buildings options on the left sidebar to display buildings in 3D if available.

3D imagery has already been available for the following cities and places in previous versions of Google Earth.

• Boulder
• Boston
• Charlotte
• Denver
• Lawrence
• Long Beach
• Los Angeles
• Portland
• San Antonio
• San Diego
• Santa Cruz
• Seattle
• Tampa
• Tuscon
• Rome
• San Francisco Bay Area
The new version adds the following metropolitan regions as 3D imagery:
• Avignon
• Austin
• Munich
• Phoenix
• Mannheim
The search takes you directly to those locations on the map. The tour guides basically show locations from different angles but fail to provide you with detailed information about what you are seeing at the very moment. You will find snapshots scattered around popular places which you can hover over. Snapshots depict points of interest in the form of photos that you can take a look at from within the application.
The default Google Earth installer is a web installer that requires an Internet connection to download program files during installation. To download the Google Earth offline installer select advanced setup on the download page and uncheck the "allow Google Earth to automatically installed recommended updates" option there to download the full installer.

Google account security gets an information boost

By Martin Brinkmann on November 1, 2012 - TAGS: None

Google makes available a Security menu when you open your account on the official web page that enables you to manage security related features of your Google account. This includes enabling the - essential - 2-step verification to add a second dynamically generated password to the log in process of your account, password management to change the password and configure account recovery options, and the list of authorized applications and sites.

You can hop over to Google Security right now to manage those features. If you are not familiar with computers, you may run into issues using the settings page. First, it does not really contain lots of information about the options presented here. While you can hover over a question mark that is displayed next to two of the three options to display a help text, it does take multiple clicks to find out essential information about the account.

Google is currently processing an update that improves the Security page in several aspects. The first change that you will notice is that options are separated into groups on the new page which helps getting things done faster. Each option, for instance recovery options, is now listed with a description right on the page, so that you do not have to hover to get basic information about the feature. If you do need additional information, you can still click on the learn more link next to each item listed on the page to do so.

You will also notice the new notifications group on the page which lists linked mobile phones and email accounts that Google may use for account alerts. These alerts are fired of when a password change is being made or when there has been a suspicious login attempt.

You can define the notification type for each device individually on the very same page. Say you want to receive password change notifications by email and the suspicious activity information to your phone.

The new Security page does not reinvent the wheel, but it adds information to a page that was rather bland and uninformative. It may take a while before the new page pops up under your account. Right now, mine is still showing the old Security page with its four buttons. (Lee Jarrattvia Caschy)

Open all images on a page in a single tab in Chrome

By Martin Brinkmann on January 24, 2013 - Tags:Google Chrome extensions

If you are browsing on sites like 4Chan or Reddit regularly where dozens of images get posted on a single page, you probably have discovered ways to make the browsing more comfortable. Maybe you installed a browser extension like Multi Links for the Firefox web browser or LinkClump for Google Chrome, or an image related extension to download images posted directly to your computer.

Img2Tab is another option that you have for Chrome. It introduces an interesting option, that is, the ability to open all images on or linked on a page in a single tab in the browser.  All it takes is to install the extension from the official Chrome extensions repository. The extension works automatically on every new page you open while old pages need to be reloaded once before the options become available.

To use it afterwards, right-click anywhere on the page you want to use it on and select one of the im2tab options it makes available in the context menu. There you find the following four options:

• Actual - Opens all images displayed on the page in new tabs in the web browser. The extension displays the amount of tabs that will be opened if you proceed. Depending on the page you are on, this can be quite a few.
• Actual single-tab - Opens the same images as the option above, only this time, they are all opened on a single new tab and not multiple tabs.
• Linked - Will open all images linked on the page you run the command on. Will open those images in individual new tabs that get opened. Displays a warning before doing so as well.
• Linked single-tab - This opens all linked images on the page in a single browser tab.

It may take a while before all images are opened in the new tab or tabs depending on the size and number of images that you open this way.

Verdict

The option to load all images on a single page is certainly an attractive one as it may improve image browsing considerable. Instead of having to browse each image one by one, you can simply select the option to load them all at once in a tab, look at all of them there, download some if you want, and browse to the next page on the site to repeat the process.

Twitter Vine: video sharing with a six second limit

By Martin Brinkmann on January 24, 2013 - Tags:twitter

Many people were not really sure about Twitter's chance of success when it was released to the public. A 140 character limit for messages did not really make a lot of sense back then but despite all the doubts, Twitter quickly become one of the most popular services on today's Internet.

Twitter today launched Vine, a video application and sharing service that limits the recording time to six seconds which again does not seem to make a whole lot of sense. Six seconds to record something meaningful? While it is certainly possible to do so, it is without doubt a limiting factor and it will be interesting to see if Vine will be as successful as Twitter.

As far as requirements go, Vine is currently only available as an application for Apple's iOS, or more precisely the company's iPhone and iPod Touch devices. Twitter's VP of Product Michael Sippeymentioned that the company is "working hard to bring it to other platforms". While those platforms have not been mentioned, it is likely that we will see a release for Android and maybe Windows Phone or Blackberry.

The service appears to be under heavy load right now which impacts not only the ability to publish videos on the platform but also the ability to view resulting videos in a web browser of choice.

On the positive side of things, Twitter users can use their account to log in to Vine and publish videos online. These videos can be directly posted on Twitter or Facebook as new messages in addition to be posted on Vine as well.

   

There does not seem to be a way right now to embed Vine videos on third party web pages. Video links posted on Twitter or Facebook lead to the Vine website where the linked videos can be viewed.

Verdict

The idea to create a video creation and sharing service that is as limiting in many regards as Twitter may make sense from a perspective of continuity. While I'm fairly certain that I won't be using the service at all, I can see it become popular with the social crowd out there. After all, all you need is a Twitter account to get started and an iOS device. The big question is, why would you limit yourself to six seconds of video if services like YouTube or Vimeo are just around the corner?

What's your take on Vine and its chance of success?

Bittorrent Sync, a file synchronization alternative?

By Martin Brinkmann on January 25, 2013 - Tags:synchronization

While you may not agree with all decisions that Bittorrent Inc made in the past, I'm referring tointegrated ads in uTorrent for instance that look and feel like torrents, you can't deny that the company is pushing out new software at a rapid pace. The company released Bittorrent Surf for Google Chrome two weeks ago, a program that integrated torrent downloading capabilities into Google's browser.

Today it opened the doors for pre-alpha sign-ups for Bittorrent Sync, a file synchronization service that does not compete with cloud based file synchronization services such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive or Cubby, but with solutions that synchronize data between devices owned or used by a particular user of the service.

The blog post fails to reveal important information about the service, and the screenshot that has been posted as part of the announcement is also not that helpful in this regard. The screenshot shows the transfers page of the Syncapp where a couple of files are listed with their location and up and download speed.

We have to look elsewhere for additional information about the service. Torrentfreak seems to have received early access to Bittorrent Sync. According to the site, Bittorrent Sync offers direct synchronization between devices without cloud storage. While that is great for privacy and device to device synchronization, it also seems to mean that the two devices need to be online for the sync to take place.

Installation seems to be straightforward. Users have to install the sync clients on all systems they want to use it on - currently that means Windows, Linux and OS X as well as NAS devices through a web interface - select a folder to share, generate a private key for authorization and use that key to sync data between devices.

Interested users can sign up for the alpha test. Places seem to be limited which means that not everyone who signs up for the Bittorrent Sync pre-alpha test will receive an invitation to take part in it.

You do need to reveal a couple of information about your current setup, location, email and name to complete the sign up form.

Free PDF Creator for Windows

By Martin Brinkmann on January 25, 2013 - Tags:PDF

I do not really print that much anymore on paper, only the occasional contract that I have to sign or other legal documents that I'm required to sign and process. Other than that, I prefer to keep the printer spooler service and printer disabled. Using a virtual printer to convert documents into pdf format on the other hand can be an excellent way to do just that.  The main reasons for doing so are convenience, as you can send documents and information straight from any Windows program supporting print to the virtual printer to convert it and functionality as good solutions offer lots of customization options.

Free PDF Creator is a free (who would have thought that?) virtual printer solution for Windows that comes without time limits or other restrictions such as the number of uses.

Note that the Print Spooler service needs to have been started on the system before you install the pdf converter as the creation of the virtual printer will fail otherwise.

You can skip registration during setup as well as it is not mandatory to use the software.

First thing you may want to do after you have installed the program is to run the settings from the start menu. Here you can define the following output parameters:

• Output quality - Set to web ready by default which you can change to print, pre-press or custom quality here.
• Document properties - Document meta data such as the author, subject, keywords or titles which are used for all pdf documents created with the help of the program.
• Security - Here you can set a password to open the document and define document changing rights for users including printing and making changes to it.
• Post processing - If you want the pdf to be post-processed.

The program displays ads in the settings menu and also under PDF Editing Options which lead to web pages of commercial programs that allow you to edit pdf documents.

Verdict

The option to add security and output quality options to converted pdf documents is surely an interesting one. While it is not the only program to offer that option, Free PDF Creator makes the features dead easy to use.