Great collection of storm tracking and weather tools for Google Earth

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Frank Taylor at the Google Earth Blog has posted a great round-up of the best weather-related tools for Google Earth.

The best piece of this post is the huge weather and storm tracking tools collection network link.  It contains a handful of folders with various kinds of data, which includes:

  • two global hurricane tracking tools
  • global cloud maps
  • current global lightning strikes animation
  • severe weather warning data and radar data for the US
  • a large collection of weather image overlays from TropicalAtlantic
  • weather observations for the US from WeatherBonk
  • a real-time day/night viewing tool
  • the global annual lightning flash rate map from NASA

If you enjoy following the weather, this is well worth checking out.

Tools for those affected by the I-35W bridge collapse

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I-35W Bridge

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The Google LatLong Blog has posted a few links with resources to help people with the aftermath of the bridge collapse.

Here are a bunch of maps with photos, news articles, meeting point locations, contact information for nearby hospitals and prayer service schedules.

Here is information about road closures and detours.

They also suggest searching Google maps for terms such as “35W Detour” for more information.

Google Maps now gives estimated rush hour drive times

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This is pretty slick — Google Maps will now give you multiple estimated times for trips that you plan (in “a limited set of metropolitan areas”).

Their example has someone traveling from Berkeley to Half Moon Bay

, which is “about 59 minutes”.  However, the directions also say that it could take “up to 1 hour 50 minutes in traffic”.   This allows you to look at multiple routes to determine which would be best if you had to travel during rush hour.

Obviously, this can’t account for accidents that might slow things down further, but it’s a neat addition.   Combine this with the new click-and-drag directions, and you can quickly find the best route during heavy traffic times.

The Google LatLong blog has a full write-up with some nice screenshots.

KML support in Virtual Earth coming soon?

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According to a post on geothought, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth will be supporting KML in September or October of this year.

The implications of this are huge, but it appears there isn’t a solid source on it yet.  The author (Peter Batty) heard it in a “vendor spotlight” presentation at the GeoWeb conference in Vancouver, but no other reporting on this has emerged yet.

If you’ve seen anything else to support this claim, please leave a comment and let us know.

Yahoo tips for “exceptional performance”

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Yahoo has just posted a list of 13 ways to improve the speed of your website.  Some of them are ones we’ve discussed on here in the past (ake JavaScript and CSS External being a big one).

Some of the tips really only apply to very large sites, but the list is worth looking over to see if you can tweak anything to improve your performance.

  1. Make Fewer HTTP Requests
  2. Use a Content Delivery Network
  3. Add an Expires Header
  4. Gzip Components
  5. Put CSS at the Top
  6. Move Scripts to the Bottom
  7. Avoid CSS Expressions
  8. Make JavaScript and CSS External
  9. Reduce DNS Lookups
  10. Minify JavaScript
  11. Avoid Redirects
  12. Remove Duplicate Scripts
  13. Configure ETags

Details about each item can be found on their site.

Web design tips from Harry Potter

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Here is a neat article I just found titled “What Harry Potter Can Teach Us About Good Web Design“.

The idea is that the Harry Potter books themselves aren’t anything special.  Nice artwork, but a rectangular shape, standard binding, normal English alphabet, white numbered pages, black text, etc.

What makes them special is the content.  What a concept…

Yahoo Answers doesn’t know how to say “thank you”

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Reading Time: < 1 minuteI got an e-mail from Yahoo Answers a few days ago with the subject line “A little thank you…”. Here is the full message:

Where is the “thank you” in that message? The whole thing is about why I should be using Yahoo Answers even more.

FWIW, I think Yahoo Answers is pretty neat. I use it from time to time and try to answer some questions. I figured that since I use it sometimes, they were thanking me for that. I guess not…

A few new tips on using the Virtual Earth API

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Reading Time: < 1 minuteA couple new API tips were posted today on some Virtual Earth related blogs.

First, the Virtual Earth / Live Maps Blog explains how to display their slick new hill shaded tiles using the VE API.  I’ve already mentioned how good looking I thought these tiles are, so it’s nice to see an easy way to use them in the API.

The other is an article from Via Virtual Earth about how to customize your own mini-map inside of the VE API.  While it’s not possible to really customize the default mini-map, the article explains how to create your own mini-map and customize it any way you want.  It’s a bit cumbersome, but the article explains it in a very detailed step-by-step manner.  Well worth the read if you’re developing any applications using VE.

An odd take on what Google Earth could do “in the Wrong Hands”

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Reading Time: < 1 minuteCourtesy of Google Blogoscoped

, here’s a short video

someone made about a fictional anniversary. It comes with the warning that “some viewers may find this video disturbing”. That warning is solely based on the storyline, as there isn’t any profanity or disturbing images.

It obviously stretches the truth in a number of places, but if nothing else, it’s a unique short story. Check it out

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