4 posts tagged “theories”
Are you wondering, by the way, why none of my recent bike videos have shown up on my maps yet, or why no new maps have been posted since early July? Well, that's because I'm too busy actually bicycling these days, while the weather is still warm, plus running my arts organization, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which wasn't open yet earlier this summer when I got the first three maps finished and posted. But in just another two months or so, it's suddenly going to be too cold and nasty again to go bicycling on a regular basis, and will stay that way for another six months or so; I figure better to just go ahead and run around and collect up all the raw data for these maps now, while the weather is still good, then spend the winter slowly getting the rest of the maps done at home while hiding from the cold and snow. That way I'll have a good seven or eight maps ready by next spring, when it'll be time to start bicycling again every day, and with all those map placemarks fully integrated by then into Google Local Search.
Did you know that, by the way? That whenever you create a customized Google map, whenever you add a placemark for a specific situation that contains either text or a photo or audio or video, it gets added to the overall Google Maps database? That way, whenever someone does a search on, say, "Wrigley Field," they'll not only get the official Google search result, but the option to view user-created content as well; and any person on the planet who chooses that option, then, will see your placemark right next to the official Google one. Pretty cool, I have to admit, and pretty smart of Google to add all this precious original content to their overall database.
The obvious goal, then, is that people will also combine Google's SketchUp to this all, a free and easy-to-use CAD/CAM program that allows people to create 3D buildings, then automatically load THEM into Google Earth and the Google database as well. If a chamber of commerce could get their stuff together, for example, they could get all the businesses in their organization to fill out a detailed placemark about themselves, plus get someone to make a fully textured 3D version of the business (or maybe the chamber of commerce hiring some computer geek to do all the buildings at once, hint hint, hint hint). The chamber of commerce, then, could create a customized Google map with all these businesses within it, which could be used in all the following ways...
--Adding to the Google online database, for people to stumble across randomly or while searching on a specific topic;
--As a downloadable Google Earth file, at the chamber of commerce's website;
--As a cool standalone demo for visitors at the chamber of commerce offices, or even city hall;
--As a source of press for those businesses; it's not that often, after all (or yet, anyway), that chambers of commerce band together and create a media-rich 3D customized map of all their businesses at Google.
This is what I'm trying to do with my bike maps, after all; not only add a little to the overall Google database, to increase the overall value of the info there, but also to drive traffic to my website "long tail" style, ergo the arts center as well, not to mention do a little boosterism for the city of Chicago, not to mention explain a little about my theories concerning city planning and urban renewal. Oh, plus give smart tourists an idea of other things they can do while visiting here besides going down to Navy Fucking Pier, plus give locals ideas for cool day trips they can make right within the city itself, on a boring Sunday where not much of all is going on, without having to worry about hotels or train rides back and the like. See how many different benefits you get from investing once in a technology like this?
So, I'm reading Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island right now, one of the books I'm hoping to review as part of my art center's website finally re-opening next week. I'm about 50 pages into it now, and I've already come to realize two things...
1) The book is fucking mind-blowing; one of the most astute observations on the human condition I've read in years and years and years;
and 2) Michel Houellebecq hates humanity more than just about any person I've ever come across in my life. I mean seriously, he puts my own misanthropy to pathetic shame, and makes me look like Sandy fuckin' Duncan in comparison.
And I've been thinking a lot about this recently, about these two very different truths to come out of one person, and what exactly it means. Because the book is just so brilliant, I of course can't help but to sometimes fantasize about the idea of meeting and hanging out with him; of just how fascinating it would probably be, for example, to have one of those long French three-hour dinners with him, just to shoot the shit about the world and life and his opinions. But then another part of me just cringes at the very idea; because I know, I just know, if I ever were to meet Michel Houellebecq, he would take an instant and passionate dislike to me, and probably by the end of the night tear me a new asshole just for existing. And I just don't know how to feel about that, I really, really don't.
And then this morning, for the first time in my life, it occurred to me -- You know, this is probably how a lot of people feel about me as well. I mean, people have said as much to me before in the past, but I've never quite understood it; like this one reader from several years ago who I'll never forget, who at a certain point in our correspondence admitted that she was almost obsessed with the idea of meeting me, but will never voluntarily do so because she knew what a profound disappointment it would most likely be. And that's true; most readers who have met me have been disappointed by the experience, because ultimately I'm just some schmuck like anyone else, who likes to drink and talk about the weather and usually doesn't have much of interest to say in the course of a dinner party or the like.
I guess what I've never understood is how the dual emotions can exist in a person at the same time; how you can suspect that a person is a complete asshole, yet have this strong desire to meet them and hang out with them anyway. Before this week, whenever in life I've discovered that a person is an asshole, I simply don't want anything more to do with them; I stop reading their work, I stop talking with them, I stop thinking about them in any context again for the rest of my life. This week is the first time in my life that I've said to myself about a person, "I bet that guy would be a real dick if I ever met him -- and by 'dick,' I mean a dick to me -- yet for some reason I want to hang out with him anyway."
Like I said, I don't know where this comes from, and I don't know what to think of it. It's just...ugh, it's such a brilliant fucking novel! I'm sure that's what's fueling all this, that it is literally one of the best books I've read in the last ten years, and is just so unrelentingly grim and dour and bitter about the prospect of the human race surviving itself, yet is full of humor and tenderness and a sincere argument over why humanity is worth saving anyway.
So needless to say, I think I'm going to have a pretty good review on my hands when I finally finish the book; and now that I've gotten this sorta insight into myself as I probably look from the perspective of others, I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about that in the future too. Oh, and another thing I've definitely learned so far, that I'm not nearly as misanthropic as I thought I was -- that I really do have a much larger love for humanity than real misanthropes do, and a much larger hope for the human race. That's a nice thing to discover, to tell you the truth, and gives me hope that I won't be as big an asshole as I currently am for the rest of my life. It goes without saying, I guess, that I recommend you reading this book!
Regular readers know that last week, I successfully finished my first-ever customized bike map, for use in both Google Maps (2D) and Google Earth (3D), that one covering the southern two-thirds of Chicago's Lincoln Park. Well, this weekend I finished up my second map as well, which I'm happy to now present to the public; it covers the northern third of Lincoln Park that the first map doesn't, meaning that both maps together now comprehensively cover the entire 14-mile round trip. For those who don't know, the northern third of Lincoln Park constitutes the third official expansion of the park over the years, originally created between the 1930s and '50s; it's not nearly as historical as the southern half, of course, nor as grandiose, and exists more for daily benefit by various neighborhood locals than for out-of-town tourism. Nonetheless, this section of the park does contain some items of general interest as well, including the Jose Rizal Memorial, Montrose Harbor, Margate Fieldhouse and more, not to mention the northern terminus of both the lakefront bike path and the vehicular Lake Shore Drive.
As always, the map is interesting enough when viewing in its 2D online form, through the static Google Maps; where things really start getting mind-bending, though, is when you import the KML file into the 3D Google Earth and take a look that way. Seriously, I just cannot get over yet what a freaky mindjob it is to see one's customized maps in full, stunning 3D glory, with the ability to spin that map and twist it whichever way you want, or perhaps zoom to ground level and traverse the path as if you were actually biking it. Combined with just how easy it is to actually make these maps, it is a flabbergasting new development from Google indeed.
Even better, though (and again, just like last time), it is super-easy to embed media such as photos, videos, text and hyperlinks into one's placemarks, and this info shows up just as easily in Google Earth as it does when you click on one online in Google Maps. It's the final kick to this new service that officially makes it brilliant; it's what turns this customized mapping ability from a fun toy into something much more powerful, almost like a working version of virtual reality. (Don't forget, by the way, all of today's screenshots can be clicked on, to see much larger versions.)
By the way, I figured something out in Google Earth yesterday that hadn't occurred to me before: that if you import both Lincoln Park files I've now made, you can simply turn them both on within Earth at once, allowing you to do the full tour of the park without interruption. I highly recommend checking out the files for the first time in this way! I'm all excited, to tell you the truth, about the opportunity to present a little of Chicago to worldwide strangers in this fashion; I think it's an amazing way to check out a slice of a city a tourist might not normally see, and especially someone who's never gotten a chance to visit Chicago in the first place. As word of these customization tools start spreading, and more and more people start making them for the cities in which they live, I can't wait to see what ends up appearing in the big Google database.
And of course, don't forget to turn on the '3D Buildings' layer as well in Google Earth, when viewing my maps; Chicago is one of something like 30 cities now for which Google owns sophisticated 3D information concerning thousands of its buildings (and not just the Loop, either, but going all the way up to Belmont). It adds to the surrealism even more, and especially when you own a powerful computer and can navigate such a virtual environment in real time.
In essence, it turns the entire thing into not just a scrapbook-style sharing experience, but also a powerful education/entertainment one, like the proverbial "encyclopedia come to life!" that giddy sci-fi documentaries have been promising us for decades, but that no one has yet delivered on. Check out this three-image series above, for example, from one section of my southern map; how you can click on a placemark to get sophisticated multimedia info on a specific spot, or click on the line itself to get the same kind of info concerning that entire section of the park. And this is just a silly little bike map of a small tourist area of Chicago; imagine now applying these new tools to the location of a historic battle, or Egyptian tombs, or a thousand other things I'm sure people will be cooking up over the upcoming months.
Or if entrepreneurialism is your thing, why not think of the possibilities along those lines that this suddenly presents? Take this shot, for example, of the commercial North Pond Cafe, which happens to lie inside the government property of Lincoln Park, and which already exists as a 3D building within Google Earth, just a gray, featureless one? Now imagine if the owners of the cafe hired someone (like me, for example) to go into Sketchup and create a photorealistic version of the building, as well as a placemark containing photos, video, cafe information and a link to their website. Even better, hire the person to create an information-rich map of the entire North Pond area, including the Nature Museum and more; then suddenly your KML file becomes what the marketers call a "value-added advertising experience," something that actually adds to the quality of your customers' lives, not just screams messages at them. Such a thing is currently available in Google Earth to any company on the planet, right this moment; it's also available to arts organizations, neighborhood associations, historical societies, even individuals with too much time on their hands, as I have already so woefully proven.
So what's my third map going to cover? Well, the West Side Park system, to be specific, as well as the historic boulevards hooking them together; I'm going out in just another day or two, in fact, to take the photos and videos. I was going to write out a little background behind what I'll be viewing, but now I'm too tired; just go read the Wikipedia entry on Douglas Park if you're interested. Anyway, if I stop where that red placemarker is above, which is technically the end of the actual parks, that'd be a total of 14 miles, when you factor in the distance from my apartment to the start of the system; there's an el stop there where the placemarker is too, making for an easy commute back to my place. If I still have the energy, though, I'm going to extend the trip to 20 miles, by biking due east to the lakefront there at Roosevelt Avenue, and taking a tour of the South Museum Campus (Field Natural History Museum, Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium); then I'll finally end the trip at Jackson and State, the location of an Intelligentsia Coffeehouse, for which I happen to have a frequent-customer card to turn in, and then catch the train there instead to go home. Wish me luck!
Once again, here is the link for my Lincoln Park North map, and here is the Lincoln Park South one; once there, simply click on the "KML" link in the upper-right corner to download the 3D Google Earth file.
The New York Times is reporting some interesting news today -- that America Online (AOL) has lost 1.2 million customers in the last three months, suddenly making it the #3 US internet service provider for the first time in a long, long time. Well, it's about time, I tells ya! I've said it before and I'll say it again, that there's a natural danger to basing your entire business model off taking advantage of ignorant customers; that once these customers finally get smart about what you're selling (or the technology behind what you're selling finally gets simple enough for these people to understand), there's suddenly no reason for your customers to stick around, and they will in fact leave you with the kind of urgency that the Jews left Egypt back in Moses' day.
AOL is a textbook example, as a matter of fact: that instead of basing their business on good service, or competitive prices, or dealing with customer problems in a timely manner, they based their business on the millions of people who suddenly wanted home internet access in the '80s and '90s but didn't know anything about home internet access. AOL spent literally billions of dollars on advertising and free CDs in those years, convincing these millions of people that there was literally no other way to get home internet access than to sign up for AOL; that's how they were able to get away with charging so damn much for so damn long, and to provide such incredibly shitty service for so incredibly long, in that they spent billions of dollars convincing millions of slightly ignorant people that they had no other choice.
But then suddenly when the existing cable-TV companies all decided to get into the internet service game, and all of them got into a price war over who could sign up the most "bundled" accounts (phone, cable and internet all in one, that is), suddenly AOL was fucked in two completely separate ways -- not only were a bunch of competitors suddenly offering better service for half the price, but they were proving to millions of middle-aged suburbanites that AOL wasn't their only choice if they wanted a home internet connection. (In fact, these cable companies offer something even simpler -- that for a flat check of, whatever, $100 a month, one can get unlimited cable television, home internet access and local phone calls, all wrapped into one interconnected uber-system.) And suddenly AOL is screwed, because they have literally nothing to fall back on -- not their reputation with customers, not their competitive pricing, not their technical superiority. Nothing. And suddenly they're losing 1.2 million customers every three months, and apparently just hemorrhaging employees as well, and with no end in sight.
I wonder, by the way, if Microsoft might be the next major company to face such a catastrofuck -- stick with me a moment and I'll explain...
For years now, Microsoft has relied mainly on two things to keep the company itself actually afloat -- the millions upon millions of copies of Windows they sell, and the millions upon millions of copies of Office they sell. Everything else at the company can basically go to crap, the theory goes, as long as these two things keep doing as well as they've always done; that much like AOL, Microsoft's success is based not on competence, not on competitive pricing, not on technological know-how, but merely on convincing millions and millions of people and companies that they have no other choice but to own Windows and Office.
Ah, but look at all the little things that are happening these days, that are starting to imperceptibly eat away at this guaranteed income:
--The new version of Windows, Vista, is officially an unmitigated disaster, according to just about any person you ask, no matter if they're Microsoft fans or not.
--A growing amount of governments and schools, especially in other countries, are now mandating that all office computers use the open-source operating system Linux, as well as open-source alternatives to Microsoft's Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer and more). This is naturally increasing the sophistication of open-source software quite profoundly these days, to the point where they are becoming viable alternatives in corporate situations as well.
--And speaking of which, a whole series of web-based applications have started appearing in the last few years as well, offering the same functionality as Office but completely free and online. Even better, several of the best ones are sponsored by some very stable and well-regarded companies, such as Google and 37 Signals.
--And let's not forget The Rumor That Refuses To Die, too -- that Google is secretly creating its own open-source and free operating system, one that will directly compete with Windows, that will combine your hard drive's information with your online info and apps in a completely intuitive and meshed way. Google Desktop for Windows, after all, is already pretty sweet; it'd only take a couple more cool additions to make that an entire replacement for Windows.
None of all this has been enough yet to put a major dent in Microsoft's finances, but you see what I'm getting at, right? At the rate that all these things are developing, it's only a matter of time before their "tipping points" occur -- when suddenly the amount of companies not buying Windows and Office can be counted in percentage points of the entire population, when suddenly a viable alternative to Windows shuts things down at Microsoft as quickly as Firefox shut down MSIE. And suddenly Microsoft is going to find itself in the same screwed position as AOL currently is in: because Lord knows Microsoft hasn't ever bothered to competitively price their products, or to release a technically superior product, or to provide anything even close to decent customer service. And the continued nightmare which is Vista has proven something as well about what's going on inside the company; that the beast there has become too big for anyone to control, that the bureaucracy and red tape that have taken over there are doomed to take the entire company down before too long. When the Microsoft Crash finally happens, I'm convinced that not only will it take all of them there by surprise, but that the corporate structure there itself will be utterly unequipped to handle it, just like the corporate bloat at AOL wasn't able to handle the crisis of the cable-TV companies at all either.
Anyway, my two cents; take it for what it's worth.
