If you build it they will dance!

Thanks to Spinneyhead for this psychedellic link to the MIT students LED dance floor. Mmm, dissssss-co.

Flash off!

For the most part I loath web sites that use Flash technology to the exclusion of all others. Flash sites are to me as TV is to radio - using the same transport technology (RF radiation) but sending a completely different content. Sure they both work but really I don't like flash for communicating anything other than purely visual works or art - animation, short movies, games etc. If you want to sell me something, tell me about your product or do anything else that is not purely visual then please, just use HTML and all that other good W3C stuff out there.

Apart from the fact that Flash is proprietary, it also doesn't play well with others. The fact that most search engines can't suck information from Flash sites is just one example, Google among others has to get Flash designers to bend over backwards to index such sites. Now think about what a blind person or any other person with accessibility problems will make of the latest flashy flash site? Until now blind people have probably benefited from use of Flash by advertisers, they are most likely blissfully unaware of such "flashverts" littering their screens. But now what if the entire site is now invisible to them? Its hard enough to get HTML web site designers to do simple stuff like put ALT attributes on their images, switching to Flash as a primary means of communicating on the web is just rubbing salt in the wound.

As one irrate museum curator said to me in Paris when I got out my camera in front of an old master: Pas des flash!

Map bliss

I recently blogged about the goodness of Google's new map service and how its interface was better than any other I'd used so far. I also mentioned their acquisition of Keyhole who have the market sewn up on jaw-dropping desktop satellite imagery. Now of course they have combined the two and you can now see an aerial image of exactly where your map view is showing.

But... its not as high res as the Keyhole images, and they don't overlay the two sets of data in anyway. Keyhole alone overlays roads, Yellow Pages information and even terrain data but then Keyhole isn't a web based application and requires a damned fat pipe to keep it fed with data so Google maps is so far a useful compromise.

But... I do recall seeing satelite imagery available once before on either Yahoo Maps or Mapquest, and I do recall seeing a web interface to Keyhole although not nearly as dynamic as the current Google one. So I think an even better Google maps is surely not far behind.

One feature I notice they are lacking - traffic data. It turns out that Yahoo is no plugged into local traffic flow information providers and is showing quite detailed information in certain areas. So you can now get your map, plot your directions and check the traffic conditions. What remains to be seen is whether Yahoo can make their routing software take account of traffic - most route finding algorithms are pretty lame when it comes to stuff like adding in requirements such as "fastest route" or "shortest route".

I have come across routing software (mostly for the desktop) that let you avoid freeways entirely but I don't think I've ever seen the option to avoiding or use specific highway routes, so I think taking account of current freeway traffic conditions and journey times will be a big leap for all those map people to make. If anyone is a candidate to roll out some really intelligent routing options surely it would be Google - but for now it seems like they are somewhat preoccupied with integrating all that sexy, but perhaps not quite so useful satelite and aerial imaging technology from Keyhole.