This is another site a bit like Flickrvision but instead shows very recent Wikipedia edits using Google Maps.
It’s a bit of a toy but interesting nonetheless. It’s a clever application by László Kozma, a grad-student at the Helsinki University of Technology. I never knew about the recent changes page on Wikipedia which shows fairly frequent updates.
Popularity: 12% [?]
This is a bit early for Halloween and I’m not the world’s best virtual carver of pumpkins(don’t think it’ll get me featured in the Museum of Bad Art though!) but it’s a fun toy.
Popularity: 12% [?]
This is interesting, for a while anyway! It drops a lot of triangles which follow each other round, in a sort of virtual conga, except the head triangle then follows the tail, ie it’s a loop.
However it alters shape over time so you have to watch as tight kinks end up being removed. It’s a bit of a toy and I could easily see it as a screen saver.
Popularity: 12% [?]
The best way to describe Flash Earth is to place it mid way between Google Maps and Google Earth. It can draw data from Google, Yahoo, Ask, Nasa, Open layers or Microsoft but the views are satelite view so you see an aerial view rather than a map. What you can do with it is smoothly zoom in and out and rotate.
It’s perhaps more of a toy than a serious mapping website but I’m not denigrating it. It’s fascinating to look at something and then compare it with the alternative from various providers. One of them (Microsoft) has street names, so you get a Google Maps type hybrid view. What you can’t do of course with Google Maps is smoothly rotate the view- Flash Earth is very good and very quick at doing that.
It also has a decent search, which works with UK postcodes as well. Take a look at the postcode SW6 1TR. It’s where I work; the Empress State building near Earls Court (in fact next door to the exhibition centre). The google photo is maybe 1-2 years old but the Microsoft one shows it being refurbished about 5 years ago (it cost £90 million!) so the view looks like a building site!
Popularity: 9% [?]
The latest version of Google Earth, the free downloadable software for Windows and Macs has a secret flight simulator built into it. Activated by hitting ctrl+alt+A you can fly in one of two aircraft over the surface of the earth.
There are instructions here on the key combinations. It’s not a combat sim, all you can do is fly but it makes nice use of the Google earth scenery and you can add all the layers- you have to view the sidebar then enable things.
Note, even with a fast net connection, if you want to see everything (I had roads and 3d buildings turned on) you have to hit the space bar now and then to pause it so it can play catch up and I have a 20 MB ADSL connection!
I spent a while flying over my part of London (East) and the screen shot above shows me approaching Canary Wharf from the south. Very nice. One or two minor bugs (this is beta) like closing the sidebar if you try to change location. But as a free toy this is superb and you get more accurate scenery than any other flight simulator out there!
Popularity: 6% [?]
It takes more than being able to select pieces and drag them into place to be a strip cartoonist but I guess that Strip Generator is as near as you are going to get unless you are a PhotoShop whizz. You can play with it without registering but free registration gets you a blog and extra tools.
The main use of the site is creating strip cartoons and the Flash interface is pretty good. You have three frames, but you can remove them or add extra and resize them. There are a large number of icons, humans, beings, shapes, objects and text bubbles to play with. These can be resized, flipped and rotated.
Like most everyone else on the site I am a talentless hack and Dilbert etc have nothing to worry about in the shape of competition but I still fancy creating something! This is an excellent site- very nicely implemented and well worth a look.
Popularity: 7% [?]
This is a bit of a toy. You are presented with a word and you have to put in the first word- IE word association. If you select the “View the cloud” tab you can see a visualisation of connected words. There are a lot of other people doing the same as you.
It makes excellent use of Flash to show how words interconnect. I could see this as having possibilities in tracking how people’s perception of English alters over time, if you had enough people using it.
I think this site is rather busy- although it still remains snappy- I think it is up against bandwidth limitations so if you see a warning web page be patient and try later.
Popularity: 4% [?]