Google Maps and the Vancouver Olympics

Where are the bars?

Check out this great map.

Olympic Reporter's 2010 Winter Games

Vancouver Sun 2010 Olympics reporter Jeff Lee's comprehensive listing of Olympic venues, hospitality events, pavilions, sponsor houses, road restrictions, Flag Walk & more for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

MAP ICON KEY
Snowflakes - Official celebration sites
Green tents: Official competition & practice venues
Red dot tags: Canadian official houses
Red tags: Other countries' pavilions
Yellow tags: Sponsor sites & events
Yellow pins: Vancouver Sun offices & house
Pink dot tags: Media centres
Green dot tags: City Halls
Green tags: Special Olympic sites
Blue flags: Official IOC sites
Trains: transit & Amtrak
Ship: SeaBus, ferries, Norwegian Star, RCMP cruise ships
Airplane:YVR, Harbour, Helijet
Blue dot tags: Olympic bus network,
Purple dot tags:free bicycle valet

Google View on Whistler slopes!

Where are the Mars Bars...

Leave it to Google Maps to take it to the next level. Yep they have done a street view of Whistlers sky runs just in time for the Olympics. Check them out and see where you would like to sky next year when the slopes have less competition.

FaceBook Fan-page Analysis

But what about Canada?

With the emergence of several new sources of data this week the lowly analyst is bringing fascinating new insight into the world of Data Mining and social applications like FaceBook. Check out this cool little web-data page to get the lowdown on fan-pages.

Here is part of a fascinating article "The Man Who Looked Into Facebook's Soul"

If what people call Web 2.0 was all about creating new technologies that made it easy for everyday people to publish their thoughts, social connections and activities, then the next stage of innovation online may be services like recommendations, self and group awareness, and other features made possible by software developers building on top of the huge mass of data that Web 2.0 made public. It's a very exciting future, and Warden is about to fire one of the earliest big shots in that direction.

If you think that's interesting you will really enjoy these defining zones in good old USA.

In a nutshell, Warden’s data analysis showed that Facebook users in the U.S. can be roughly segmented into seven regions, which he named facetiously:

Stayathomia: This belt’s defining feature is how near most people are to their friends, implying they don’t move far.

Dixie: Like Stayathomia, Dixie towns tend to have links mostly to other nearby cities rather than spanning the country.

Greater Texas: Unlike Stayathomia, there’s a definite central city to this cluster, otherwise most towns just connect to their immediate neighbors.

Mormonia: The only region that’s completely surrounded by another cluster, Mormonia mostly consists of Utah towns that are highly connected to each other, with an offshoot in Eastern Idaho.

Nomadic West: The defining feature of this area is how likely even small towns are to be strongly connected to distant cities; it looks like the inhabitants have done a lot of moving around the county.

Socalistan: LA is definitely the center of gravity for this cluster. Almost everywhere in California and Nevada has links to both LA and SF, but LA is usually first.

Pacifica: Tightly connected to each other, it doesn’t look like Washingtonians are big travelers compared to the rest of the West, even though a lot of them claim to need a vacation.

G-mail Still the Best

If only it did the dishes too...

If you didn't already know... Gmail is a free webmail and POP email service provided by Google, known for its abundant storage and advanced interface.

It is known as Google Mail in the United Kingdom and Germany and recently aggregrated Google Talk to its online service as well, providing users with an online chat feature for quickly communication from any computer in the world.

It currently offers 2GB+ of disk storage for emails and attachments and it’s fully integrated with Google Calendar. The account memory increases the longer you have the service.

Now, if you know all that, you might be interested in super charging your g-mail skills using Firefox (don't get me started on how good this browser is) . Check out these 2 great locations. If that's not enough then check out this blog post at lifehacker.com for lots of great posts.

TED Continues to Amaze All

But now I have to think more!

"There's a flip side to everything," the saying goes, and in 2 minutes, Derek Sivers shows this is true in a few ways you might not expect.

Why you should listen to him:
Derek Sivers (link to his blog) is best known as the founder of CD Baby. A professional musician since 1987, he started CD Baby by accident in 1998 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too.

CD Baby was the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients.

In 2008, Sivers sold CD Baby to focus on his new ventures to benefit musicians, including his new company, MuckWork, where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their "uncreative dirty work."

"Derek Sivers is changing the way music is bought and sold. A musicians' savior. One of the last music-business folk heroes."

Esquire Magazine