Two days of Google Goodness: Geo + Wave Hackathons

New York Geo Hackathon Friday Nov 20th
I've been using Google's geo products and APIs for a large portion of our Sailing Trip, so when I read about the NYC Geo hackathon and that it was on the same continent, I had to go!! It was a long day starting with a 4am wake up to drive to the 5:45 train from Providence to NYC (luckily I had Google maps to help).
Although I didn't really learn anything new about the APIs, I had a great time talking with the other developers. You have to realize that I've been living in a virtual "geek vacuum" for the past six years. All of my interactions have been through online forums, my sailing friends typically glaze over at "click the Start Menu". I selectively demoed my sailing blog with integrated geoblogs, blurbbits and automatic interactive maps. I was actually a little bit surprised about how much I knew about the various Google products and APIs. I found myself helping others with their issues/projects..

• "Use a Google spreadsheet as the map data source" ..
• "I would use the chart APIs to map your data"..
• "Static maps are better for that"..
• "use the data APIs" ..
• "map your geotagged calendar entries"..
• "use the Map Bridge to control 3D flash maps with javascript".

I even got to talk in detail with one of the developer advocates from Google, Roman Nurik. I realized it's a lot more fun to brainstorm when you get to bounce ideas off other people.

Friendfeed please don't go away..

This started out as a "simple" comment to Robert Scoble's post The second life of friendfeed.
I still use friendfeed to "play around" with ideas about how I want to interact with the web, as both a content consumer and provider. Nothing I've found (yet) can replace friendfeed's functionality, easy to explain "common interface" (WRT to twitter/feeds) and the simplicity/flexibility of their embedded pages and widgets.
Before the Facebook merger and the mass exodus, Friendfeed revolutionized the way I interacted with the web. I looked at the comments of the people I respected before I visited the site/page that was being discussed. For me, real-time search has nothing to do with friendfeed's value (I actually use FF paused). I love the focused search capabilities (title, user, # of comments and groups/lists). Come on how cool is that ..as long as you actually have content/comments to search?

It's ALL New to Me

N. Tabiteuea, Kiribati

We've been out there.. way out there. For six years we traveled to remote corners of the globe on our sailboat. For you landlubbers, the changes in technology and the web have been gradual and maybe even unnoticeable. For me they are completely obvious and sometimes dramatic, like when you revisit the town you grew up in or see an old friend or young child and realize how much they've changed.