Google Map

Cows are magnetic

This entry was posted in Cow Google Map science on by

Well, not really magnetic, but they do tend to align themselves to the Earth’s magnetic field. A scientist has researched the alignment of herds of cows using images from Google Earth. His results show that herds of cattle and deer will, when standing still, all align themselves north-south. However, disruptions of the local magnetic field, such as those caused by powerlines, upset their senses and they tend to point in random directions. This effect becomes less pronounced the further away from the powerlines the cattle are.

A brief review of Nokia Sports Tracker

This entry was posted in Google Map GPS map mobile phone on by

It doesn’t work on my phone.

Perhaps that was a little too brief.

Nokia Sports Tracker is a neat sounding mobile phone app I heard about on Tuesday. Basically it will use the built in GPS on your Nokia phone to track training rides or other journeys, geotagging any photos taken along the way and allowing you to upload the data to a website to share. I love mapping software so I thought I’d give it a go.

The problem is, my 6220 has never been all that good at GPS. The built in software has found a signal once and still thinks I’m in the same back garden I was eight months ago. Google mobile maps works far better. I guess it polls phone masts and does a bit of initial triangulating from that. Right now it’s got me to within 700 metres- not great for navigating, but it does get better when it can find GPS signals. However, Google maps doesn’t have, that I can find, the trip recording features that are what appealed to me about Sports Tracker.

Does anyone know of an alternative?

Ground Zero- who shall we nuke today

This entry was posted in Google Map Nuclear bomb on by

This Google Maps mashup allows you to drop various sizes of nuclear device (or an asteroid) on the city of your choice. The damage at various radii are then added to the map.

These are generic, obviously. The script’s author admits that terrain, detonation height and other factors would affect damage in reality, but it gives you an idea.

via io9