Internet Moments

Google Earth is a free download from Google that offers a unique, interactive, dynamic globe that’s created using satellite photos and electronic data from all kinds of resources.  Lets say you want to check out a friend’s new house in Washington D.C. By typing in the address you can zoom right in on a satellite photo of their house that you can then move around.  You can search their neighborhood for restaurants, schools, libraries, gas stations, whatever you want.  But that’s not all, next you could add layers to the satellite photo that would tell you things like voting district borders, real time traffic speeds, crime statistics, all kinds of stuff.  You can even find YouTube videos, streaming webcams and photos of neighborhoods.  Try checking out the 3-D renderings of whole cities and, if you go to places like the Grand Canyon you can view the terrain in 3-D.

DrCalculator.com has a collection of calculators that would be of help to just about anyone.  Most of them are for personal finance.  For example, try the Simple Savings Calculator to experiment with compound interest or experiment with the Basic Mortgage Calculator.  There are also some novelty calculators like the calculator for how much you’ll save by bagging lunch or the Cost of Living Calculator.  There’s also some calculators for health issues like the Body Mass Calculator.

Local.Alkemis.com is a website that offers lots of local information, including access to traffic cameras in cities all around North America and even a few cities around the world. Alkemis.com has several projects underway with this mapping system that combines Google Maps, live traffic cams as well as Yahoo Traffic, Weather radar, local news, Fandango movies, even local subway maps where possible. An amazing experiment in combining multiple forms of data into an integrated and functional website. Keep checking back as they develop more and more information for cities like: New York, Washington, Las Vegas, Toronto, Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston, London, and Dublin. Here’s a link to all the cities they cover: http://local.alkemis.com/local/index.htm#infoDiv

This site is one to watch for future developments!

BeFunky.com is a great website for manipulating pictures online.  You can take any digital picture and turn it into a black and white or color cartoon drawing.  Have fun with a photo of a friend.  Add a text box and turn your favorite photos into a comic book story.  There are also several easy to use online editing tools.

You can also use BeFunky.com to create a uvatar and they’re working on a video cartoonizer.
Try it, you’re bound to get more creative!

The SkyscraperPage.com offers a unique collection of diagrams of over 21,000 skyscrapers from cities all around the world.  The diagrams are made by over 600 contributers and they are displayed in a variety of ways.  You could view the world’s tallest buildings or the tallest buildings that are under construction.  Check out all the skyscrapers in a single city like:  New York, Tokyo, London, Chengdu, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Dubai, Las Vegas, or any other city in the world.  Did you know where most of the world’s tallest buildings were built?

Google Moon gives you an opportunity to explore our moon.  See the locations of the lunar landings and hundreds of pictures from the Apollo Program.  Zoom in using the slider on the left of the screen.  Hold the left mouse button down to move around the surface of the Moon.  As you zoom in on the sites of the Apollo landings you’ll start to see more and more detail.  Across the bottom of the screen you’ll see actual pictures from the Apollo missions.  In the upper right there are buttons to change to experiment with that offer detailed charts, elevation maps, locations of the Apollo missions and satellite images of the moon.
Google Moon was created through the cooperation of Google and the NASA Ames Research Center.  You can learn more about how Google Moon works at:  http://www.google.com/moon/about.html

Internet moments, for when you have a moment to explore the internet.