#33 Relocating With Online Maps

The world wide web makes it so easy and convenient to look for homes, it's a wonder anyone stays put. Wait a minute. Lately, it seems no one does stay put! So I'm sure these web sites get alot of use: Apartments.com, ApartmentFinder, and ApartmentGuide. I was very impressed by the Houston Association of Realtors site, or HAR.com. I would certainly recommend this site to others. It not only contained gargantuan amounts of information, but it was enormously fun to use. There are many options to narrow a search by town, school district, and property type, as well as the more conventional criteria of list price, number of bedrooms, and square footage. If there are particular amenities you like, such as a pool or proximity to a golf course, you could search by those criteria, and others as well. I looked at foreclosures in my town and 88 records were found. Listings were detailed and included not only property descriptions but also various links. You can see a map of where the home is located in the community, for example, or send an email directly to the realtor. The photo gallery is a great feature. More expensive homes have links to fantastic virtual tours. There was only one other thing that could make it easier to relocate...gobs of $$$ at my fingertips. Then I could use my favorite HAR.com feature, "add to my cart". Unfortunately, I didn't get to actually exercise that option.

Once you have found your new home, you can easily learn about area weather, recreation, restaurants, shopping, and community events at www.discoverourtown.com. (This is a convenient resource for travelers as well.) Walkscore.com calculates the "walkability" of your neighborhood based on the proximity of businesses, services, and things to do. My address scored 31 (out of 100) and was rated "not walkable", having only a few destinations within easy walking distance. As the site says, "Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment." With the current price of gas, it's good for your wallet, too. This site can provide information for people who want to cut down on fuel consumption without sacrificing quality of life. Its weakness is that it does not take into account crime, traffic, and other safety considerations when computing an accessment.

#32 Mapmaker, Mapmaker Make Me a Map

The sheer number of google map mashups out there is amazing, and I looked at a ton of them. Some are utterly depressing, such as GlobalIncidentMap.com, "a display of terrorist acts, suspicious activity, and general terrorism news". If you can stand visiting that enlightening source, you will see a newly added blinking red button in the right hand corner of the page called "School Incidents Maps". (Yes there are so many they merit a map.) This particular map helps one become informed about all the horrible things happening in American schools, like fires, gas leaks, lock downs, and bomb threats. You can discover other trivia too, such as, according to the Waco Superintendent of area middle and high schools, a single bomb threat costs about $125,000 in lost wages and time. I was glad a link to "find a world brewery" immediately preceded all of that.

Other mashups can be quite entertaining and share useful information that doesn't drive me to [virtually] drink, make me want to cry, build a bomb shelter, or even momentarily ponder homeschooling my children. One taught me that if I walk due east from Houston, for about say 7000 miles, I will find myself in beautiful Harare Zimbabwe, another that there are no free public "facilities" in my town (guess they don't count libraries). I've used a mashup to track flights from Philadelphia to Bush when relatives are coming to visit. It's fun to watch the progress of the virtual plane containing my virtual loved ones. The zip code and world time maps are quick and easy reference tools. Photoenforced.com has maps of where all the red light cameras in the United States are located, so you can comport yourself appropiately when you know Big Brother is watching.

Activity 1, #2: I used a mashup to send an email to someone close to me who is recovering from surgery. One day this week I was wondering, "What can I do to let this person know I am thinking of her, encourage her from so far away, and maybe make her smile?" Then I got an idea. MapMSG.com lets you send custom smoke signals to anyone in your address book. I found a satellite view of my neighborhood, and wrote a few lines of encouragement in the box provided. The finished product looks like the message is emanating directly from my humble chimney. Next time I use this site, I may send crop-circle mail to a friend who enjoys reading science fiction.

Activity 2: As mentioned above, while I thought the mashup was great, I did not have a very good time exploring the global incident map. Terra Server has some interesting images, but it looks like you have to purchase one before the little colored squares blocking your view of the shot are eliminated. I like the photos on Panoramio (#36 Explore photos of the world) better. Here's one taken near Ziguinchor, Senegal of a bathing beauty:





The National Atlas has "dynamic maps". I don't sit around worrying about invasive zebra mussels or avian cholera distribution very often, but the maps are really wonderful educational tools. I explored the dynamic volcanoes maps, which are just incredible...tons of data, excellent geographic imagery, and beautiful photographs. I also went back to the main page and did a general search for St. Louis encephalitus and West Nile virus, to see if there were any maps or statistics for Houston. I was directed to a page which contained links to the CDC, the entity which is responsible for collecting and disseminating public health information; so even though the National Atlas technically didn't have such a map, I was able to easily obtain the information I sought through their highly organized and user friendly site.

Perhaps I am now completely jaded by all of these map mashups, because the LandSat Image Viewer didn't do much for me. While I was watching it, my thoughts were wandering and I remember thinking, "I wonder if that cow on the beach ever found her way home?"

# 31 Maps Are Not My Forte

I have no sense of direction. Just ask my husband. This is a man who can fly to any place in the country, jump in a car, find his way to an obscure little business in the middle of nowhere, AND snag the best parking spot in the lot. It's very discouraging when he does stuff like this so effortlessly. I consistantly blunder along in my car, not knowing in what direction I am headed or where on earth I am, most of the time. I'm lucky if I don't get lost at least once a week. So it came as no great surprise to me that exploring google maps left me feeling somewhat frustrated. After watching the tutorial, I tried to create a custom map to post. No luck. I watched the tutorial again, but still could not find the necessary links, or when I did find them, they didn't work like they did in the tutorial.

Online training is great, until you have a question or a problem. I'm not afraid to ask for directions. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding the little google gas station where I can stop and get them.

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#30 Driving in the Dark

This lesson is designed to help library employees use computer storage resources more appropriately and efficiently. We have already learned that enhancing back up drives to protect stored files is not an inexpensive proposition. Because of this, it is important to move work such as photographs to public storage sites when we can. Flickr, Photobucket, and Imageshack are options to consider. It is also a good idea to make a habit of looking at stored work on the library's P, S, and Z drives from time to time to see if any files can be reorganized or deleted.

If I am unsure about whether to delete a file or not, I now know that it is reasonable to keep it for about two years. I can also save files on a CD or USB drive, and thus avoid at all costs the dreaded "to delete or not to delete" angst. The S drive is a place to temporarily park work that I would like to share with others. Those files are deleted if they remain on the drive for over 14 days.

I copied a file from the P drive, placed it on the S drive, and then deleted it. Very easy. My files stored on the P drive are fairly streamlined and organized, and I never use the Z drive, because I didn't know I could. How about that? Usually being in the dark is not advantageous, but today it saved me some work.