Google's Street View

I was playing with Google's Street View function in Google Maps, and I am amazed at how good it is. There isn't coverage in my immediate neighborhood, but much of my local area is.

Here for example is a side-view of the Maple and Old Woodward intersection in Birmingham, a place I like to go now and then.


What Google does is have cars drive around with roof mounted cameras, snapping photos that then get stitched together to form 360 degree views, and linked to their street location.

Google has also photographed a large number of neighborhoods, and I was able to find up-close photographs of my parent's house, and my in-laws house. I'm guessing those obsessed with their privacy are alarmed by this.

Laphroaig

A friend poured me a taste of Laphroaig 10 year old scotch.

Wow.

You know the "liquid smoke" you can get to add to dishes to make them smoky?
Laphroaig is like "liquid peat". It smells and tastes like pure peat smoke infused into distilled malt.

Now, at first, I thought it was disgusting. But then, after the third sip, I began to like it.
Later, I tried some Chivas, and realized, the peat was there all along, but more like an undertone. Laphroaig is like mixing the guitar out and letting the bass carry the tune. (Sandman, Morphine).

I need to buy a bottle of my own!

Video: Driver Hits Gas Station

Wow. Could have been a lot worse.


Chick Plows Into Gas Station - Watch more free videos

Returning to Blogging

Hi everybody!

We've been pretty lousy at blogging over the last half a year. Some of our readers may think that our product is dead or forgotten, and this cannot be further from truth.

In fact, we've been very busy over the last several months. We developed a new version of our product, iAuto v.4.x, that had most of its internal structure revamped and improved, templates changed and a number of new features and functions added to make our iAuto even more attractive to our customers.

We then improved it even further by adding SEO features such as SEO-friendly URLs, listing data in description and keywords meta tags, and a great Browse By... feature. You can select up to 7 database fields that you can browse by, narrowing down your results to just a few listings that match your needs closest.

For example, you can have the following Browse by search configuration: Vehicles->Cars->Honda->Acura->Between $0 and $10,000->Zip.

And, of course, we developed two new templates. A single picture is worth a 1,000 words, therefore, the best way to see how well we did is to go to our iAuto Demo page at http://www.iautosoftware.com/demo.html.

To go further, we decided to offer a boat classifieds version of iAuto, iAuto Boats. We've done some research and came up with the iAuto Boats demo for your attention.

Hosted version is a new addition to our versions. It offers iAuto pre-installed, hosting space with your domain and all the functions of the Cpanel at your disposal. And all that for an introductory price of $29.95 per month only.

We will try to be more consistent with posting our news and ideas to this blog, and we'll try to not limit the posts to marketing-related stuff only. Instead, we're hoping to get our product developers and programmers involved as well.

Kenneth Cole: Don't Bother

Some time ago, say 6 months or so, my wife got me a nice looking Kenneth Cole "Reaction" belt. It was soft brown Italian leather, and appeared to be well made.

After a few months of use, the leather split near the buckle. Since I didn't keep the receipt and tag, I couldn't return it to Kohl's or wherever my wife bought it, so I called Kenneth Cole Productions Inc. on the phone and asked if I could have the belt exchanged. The customer service lady took my information, and told me to send it in.

I sent the belt in. And waited. A long time. Then, after about a month, I get a box from Kenneth Cole. And what did they send me? A wide, black, "bluejeans" type belt. Nothing like the soft, brown "business casual" dress belt that I sent in.

You'd think Kenneth Cole's people could tell the difference between a brown dress belt and a black casual belt.

I also discovered that Kenneth Cole supports a slew of liberal causes, including being aggressively anti-gun.

So, I have learned my lesson. No more Kenneth Cole junk for me.