Categories
Computing Technology

Google Launches Maps for South Africa [Officially]

“As of today, new detailed maps of many South African cities and towns, including Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and East London, are accessible on Google Maps through any web browser or via Google Maps for Mobile on dataZAmaps_logo_lg enabled handsets.  Although already available in South Africa, the map data has been improved dramatically and is now available with additional features.  In addition to searching online Maps, Google Maps users will now be able to find businesses and check driving directions.  Businesses will be able to add their own business listings for free via Google Maps Local Business Centre.

The map data includes a substantial amount of user generated content provided via Google Map Maker as well as thousands of business listings for South African cities.” Blah blah blah….

What the hell, let’s go check out the changesmaps.google.co.za.

Oh, and they have a “Google Maps stalker mode” too…

Categories
Technology

Google Maps Street View South Africa

streetviewSouth Africa prepare yourself for an invasion of a different type. The Google Maps Street View South Africa project launches today. That hideous monstrosity on the right is the Toyota Prius that over the next months will be peeking over your twelve foot walls to help criminals check on the location of your 46inch Bravia.

No doubt this development is due to that little World Cup 2010 thing that is happening next year, but damn the footage is gonna look terrible and be mostly useless considering the state of construction our country is in. Looking for Rosebank Gautrain station? That’s it – behind the pillars of concrete and the zinc walling. Nelspruit Stadium? It looks like an empty piece of land to me… Well, you get the idea.

Anyway, from the marketing schpiel:

Top 10 Street View tips for users

  1. Explore parts of the world you’ve always wanted to visit – see famous areas, tourist attractions; buildings and architecture. Or reminisce about places you’ve visited and give recommendations to friends about where to stay and how to get there.
  2. Preview your holiday accommodation. How close is it from transport and amenities, or the beach?
  3. Show your overseas or faraway friends and family where you live; where you work; where you had a picnic; where your local drycleaner is.
  4. Can’t remember the name of that amazing restaurant or clothes store you visited a few months ago? Walk the streets and find it. And then use the driving directions in Google Maps, with Street View images of intersections and landmarks, to get there.
  5. Use Street View to study the geography, vegetation and landscape of different parts of the world. Teachers can incorporate Street View, Google Maps and Google Earth into lesson plans or arrange a virtual fieldtrip.
  6. Plan your day virtually – show your party guests where the venue is, or teammates where the weekend sportsground is. Arrange meeting spots with friends. Plan bike trips and walking routes.
  7. If you’re looking to buy or rent a property, make a more informed decision by taking a virtual walk-through of the area and property you’re interested in. Save time by not going to home-opens that don’t meet your criteria.
  8. Moving to a new area? Look at nearby amenities such as parks, roads, bus stops, shopping areas and parking when planning your move.
  9. Helpers and carers can search for buildings which provide wheelchair access, or avoid steps by checking out what a building looks like.
  10. Does your child have to walk to or from school? Plan their journey, show them local landmarks and look over the walking route together. Or see where their school fieldtrip is taking place.

Well, when they put it like that, I guess it sounds pretty cool. More here.

Categories
Entertainment Humor politics Rants

Poor Quality German Vehicles Plague Cabinet Ministers

2006-2008 Mercedes-Benz ML350 photographed in USA.
Image via Wikipedia

Science and Technology minister Naledi Pandor is the latest victim of unreliable and aging German luxury automobiles, a condition known in car manufacturing circles as the “H1WAN12 (Have 1, Want A New 1 Too) Swine Fool Panic”. Recently she too was forced to order two Mercedes Benz ML350s to ferry her growing ass from meeting to meeting, following the apparent gearbox failure of the two previous cars designated for the Minister.

The cars were both running with the enormously high mileage of 141000km and 106 000km which explains their sudden calamitous failure. The new replacement cars include the latest in ministerial comforts aimed at improving leaders’ ability to make poor decisions in traffic – metallic paint, command navigation, media interface, DVD player, technical off-road package, heated front seats, Xenon active lights, sunroof, run flat tyres and private glass. A spokesperson for the manufacturer, Masipa Dense has expressed shock and horror that the minister did not take the heated rear-seat option. The new cars were purchased at a cost of 28 RDP houses.

2007 BMW X5 photographed in USA.
Image via Wikipedia

In a similar yet apparently unrelated incident, minister Nathi Mthethwa was also a victim of German engineering when the 2003 BMW X5 and 2006 Audi A8 he recently inherited turned out to be “mechanically unsound”. He replaced these with two “BMW ministerial-edition” X5s totalling the humble sum of R1.4 million, or 26 RDP houses. Audi has declined to comment, but industry insider Jeremy Clarkson has indicated that Audis are driven by cocks these days, a fact that goes a long way towards explaining Charles Nqakula – the minister who the vehicles were in fact inherited from.

Not to be outdone, Minister of basic education, Angie Motshekga dipped into the public treasury for a more sensible approach when considering the nature of the unreliable and trouble-plagued German vehicles. She chose instead to only take one R900 000 BMW 730D and rather replace her previous vehicle with a more reasonable and cheaper option manufactured by Indian mega-company Tata: Her Range Rover Sport TDV8 cost a rather sane R800 000. Reasons given for the choice state that the 4×4 ability of the vehicle will allow her to visit extreme rural areas to ensure the children in those remote regions are given their half-bowl of miele-pap every morning before walking barefoot to attend lessons with no equipment in the open veld beneath the trees.

Collins Spindokotela, minister for the evaluation of corruption, has defended the purchases as within the rules dictated in the ministerial handbook, and indicated he would rather see the frivolous spending being made on good Italian cars which are “…just as unreliable, but much prettier on the eye.”

Categories
Biking Rants

7 Points In Defense Of The Biker

Motorbikes on the Dragon
Image by TeecNosPos via Flickr

Saul K, from the Outlet, has an issue with bikers. Time to bring out the sparring gloves.

Actually, no. We all have to share the roads, and a large portion of bikers wish to do it in the safest manner possible. If you think our roads are currently bad for cars, bear in mind they are ten times worse for bikers. Lanes are narrower, road surfaces are carved into horribly uneven grooves-of-death, or stairs between lanes making lane changing on a bike impossible, and construction debris and dust covers the roads, making stone-catching sore, and making braking unsafe.

So to paraphrase from Saul’s entry, I’d say this is a brief summary of the contention points:

– Bikers are a hypocritical nuisance.

– Lane splitting is evil.

– Bikers never stick to the left hand side of the road like bicycle drivers do.

– Bikers tend to sit in car driver’s blind spots.

– Bikers change lanes too often.

– Bike owners feel the need to speed consistently.

– “when you learn how to drive we’ll stop running you over”.

I feel compelled to react to each of those points individually, and get some biker opinion out there.

1. Bikers are a hypocritical nuisance:

Of course we are, we’re arrogant too, we’ve every right to stamp our authority on the roads and what’s more, we’re cool. 😛

2. Lane splitting is evil:

The Happy Couple
Image by Shaun Dewberry via Flickr

Lane splitting is perfectly legal in South Africa, and let’s face it, you’d be a moron if you sat in the traffic, choking down exhaust fumes, when there’s a perfectly good gap between cars that one can use.

3. Bikers never stick to the left hand side of the road like bicycle drivers do:

Sticking to the left hand side would be silly unless you want to collect the tail-end of a truck, hurdle a random pedestrian or smooch a vehicle exiting from a blind entrance. (Or refurbish the face of one of those, ahem, bicycle drivers[sic]) We’re using engines, not legs, here. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re suggesting the building of dedicated biker lanes, well, hell yeah, absolutely!

4. Bikers tend to sit in car driver’s blind spots:

Unfortunately, yes, this is a symptom of poor mirror design and lane-splitting.  However, all drivers that did their driver’s license test were taught to check their blindspots frequently – do you think they do it? Well, yes, many do and I have absolute respect and always try to thank the driver who sees me and cancels his/her indicator to let me through, or shifts slightly to one side, but so often the driver feels there’s no time to check the mirror before they make a desperate lunge to sit behind traffic from a different point of view in the next lane.

5. Bikers change lanes too often:

See below discussion on speed. If you’re going faster than the traffic around you you’re going to need to change lanes.

6. Bike owners feel the need to speed consistently:

On the speed issue, yes, some bikers do ride at excessive speeds fairly often – most often Sunday mornings on empty roads long before cage-drivers wake up. But to be fair, biker’s speeding is often a symptom of vehicle driver’s speeding. If you ride to live it’s highly recommended you ride at least 20km/h faster than the traffic around you. Any slower and cars will start overtaking you – and not surprisingly being overtaken by a low-flying Ford is one of the scariest experiences on a bike. Yes, surprise! We can’t hear your eco-friendly green hybrid save-the-planet-but-pollute-it-with-lead batterymobile buzzing up behind us – we’ve got, yes, fresh air blasting past our ears (and maybe a nice loud pipe under the seat, too!). And what’s more, we can outbrake you by a country mile. At traffic lights we often live in fear of being rear ended by a ton of metal that just cannot brake fast enough. 160-170km/h is not excessive if the cars are traveling at 130-140km/h, it’s realistic.

7. “when you learn how to drive we’ll stop running you over”.

I doubt it. There will always be bad bikers and there will always, always be terrible drivers. I choose not to see car drivers as the enemy, as I too am a car driver, but I am exceptionally cautious around cars when biking. And by the same measure I’m exceptionally cautious around bikes when driving. We’ve only got so much tarmac to share and there are a lot of idiots out there. I’d like to get to where I’m going (even if it is a bar) in once piece, as I’m sure you would too.

C’mon, Saul, buy a bike!

Bikers, evil? What do you think?

Categories
Computing Freedom Movies Technology

Pirate Bay Sold, Founder Sunde to Retire in Cape Town?

Napster, Inc.
Image via Wikipedia

So the hot news on the interwebs is that the world’s largest torrent tracking site is due to be sold to a private Swedish gaming firm, who will attempt to turn the service legit. Shades of Napster‘s demise loom large, but hopefully this time the record companies and the motion picture association have a bit more foresight and don’t attempt to bully their way completely out of the online era. I’ve always maintained I don’t mind paying a few bucks for legit downloads from a decent music download site.

Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen. We’ll have to watch closely as it plays out over the coming months, which means that Peter Sunde’s visit to South Africa to keynote at iWeek 2009 should prove to be a hot event.

One does wonder how he’ll skip out of Sweden with a jail sentence hanging over his head. Perhaps he’s got himself one of those easily obtained fake South African passports?