Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Yesterday Google Blogoscoped pointed out a hack for your Google Maps that would allow you to zoom much farther that you might think in just a few steps.

1. Select the location you’d like to zoom in on and switch to satellite view.
2. Zoom in as far as it will let you, and then click on the “link to this page” which is found in the top right corner.
3. Replace the “z” parameter in the URL with a larger value like 20, 23, etc.
4. You’re all set! If more detail is available, it will show it.

The key word in that last step is if. Every location that I tried to zoom further in on didn’t work.  I went back to the Google Blogoscoped blog to see what everybody was saying about it, and it appears as though most of the images that I’ve seen where people have been able to zoom in to extremely close levels were from Google’s Australia Day 2007 fly-over.

Other images of animals in Africa (like the image of camels above) are most likely from the National Geographic project with Google where more than 92,000 photos were taken over a period of a year by an aero-photographer all across the country.

A couple of places where this trick is known to work is right over the Googleplex in California, and in New York. I gave New York a try, and it actually worked at a Zoom level of 20. Below is the before and after picture in New York.

Give it a try, if you find another location where this works, post it in the comments below.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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As fond as we are of the A-Class, it’s never been the best looking Benz in the bunch, but with the introduction of the new A-Class concept, it looks like that could soon change. One of the car’s designers describes it variously as sexy, expressive, and beautifully formed, and while we wouldn’t go quite that far, we have to say it’s not too shabby. The car sports some interesting looking LED headlights and an inverted mesh grill on the outside, and on the inside it’s packing a rather futuristic display, complete with a dash-mounted tablet and what looks to be an iPhone protruding from the center console. Now, there’s no guarantee that this thing will get the E-Cell treatment, or that all the bells and whistles will make it to production, but for now, it’s shaping up to be a rather stylish upgrade. For more Mercedes-Benz eye candy, check out the gallery below.

Mercedes-Benz debuts tablet-packing A-Class concept originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 10 Apr 2011 00:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EV charging station announcements are almost becoming commonplace (keyword: almost), but not so much that we aren’t happy to welcome one more. This week NRG Energy unveiled it’s first eVgo branded “Freedom Station” at a Dallas Walgreens, and aims to pepper the map with a total of 60 such units by Labor Day. Each eVgo freedom station will pack both a quick charging 480V AC/DC converter (juicing up a Nissan Leaf to 80 percent in about 30 minutes), as well as a 240V Level 2 charger (netting 25 miles of “go” per charging hour). NRG plans to cover the Dallas / Fort Worth and Houston areas with 120 of these guys by the end of 2012. Like others before it, the eVgo network plans to follow a subscription model — with the premiere plan ($89 a month on a three year contract) not only covering the cost of usage at eVgo charging stations, but that of electricity used at your home charging dock, too. Toss in a handful of generous EV owners rocking PlugShare, and Dallas has the makings of a low-emissions wonderland.

NRG’s eVgo charging stations hope to catch the eyes of Texas originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For those unaware, Eretz Nehederet is effectively the Israeli equivalent to The Onion, and on the 1st of April, they covered the hardest-hitting piece of Apple news to cross their news desk in quite some time. That news, friends, is the iBoy. Available in a variety of skin tones, religious beliefs and languages, this iPad-adorned human is both the best and worst thing to happen to mankind… well, ever. There’s no word on when it’ll be on sale, but it’s fairly clear that “divorce” and “alcohol” are about to take a backseat to this guy when studying factors that rip families to shreds. Click and weep as you see fit.

[Thanks, Lior G.]

Israeli parody details the rise and fall of Apple’s iBoy, humanity as a whole (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While we’re not exactly in a hurry to spend $30 each on 60-day delayed movie rentals, theater owners are quite upset by the whole premium video-on-demand plan apparently being pushed by Warner, Sony, Fox and Universal. The most active objector so far appears to be AMC Theaters, which announced yesterday (press release after the break) it would notify studios that it plans to “adapt its economic model” regarding movies bound for p-VOD. What it wants is likely a bigger slice of the revenue and also a heads up on which movies will be getting the earlier releases. Rival theater chains Regal and Cinemark have already expressed plans to cut promotion and screens for movies headed to p-VOD, but without any official announcement it’s still not clear which movies those will be. Of course, cutting down promo and screens cuts into the theater’s own revenue, so we’ll wait to see who blinks first. (Hint: it won’t be us — we wouldn’t pay $30 to watch The Adjustment Bureau on Mars, much less in our own living rooms on DirecTV, Vudu or Comcast.)

Continue reading Theater owners ready to fight over $30, 60-day window VOD movies

Theater owners ready to fight over $30, 60-day window VOD movies originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Apr 2011 20:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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