De Roeter

Having dinner in De Roeter with my former office room mates.

New York 2006

Last June I visited New York for an expert meeting I was invited to. I had never been in New York—well, actually I was there two times before: one time when I was about 10 years old with my parents, but we landed on Kennedy Airport and drove a rental car straight into New Jersey and from there to Toronto crossing the border at the Niagra Falls, and one time on my way back from Charlottesville, Virginia to Chicago when I had a transfer at LaGuardia Airport which was last year—so I took a lot of pictures. I've uploaded most of them to a public album at Picasa Web. Not all of them are worthwile, but what the heck.

Raoul's Public Photo's

from: Dam 1, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands to: Binnenhof 1, Den Haag, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands - Google Maps

So Google Map finally indexed detailed street information for the Netherlands. It's realy cool to be able to type in a street name and address number (!), and be directly transported to a satelite view of the address! What's more is that Google Map also gives directions! (Well, it already did, but up till now you had to provide geo-coordinates for starting point and end point, which was slightly less convenient...) Here's an example: from: Dam 1, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands to: Binnenhof 1, Den Haag, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands. Oddly, Google hasn't yet announced the extension on their main blog.

What's even more (and maybe even better): It also works on my cell phone! If you want to try, just surf to www.google.com/gmm on your mobile phone and allow the Java application to be installed (google automatically detects your phone brand and make). It's realy extremely useful! Perhaps in the near future it will be able to tell (approximately) where you are?

By the way, it also works across Europe: Here's the route from my work to Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris.