I am officially enjoying Google Map Maker now.

Google Map Maker is Google’s crowd-sourcing tool to gather geographical information and turn them to maps. Google Map Maker was launched in the Philippines October of last year. Due to the positive response to the product, Google deployed Map Maker data in the Philippines to Google Maps.

I always loved the idea of crowd-sourcing (like Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, etc). There are other similar online tools out there such as OpenStreetMap and Wikimapia. My only problem with OpenStreetMap is that their default editor doesn’t have satellite imagery which makes it hard to point areas of interest or identify location of roads unless you have GPS. Wikimapia, though, uses Google’s imagery but their moderation scheme is not good at all. I find it very prone to vandals. (more…)

Happy Independence Day to the Philippines!

The Philippines gained it’s independence from United States of America Spain last June 12, 1988. This means we’re celebrating our country’s 111th year of independence!

Google is also celebrating Independence Day with us. Thanks to ate Aileen Apolo for plurking about the Google Doodle for the day!

UPDATE: It’s confirmed. The new name will be Bing (http://bing.com). Rumors are spreading that they will launch it on May 29, 2009.

There are various reports in the Internet that says Microsoft is doing a rebrand of Live Search, their very own search engine. Live Search lost its luster in the search engine game, just as how Internet Explorer lost the consumer’s trust. Microsoft’s several failed attempts to buy Yahoo may have led them to do the rebrand.

Rumored potential names of the search engine reboot are Bing, Kumo and Hook. Both bing.com and kumo.com are already on the hands of Microsoft, while hook.com is still owned by another party. (more…)

Last year, the search-engine giant Google launched Google Map Maker in the Philippines. It is an online mapping tool where people collaborate to map the world. Since it’s launch in the country, there has been a lot of moderated user-generated content that Google decided to push the Philippine Map Maker street-level data in some cities to Google Maps. Relative to other online collaboration tools such as Wikimapia, Google Map Maker has lesser vandals courtesy of their reputation and moderation algorithm designed by Googlers.

So what does this mean to the Philippines? To be short and concise, better Google Maps (Google Map Maker, and Google Earth) for us!!!

Google Maps Mobile can be easily installed on Sony Ericsson, Nokia and other compatible phones. All it takes is to download the mobile Java application and poof, you have a map in your hand! That was a lie; the data still lies on Google’s end so you need to have an active data packet connection (preferably 3.5G or 3G but GPRS would do) which I think all telcos in the Philippines offer for a competitive rate (despite different pricing scheme, it still sums up to 20/hour).

With Google Maps, you search, browse and hop thru different cities around the world. You can even plot your location on the map without an embedded GPS on your phone although having one gives more precise coordinates. In the absence of GPS or weak GPS connection, Google uses the cell information [further reading, Youtube video] on the header data of the packets sent by your handset, although this one gives less precise measurements.

There has been a countless times where I personally found this tool useful. I’ve used it to find buildings in the wilderness of the long Ayala Avenue. Another potential use of this app is for route mapping, which sadly isn’t supported yet in Metro Manila.

What do you think about Google Maps on Mobile? Have you used it? Share your insights.

When I logged on Google earlier this morning, I saw a super weird variation of the Google logo. I thought Google was hacked or something; which was next to impossible – it was a bit late when I realized that it was actually another Google doodle (Google doodles can be seen on special occassions and historic events).

The first thing that came into my mind was a Japan Day or something. Next thing in mind was a Red Cross Day. But guess what? It read “Maligayang Araw ng mga Puso” (Happy Hearts’ Day or Happy Valentine’s Day) when I hovered my mouse over it. Whew, I nearly forgot that it’s Valentine’s Day.

Then, I’ve realized that I booked my Valentine’s Day with a very geek appointment (something to do with programming). Wahahahaha. But sadly, it got cancelled a few minutes ago.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you.

Google is buggy right now. It even tagged itself as an unsafe website. Rumors have been spreading that the issue’s scope is worldwide — this I can’t confirm myself.

The bug shows up when opening an entry from the search engine results page.

Translation of the error above. Warning- visiting this website may harm your computer.

Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Friendster, Plurk and Twitter.

First, there was Yahoo. A lightweight portal and search engine. Then came the n00b search engine Google. Yahoo could have been threatened by Google’s birth and so they bloated themselves with lots of unnecessary services. Google struggled to fit the mainstream, and eventually it did.

Years later, Yahoo was used by millions of users. In fact, Yahoo is the most-visited website in the Philippines (and the World). Meanwhile, Google remained the choice of the so-called “Internet elites”.

The “internet elites” tried they’re best to persuade people to use GMail (Google Mail), but the “internet masses” preferred to stay with they’re “user-friendly” Yahoo with all those eye-candy RAM hog interface (which slows down your computer to death). A few adpoted the minimalist yet very usable GMail — and ended up super-satisfied with it.

Following the flow of the story were Friendster and Facebook. The “internet elites” first liked Friendster but eventually adopted Facebook when it was released out in the World; while the “internet masses” continued to patronize the very Asian Friendster.

Facebook, during it’s Global release (it was initially available in US only), was like Google – simple yet usable. But through the years it started becoming Yahoo. To date, it is bombarded with tons of unwanted applications that fills your inbox like flashflood.

Out of the blue, Twitter joined the party. Twitter introduced itself as Google way back in 2001. Again, a simple yet usable website. Then came a competition which surprisingly was not a super-bloated Yahoo. It was Plurk, a present-day Google. A very usable but not bloated, improved version of the 2001 Google. No doubt it was better to Twitter for some, like me.

The_ ______ ______ ___ ______.

The Web 2.0 Tales’ pages started to become unreadable as the trying-hard, capitalist Microsoft tried to join the story. And this concludes my Web 2.0 tales.

————————————————-

I know it’s crap, but deal with me. You may not agree with my binaries: the “internet masses” and “internet elites”, the “Yahoo” being associated as bloated and “Google” as minimalist, and the likes. This post is based on my opinion, the opinion of Conrad Miguel E. Gozalo.

————————————————-

I hope present-day “Google” websites will remain “Google” and not evolve as “Yahoo”.

Woot!

I just came home (dorm, my second home) from a Google event at Manila B of Shangri-La Makati. In contrast to most of the events I attend, I went to the venue all alone this time since the slots were too limited that I was not able to tag anyone to go with me.

The Google event was their launching Power User Launch of their new product Google Map Maker. In a conversation with John Pinette, Google’s Director of Communications in Asia Pacific, Philippines is the only South East Asian region where Google Map Maker has been officially launched – although it is already deployed in some countries such as in Vietnam. (more…)

While checking the trends of the keyword “UPCAT“, I noticed that Google spelled Muntinlupa as “Muntinglupa”. Muntinglupa ’s literal Tagalog translation is little land. Wahehehe.

I hope Google’d correct this. LOSER [ang post na ito]!

All images and questions from Google Treasure Hunt 2008.

Question:

A robot is located at the top-left corner of a 58 x 64 grid (marked).

The robot can only move either down or right at any point in time. The robot is trying to reach the bottom-right corner of the grid (marked ‘Finish’).

How many possible unique paths are there?

The image is not drawn to scale. For illustration purposes only.

Solution

Since I love PHP, I will be attempting the solve the problem in PHP.

Here’s how I am gonna do it.

Since it is a 58×64 grid, to reach the 1,1 location the robot needs to go down 57 times and go to the right 63 times yielding a total of exactly 120 steps to reach its location.

So the rule is:
Number of times to go down = Y coordinate origin of robot – 1 = numdown
Number of times to go right = X coordinate origin of robot – 1 = numright
Number of steps to reach location = Number of times to go down + Number of times to go right = maxnum

The Plan

Generate

Generate strings maxnum length using two characters of my own choice which will be 0 and 1. 0 will represent movement to the right while 1 will be movement downwards.

I will generate the strings 0000…001, 0000…010 to 1111…111. All must be of length maxnum or in my case 120.

Screening

On the course of generation, one conditional with two arguments will be made.

These are, if the number of 0s and 1s in the string being generated exceed the number of allowable 0s and 1s (numright and numdown), then throw the string and proceed to the other.

Increment the Counter

If it passes the screening, then increment the counter. After the generation of possible combinations, echo or print the number in the counter. The number represents the number of possible movements.

Optimization

The code to be used could be optimized by:

• screening should be done every after generation of a complete maxnum length string instead of screening the string while generating it character-by-character.

My head is already aching! Waaaa, I wanna solve it during the week. I won’t stop until I solve this. Amf!!

Try to play it here.