Google Locking Blooggers out of their Blog - thanks Google!

I got a weird email message last night that I first thought was junk, then I realized it was actually legit! Google has some new automated system that is flagging potential spam blogs and locking out owners. I was one of the many unlucky ones with my very popular GISuser AnyGeo blog gisuser.blogspot.com being flagged for some reason and locked! Friggin marvelous move Google.

After searching the web for how to contact the blogger team -- good luck with that one!!! - it seems many others are having the same mis-fortune.

For one, I'm very pi#@#$#@$ed off about this, particularly since I'm off to San Diego for the ESRI UC bnext week and had planned on blogging.. great! So, if anyone from Google happens to read this, maybe contact me (glenn at gisuser.com) and offer up some help or advice. Otherwise, WordPress is sure starting to look good!!

Google News for your Nokia smartphone

A tip for those needed Google news wherever they are... simply key in m.google.com/news from your mobile and you'll have it! Read up on the latest news from anywhere at anytime.
Search for news on any topic
Personalize your news page
Compare news from different sources

Geolocated photos into Google Maps or Google earth via Geo-RSS with ease

This may be old-school for some of you, others will appreciate this simple tip. All you need here is a Nokia N95 or other GPS-enabled device, some geotagged photos, a flickr account, a geo-RSS feed, and a Google account (optional) - read on for this simple GeoRSS photo feed, google map tutorial. If you use a GPS-enabled cameraphone (like the Nokia N95, N82, Nokia Navigator etc...) then you can easily post your photos to flickr or other online services (use a tool like Shozu to help with this). But did you know that Flickr creates a Geo-RSS feed from your photo stream? Even better, you can simply copy and paste your Geo-RSS feed location into the google maps search bar and voila... your photos are now available via Google maps to share with others, save to your mymaps or whatever the heck you want to do. Simply look at the bottom of your flickr page, you'll see options like RSS, GeoFeed and KML - yes you can easily open your photos in Google Earth too with a flickr provided KML file!

For users of Google, if you save your custom map in your MyMaps you'll have the ability to easily share your map feeds and you can even embed them in a webpage or blog.

Go to your flickr page, scroll to the bottomcopy the GeoRss feed url
jump back to google maps
paste the RSS feed url into the search bar and click "search maps"
click the "Link to this page" you can grab a link or embed the map into your webpage.

The link to this page provides a link back to Google Maps where you can view the photos

Selecting the Paste html code into your webpage is simple and displayed below - this is a live Google Map pulling my geotagged photos from the GeoRSS feed via Flickr.

View Larger Map
useful links:
www.google.com/maps
www.flickr.com
www.shozu.com
www.georss.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoRSS
Yahoo! Maps Web Services - GeoRSS v2 Reference

Take your N95 Geolocated photos into Google Maps via Geo-RSS with ease!

This may be old-school for some of you, others will appreciate this simple tip. If you use a GPS-enabled cameraphone (like the Nokia N95, N82, Nokia Navigator etc...) then you can easily post your photos to flickr or other online services (use a tool like Shozu to help with this). But did you know that Flickr creates a Geo-rSS feed from your photo stream? Even better, you can simply copy and paste your Geo-RSS feed location into the google maps search bar and voila... your photos are now available via Google maps to share with others, save to your mymaps or whatever the heck you want to do. Simply look at the bottom of your flickr page, you'll see options like RSS, GeoFeed and KML - yes you can easily open your photos in Google Earth too!

useful links:
www.google.com/maps
www.flickr.com
www.shozu.com

A cool Flickr slideshow and google maps on N95

HEre's a great app for you to use to embed photos into your website or blog. The app comes from http://flickrslidr.com/ - flickr slidr and is very simple to use... enjoy! Below is a slide show of images captured showing the latest Google maps mobile running on a Nokia N95



Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Symbian Smartphone Show Symbian C++ version of Google Maps Mobile

From The Symbian Smartphone Show... Symbian Limited today announced that Google has made available a free, native Symbian C++ version of Google Maps for mobile that was developed by Google for Symbian smartphones. The new version of Google Maps for mobile will provide users with an extremely fast and responsive mobile version of Google's award-winning mapping and location services software for Symbian smartphones. The client is available for download for S60 3rd Edition on Symbian OS-based phones at www.google.com/gmm

Google MAps Mobile on N95 deck

ShoZu
Enjoy the view

Mobile post sent by gisuser using Utterz. Replies.

Google maps mobile on N95 - traffic updates - audio clip

ShoZu
Enjoy the view

Mobile post sent by gisuser using Utterz. Replies.

Google MAps Mobile updated at 1.70.2- now running on my Nokia N95

A quick technorati search today seemed to indicate to me that Google Maps Mobile has received some kind of update - although I can't find any definite validation of this. According to some blogs, Google maps mobile has been optimized to run much better on Symbian S60 smartphones (think Nokia N95) So, curiosity got the better of me and I ran to grab it... I currently run Nokia Maps which comes "stock" on the N95. I go to http://www.google.com/mobile/gmm/index.html and then register for the latest download. I then get a txt message where I can grab the app (you gotta love all you can eat data plans ;0) I downloaded gmaps mobile (1.7) and loaded her up. The app started me off in London (why??) but then I simply requested that my location be updated.. low and behold in about 2 seconds the map centers on my current position (likely grabbed from cell fix). Then I browse around, switch to satellite image mode, and then even viewed current traffic conditions on I-25 - something that's crucial here as it can easily be a parking lot! I test the search and it works very well... simply put, the latest Google maps mobile on Symbian S60 is freaking awesome! Its fast, intelligent, and it works! I'll be testing some more this week-end so stay tuned. Screen shots and more details are now up on the flickr - see http://www.flickr.com/photos/gisuser/sets/72157602390210155/