Google Maps is one of those Google applications I have written about before. Sometimes scary, with its satellite view, but mostly helpful when it comes to its regular mapping options. The only disadvantage: the actual size of the map that is displayed can be small. A full screen map display would be helpful, but we have to resort to third party sites for this.

One of the ways I use Google Maps, is to plan visits to places I have never been to before. I like to print the map of the surrounding area of my destination, just in case I get lost. There's not much worse than wasting three hours trying to find some location, only to find out I missed it by just two blocks. The larger a map I can print, the better. Like I said, Google Maps only shows a smaller map, but Bret Taylor comes to the rescue. The former product manager at Google who worked on Google Maps, offers a Full Screen Google Maps application on his site. Very useful to me. One drawback though: it doesn't let me print the map. So I make a screenshot of the map and print it that way.

Have you ever wondered which US presidential candidate is the right one for you? Electoral Compass USA lets you find out.

For a couple of years now, several Dutch companies have created (online) applications to help Dutch voters decide which party best fits their own ideas. Since the Dutch political arena has over a dozen parties competing for votes, it can be difficult to decide which party to vote for. The electoral applications let users rate a limited number of statements and then compares the respondent's rating to the views of political parties. Based on the analysis, the best matches is determined.

Electoral Compass USA is created by Kieskompas BV and it allows people from all over the world to determine their position in the political landscape. This position is plotted on a graph that also contains the presidential candidates and you can see which candidate is closest to your position. The entire process takes less than ten minutes, you simply rate 36 statements on a strongly agree/disagree scale.

Just make sure you read the questions thoroughly. I took the survey twice, once in English and once in Dutch, and I got two slightly different results. Of course there is always the problem of statements that are a bit fuzzy, or your interpretation of a statement may differ from the author's intent, but this tool still serves a purpose. An interesting feature is the option to remove some issues from the equation to see how this affects your position.


(this is just an example, these are not my actual results, I doubt you are interested in my political opinions)

When I switched from NedStat to StatCounter last year, I didn't know for sure if I would like the new service. For a couple of weeks I used three services, but I soon realised I only visited the StatCounter site. So I stuck with that one.

StatCounter is a pretty bare/no-nonsense site statistics service that offers enough stats to satisfy me. It is mainly numbers with a couple of graphics, but that's ok. I don't need a flashy site, I just want to see who came to visit and how they found me. When it comes to visitor tracking, there are several services that use a map to display where your visitors came from. One of the bigger ones is ClustrMaps, which uses its own map. There are also services using Google Maps to display visitor info. When I logged into StatCounter tonight, I was greeted with a message announcing a Visitor Map option as well. Since my stats are private, I won't be displaying the map for anyone to see, but it is a nice visual aid to show me where my visitors are from.

Maybe Google Post-Its would also have been a nice name, but I guess that would involve some legal issues. When I first heard about Google Notebook, I thought it was some kind of Google Desktop or Google Pack software for my notebook. You know, what used to be called a laptop. But no, Google Notebook is an application that lets you store information online. Kind of like electronic memo pages/post-its, with the advantage that you can copy text.

Google Notebook is a product from Google Labs and it seems news got out a bit too soon. The search option is not working yet. With Google Notebook, you install a browser plugin for IE6+ or Firefox 1.5+ (no Safari/Opera yet). Once installed, the plugin lets you copy data/URL info to your own collection of notes. These notes are kept on a Google server (include obligatory remark about Google-related privacy risks here) and you can view and manage them there. Notes can be private or public, and they can be categorized in a number of notebooks.

I only logged in and messed around with a couple of notes so far, to get a general feeling about the product. Apart from the privacy issues, I can see how this might be useful. Especially to someone who uses a lot of different computers (as long as those are online). A student visiting different institutional libraries to do some research could store notes this way, without having to write them down, or download all kinds of references (if at all possible). I may use this some more over time, at work, to see if this can indeed be helpful when researching materials online. I don't think I will put it good use in my everyday personal surfing, but who knows. It is still a new service, after all, and sometimes I only see the point of something after it has been around for a while.

When you publish a blog, you want to make sure people know you have added a new post. One way of doing this, is by pinging a blog directory service. You tell this service that your blog was updated, and then it gets listed in the directory of recently updated blogs. There are dozens of pinging services out there and it is too much of a hassle to ping them all manually. Some blog software offers automated ways of pinging services (like one of the Nucleus plugins does) which saves you some time. If you don't have that option, or if you want to ping more then just a few services, you probably have to manually ping them. Which means going over to the site and entering your URL to tell the service your site was updated.

Pingoat pings a whole bunch of services for you. Enter the URL of your blog, and possibly that of your feed, and select services to ping. Bookmark the results page and reload it next time you update your blog to ping the same services again. A similar service is Ping-o-Matic, which also lets you bookmark a pinging page.

Man, I should have had this when I was running my weekly (A)D&D games. A generator to create pdf's of sheets with hexagons on them. Great for positioning those miniatures when your players try to sneak away from the big bad monster 1/100th of an inch at a time. There are other types of graph paper to create as well. But really, who needs that when they can print hexagons?

I should really create a new adventure some day ...

Every once in a while, I have a reason to convert the contents of a Word document to HTML. Most of the time, it is a document a colleague made, and it probably contains a table too. Instead of copying it all to an HTML file, I consider using Word to save it as HTML. The only problem: Word adds a ton of crap info into the final document. If you ever tried to read one of the tables converted by Word itself, you know what I mean. No use in even trying.

Over at Textism, there is a basic Word HTML Cleaner. Save a Word document as HTML with Word, then upload it here. A clean version of the HTML is given as output, which you can then copy and save. It is also possible to take out a subscription which, among other benefits, allows you to convert files over 20 Kb in size.

Conjugating the verbs of my own language is hard enough. Conjugating verbs in other languages often goes wrong. Hey, if you are a regular visitor, you are probably aware of that. Now there is help. At WebVerbix, you can use an online conjugator (is that even a word?) to see how to conjugate verbs in 117 languages. Not all equally useful. At least, I don't expect anyone to regularly conjugate Gothing verbs.

Apparently, the online version contains a subset of verbs from a shareware Windows program. So now whenever you feel an urge to check how to conjugate the Dutch schrijven (to write), simply surf to WebVerbix and check it out. Of course this can also be helpful just to check conjugation of verbs in your own language.

Months ago, I installed MSN at work, and made my ID available for colleagues, university staff, and students. The idea was, that perhaps they would like to contact someone from the library through a chat service. There was only one problem: nobody ever visits the page that actually lists my ID. And since this was not an officially sanctioned step, nothing came of it. I still run MSN though, and our entire department is now communicating through MSN and IRC. Most people run a multi-protocol client instead of MSN. (Oh, I see future posts piling up)

Anyway, most of my work is done at the computer. This means, that if you are able to check my MSN status, you know whether I am in or out. Hold on, this is not an invitation to look for it and add me to your buddy list. The ID is strictly for business purposes

In addition to my name and room number published on our university site, my contact info also contains a listing of the days I am in. This is quite easy: I work five days a week. However, there are times when I have a day off, believe it or not. So people can't contact me, even when they try. Phonecalls get answered by someone else, and they end up mailing me. Even when I am in, I am often in a meeting or helping a customer. So phone calls are not always convenient.

I was thinking of a way to let people know for certain whether or not I would be able to talk to them. The solution was pretty easy to implement. [Read More!]

One of the hardest things to do when designing a web page, is coming up with the correct color codes. There are plenty of color charts you can use.

Now there is also a flash-based web application that lets you change colors on the fly. Click one of the colored squares, preferably one that is close to a color you like. Press the + button in the bottom-right corner. Slide the R,G, and B values to change the color to your liking. Watch the color code change to reflect the color you created. Copy the code and use it on your page. For more intricate tricks, check out the English tutorial.