Lots of new technology

Yeh, it’s been awhile since I updated this blog. But I’ve got great excuses! You see, lots of new technology has come out of the woodwork this summer and I’ve been seriously preoccupied working with it. First off, earlier this summer Google announced their new Google Earth Plug-in. I’d been waiting for such a mechanism for a long time. Up until the plug in appeared, you pretty much had to run the Google Earth client. Now, I can host Google Earth in my own web pages and control the user experience, and direct the way you see the rivers. So I quickly went to work creating this site http://www.whitewatercampsites.com/3D/pgRaftingRiversInGoogleEarth.htm# which hopefully will grow into a means to navigate the campsite photos directly from Google Earth.

So I’m busy gathering GPS coordinates for all the campsites, rapids, and other points of interest. This winter I’ll try to stitch the GE markers to my campsite albums as cleanly as possible.

So, that was technology fixation #1. And soon after that, Google announced the beta of their new ‘Knol’ feature which is intended to compete with Wikipedia. The shine is coming off Wikipedia because the authors are anonymous, people are questioning the fact that they cannot tell where the info is coming from and thus the bias, and the ‘clean-up’ crew of volunteer authors might be getting tired of continously correcting the additions. In contrast, the Knol approach is to demand that the authors be fully identified and verified. So you know exactly who is writing what on each Knol page. I'd known about Knol since last winter, but when the beta was announced I just had to start creating Knol pages for whitewater rafting. I already had lots of content on my http://www.multidayrafting.com/ site, and Knol pages may be the better way to expose such information. So I’m gradually migrating it to a series of Knols. It may or may not come to anything, but if Knol catches on and wins the war of public opinion, then it will be THE place for information about everything. Here is the front door: http://knol.google.com/k# Just search for rafting or whitewater.

Next technology to demand attention was DeepZoom and the MultiScaleImage control in Microsoft Silverlight Beta 2. This is truly awesome technology. The best example I’ve seen is a page that Kelly Blue Book has put up here http://www.kbb.com/kbb/PerfectCarFinder/Default.aspx. On the KBB page, scroll down until you can see “Perfect Car Finder: Photo Edition” and click on the red button titled “Start Now”. You will be prompted to install Microsoft Silverlight Beta 2 if you don't already have it. Definately go for it. While it will take a few minutes, the results will be worth it.

When the page finally comes up, you'll see photos of nearly 400 automobiles. Each photo is a ‘deep zoom’ photo, meaning you can use mouse clicks or your mouse wheel to zoom into the photo so deeply you’ll be amazed. (The prototypical example is the Hard Rock Memorabilia site, Google it. On that site I swear you can zoom in far enough to see the fingerprints on the old guitars!)

Also check out the sliders on the left side that allow you to select price range, style, etc. of the cars. Moving them cause the photos to be filtered and re-arranged into a group as you move the sliders. It's all a very cool use of this deepzoom technology. If you don’t have a wheel on your mouse, clicking on a photo zooms to the photo you click on a ways (you need the wheel to go deeper) and Shift+click will zoom back out. Drag the mouse around to reposition yourself in any photo or the entire mosaic. You can guess what I’m planning to do with deep zoom and my websites!

On top of spending time with these new technologies and web pages, we’ve been preparing for our Lower Salmon float, leaving tomorrow, in fact. This is the "Burning Foot Float". It should be interesting to see who shows up. I know for certain that some will, so it won’t be a bust, and the weather is looking great and not as hot as it could be. In getting ready, I had to also finish up the new multi-day frame for my Aire Jag. It came out pretty good. The welds and some geometry could have been better, but it will serve the purpose. I’ll post photos of the construction and the frame in-use on the LSR after I get back.

Finally, this summer has involved a lot of yard work. And that includes creating a 30-foot stream water feature in the back yard. It’s pool and drop, and drops 18 inches in those 30 feet. So let’s see, that’s about 264 feet per mile! Definitely class V!!! Now, if I could only find a scale model raft. Hmmmm….