Echo Binary

I love landscapes so I like the new Google map view, terrain, which highlights physical features of landforms like mountains, valleys and even the vegetation.

Using this view, you can appreciate the elevation of the mountains and highlands even more. Looking at the Central Luzon area gives you more idea how flat it is. I think that the darker the green patches are, the more vegetation or forestation there is. At Central Luzon, looking at those darker green patches gives you a bird’s eye view of a large agricultural farm around San Luis, Pampanga. In mountains — the darker the green area, the denser the forest.

Just looking at how jagged the road and mountains surrounding Baguio City gives you more trill especially when you haven’t been there.

After seeing a number of mountain terrains in Google maps, I suddenly had an urge to go hiking!

Where is the Google love? I still haven’t seen the new UI for Gmail in my inbox. Apparently, my account has not received the upgrade yet. Maybe it’s randomly assigned. I’m using my Gmail account everyday — an avid user — why I haven’t seen the new version yet? I’ve been waiting for it ever since the first rumor came out.

While everyone is discussing the new features and showing off screenshots, I’m still here, waiting anxiously. I really hope that the new UI will be activated in my account soon.

Update:
I’m surprised to see that the “loading…” message in my account in Gmail had changed from red to yellow so I knew right away that my account is already using the new version. From what I have ‘felt’ so far, what I’ve read is true. There is a slight slow down when scrolling page. However, I noticed that there opening email from inbox listing is now faster. I think that the javascript is pre-fetching the content of the listed email so it now loads faster.

I’ve seen how TechCrunch started from a small site by Michael Arrington that blogs about Internet startup. To read about its success is both exhilarating and awe-inspiring. It may not seem obvious but we’ve come to another wave of dotcoms and TechCrunch is geared towards that direction to report the the latest scoops and development. It’s something that I really envy when I look at Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. People can really get rich when they have the concept, network, guts and right timing to create something new.

I’ve linked TechCrunch in a number of my entries I’ve made here in my own blog and I’ve also commented a few articles in there. To know that it makes more than 240K USD a month is just insane. How can a blog create so much money. It appears that Michael Arrington and his crew got a lot of creative juices to boot.

This is just one example of success story which represents how serious business the internet can be.

Source: Yes, some blogs are profitable - very profitable [via Digg]

For the lighter side of my blog, let’s talk about videos. I know that YouTube needs no introduction and I won’t believe that you have not seen a YouTube video yet. Now, if you are a gamer you’ve probably watched videos that gamers have recorded and encoded, splitting to multi-part videos on how they beat an entire game from start to end. Honestly, would you watch a game instead of playing it? If you are too eager to watch game videos then watch from the real source of game video entertainment.

There is only one website I know that exhibits game franchise history with deep details and trivia that game enthusiasts would love to watch — Gametrailers.com. You can even download the videos from the website in different formats such as .mov, .wmv or iPod-ready mp4.

These retrospective easily sets apart Gametrailers.com from any other game websites I know. There are game reviews and even previews in Gametrailers.com but these retrospectives do not only review games — each retrospective takes a good look on the influences of the game during its time and often describes how a game developed from one simple franchise to one of the most prolific one.

To give an example, let me introduce the Final Fantasy retrospective. It is the longest retrospective in Gametrailers.com right now, spanning 13 episodes. It’s not even finished yet so I’m looking forward to how these guys are going to end it. There are a lot of information in each episode. If you have not played any of the games prior to FF VII, then you’ll need to watch these videos to appreciate the older FFs. Be prepared to watch some spoilers but rest assured, spoilers are kept to the minimum. Sometimes even game reviews cannot prevent spilling some spoilers to let the editors explain the game plot easier.

Now, I’m not really a Zelda fan but I appreciate adventure RPGs as well. I’ve played Zelda once in Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) but I didn’t finish it. Watching the retrospective videos not only gives me the overview of the series but it also enrich my understanding of the game history. I wanted to play the series from the beginning but it’s going to be troublesome finding old Nintendo hardwares and classic games like Zelda.

I’m sure you’ll think twice in watching game videos in YouTube again. I encourage you to visit Gametrailers.com and watch more videos!

I always thought that crop circles are fake. They are created by humans — NOT aliens!

A team of Firefox fans made a good example on how crop circles are made. From planning to execution, the Firefox Crop Circle team even spent a great deal of time documenting the process on creating the crop circle just like any good open source project.

And the result is awesome…

It’s actually my first time reading about the process of creating crop circle and I’m not surprised that it needs a lot of teamwork to complete.

For the complete details of the Firefox Crop Circle project, click here.