Ten faithful followers of the WAP Retired SIG met at the Pi Office on July 27, 2006. The topic for this month's meeting was "All things Google," with a particular focus Google Earth. Nancy Little, who had the lead on the program, was in place and ready at the appointed time of 1:00 o'clock.
With the aid of the overhead projector, Nancy demonstrated the details of using the free, downloadable Google Earth application. She played with the controls and tool bars, responding to the numerous suggestions on where to go and what to do. Google Earth provides maps, directions and visualization of thousands of locations, and we proved it by ‘visiting’ the Pi office, the Grand Canyon and the Eiffel Tower from an overhead satellite perspective. A good way to plan your next trip would be to scope it out via Google Earth!
Bob pointed out there are a few other Google-related applications that are useful. One such item demonstrated was the Google Plug-in for Address Book. He also shared with the group an adjunct application named Googalyzer that has its own browser style interface that connects with any number of Google search topics.
As a separate lesson, we learned how to use the Speech command to speak text. One person said they use it to review their documents for typos, explaining that it is easier to hear mistakes than to find them while reading; this is especially true of material we have written ourselves. It was a good suggestion, and was part of a good meeting.
The next meeting's topic was not decided upon, so the agenda still has to be refined. See you in August!
Google Earth:
http://earth.google.com/
Google Maps Plug-n for Address Book:
http://www.briantoth.com/addressbook/
Googalyzer:
http://idisk.mac.com/gonfunko/Public/googalyzer.html