Jasonisms

I was perusing around on Google Maps and saw this rainbow airplane flying over Parker, CO. Which isn't too far from reality as just to the north there is a local airport . But, it's still fun to see the colors off the airplane in flight. 

Let me preface this by saying I grew up long before cell phones were in everyone's pocket. In fact, I didn't have my first cell phone until I was in my twenties, so I know a thing or two about living without having the world's knowledge at my fingertips. My first day without a cell phone was both frustrating and liberating. It began as all things do - in the beginning: My alarm didn't go off. As it turns out, like many of us, I use my cell phone as an alarm clock, which is convenient since it's on the charger all night next to the bed. Normally in the mornings I'll check for any emails that came in overnight, check the headlines to make sure no one has started World War III and then, maybe if I'm not in a rush, I'll flip through social media to see who's doing all the exciting things I'm not. Or look at pretty pictures. The real inconvenience came when I realized I had no reminder for an appointment. Luckily for me I knew the appointment ...

Dear +Google Maps , Part Deux, A few days ago I sent feedback about a location. Specifically, that the location no longer held a certain business, The Salad Bowl. Local Page Let's roll back a few blog posts. Remember this one ? I reported the restaurant closed via the Google Maps report feature and received and email stating the restaurant is still active? Well, Google Maps, you're at it again. You see, I walk past this spot four or five times a week. In street view, do you see that space to the left of the Salad Bowl, the one with the tree? Yeah, that spot. I walk through that every single time I go to the gym and I go four or five days a week, depending on the week. You see that pet store next to the Salad Bowl? Look to your left. Okay, yeah, right there. Yeah, I shop there for dog treats, fish supplies and various other bits. Streetview One might say I'm fairly well versed in that corner of the strip mall. And yet, I receive this email from you: From: ...

Dear  +Google Maps I sent feedback from the mobile app last weekend regarding a restaurant that didn't seem to exist any longer. You see, I was trying to find this restaurant after having read a 4 year old review on a local dining blog . Yet, I found myself driving around in circles for a few minutes trying to find this restaurant, even though no restaurant with that name seemed to exist. However, I finally found a  restaurant at the address, but not Los Farolitos . As you can see by the Google+ page for the restaurant, there are no reviews and no one from the restaurant has taken ownership of the site, leaving me to believe the place hasn't had any customers in quite some time. Even your very own streetview photo of the location is three years old: September 2011 That being said, the location listed as Los Farolitos is now occupied by a place called Juan's Something or Another. Yes, it is still a restaurant, but no longer Los Farolitos. In fact, I can't fi...

I really really hate Google Maps. This is no easy thing to admit since I'm incredibly immersed in the Google ecosystem. Recently I had to wonder if I was going to leave the Android experience for, perhaps, the Windows Lumia experience or even the Blackberry experience. Having loved both my earlier Nokia and Blackberry handsets, I would have no misgivings about going back to those particular companies. However, as I looked at their online app store offerings, I cringed. Sure they had Facebook and Twitter, music and movie apps and hosts more, they didn't have  +Google+  ,  +Snapseed  (one of my most used apps) or very many of the Google suite of apps at all. I suppose I could use more Flickr than Picasaweb/G+ Photos, Skydrive over  +Google Drive   or a variety of other workarounds that give the same functionability but without the Google ecosystem. This brings me to Maps which is by far Google's worst product. Sure, they keep adding features to the ...

In my last blog post about Google Maps , I noted that whenever I try to create a map using the Draw a Line::Follow Roads tool GMaps always saves as straight lines, for some unknown reason. This time, using my Google Apps account, I decided to create the map I was creating last time I became so frustrated I stopped. And look! The same friggin thing happend! What the hell? Google Maps really does hate me. This is, not only, a completely different account, but its also only a year old, so is probably on a number of different servers. This is very annoying, Google! EDIT : So, apparently, if you open the Map back up,  edit  it and right-click on the line you can then select  snap to road  to fix this issue. However, it must be done for each and every line separately and doesn't save that as a feature any additional lines being drawn. So the question of the day is, why these extra steps? Why not "draw lines to roads" and have them, oh, I don't know, draw the lin...