Oz slang for directions in Google Map...Chuck a left! (Directions from Max Brenner to San Churro!)

Street View...now in 3D!

There seems to be a couple of other April Fool hoaxes Google has provided this year

My first reaction was "Cool, they finally giving us the option to have email notifications.", but then I remembered how Buzz 'spammed' my inbox with all those random messages that I didn't care about, so in the end I just clicked on "No, thanks."

If you, like me clicked "No, thanks" but then changed your mind. The elusive "notification setting" is hidden under a menu which can be triggered when you hover over "Inbox" and click on the arrow icon that appears.

Interesting thing is I do remember that Google making a firm stand on keeping Google Wave and Gmail distinctively separate, guess that is no longer the case!

ps. Compared to when I last used Wave, it seems to have improved a fair bit. The inline commenting is win!

To be honest, I just took the use of Google for granted and never really thought much about it until I went to Ignite Sydney last week. One of the awesome talks "Everything I know about you" by Michael Kordahi tested to see if our perceptions to the search results (he comapred Bing, Google, Yahoo) would be the same if the branding was removed. The results of preference (and the search terms people looked for) are indeed very interesting - definitely worth watching!

Interesting thing was after the night I went home and gave it a go myself. For simple/basic searches (which were essentially keyword searches) all three search engines were roughly the same for me - but in picking the preferred one I actually rarely picked Google! Though for more complex searches (eg. ones which I just typed in a question) Google was the clear winner. The other two were nowhere close.

Random footnote - I hear some of you may be asking, what is Ignite Sydney? No, it is not an event where pyromaniacs go and set fire to Sydney landmarks. Ignite Sydney is a series of presentations with one very simple idea behind every presentation:

Make the presenters stick to a rigid format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, giving a guaranteed 5 minute presentation.

This means no death by powerpoint - yay! and generally very interesting, entertaining and well thought out presentations - double yay! If you don't live in Sydney then don't worry - there are Ignite events all around the world. Have a look here for the full list

Sunday, 15 November 2009

#319 - Two things: Fast decision making can be critical at times and people can sometimes think very irrationally...

I was standing at the train station today waiting for the train and looking at a group of three people who were just talking to each other. Suddenly one of them accidentally drops their phone (an old Nokia 3315), all three look down at the phone, then one of them stepped forward to pick the phone up. Except when he stepped forward he kicked the phone down onto the train tracks. Now all three were staring at the train tracks. At the same time the announcement overhead starts "The train arriving at platform three...", the group looks to their right and indeed a train is coming.

So what do they do? One of them is just standing there seemingly still deciding whether he should go and grab the phone or not; the other jumps down to grab the phone while the other is yelling "leave the phone!". Luckily the guy that jumped down to grab the phone jumped back up before the train passed - he had probably only 1 or 2 seconds to spare. The fast decision made by the guy that jumped down meant that he was able to get the phone and be safe (had he hesitated he would not have made it in time), but on the other hand, I feel that it was a rather silly decision to make - risk your life for a phone.

Monday, 16 November 2009

#320 - Yann Tiersen's  Comptine d'un autre été: L'après midi is lovely song.

My sister introduced me to "Comptine d'un autre été: L'après-midi", a piano piece composed by Yann Tiersen and I feel it is a very nice song. If you feel like you've heard the song before it might be from the movie: Amélie. Although the YouTube movie clip isn't actually related to the movie, it is a nice (but sad) clip to watch. Will be looking forward to learning to play this song when I get my hands on a piano!

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

#321 - Message to Oracle: Empty string is not the same as null.

This is just a rant as a result of a 'bug' that needs fixing from work. For those of you who are non-programmers, 'null' in programming is quite literally 'nothingness'. While 'empty string' is a string that has zero characters to represent nothing (Strings are just a series of characters). Null is the absence of a value. Empty string is something to represent nothing. This probably isn't the best explanation, so it might not make much sense as to why there is such a distinction to represent "nothing" ... but take my word for it there is.

So this brings me to my rant of the day - Oracle databases silently converts any empty string values into null. So if you try to store an empty string into Oracle it will magically be stored as null. This causes all sorts of problems when you take the value out from the Oracle database and try to use it, since it will give you null when you are expecting empty string (all other databases will return empty string).

Wednesday, 18 November 2009

#322 - Understanding Your Brain for Better Design: Left vs. Right

As most people know our brain has two halves - left and right. The biggest difference between the two halves is how it processes what we see. The left brain takes a more 'bottom up' approach - looks at all the small details and builds a bigger picture. Whereas the right side is more 'top down' - looks at the big picture and slowly breaks things down into details.

Obviously we need both halves of our brains to work, but generally we all have a dominant half which effects the way we think and perceive the world. I used to feel that the more creative of us were right brain dominant and thus it was in their nature to be more creative. However, this article brings up a very good point - left brain dominant people are just creative in a different way compared to right brained people and depending on your brain dominance you should play to your dominant brain's strength. I'll be giving that a go and trying some slightly more orderly creativeness

Thursday, 19 November 2009

#323 - Don't be afraid to ask for help when you're in trouble.

Today was a rather slow day at work because I was attempting to figure out something I knew very little about. When first tackling the problem it felt like there was a possibly I could get it working, but then as the hours passed by it became clearer to me that I was just going around in circles I could have (and should have) at that point asked people around me for help since I knew they would know much better than me, yet me being stupid I didn't. Why? As stupid as it sounds, it was because I didn't want to feel stupid asking a potentially stupid question. But as the day drew to a close and not having progressed much, I realised my stupid mistake and felt very stupid.

So, the lesson of the day? Ask for help when you feel like you need it (do give it a good try first, don't just ask for help before giving it some thought), because it may or may not be a stupid question, but if you don't ask for help at the end you will most likely eventually have to ask for help and you will feel stupid for not asking for help!

Friday, 20 November 2009

#324 - Google releases the Chromium OS open source project.

Sometime ago there was talk about Google releasing Chrome OS and today that exact project has been open-sourced! The main idea behind Chrome OS is that for most of us, a good majority of what we do on a computer these days is using the Internet. We boot up our computer, and chances are we open the web browser, check our email, the news, forums etc. So the smart people at Google thought, well if we are hardly using any of the desktop applications and all we really want is to surf the Internet, why not cut out all the wasted time loading desktop applications that we rarely use? As a result, they came up with Chrome OS. It seems like a very interesting idea to me and now that it is available for poking around, might just install it on my old laptop and see how it goes ps. Is it just me or does it feel like Google will take over the world?

Saturday, 21 November 2009

#325 - Writing emails in a language you are unfamiliar with is a long and painful process.

It's no secret that I'm not that great with written Chinese, in fact I'm quite bad at it. Today I tried writing an email to my parents in Chinese and it was really really hard! In the past, I would enter Chinese using 'bopomofo' (a phonetic way of entering Chinese) which was slow since I didn't know which keys were where; but do-able since I know how to speak Chinese, so all I had to do was enter the sound and pick the correct character.

However, this time I was trying to practice my written Chinese so I was using the awesome Chinese input method in Snow Leopard - you quite literally draw the character in. After a couple of characters, I realised how much I had forgotten - even the most basic of characters I had no clue how to write! I ended up going to a English-Chinese dictionary and looking it up. The entire email of approximately 3 sentences took me at least 30min!

i challenge you to write a weekly entry to your blog on 7 new things you learned about this world, 1 new item for each day. not too difficult hey?

There was no reason I could think of to decline this challenge, so I have decided to take the challenge! Though I'm going to cheat a tiny little bit, instead of "7 new things I have learned" it will be things I have learnt, found interesting, would like to share. So here we go - my first weekly post and hopefully the first of many more to come!

Sunday, 25 October 2009

Thought of the day: www.example.com, www.example.org, www.example.net are reserved domains that are not available for registration!

In the past couple of months, I've written and done a fair bit of testing and as expected there are always going to be "dummy" email addresses, web-links etc. The most common being ones like: admin@example.com, www.example.com. One random day I thought to myself "Hey, what if someone registered 'example.com' as their domain name, wouldn't they get a tonne of random traffic?"

Well, to my surprise, the domain names: www.example.com, www.example.net and www.example.org are actually all reserved and not available for registration. If you want to read all the details you can have a look at RFC 2606 (warning: I've found RFCs have the tendency to be sleep inducing).

ps. didn't quite discover this on Sunday, but discovered it relatively recently - and trying to remember something that happened on Sunday when it's Tuesday is surprisingly hard!

Monday, 26 October 2009

Thought of the day: Incentives/rewards that are offered to us to motivate us can actually make things worse as it restricts our ability to think creatively. Intrinsic motivators work heaps better than extrinsic motivators.

Watched the TED talk: Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation and indeed it was surprising. From experience our society tends to use incentives such as money to motivate us to do something. However, in Dan Pink's talk he shows us that there is scientific evidence that this extrinsic motivator is probably doing more harm that good in the majority of cases.

He highlights that scientific studies have shown that for basic mechanical tasks extrinsic motivators work really well, but for any tasks that require "rudimentary cognitive skills" these extrinsic rewards actually make things worse. The reasoning behind this is that "Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus, concentrate the mind. … That reward actually narrows our focus and restricts our possibility." The problem with this is that most companies/businesses operate using the reward-based system even though a good majority of the jobs require employees to think outside the square to solve problems. It's definitely a good watch!

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

Thought of the day: Friends are a great source of motivation - whether it be working together, giving you ideas, or even just 'triggering' ideas

I think this one is quite self explanatory…simply talking to friends often gives me this extra energy to go and do something. Sometimes it's just the conversation itself, other times it's something I've always wanted to do, but didn't know how to approach it, and friends are awesome at giving you ideas. Talking to friends doesn't always trigger the motivation inside me, but talking to friends is always nice

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

Thought of the day: Sitting in front of a computer is really bad for your posture - should be wary of your posture and do stretches regularly!

Ok, I admit that I am in front of a computer a good majority of the day - pretty much all day at work, then all night when I get back home. After a rather bad fall during on Tuesday during soccer asked a friend who is practicing physio and luckily she said all seemed good. Though she did also tell me that since I spend so long in front of a computer I really need to watch my posture - straight back, shoulders back and no poking my head forward to look at the monitor. In addition should also be regularly doing stretches to relax the muscles around the neck/shoulder area.

Been told time and time again about the posture (though it is so hard to sit upright!) but didn't realise that we should also stretch on a regular basis to relax/strengthen the muscles around the shoulders/neck. Guess that is one extra thing to do in the breaks I try to take every 30 minutes when using a computer.

Thursday, 29 October 2009

Thought of the day: Passion, focus and vision are all vital to achieving a goal.

In my many random readings, came across this article: 10 things Google has taught us, and I thought the first three points were quite good. You need passion to move forward and be willing to put in the hard work. You also need focus otherwise all your passion may be spread out amongst too many of your ideas. Lastly, you need a vision to tie together the "focussed passion" to work to an ultimate goal.

One of the quotes I quite liked from the article was to do with focus: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully". I have probably suffered from this fault myself - too many ideas and I seem to want to try them all out - will need to learn to pick carefully and say 'no' to the other ideas!

Friday, 30 October 2009

Thought of the day: All domain names consist of letters from the English alphabet, numbers, dots, dashes, underscores right? Well, actually no, meet: Internationalised Domain Names!

Was watching the morning news when I saw that the ICANN had approved domain names that contain non-Latin characters. My initial reaction was something along the lines of: Wow, that is awesome. Would be cool for non-English speaking people! Though it would mean getting to these non-Latin domains may prove tricky - you can't expect everyone to know how to type Chinese, Greek, Arabic etc! I wonder how this will work…

I had thought that Internationalised Domain Names were new and just introduced today, but a quick google later in the day revealed that I was very very wrong. In fact it was proposed in December 1996 and implemented in 1998 and a protocol to handle non-Latin domains had been agreed on, adopted and supported by many top level domains!

Today's announcement seems to be just an extension from IDNs as existing non-Latin domains still ended with .com, .kr, .tw etc but now with the announcement from ICANN these restrictions no longer apply. It shall be interesting to see how this unfolds and if the allowance of non-Latin extensions will mean greater use of IDNs on the Internet.

Saturday, 31 October 2009

Thought of the day: Auctions feel very much like gambling, and "3rd and final call" don't seem to be very "final" at all!

Attended an auction today (was only there to observe, didn't bid) but what I can say is it felt like the bidders were gambling that that extra $1000 or $500 in their bid will make their bid the winning bid. For at least 3 bids before the winning bid, I was able to sense the winning bidder felt like he had won, but was then out bid, so he tried his luck and put in another bid.

It was also very interesting to see how the auctioneer dragged the auction on when he saw that there was potential interest from one of the competing parties. In my opinion it was a bit unfair, since several times at the "3rd and final call" the auctioneer actually stopped and asked uncertain bidder "are you sure etc etc" and because of that it increased the price by at least $1000. Maybe all auctions are like that where "3rd and final call" isn't really final until the auctioneer is 100% certain that he has squeezed every last bid out of everyone.

ps. Not convinced that "Thought of the day" is a great name...been trying to think of another name all of today but couldn't come up with anything! Any suggestions…?
pps. This is my first stab at something like this - any comments, suggestions, feedback will be awesome!

A few notes before I start

1. The data/labels for all the graphs here have no meaning at all - just examples that I have come up with.
2. I'll explain each parameter probably only once (since they are generally the same across all graphs). If something is different or special I'll explain it again.
3. If you have any other tips/hints please share

Tip 0 (yes a tip before examples!)
Use this tutorial with Google's own Developer's Guide. Google's guide is quite good, but just confusing at times. I won't be going through every little bit since Google's guide outlines a fair bit, especially the technical syntax.

Example 1: Pie Chart

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=p3&chs=450x200&chd=t:73,13,10,3,1&
chco=80C65A,224499,FF0000&
chl=Chocolate|Puff+Pastry|Cookies|Muffins|Gelato

There are 3 parameters that ALL charts MUST have, and they are cht, chs, chd.

1. Chart Type (cht): Specifies the type of graph you have (pie, vertical bar etc)
2. Chart Size (chs): Specifies the pixel dimensions of your graph (width*height)
3. Chart Data (chd): The data that you want to display in your chart

1. Chart Type (cht) is quite straight forward - select the chart type you want, and put in the corresponding code which can be found from Google's Developer's Guide.

2. Chart Size (chs) is a tad more complicated but not much more (just needs a bit of trial and error). You specify the size of your graph in pixels: chs=<width>x<height>. Other than the maximum limit, the hardest thing is how big to make your graph? My tips are:

Tip 1: Give a rough estimate, generate the graph then press 'ctrl+a'. This will highlight the graph boundary so now you can adjust the size accordingly.
Tip 2: For pie charts, a rule of thumb is: w=2.5h for 3D charts and w=2h for 2D charts.

3. Chart Data (chd) is probably the most complicated as each chart has a slightly different syntax for data (see below examples and Google's Developer's Guide). For pie charts you need to make sure that the sum of your data points is 100 - ie. calculate the percentages and use the percentages as your data points.

Now onto the optional parameters - ones that allow you to customise the look of your chart and make the look pretty

Chart Colour (chco) uses the Hex representation (RRGGBB) to specify the colour of your chart. What colour you pick is really up to you. For pie charts you can just put in one colour and all the segments will be shades of that colour. Or you can put in more and the segments will be a gradient from the first colour listed to the last colour listed.

Tip 3: If you have a fair few segments in your pie chart, I find listing 3 colours works well. It creates a relatively nice gradient and makes it easier to distinguish between the segments.

Chart Labels (chl) specifies the labels for your data. It is optional, but you probably want to include them, so your chart will makes sense! With pie chart, it makes sense that the number of segments you have is the number of labels. So if you had 6 bits of data, you'll have 6 labels. However, unlike chd where values are comma separated, pie chart labels are separated by a vertical bar '|'.

Tip 4: If you want a space in your labels use '+' where you needed spaces. eg. Puff+Pastry

Example 2: Horizontal Bar Chart

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=bhg&chs=550x230&chd=t:100,50,115,80&
chxt=x,y&chxl=1:|Python|Java|Ruby|.NET&
chxr=0,0,120&chds=0,120&
chco=4D89F9&
chbh=35,0,15&
chg=8.33,0,5,5

Chart Axis Type (chxt) specifies the different axis that will be displayed on the chart. There are 4 types (x,y,t,b) and can be repeated (eg. you can have 2 x-axes). These axes are referenced by their index numer (that is the order you have specified them in). Counting starts at 0. So in the example, x-axis is #0, and y-axis is #1.

Chart Axis Label (chxl) specifies the label you want for the axis/axes. The syntax is generally quite straightforward with the axis number coming first followed by a colon':' and then the label names. There is just one small 'exception' (bug?) that I have discovered. For horizontal charts you need to "flip" the axis label and the data you provide. So if your data is chd=t:1,2,3,4 your axis label will have to be chxl=1:|Four|Three|Two|One. Again, this only happens for horizontal charts and I'm not quite sure why.

Note (not quite a tip): Just to re-iterate, for horizontal charts you need to "flip" (or reverse) the axis labels and data you provide for them to match. So the first label will match the last data, second label match the second last data etc. Note in the example, Python is the first label, but it has value 80 - the last data point. (Strangely enough, this doesn't happen for vertical charts)

Chart Axis Range (chxr) specifies the start/end range of the axis. The first number specifies the axis, second and third number specifies the start and end of the range respectively. In most cases, you will probably want your range to be slightly more than your maximum data value. (eg. in the above the maximum value is 115, so I have set the range to be between 0 and 120)

Chart Data Scale (chds) specifies how your data will be scaled. My general rule of thumb is unless you want to do some special scaling (eg. compare percentages of the values instead of showing the actual value) you will scale according to your range. Whatever you have set the min/max of your range (chxr) will be the min/max of your scale (chds).

In order to display your chart correctly, you will need to use both, Chart Axis Range (chxr) and Chart Data Scale (chds). By default the range and scale is 0,100 - but chances are you won't always want your axis to have a maximum of 100. Without correctly specifying these two parameters, your chart will still appear, but it will essentially be incorrect.

Tip 5: chxr and chds will generally be a pair and have the same values. The min/max specified in chxr will also be the min/max for chds.
Tip 6: If you want to display the data percentage-wise, the chxr and chds will differ. chxr will have range 0-100, and chds will be 0-max data point. For the example above, if the graph were to show the percentages of each bar the 4th line will be replaced with: chxr=0,0,100&chds=0,115&

Chart Bar Size (chbh) specifies the width of the bar and also the spacing between bars (and groups of bars). The first number (mandatory) specifies the width of the bar. The second and third are optional and they specify the spacing between bars in a group and between groups. In this example, the bars have width of 35, and each group (separated by commas in chd) is separated by width 15. As each group only has one data point, changing the middle value will make no difference (to have more than one data point for each group, you need to use vertical bars '|' - see examples below).

Chart Grid lines (chg) draws the lines behind the bars, making it easier to read the chart. Although optional, I think these really are the icing on the cake for the charts. The syntax chg=<verticalGridLines>,<horizontalGridLines>,<lineSize>,<gapSize> itself is easy, but getting the grid lines to draw correctly is harder. Of the four values, the last two are optional and determine what the line will look like when drawn. It really depends on personal preference and the type of chart drawn, but I find using 5 for each gives a nice dashed line. The first values is for vertical grid lines and the second is for horizontal grid lines.

Getting the grid lines to draw at the intervals you want (eg. every 10 units) is the tricky bit. Google by default assumes your axis range is 0-100 which isn't always the case, so some basic maths is needed. IF your axis was 0-100, then to have vertical grid lines every 10 units is simple: chg=10,0,5,5. But in the example the range is 0-120 so the grid lines will display incorrectly if you simply put in chg=10,0,5,5. To get the lines to show correctly for range 0-120, you need to 'scale' the grid line value. Luckily it is quite simple: 100/120*10 which gives you 8.333..., therefore chg=8.33,0,5,5. The formula is basically 100/MaxRange*IntervalAmount. Also, if the result is not a whole number, give the value to two decimal places, otherwise the grid lines will be slightly off.

Tip 7: To calculate the value to correctly draw your grid lines, use the formula: 100/MaxRange*IntervalAmount. eg. Your graph has range 0-80, and you want an horizontal grid lines every 5 units: 100/80*5=6.25, therefore you will have: chg=0,6.25,5,5
Tip 8: If the value calculated from the formula is not a whole number, go to two decimal places for more accurate grid lines. (You can go to three or more decimal places, but I find two is generally enough)

Example 3: Vertical Bar Chart

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=bvg&chs=350x300&chd=t:20,35,10&
chxr=1,0,40&chds=0,40&
chco=ff0000|ffa000|00ff00&
chbh=65,0,35&
chxt=x,y,x&chxl=0:|High|Medium|Low|2:||Task+Priority||&chxs=2,000000,12&
chtt=Tasks+on+my+To+Do+list&chts=000000,20&
chg=0,25,5,5

Chart Colour (chco) is quite straight forward. Note that for this example, I have used the vertical bar '|' to separate the three hex colours in order to get different coloured bars. If I had used a comma ',' then all the bars will be red (the first colour).

Chart Axis Style (chxs) allows you to apply a style to your axis. chxt and chxl (explained in Example 2) specify which axis you want, and their labels while chxs lets you specify the font colour and size for a particular axis. In this example chxs=2,000000,12 has set axis #2 to be black with font size of 12. Note: If you look carefully you'll see something "strange" in the chxl for axis #2 (Task Priority axis). The empty '||' on either side of the label is so the label will be centred.

Tip 9: If you want a second x-axis for say an axis label you can centre the label by having empty labels '||' left and right of your actual label. The number of empty labels will depend on the number of categories in your main x-axis, and how long your axis label is. In this example, the axis label is quite short and there is a total of 3 categories (High, Medium, Low) so i have put one empty label on each side of 'Task Priority'

Chart Title (chtt) specifies the title of the graph. Like other labels, if you want a space in your title use the '+' character wherever you need a space.

Chart Title Style (chts) specifies the font colour and size of the title. It is quite similar to chxs.

Example 4: Stacked Vertical Bar Chart

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=bvs&chs=350x300&chd=t:20,35,10,5|30,55,25,0|5,25,5,5&
chxr=1,0,120&chds=0,120&
chco=0A8C8A,EBB671,DE091A&
chbh=45,20,15&
chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|Pizza|Pasta|Pide|Salad&
chdl=Large|Medium|Small&
chg=0,8.3,5,5

Chart Data (chd) as explained in Example 1 specifies the data in your chart. However, note how the data for this slightly more complicated graph is written - it is separated using both commas and vertical bars. Each group separated by a vertical bar represents one series: the first group is Large, then Medium, then Small.

Chart Legend (chdl) specifies the legend for the chart. It is separated by vertical bars and corresponds directly to the way the data is represented.

Note that even though the largest individual data value is 55 (the 2nd value of group 2), the range/scale is put as 120 because the largest SUM of corresponding data values is 115 (sum of the 2nd values).

Tip 10: If you have a stacked chart, the range/scale will be the maximum of the sum of the corresponding values of each group. That is, compare the sum of all the first values in each group with the sum of the second, third values etc.

Example 5: Vertical Bar Chart

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=bvg&chs=350x300&chd=t:20,35,10,10|30,55,25,5|5,25,5,5&
chxr=1,0,60&chds=0,60&
chco=0A8C8A,EBB671,DE091A&
chbh=15,0,20&
chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|Pizza|Pasta|Pide|Salad&
chdl=Large|Medium|Small&
chg=0,8.3,5,5

Data-wise, this chart is identical to Example 4a - the only difference is it is not a stacked chart (bvs), but just a standard vertical chart (bvg). The only changes are in the chxr, chds and chbh parameters to make the chart display nicely. Note how the range/scale is now 0-60, since it is no longer a stacked chart so the maximum value is 55.

Example 6: Line Chart

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=lc&chs=450x330&chd=t:7,18,11,26,22,11,14&
chxr=1,0,30&chds=0,30&
chco=4d89f9&
chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|Mon|Tue|Wed|Thu|Fri|Sat|Sun&
chls=3,1,0&
chm=d,4d89f9,0,0,12,0|d,4d89f9,0,1,12,0|d,4d89f9,0,2,12,0|d,4d89f9,0,3,12,0|d,4d89f9,0,4,12,0|d,4d89f9,0,5,12,0|d,4d89f9,0,6,12,0&
chg=0,6.67,5,5

Chart Line Style (chls) specifies what the line will look like. The numbers are (in order) how thick the line will be, size of line segment and size of blank segment. So if you want a solid line (as per example) you will want the last value to be 0. Note, the line style is just the line - it does not draw the markers, that is specified in chm (see below).

Chart Markers (chm) specifies what the markers will be for each data point. Setting the markers is quite ugly - you need to specify the marker for each data point you have. Luckily, the syntax is relatively easy - the shape/type of marker, colour, data group, data point, priority. In this example there is only one data group (so the 3rd value are all zeroes) and you can see that the 4th value of each chm group goes up by 1 as it specifies the particular data point. The size is set to 12 to make the markers nice and big. Priority specifies how the markers are drawn - below or above the line and other markers.

Wow, so that finally concludes this tutorial which turned out much longer than I had imagined! Hopefully I've made sense, explained things well and helped you get a better understanding of how to use Google Charts API to get the charts you want/need. If you have any questions please feel free to ask, or if you have some tips please share them

When Google Maps was released in early 2005 it was quite cool to be able to see a birds-eye view of various places (even if you could only zoom in so far). Since then, there has been many improvements - more view types, clearer pictures, closer zoom etc.

In mid 2007, a new view type: Street View was made available. I must say, it is quite cool - Street View allows you to actually see the street as if you were there at the place. This view was only available to a selection of cities in the USA and Australia (the 'birth' place of Google Maps) was left out...until today!

Yes, as of today (5th August 2008) there is Street View in Google Maps for pretty much all of Australia! At first I was quite excited, as I've had a look at Street View in USA before (1 Infinite Loop ) and thought "Wouldn't it be cool if this was in Australia?". Now that it is in Australia I must say it is cool, but definitely also scary! In my opinion, being able to see your own house on Google Maps and with the correct (or a very close) address feels scary!

Though having said that it is definitely very cool! After spending quite some time just randomly looking at places, I begin to wonder how long it took them to 'capture' all the streets in Australia. Not only that, also how they could capture such great photos by driving a van around the streets.

Now that I'm slightly over the 'excitement' of Street View in Australia, I wonder if it is a good or bad thing that there is Street View? There has definitely been a lot of controversy with privacy that surrounds Street View (and now that I can see places I recognise it really 'hits home'). In my opinion, it is actually good - since if someone does have your address, and they are in your neighbourhood they can always just look at the Refidex and locate you; I guess with Street View it means people can 'preview' what they will see before they physically go there. It'd be interesting to know what others think.