CNet: Amazon search pictures your destination

Early Thursday, the company announced the first phase of its service, called A9.com Yellow Pages, with 20 million images from 10 cities, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Seattle.

People can call up a business listing to find contact information (with an Internet-to-phone dialing service), reviews, a local map and a photo of the business' facade. With a feature called "block view," people can also click to see adjacent businesses or surrounding neighborhoods.

To accomplish this feat, the company has sent a handful of vans onto the streets of America, touring around with digital video cameras strapped to their rooftops. The cameras are synchronized to a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver so that A9 can map local addresses to their images once recorded onto a computer hard drive. Because GPS can be inexact, the company has proprietary software to further map some images with addresses.

So far it has taken photos of roughly 1 million businesses in 10 metropolitan areas: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, Ore.

24-hour Sci-Fi Movie Marathon movie list has been offically posted, subject to change as always.

Went to Macworld today with Kathy ((Onpiano) from (e:) west). We spent most of the time ogling iPod accessories. Not that I own an iPod, which not only would require initial capital to purchase, but also an ongoing budget for gadgetry upkeep.

[size=s][cell phone pix below][/size]


iPod Shuffle listening station


Underwater listening station?


And the ultimate iPod accessory...





Damn that thing is gorgeous! It's basically gadget bling when you come right down to it - combining two of my favorite things. I have to get me a paying job soon.

The rest of the time was spent lusting after the new version of Garageband (charmingly pronounced GARageband by the British demo guy). Oh what I wouldn't give for a disposable income!


The Mac faithful congregating at the Apple booth

(e:) west version of the story

Speaking of cinnamon... [inlink]terry,377[/inlink]

I remember reading about this in Health a while back. I couldn't find that article online, but found this one.

Cinnamon joins cholesterol battle

The 40-day study, of 60 people in Pakistan with Type 2 diabetes, found that one gram a day of cinnamon -- one-fourth of a teaspoon twice daily -- significantly lowered the subjects' blood sugar, triglycerides (fatty acids in the blood), LDL (or "bad") cholesterol, and total cholesterol.

and if that's not enough -

Finally, there may be an indirect health benefit to be had from cinnamon, according to Taiwanese scientists writing in the July 14 issue of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. Cinnamon oil, they found, kills mosquito larvae more effectively than DEET, a common pesticide and mosquito repellent. The next step is to test it against adult mosquitoes.

Random notes:

I was listening to some Laura Nyro and I would recommend her to all you Streisand fans out there.

I was just looking at some pix of the mansion (I am suffering from serious mansion-envy) and it's amazing how quickly you guys settled in. It looks so empty in these pictures[inlink]matthew,489[/inlink]compared to when I was there just a week later.

As for me, I just unpacked and put my suitcase away. I think if estripwest is going to have a snowball's chance in Alameda, I'd better get a roommate (or two) to take care of me.

Had an interesting encounter waiting for my flight to Buffalo. This woman sat down next to me and we had quite an animated conversation about her job as a porn star. She's also an internet entrepreneur. I don't think the Hasiidic Jew who was sitting on the other side of her appreciated it though.

Just because of that juxtaposition I had to snap a stealth pic with my cell phone.



Maybe I'll fill in the whole story some day. Her web site is (porn site). I'm in an all-day class tomorrow, so I know if I don't upload this now I never will. (Not like that would be any great loss...)

She really had the most arresting blue-green eyes I've ever seen.

Story continued here [inlink]twisted,122[/inlink]