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Thursday, June 28, 2007

Drag Directions in Google Maps

Google Maps improved the directions feature. First, you can right-click a part of the map and select “directions from here."* Then right-click another part of the map and pick “directions to here”. A route will appear in blue, and you can now click a spot anywhere along that route, and drag it to another position... say, because you want to make a stop someplace nice, or you prefer driving along the coast (Google also put up a video showing this in action). I gotta say this drag & drop feature works extremely smooth, updating the route in real-time...

Ongoing comments

[Thanks Luke, Darren, Billy M. and Megan!]

*Note that in Firefox, you might have disabled to allow sites to replace the context menu; if so, toggle your options at content -> advanced.

Google Desktop for Linux

Google just made their Google Desktop “offline search” (and gadgets) program available for Linux (it’s already available in Mac and Windows versions). Screenshots by Linux users in the comments are much welcome! [Thanks Danny and Clarissa H.!]

Google Gadget Ventures
By Colin Colehour

Wow, Google is going to offer grants for developers to improve their gadgets, they announced:

We plan to offer two types of funding: $5,000 grants for gadget developers who want to invest time making their already successful gadget even better, and $100,000 seed investments for new gadget-related businesses. For now, applications are restricted to gadget developers who have more than 250,000 pageviews per week on their gadget.

[Update: Disclosure – Colin worked as a contractor for the Google Partner Solutions organization for 1 year; at the time of him writing this post he already did not work there, and we also originally disclosed this relation in Colin’s first blog post. Just figured it is worth it to repeat it in his posts. -Philipp]

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