I am definitely impressed with MSN maps on first use.

First thing that comes across is the load speed, it definitely kicks google out of the water, even though im pretty sure their servers must be loaded since they just launched. Another aspect that stands out is the smooth scrolling, another +1 for virtual earth.

They have also included some features such as "locate me":- ( cant say much since both google and microsoft cant find my house and simply give me the map of houston ), "scratch pad":- which remembers all the places you searched for and also keeps track of where you last left off using cookies.

MSN maps is brilliant, though I dont see myself completely switching to either service I will surely be using them both side by side while comparing the results.

As most of us know msn's virtual earth will be releasing tomorrow. Thanks to the google cache you can have a look at the web page here

After coding in C and C++ for such a long time , it really takes some effort to keep in mind that there is a quite a big difference as how strings are evaluated in languages such as PHP or javascript when enclosed in double quotes as compared to single quotes. Proper use can definitely help in performance wise.

I think its safe to say the general rule of thumb when it comes to deciding when to use what is use single quotes when outputting plain strings and html with no variables since the PHP parser wont have to look for variable, and use double quotes when there are variables, special characters, symbols .

Here is a nice PHP benchmarking site http://www.blueshoes.org/phpBench.php

Something that would be cool is to have the complete map of the USA ( google map) with major highway intersection cams. Basically all the cams on one map.

I so hope they dont screw up the transformers like how they do with everything else

With the Google Maps API release, I definitely wanted to play around with it and come up with something fun. First thing that came to mind was to show the various highway cameras on the maps and in those small boxes show a screenshot of the current conditions. I now present to you Houston Traffican Cams powered by the Google Maps API which can be found here http://kashif.f2o.org/gHoustonTraffic.html . The maps shows about 10 popular intersections with little markers. Click on the little markers to show a little camera shot .

These are the intersections that it is currently showing ( If you would like to see more, leave me a comment :) ):-

I-10 at Heights.

I-10 at TC Jester.

I-610 West Loop at Bellaire Blvd.

I-610 West Loop at Beechnut

I-45 at Cross Timbers.

I-45 at Tidwell .

I-45 at Little York.

59 at Hillcroft.

59 at Weslayan.

59 at Shepherd

59 at Beechnut.

Please let me know if there are any improvement that I can make to it. If there are other intersections that you would like to see you can visit the Houston Transtar and drop me a line at kashif-khan at excite dot com.

Excellent little tip to use your gmail account as an organizer

http://www.tipmonkies.com/2005/05/12/use-gmail-as-a-personal-organizer/

After a simple little test, seems like yahoo maps have the most up to date information. They were able to locate my place while the other services like google, a9 didnt even know that it existed. +1 Yahoo