Windows Live Mashups

Here's a neat web page that shows off how developers have mashed up Windows Live maps with other data. Very cool!

An Example of an ASP.Net Website

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to find a privately owned suite to stay in during my stay in Waikiki. The owners, Irene & Wes, are incredibly nice people and I promised to build them a website to better advertise their suite. It's now done and live.

I must confess that I went well beyond what I had originally intended to do but I'm very pleased with the end result.

On the technical front, I still have a long way to go to be a "CSS Master". I find lining up side-by-side columns especially tricky. I tried to you DIVs as much as possible, rather than tables, but the latter sometimes prove invaluable.

The content of the site is presented in pretty basic ways, but there are two interesting highlights I'd like to draw your attention to:

1. Maps - These are just embedded Google maps but I think it's incredible what they've done to make it so easy to incorporate sophisticated maps like these into anyone's website. Back in 1995, when the web first dramatically expanded to the general public, did anyone foresee that such information would be available so readily?
   
   
2. Photos + Videos - Photography has been a passion of mine since I was a kid. Now, in the age of digital photography, it's incredible what images one can capture. Beginning with this trip I started using a Canon G9. It's a 12.1 MegaPixel gem that is reportedly "as good as it gets before short of getting an SLR". It's also very good at capturing videos, though I've found that even my 2GB memory card gets quickly filled when doing that!
   
   Anyhow, in times past, when I wanted to display hundreds of images, I would typically construct a traditional menu of hyperlink buttons like this one. But for this Waikiki site I wanted something different. So I decided to try out the accordion control. I think it worked super well! With so many photos, having companion thumbnails was a must. There is a bit of a delay loading the thumbnails into the cache the first time but it's not insurmountable, at least not with my high-speed connection.

Incidentally, for image manipulation, my current set of tools are these:

• Image Editing: Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2
• Image Viewing & Intelligent Conversion: Irfanview (free)
• Video Maker: Microsoft Windows Movie Maker (free)
• GIF Animation Maker: UnFREEz (free)