SketchUp and Google Earth

Wow. I was honestly blown away when I discovered this combo. I have to take my beanie off to the guys at Google, they come up with some fantastic ideas. I'm talking about SketchUp and Google Earth. At some point SketchUp was obviously taken over by Google because its now toting their flag and much like their other products, is available for free download.

For those of you unfamiliar with SketchUp, it is a simple yet really powerful 3D modelling tool, mainly for use architectural design but can be used for anything really. Getting a good looking building together literally takes seconds, but here's the really cool part: Google's version allows you to place your building anywhere on Google Earth. This allows you to see your building right over the satellite image of your home, with all the contours and everything.

If you're really a contributing sort of person, you can upload your creation to Google's database, which I am assuming will one day replace the blandish looking, poke-your-eyes-out grey buildings they currently have in the program. I'll give this one 8 bananas, but only because it's not everyone's slice of pizza.

My favourite Firefox Add-ons

One of my many favourite things about Firefox is the add-on support. The only problem is that there are a ridiculous number of them available and it is impossible to know which ones are cool. Here's a list of my favourite ones:

• TabMixPlus - Enhanced tab browsing options. I can't emphasize how much I appreciate this add-on. There was a small time when it didn't work with firefox 2 and I was lost without it.


• IE Tab - This simple extension allows you to view a page using Internet Exploiter as a tab inside of firefox. Very useful for those sites that look all screwy in the 'fox.


• DownloadThemAll! - A great download manager, very easy to use. "Add another chunk, Mr. Ahab, he's not coming down fast enough."


• StumbleUpon - Say goodbye to work and hello to the top ten browsers list.


• Selenium IDE - Warning: this is a nerdy one. Unit testing for html pages.


• Tab Catalog - Nifty little add-on which shows you little previews of all your tabs. This is a nice built-in feature in IE, so its great to have it in firefox too.

Thats all for now, but there are tons of great ones out there. Check out Mozilla's recommended add-ons here.

www.stumbleupon.com

StumbleUpon.com is a crime. Sites like that just shouldn't be allowed on the web. Its really just a site that you plug in your interests and it sends you to a random page that it thinks you would like. Before you know it you have been caught up in a hopeless cycle of finding cool sites. Its definitely worth getting the toolbar, but if you do, then don't expect to get any work done. You can spend hours just clicking the Stumble button.

Brabys maps and Shell Geostar

Ever been looking for directions? Here are two fantastic sites worth having a look at:

www.brabysmaps.co.za/brabys/directions.asp

and

www.shellgeostar.co.za

Both give you step by step directions to your destination with distances. Braby's gives you the speed limit as well. It also provides you with the option to change your route, but I couldn't for the life of me get it right. That feature would have been nice because both sites sent me down some extra roads. For example, for my trip down to Plett it sent me off and on the main highway a couple of times.

Either way the maps did end at the right place, and they even started pretty much from my house.The distance and time feature is also really handy for calculating long trips.

Updated: Found a lot more bugs with these sites. Still quite handy though (especially if you're trying to clock up kilometers on your car allowance :D) for generating maps to functions and emailing them.

Lately I have found Google Maps quite handy. I used it to find my way out to the last church camp out past Magaliesburg, and it was great. The roads were all there - well until we got to the dirt road, but I had no pie-my-eye dreams of seeing that so it was fine.

Knocked it down a notch as promised. Got you're spice weasel? BAM!

www.wheretostay.co.za

Here's another nice site I found useful in searching for holiday places to stay. The web interface is really nicely done and the site is so easy to use. The information on each resort is really good and up to scratch. I'd give this about an 8/10.

www.wheretostay.co.za

neatfonts.com

I found this catch on blendernation.com. Neatfonts.com is a free online font library. I always find it hard to find a good font and usually end up going with something plain, so I am always looking for good font sites. Neatfonts.com is nice and easy with a ton of really nice looking fonts and quick and easy download.