Slashdot Mirror

You really don't see anything odd in these results?

1. Google Maps
https://www.google.com/maps/

2. Maps - Navigation & Transit - Android Apps on Google Play
https://play.google.com/store/......

3. Official MapQuest - Maps, Driving Directions, Live Traffic
https://www.mapquest.com/

4. iOS - Maps - Apple
https://www.apple.com/ios/maps...

5. Google Maps - Navigation & Transit on the App Store - iTunes - Apple
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap...?...

6. Yahoo Maps
https://maps.yahoo.com/

7. World and USA Maps for Sale - Buy Maps - Maps.com
https://www.maps.com/

8. New Night Lights Maps Open Up Possible Real-Time Applications ...
https://www.nasa.gov/.../new-n...

9. 'Duck Dynasty' vs. 'Modern Family': 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide ...
https://www.nytimes.com/.../12...

10. From Ptolemy to GPS, the Brief History of Maps | Innovation ...
www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/brief-history-maps-180963685/

11. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies: MAPS
www.maps.org/

12. Bing Maps - Directions, trip planning, traffic cameras & more
https://www.bing.com/maps

Disney World, and it's not in the park itself. Geez, you've got this all mixed up. Typical Californian, giving bad directions...

If you weren't such a tourist you'd know that Disney World is in Florida and Disney Land is in fact in California.

Disney World, and it's not in the park itself. Geez, you've got this all mixed up. Typical Californian, giving bad directions...

No it does not. OSM is a cartography portal, where you can map shit that's in the real world. You can't really do many useful things in openstreetmap.org but look at the map and edit it. If you want to use it like google maps, you'll have to either download the data and some software to interpret it for you, or use a third party service like mapquest. However, it sucks.

I agree, we should use OSM, so we make it bigger and better. But as I have to make a website were there're pinned points in a city map so everyone can see it, OSM is not useful for me. Sadly, it can't replace "Google My Places"..yet

This is currently inavailable: http://open.mapquest.com/

Or may be I'm overlooking, I just need a map where I can mark places and probably attach photos to it (like to show the front of a starbucks store). But in a whole country. As far as I can know, can't do it with OSM, without serious work.

As mentioned, http://map.project-osrm.org/ is one of the best routers that uses OSM data. There is also http://open.mapquest.com which might even integrate with the MQ mobile app so you can find a route in a browser, then send it to the MQ app to take in the car. There is also routing on http://maps.cloudmade.com/ although sometimes it seems like they are a little out of date.

But there is code being worked on to integrate OSRM into the osm.org website itself.

The main Mapquest site uses Navteq by default for US maps. They have a separate site that uses the OSM data: http://open.mapquest.com/

Give http://open.mapquest.com/ a try. It uses OpenStreetMap data while including many mapquest features, including satellite imagery.

Also, sometimes two roads are very close to each other, so when the device tells me to "turn right" I need to glance at the screen so see whether should I turn right now or go 15m and then turn right.

The smart thing to do would be for your Nav to say, "Turn right on Algonquin Street" rather than just saying "Turn right" and expecting you to stare at the screen to figure out which street it means.

Going into old fart mode, I remember back when you had directions printed out from MapQuest that would say "drive 3 miles and turn right on Algonquin." This way, you looked at your odometer and calculated 3 miles. When you hit about 2.5 miles or so, you started looking out the window for street signs on the right saying, "Algonquin." While you were looking out the window, you might notice that kid chasing a ball into the street or something. Ah, memories...

Hey! Get off my lawn!

http://www.mapquest.com/?q=52.484,13.3716

That. and yes it's comparable in size. but a giant chunk of concrete that is still sinking to this day.

changes usually appear on http://open.mapquest.com/ quite quickly, and that includes both rendering and searching. not too surprising, given that they employ some key osm project developers ;)

Ah, cool. Thanks for the links.

I just noticed that http://open.mapquest.com/ includes some changes and deletions I made near my house a few months back. It is good to see that someone is actually trying to use the data I've provided, and seeing this encourages me to provide more updates to further make OSM match reality...while simultaneously discouraging me from playing with Google's new tools, which don't seem open at all.

very. hopefully people will discover osm and "upgrade" from google - with osm, you can get entire dataset and do nearly anything with it.

several other mapping companies are contributing to osm - http://open.mapquest.com/, even http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/08/02/bing-maps-adds-open-street-maps-layer.aspx (although the link in the latter seems to be broken right now :) )

you can find other interesting uses of osm data here : http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM_based_Services

of course, there's always the fact that "map maker" was available in multiple other countries before "opening" it for usa. which means others have had a chance to ask "why do this if there's osm" already ;) http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Kompa/diary/10047

so i would like to invite everybody to join http://osm.org/ :)

Okay, that's a bit off-topic, but not that much when we discuss virtual globes and the likes. Here's a dismissed submission last week that I think worthy of sharing: "It's a dream come true. After MapQuest and Yahoo actively supporting the Wikipedia-like map initiative OpenStreetMap.org. Microsoft announced that they hired OpenStreetMap's founder Steve Coast for their Bing Maps team. But there's more, they committed providing orthorectified aerial imagery and more to the project. From the official announcement: "Continuously innovating and improving our map data is a top priority and a massive undertaking at Bing. That's why we're excited to announce a new initiative to work with the OpenStreetMap project, a community of more than 320,000 people who have built high quality maps for every country on earth. Microsoft is providing access to our Bing Aerial Imagery for use in the OpenStreetMap project, and we have hired industry veteran Steve Coast to lead this effort. [...] As a first step in this engagement, we plan to enable access to Bing's global orthorectified aerial imagery, as a backdrop of OSM editors. Also, Microsoft is working on new tools to better enable contributions to OSM." Microsoft already added the OpenStreetMap layer to Bing Maps last August."

Clearly, this means to me that open data has won that round and that Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ are in deeper trouble today than a few months ago.

Now to go back to Google, at the moment, but it could change anytime, they're going on a different road away from OpenStreetMap with their Google Map Maker.

Microsoft's frigging address is One Microsoft Way. How much clearer can they make it?

>>>>> It took me 4 days to drive from Boston to Seattle

>>I used to have a car like that. Took me 4 days to cross Belgium.

(blinks) Um. Okay. Boston to Seattle is over 3000 miles and takes 46 hours acccording to this mapquest search - http://www.mapquest.com/maps?1c=Boston&1s=MA&2c=Seattle&2s=WA

In response to your sig.... 4 8 15 16 23 42

    1) Coordinates in the Central African Republic according to Google Maps

    2) Somewhere in the pacific according to Mapquest

    3) The mystery numbers on "Lost"

    4) The lottery numbers I lost with last week

    5) An arbitrary set of numbers to make people wonder what you're on about.

    6) 42 = the answer to the life, the universe, and everything. The others are numbers leading to that answer. To understand the answer, you must understand the question. For that, you'll need a much bigger computer. We can build it. We'll call it "Earth".

    7) As a single integer, the number of years old the earth will be, when it simply falls apart. :) (start singing REM "It's the end of the world as we know it")

    8) A phone number in a non existant area code.

    9) A local number in any of a number of countries, depending on the dialed country code.

    Did I get it right?

As if.

Because if you go to the same location in mapquest, and turn on aerial view you see the buildings in all their glory.

And if you go to the Google Maps version and turn on Street View, you can see the buildings in living colour. Ground Level.

So, basically, Google's being stupidly secretive, as you can use their own tools against them.

Dur.

RS

For instance, there is no reason for handguns to be available.

Have you ever been hog hunting? Or in close quarters combat? How about trying to protect your family when robbers broke in? Though I haven't in a long tyme I used to go hunting in Hog Valley, FL outside of Gainesville where the University of Florida is located. Although only for training I've also been in urban and close quarters combat. And then I wished I did have a handgun, not the .45 APC but something like a .451 Magnum or .41 Magnum.

Note the parks within easy running distance if the police should happen to interrupt your B&E and the hospital if you throw out your back hauling all that stuff out to your truck.
  Also, Jeff is a contributer to Open Source software so please don't steal any of the media (CD's, thumb drives etc) since you can probably download much of it from Freshmeat or his own website
 

I found two odd things when googling Jeff; first, that he lives in apt #5, not #4 so perhaps Jeff is trying to arrange that an annoying neighbor get robbed?
      Second, he once posted a number of conspiracy theory pages that are now all 404. So perhaps this isn't really Jeff issuing this invitation? perhaps it's the CIA looking to take him down for posting the Truth?

I'd post more but it is really hard to do invasive, privacy violating searches while bouncing a toddler on one's knee and keeping him away from the keyboard.

... can you copyright a gallon of petrol through the law firm's letterbox?
I think your comment is inappropriate and uncalled for.

DOZIER INTERNET LAW, PC
301 Concourse Blvd.
West Shore 111, Suite 300
Glen Allen, VA 23059
PH: (804) 346-9770 FX: (804) 346-0800
possible home
9319 Meadowfield Ct
Glen Allen, VA
Add to Address Book, Map (804) 262-9737
cybertriallawyer.com

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&country= US&popflag=0&latitude=&longitude=&name=&phone=&level=&addtohistory=& cat=DOZIER+INTERNET+LAW%2C+PC&address=301+Concourse+Blvd.&city=&state=&zipcode=23059
who:
http://www.dozier-internet-law.info/
when:
upcoming appearances listed here
http://www.cybertriallawyer.com/
If, like me, you are a big fan of Bull Dozier's work to clarify copyright law, drop him a note or give him a call or stop by one of his talks.

I hope the distribution isn't limited to third-world countries; there are some poor areas right here in the U.S. that could use these machines. Certain Indian reservations come to mind...

Like the Rosebud reservation in the Blackhills, in 2003 it's unemployment was 85%. Or "Fort Mojave Indian Reservation along the California-Arizona-Nevada border, the unemployment rate climbed from 27.2 percent in 1991 to 74.2 percent in 1997."

I need a computer with decent outdoor screen and great battery life, one that's cheap enough I can afford to let it sink into a swamp without diving in and fighting the alligators and leeches for it (I do wildlife research in Florida). This machine may be just the ticket.

Na, go ahead and wrestle those gators, then cook yourself some gator tail. For some extras go to Hog Valley for some wild boor.

I set up a website for a brick-and-mortar store about seven months ago on my Mac. I then went to Google's maps and provided a link for directions. Then Google quit working with Safari browsers. Now, I know Apple's browser has its problems and has so many that many Mac users are not using the Apple-supplied beta browser because of problems with their release version but I cannot afford for anyone to not be able to load a map due to a problem with someone's map API. So I switched the website to use Mapquest.

Yes, I know that Mapquest is a slag-heap of a company since AO-Hell purchased it. I also know they're not innovating, they're just resting on their laurels and being used to provide AO-Hell with cash. But it works with all browsers I tested on Windows and Macintosh platforms, including some pretty obscure ones like iCab and Netscape's Navigator 2.0. Unless of until I get absolute assurances from Google that they'll never roll out new code again unless they test it first, I'm not using Google Maps for anything.

Haven't tried Microsoft's. Probably won't either as they won't work well with Macs or Linux or Unix and I cannot afford to disenfranchise anyone.

My work is in the Real Estate Industry. My FIRST tasking of the day is to visit the houses that have come on to the market. Sometimes it is 1 or 2, or it has gone as high as 30 to 40; And about 99% of the time, some place different than before. My current method is to screen scrape MapQuest for directions, and distances. It sure would be nice to use an algorithm that could get the job done; I also think the Web Master at MapQuest would like it to, so that the rest of my kind could use it.

You may want to use other sources for maps instead of Google, perhaps Mapquest, http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=addr ess&address=1+Observatory+Cir+NW&city=washington&s tate=dc&zipcode=20008
a much better shot of Cheney's residence(just click the link to view the aeriel view instead of the map). However those big squares they got all over the place on Google do look quite menacing. I have found, however, that its a tossup between Google Earth and Mapquest for what you can and can not view as I found before with Area 51 and a few other choice locations around the US and world.

I know I'd rather live in Lancaster, PA than Silicon Valley. Even if it has a ton of culture, sitting in my car for years of my life to get to it and then waiting in long lines to see said culture isn't appealing.

Thankfully, I found a job at a technology company near Lancaster.

Heck, I can get there in less than 10 hours.

And This one will get you from Intercourse to Climax. In just over 33 hours....

Here's how to get from Blue Ball to Intercourse.

Then you're back in the city, of course. :)

Detroit to Chicago is 280 miles.

100 miles west of Detroit is about halfway between Jackson, MI (birthplace of the Republican party, not many other claims to fame) and Battle Creek, MI (headquarters of Kellogs and a nice airshow). Albion MI would be the closest (travelling on I-94), and you've probably never heard of that little town unless you live around here, and maybe not even then.

(I post this not to argue with you but because I have found many people who don't live in America have a hard time comprehending how large this country is, especially Europeans. One of my uncles recently told me about a guy who flew into Boston from Europe, and asked for directions to St. Louis for a lunch meeting. Ouch. You can do that in Europe, especially with a fast rail connection; not so much here.)

They probably have another "secret" base to do this work from.

You seem to be talking about Schriever Air Force Base. Interestingly, this is also pretty close by. According to TFA, one of the reasons for the move is the commute between Peterson and Cheyenne Mountain. From Peterson to Cheyenne Mountain is a fairly ugly drive directly through Colorado Springs (the end of that route isn't quite right, but Mapquest doesn't seem to know exactly where the entrance to NORAD is. By contrast, from Peterson to Schriever is almost entirely through open country with minimal traffic.

You can probably find some good satellite photos on Google.

You hardly need satellite photos. I'd guess some people living near the Broadmoor can probably see traffic in and out of the mountain with nothing more than binoculars or maybe a small telescope at most. OTOH, there's not really much to see -- almost everything is underground, and about all you can see from the outside is the entrance to a tunnel into the mountain. About all you'd see from a satellite photo would be a road that disappears into the side of a mountain with a LOT of antennas on top (though a lot of them belong to the local radio stations, TV stations, Sprint Broadband, etc.)

They probably have another "secret" base to do this work from.

You seem to be talking about Schriever Air Force Base. Interestingly, this is also pretty close by. According to TFA, one of the reasons for the move is the commute between Peterson and Cheyenne Mountain. From Peterson to Cheyenne Mountain is a fairly ugly drive directly through Colorado Springs (the end of that route isn't quite right, but Mapquest doesn't seem to know exactly where the entrance to NORAD is. By contrast, from Peterson to Schriever is almost entirely through open country with minimal traffic.

You can probably find some good satellite photos on Google.

You hardly need satellite photos. I'd guess some people living near the Broadmoor can probably see traffic in and out of the mountain with nothing more than binoculars or maybe a small telescope at most. OTOH, there's not really much to see -- almost everything is underground, and about all you can see from the outside is the entrance to a tunnel into the mountain. About all you'd see from a satellite photo would be a road that disappears into the side of a mountain with a LOT of antennas on top (though a lot of them belong to the local radio stations, TV stations, Sprint Broadband, etc.)

http://www.mapquest.com/directions/main.adp?go=1&d o=nw&rmm=1&un=m&cl=EN&qq=1ADqpk24ofDkuc4IG4Ehs%252 fAEjgZR2BG9ix2kc%252b7W14LbXPmRnioEBbFoFkkui0XuKa2 %252bPbBdd3At1fgcXaHhjGhe0EWtEWjyAn51K9p7bvF7zBsZp Fu6weesL%252b%252ffyZ8uXkaHosUFYQYQTYnXwSmw45%252b 441BWRwka6HyvjwYVcyE37%252fzQnub48Q%253d%253d&ct=N A&r=f&rsres=1&1y=US&1ffi=&1l=&1g=&1pl=&1v=&1n=&1pn =&1a=2200+MISSION+COLLEGE+BLVD&1c=SANTA+CLARA&1s=C A&1z=95054-1537&panelbtn=1&2y=US&2ffi=&2l=&2g=&2pl =&2v=&2n=&2pn=&2a=2701+San+Tomas+Expressway&2c=&2s =&2z=95050

Before gmaps, mapping was starting to fall off charts of desktop app and only for gps. with gmaps and the various mash-ups, the application is limitless

Wrong. What, you think that everybody has the money for a nav system? Mapquest is one of the Web's most popular sites, and still, in my opinion, still has a better interface than Google's. (although they should damn well get rid of that top text-entry box, above the address entry)

Before gEarth, satellite imagery was a classified thing given only to the rich and priviliged. with gEarth, satellite integration into mapping became almost required and more people have access to it

Sure. Microsoft's Terraserver never existed years before Google even got its own domain.

Before gSpreadsheet. MS was pretty much the only game in town. OOo was there, but just offers nothing that MS doesn't. There was just no incentive to use it. but since gSpreadsheet allowed for on-line spreadsheet edit on reliable/fast servers. I've started using it to keep lists (DVD collection, anime, game high scores, etc)

That's nice. If I want to use Google Spreadsheet, then I'll need it to have a LOT more features. It's nice for simple things, and access-anywhere and multiuser edit are very useful features, but it's not going to be going toe-to-toe with Excel for a long time.

They also fail to show my house, built 3 years ago. The sad thing is, mapquest also fails to give directions to my house... built 3 years ago.

What? I don't get it.

Its really quite nice here.

Question: What's the distribution on the other 70%

You can search for -- and get maps of -- all the other known reserves right here.

There are a couple of problems with these things, both familiar to MapQuest users.

1) Things change. New roads (sometimes whole communities) get built, and there is some latency in getting that updated data where it can be used by your GPS-mapper (whether in your car or on the web).

2) Driving-direction algorithims are good, but not flawless. MapQuest, for example, provides driving directions that will usually get you where you want to go, but may have you take an odd route to get there.

The bottom line: If you expect your Tom-Tom (or whatever) to magically do all of your thinking for you, you'll eventually wind up going over an 'unexpected' cliff ...

Indeed, CalTech is in Southern California, a bit north of Los Angeles. MIT is in Massachussetts, but not near any town of note. The mapquested driving directions between the two covers just under three thousand miles.

http://www.mapquest.com/directions/main.adp?do=nw& go=1&r=f&aoh=&aot=&aof=&1a=1200%20E%20California%2 0Blvd&1c=Pasadena&1s=CA&1z=91125&1y=US&1l=hx%2BBcN MyRQc%3D&1g=Jq9QnhLqEKg0e3w7QXK0sQ%3D%3D&1pn=Calte ch%20Library%20System&1pl=626-395-6405&1v=ADDRESS& 1ffi=1&1n=&1qn=CalTech&2a=&2c=&2s=MA&2z=&2y=US&2l= EAZk4Uqwp9c%3D&2g=kt4TVg2IZ58%3D&2pl=&2v=STATE&2ff i=&2n=&2qn=MIT&panelbtn=2&1qc=Libraries-Institutio nal&q=CalTech&2pn=MIT&2sb=Mit-Research%20Lab-Elect ronics%7C77%20Massachusetts%20Ave%7CCambridge%7CMA %7C02139%7C423592%7C-710937%7C617-253-2509%7CUS&2q c=Colleges%20%26%20Universities

Yahoo retains the largest audience in the United States, though its visitor growth slowed to about 5 percent last year.

24 hours is getting there.

You're exactly right: the southern border of New Hampshire to Miami, Florida is almost exactly 24 hours.

By "getting there", you mean that's just north-to-south, and is not the furthest (Key West is around 3 hours south of Miami, and Canada is about 4 hours north of New Hampshire's southern border).

Going east-to-west, which I've never done, I would imagine it would take 3 days. Well, Mapquest says that it'll take 49 hours to go from Manchester, MA to Manchester, CA (two coastal cities, close to the same latitude), but of course you'll need to sleep; with two people at minimum you could probably do it in 3 days, non-sleep-stop (still have to stop for gas, food, bathroom). With just one person I'd budget closer to a week, unless you want to fall asleep at the wheel.

So, yeah. This is a big place!

I find that Mapquest gives much better maps than Google. When zoomed out mapquest gives many more street names, so that you can actually find what you're looking for, or looking for a better point of reference. Check out the links to see what i'm talking about. Mapquest is zoomed out a bit more, but it still shows quite a few street names, google on the other hand shows very few street names until you zoom in a bit more. Google doesn't put the street names unless it can fit it within the width of the street.

Google Maps
Mapquest

You know, everytime I want to bring up a map, I still type in mapquest in the URL.

I know Google maps exists, but typing google in the URL brings up http://www.google.com./

Typing mapquest in the URL takes me directly to http://www.mapquest.com./

They both give me the exact same results, just one gets me there quicker than the other.

Agreed. Given that Google is now 24% down and dropping from their peak several weeks ago, I (as a Google Shareholder) don't want to see the stock slide any more.

First they miss their earnings forecast this last quarter, which limits the amount of new investment from banks (which only means they should take care of their existing cash), mostly due to competition in advertising.

They are already under attack for providing content blocking for China, now may have to scale back their image searches, are under governmental requests for search records on providing pornography to minors... meanwhile, there're competing search engines, and their tricks in google maps are being duplicated.

When you put all the pieces together, Google needs real intelligence to weather the next few months, or they are going to lose the short-term trader's confidence... and with that, their value drops.

I don't know if Tennessee will have much much impact on ocean currents, since it's the only place on your list not on the ocean! However, Nashville is one of the most popular entertainment centers in the world, and it is often called the Third Coast (with New York and Hollywood on the other two coasts).

The Tennessee Valley Authority has three nuclear plants which produce about 30% of the power TVA generates. Tennessee has some of the cheapest electricity rates in the nation.

In addition, we have Oak Ridge, which produced the uranium used for the world's first atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project. They even have a festival now celebrating their secret past.

But we don't have any oceans. Sorry! :-)

Printer-friendly mode sometimes has ads. The Scotsman has them, as does Mapquest.

You could always search for a hosts file that will block a good portion of ads, and use it in conjunction with Firefox's image block.

AJAX isn't an end in itself; it's just a tool. It's like JavaScript. Back when the web was old, if you wanted to do data validation for a form (for example), you had to send the page to the server and wait for a new page as a response. When JavaScript became popular and well-enough supported, the webpage itself could check data before sending it to the server - although the checks couldn't be that complicated. AJAX is similar; instead of limiting yourself to either using a new page or client-side data, AJAX lets you use JS to access server-side data.

As a concrete example, play with Google Maps for a couple of minutes, then try using a map from MapQuest. It will quickly start to annoy you that you can't drag the map and that you have to click to a new page to move the map around. GMaps isn't pure AJAX, admittdly, since it deals with picture data - it can just write the image tags to the page and move them around as you drag. But the side text and the map searches are AJAX - when you click search, you don't open a new page with the search results. You can keep using the map; the client will turn your search into an XML request, Google will process it, and send the results back as XML - asynchronously.

For another example, I wrote this week a dead-simple chat program (because I needed a specific feature). It was simpler to write a web app instead of a real app, because the latter would require networking, windowing, and whatnot - the web interface made GUI easy and manual networking irrelevant. Without AJAX, I would need to have the page reload every second to check if there are new messages - very distracting. I had the system asynchronously check for messages in the background, and when one arrived, update just that part without refreshing the page.

AJAX is a tool to be used when necessary. Don't freak out over it, but realize it's there whenever you need to use a more application-like interface instead of a page-like interface.

Well, as someone who actually DOES live in rural Wisconsin, I can assure you that you're quite wrong.

It is also interesting to see the most popular web sites. Start by typing www. into google suggest. The top 10 are:

1. www.yahoo.com - Search/Directory
2. www.hotmail.com - Email
3. www.google.com - Search
4. www.ebay.com - Shopping
5. www.msn.com - Portal
6. www.aol.com - Portal
7. www.ebay.co.uk - Shopping
8. www.irs.gov - Government
9. www.mapquest.com - Maps
10. www.amazon.com - Shopping

Typing one more letter shows you the top sites for that letter. Here is the top for each letter:

• a is for www.aol.com - Portal
• b is for www.bbc.co.uk - News
• c is for www.cnn.com - News
• d is for www.dictionary.com - Reference
• e is for www.ebay.com - Shopping
• f is for www.food.gov.uk - Government
• g is for www.google.com - Search
• h is for www.hotmail.com - Email
• i is for www.irs.gov - Government
• j is for www.juno.com - Internet service provider
• k is for www.kbb.com - Consumer information
• l is for www.lyrics.com - Music
• m is for www.msn.com - Portal
• n is for www.nick.com - Kids
• o is for www.orbitz.com - Travel
• p is for www.pogo.com - Games
• q is for www.qvc.com - Shopping
• r is for www.rotten.com - Information
• s is for www.sears.com - Shopping (sorry slashdot)
• t is for www.target.com - Shopping
• u is for www.usps.com - Government
• v is for www.verizon.com - Telephone service
• w is for www.weather.com - Weather
• x is for www.xanga.com - Blogs
• y is for www.yahoo.com - Portal
• z is for www.zappos.com - Shopping

This is some random commentary to make sure that my post has enough characters per line on average to get by the lameness filter. Just a few more words should do it. Then I will be over the limit. Maybe you would like to hear a bit about my projects: Attesoro - A internationalization editor for Java programs. Coinmill - A currency conversion website with many currencies, and features such as abilty to parse English sentences asking for currency conversion. Java Utilities - Utilities for common task in the Java programming language such as parsing CSV files and string manipulation.

I don't think monopoly means what you think it does.