Results tagged “google”

Google announced today that it will provide free wireless internet access at 47 U.S. airports and on all Virgin America flights for the holiday season. Starting now through January 15, anyone should be able to log on to free Google WiFi at BWI, which is the only local airport included in the program. You can find the complete list of participating airports here. Naturally, Google says it plans to use the free service as a means to advertise its products, like iGoogle and Google Chrome, to potential new customers. Still, paying that extra $9.99 for a day pass for internet access at most local airports is a huge drag, so until every airport starts offering it for free, all the time, we'll take what we can get.

Greater Greater Washington's Michael Perkins has been doing great work chasing down why, exactly, WMATA and Google can't come to an agreement and get Metro data into Google Transit. This post gets into the details, but the short version is that WMATA isn't inclined to play nice with Google, apparently because the agency thinks its schedule data might be worth something. No, they're not sure if they can get any money for it, but they'd like to find out: Metro has been talking about bidding out a half million-dollar contract for a consultant who can tell them whether they might be able to monetize their schedule data. Today Perkins saves them the trouble by reporting the likely answer: no. He's got Google on record saying that they don't pay New York for its transit data, despite a history of the MTA trying to extract money from those using its data. If the Big Apple can't shake down Google, what hope do our local transit bureaucrats have? It's looking an awful lot like WMATA is stonewalling developers, inconveniencing its riders and preparing to waste $500k for nothing. Maybe Metro should focus on moving people around the city and leave the dreams of internet mogul-dom to the Californians.

              

Any fan of the space program should recognize quite a few faces roaming around D.C. this week. Last night, the biggest gathering of Apollo astronauts in years arrived at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum for the annual John H. Glenn Lecture featuring the Apollo 11 crew, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, along with NASA's first Flight Director, Chris Kraft, and of course, astronaut and Senator John Glenn himself. The audience was filled with other Apollo astronauts, as well as the STS-125 crew that flew the space shuttle Atlantis to repair the Hubble Telescope in May.

Here's the statement we got back from a Google spokesperson about this morning's seemingly large outage in the Washington, D.C. area: "The issue affecting some Google services has been resolved. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we'll share more details soon." So basically, not really an answer at all. We'd press them on the issue, but today's outage really drove home how completely and totally this company appears to have taken over our ability to function on a daily basis. Angering The Google would be like hanging up a big sign in our yard saying "We Hate Oprah" in Chicago. You really shouldn't do that if you value your life. UPDATE: More from the Official Google blog: "An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions. We've been working hard to make our services ultrafast and "always on," so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens. We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again."

It's not just you. It's all of us, too. Gmail, Google Reader, the entire Google family of products seems to be out across the region. Friends in other cities say they're not having the same problem, so who knows what's up. In the meantime, while you're waiting for the ability to do practically anything else on the Internet, consider leaving say, one or two or twelve comments on DCist! UPDATE 12:15 p.m.: We have Gmail! We have Gmail! International crisis averted.

As Metro General Manager John Catoe promised earlier this month, Metro will finally make public its schedule and routing data, starting tomorrow. As the Washington Post reports, users in San Francisco used BART rail data to create an iPhone application. You can bet that work starts on an i-app for the District before lunchtime Monday. The Post gives credit where credit is due, highlighting the efforts of the crackerjack bloggers at Greater Greater Washington in organizing the petition drive to ask Metro to release their data. One enterprising software developer you can expect to make good use of the data now that it doesn't exclusively belong to Google: the incomparable Tom Lee.

Last night, a friend explained to me something I already knew: This Facebook terms-of-service kerfuffle was much ado about nothing. What, exactly, did Fbers think would happen? Facebook would assume control of the world's supply of 25 things? And this move wouldn't pave the way for the next Myfacester?

$68,000. That's how much money WMATA earned from web advertising in the last fiscal year. It's also, according to the Examiner, what the agency says is keeping Washington's public transit riders from being able to use Google Transit, a story which has picked up considerable steam since Greater Greater Washington got it started and we reported on it last weekend.

The Red Line was an utter mess this last week. Track work caused delays of up to 30 minutes in many places last weekend. A fire on Friday at the Friendship Heights station backed trains up during the morning rush hour. And DCist's staff email threads were filled on Monday and Tuesday with complaints about Red Line trains being backed up for one reason or another, for reasons that remain to be discovered.

Here at DCist, we pride ourselves on providing D.C. area residents with one of the best ways to slack off while at work -- reading and commenting on our web site! But today's best procrastination method has to be this Google Search 2001 tool that Google released as part of its ongoing 10th birthday celebration. The search page lets you easily find out whether you are you cool/lame enough to be found on the Internet in 2001. When searching my name in 2001, the first page returns a listing for my having been attending Vancouver Film School (true!) and a non-working link to a play review I wrote for the University of Arizona's Daily Wildcat in 1998. Not exactly a big web presence, but a presence nonetheless. How do you rate?

It's been quite a week for the Orange line, with three long delays in three days (not to mention last week's storm-related delays). Monday's derailment of a train between the Rosslyn and Court House stations left people clamoring for a way to get home, but luckily, it wasn't as severe as it could have been. Of course, no one would argue that being stuck in a tunnel for a long time with air conditioning on one of the most oppressively hot days of the year isn't tough, but imagine what could have happened instead.

Libertarian-leaning Republican presidential candidate and hero of the Internets Ron Paul has gotten himself a blimp, and it's headed this way. According to a just-released flight plan, the blimp, which will read "Who is Ron Paul? Google Ron Paul" on one side and "Ron Paul Revolution" on the other, will launch from Elizabeth City, N.C., Monday and flyover Washington circa 3 p.m. the same day, with a rally planned for 4 p.m. and another re-launch...

If you've taken a D.C. taxicab since the stroke of midnight last night, you may have been surprised by a cab driver insisting that you pay an extra $1 gas surcharge. Didn't the gas surcharge expire in September? It did, but last week the D.C. Taxicab Commission quietly passed an emergency measure to bring back the $1 fee, beginning at 12:01 a.m. this morning and lasting until 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, January 29, 2008. “Prices...

Three of the Capitals' best five offensive players are still out with minor injuries. That's the good news. The bad news is that, after being absolutely destroyed by the Carolina Hurricanes last night, the Caps are tied with the Atlanta Thrashers for the worst record in the East at 5-9-0. Last night's loss would have been easier to explain if the Caps were missing ten, or maybe twenty of their best players. Two Hurricanes scored...

Early yesterday morning, the tragic news was announced. On Myspace, a bulletin appeared that read: Ian Mackaye, lead singer of influential hardcore band Minor Threat as well as Fugazi passed away today in a Baltimore hospital room. Outside a Fugazi show in New Jersey last night, the singer was struck by a car passing by the front of the Ventura Theatre. Brunswick police say that the driver allegedly stopped, but then fled the scene. There...

Written by DCist contributor Andrew Chriss Falls Church offers a diverse array of ethnic cuisine, providing a homespun, lower cost alternative to higher-priced and better-decorated offerings in the District. That being said, it's been a while since the days when I frequented the BBQ, kosher deli, and pho establishments in Loehmann's Plaza. On this night, the destination was Eden Center, Falls Church's Vietnamese epicenter on Wilson Boulevard in Seven Corners. But where to eat? The...

>> There's a new webcam available showing the progress of Monument Realty's Half Street project, which includes the expansion of the Navy Yard Metro station. [Near Southeast DC Redevelopment] >> Georgetown student pleads not guilty in hate crime investigation. [WJLA/AP] >> Members of the Metro board representing D.C. are pushing for higher parking fees at suburban stations in order to avoid increasing bus fares. [Examiner] >> A bunch of streets will be closed this...

Dulles-based AOL announced today it will move its corporate headquarters to New York. The shift is just another in a series of announcements regarding an overall restructuring of the Internet service provider that has included massive layoffs and a switch from fee-based subscriptions to a reliance on advertising revenue. The New York move was explained by AOL to be designed to place executives closer to the advertising industry based in Manhattan. So far we're hearing...

YouTube user artschoolscrewup only recently uploaded this video from D.C.'s July 4th parade, which shows the guy playing Uncle Sam on stilts falling on his butt. A quick search reveals that Uncle Sam on Stilts Taking Abuse is on its way to becoming its own YouTube genre, but questions abound: is it funny for any Uncle Sam to look silly, or only ones on stilts? And why the prevalence of putting Sam on stilts...

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,...

Good morning, Washington. We've just been catching up on the rather scary looking but thankfully not terror-related explosion in Manhattan yesterday. Naturally, our parent site Gothamist has complete coverage of the steam explosion that occurred on East 41st and Lexington Avenue (41st between Lex and Third) just before 6 p.m. yesterday. Unsurprisingly, the explosion, which killed one person and injured 30, had New Yorkers worried for a while, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said...

>> We tragically forgot to mention in About Tonight that all left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers will gather on the Mall for Screen on the Green's first showing of the summer, Annie Hall. The movie starts just after sunset on the screen between 4th and 7th, NW. Bring an umbrella and/or a Faraday cage, as the thunderstorm watch goes until 9 p.m., but the screening is more or less rain or shine, unless lightning...

Some of you may remember our venerable DCist Maps project, which provided an overlay of the D.C. Metro system in the classic WMATA style, plus the ability to build your own customized maps. We were proud of the li'l guy, but he had clearly begun to show his age: designed in an era when 800x600 was still a common screen resolution, the map window was ridiculously small. And although we spent an awfully long time...

The Associated Press has discovered the one thing State Department employees are more frightened of than a backlog of passport applications: wasps! Cicada-killer wasps to be precise, which have infested areas around the State Department's headquarters at the Harry S. Truman building on C Street NW. A memo obtained by the AP tries to calm the fears of Stateys regarding the menacing looking wasps by pointing out that they are "generally not aggressive and do...

There's been all kinds of crazy stuff found on Google's new StreetView application, which we wrote about before - guys who appear to be peeing on the side of the road, climbing fences into houses, and so on. While D.C. won't be getting StreetView for a little while longer, there is still some strange stuff to be seen with good ol' Google Maps. Joyriding has long been a problem in D.C., where (usually) kids steal...

Andre the Giant, Schmandre the Giant. The other day we noticed one of these stickers on a lamppost at about 13th and R Streets NW. It's good to see some grassroots (lamp roots?) support for the D.C. United star, and Dan Steinberg over at the D.C. Sports Bog has been on the case for some time. For those who don't know, "tiene un posse" is a reference to the Andre the Giant Has a...

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti...

If you're anything like us, you've been experiencing major geek covetousness ever since Google Maps launched its Street View functionality late last month. The feature (which may seem similar to past users of Amazon's A9.com) shows street-level photos of locations. Users can move smoothly from spot to spot, rotating their view and taking in the sights. Unfortunately, Google Maps' coverage of D.C. doesn't feature any of the blue outlines that signify Street View-equipped roads. But...

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried...

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with...