Draggable routes is arguably the most significant change to Bing Maps. “This is a great (and much requested) feature added to Bing Maps allowing you to generate a route, then in the case that you need to change the route, you can simply grab any part of it and drag it to where you want the route to actually go,” says Microsoft’s Chris Pendleton. “To use draggable routes, click the directions link in the welcome pane or the car icon near the bottom of the welcome pane. Enter a start and end, generate a route, then grab anywhere on the route to move the route line. The route will regenerate for you.”

With the zoom bar, you can now jump to specific zoom levels rather than just zooming in and out, and if you want driving directions or traffic info, you can enter specific commands in the search box like “Bellevue, WA to Space Needle” or “Seattle Traffic.”

You can now embed maps onto blogs or sites by clicking the share button when the map is where you want it to be. You can then copy the code or click the “customize view” link to bring up the embeddable map customizer.

As far as navigation, there is a new selection of features on the button bar with the following:

- “Welcome” loads the welcome pane

- “Car” loads driving directions

- “Star” loads My Places, formerly called Collections

- “Envelop” loads the ability to share the map with someone via email, copy a URL or embed the map into a web page

- “Printer” is for printing

- “Traffic light” will load the traffic overlay

“We’ve moved the processing power closer to the user,” says Pendleton. “Using Microsoft’s ECN, we now have Bing Maps running in data centers in 7 locations around the world. This means wherever you are around the world, you will access Bing Maps from the closest geographic node to where you are physically located.”

In addition to that, the default Bing Maps home page dropped from 678kb to 484kb and Pendleton says it “zips through the pipes” much faster now.

Art Swift, the vice president of marketing at MIPS, explained in a statement, “Android presents a compelling value proposition in bringing internet connectivity and a broad range of applications to MIPS-based digital home devices.  We are working closely with customers and partners to ensure that critical technologies are available for developers to take advantage of Android for consumer electronics.”

And since MIPS has previously worked with Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Linksys, Pioneer, Microchip Technology, Motorola, and Sony, that could mean that some very exciting and polished stuff is being lined up.

Indeed, digital TVs, home media players, mobile Internet devices, set-top boxes, and VoIP systems were all mentioned in the MIPS press release (although nothing resembling a concrete release date was shared).

So Android fans may not need to keep their fingers crossed much longer.  It looks like it’s becoming just a matter of time until the operating system is found in a lot more products than mobile phones.
source:http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/08/05/processor-specialist-promotes-android

Nationally, online job demand has been relatively flat over the last several months after sharp declines in December 2008 and January 2009.Nationally, there were over four unemployed looking for work for every advertised online opening, as the number of unemployed increased even as the number of advertised openings remained steady.

“Online job demand has held relatively steady at around 3.3 million advertised vacancies per month for the last six months,” said Gad Levanon, Senior Economist at The Conference Board.

The monthly number of advertised vacancies in 2009 continues to average about 1.2 million below the monthly average of 4.5 million in 2008.

“While we are not seeing declines, the sluggish nature of labor demand is another indication that the path to recovery is likely to remain a long haul,” said Levanon.

Looking at the overall trend in online job demand, the South showed the most positive improvement. In July, large states that continued to show modest increase include Virginia (4,700), Maryland (3,300), and North Carolina (1,400). Among the smaller states in the South, Oklahoma (500) and Alabama (400) increased modestly in July. Florida and Georgia, which have been relatively flat over the last few months, declined 4,400 and 3,700, respectively.

source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/08/03/online-job-openings-see-modest-gain

The online database will allows users to access information on 22,000 works of art from the Louvre, and provide high-resolution images along with their locations in the museum.

Before today, the Atlas database was only available in French and could be accessed via the Louvre’s website, which receives more than 10 million visits a year.

The launch of the English version of Atlas was started by and funded with a $380,000 grant from the American Friends of the Louvre, a group that was founded in 2002 to strengthen ties between the museum and the American public. The new version of the database will offer English-speaking visitors in depth information on the Louvre’s large collection.

Atlas was launched in 2003 and offer access to a database of 26,000 of the 35,0000 works on permanent display at the Louvre. Currently 5,500 artists in a variety of media are on the site. Atlas also offers online visitors a virtual album, which allows them to customize their own personal tour of the Louvre.
source: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/07/30/the-louvre-opens-online-english-database