大象传媒

Nice use of google map....
Live in Silicon Valley - lots of mistakes do happen but it's fun!

Oops, this doesn't work in Firefox under Mac OS-X! (no map display, clickable items corrupted)

Completely Unusable.

So what's wrong with words?

Experiment Shmexperiment!

Sounds like a jolly to me :)

Don't forget to check the latest technological developments at Dean & Deluca in St Helena

I used google maps to chart my wine drinking progress (from a novices perspective) throughout last year to accompany my ongoing wine blog.
See

Its a really useful tool.

Charlie

If you're visiting companies in Silicon Valley you've got to go to their staff cafeterias for lunch - if you're used to British canteens you'll be in for a very pleasant surprise! The one at Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus (Mountain View, a few hundred yards from Google) was good but my friends tell me that Google's is fantastic! Apple's (Cupertino) has a sushi bar! Also note the free beverages (coffee, tea, soft drinks, fruit juices, smoothies, etc) and snacks to keep the employees going... Some companies even have branches of Starbucks in their buildings.

The headline on the main page says:
"Valley mash-up
Follow our journey through America's tech heartland"
which led me to assume it was a guide to rawkus nights out and techno/electronic clubbing in San Francisco, now that would be a great use for google map!

I do not approve this program of yours. It looks like a road map for lazy or ignorant terrorists.

Please do not do it.

Google is a media company like any other. Why is the 大象传媒 promoting their services? If you want to keep your license, then best avoid blatant plugs for commercial services. And that holds even when their commercial model is based solely on advertising.

What - no Apple? They are right there - in Cupertino.

"ops, this doesn't work in Firefox under Mac OS-X!"

Works fine on a Proper Computer running Firefox.

Nice technology!

Very nice. And it works perfectly for me on Windows XP / IE 7.

haha i live there :D. I pretty much know where all the places...well most of them anyway...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

why would i care?

We've been using Google Maps for around a year now on
Is it more exciting in London than Silicon Valley?
I'd say so.

Possibilities for Google Maps mashups seem to be endless.

Hopefully Google will update their satellite images to show a lot more detail outside of towns and cities one of these days. Then we could follow in detail the journeys of the great explorers, and so on.

Here's a mash up I did last year to illustrate a cycle route in to Paris from the airport, using Google Maps and links to photos taken on the ground:

I've been in Silicon Valley since 1980 (now on my 5th Start-up). You HAVE to visit the Original SV Start-up... the garage where Hewlett and Packard started in 1939. Its been restored in Palo Alto. There's also a great computer museum near the Sun Microsystem campus in Mountain View that's worth a visit. I also like Graham's post about visiting the cafeterias... it does give you a real snapshot of 'campus life'.

Have fun. Enjoy the nice weather. It'll be in the 80's on Sunday!

Good, I like it. Could we have some info on how its done? I was thinking of doing something similar. My company has an old version of IE and it works just fine. Funny I thought "everything" worked in Firefox ;-) The pictures are a nice touch and this idea should be further developed.

Works great with Firefox and XP Pro. I am off on another mind-expanding tangent (or as my boss likes to say, goofing-off.)

BTW, what does a jolly sound like anyway? I've never heard one here in the US.

Neat experiment. Might be a good idea to also include a legend, ie, explain the significance of the letters on the pointers in the map.

Echo comment #15 - useful to know how you've done this.

"Oops, this doesn't work in Firefox under Mac OS-X! (no map display, clickable items corrupted)"

im using MacOS X and Firefox and the map displays fine, and clicks fine too. Just a problem with your computer :)

Good Job! However, I prefer "endnotes" with small mash-ups like this. After the mash-up put one line links such as:

C. "Meebo!" (Mountain View, CA)
D. "Sony Goes Home" (San Francisco, CA)

, the Google API can do this with zoom level to reduce the hassle of close-stacking data points.

And I second a stop at Cupertino!

(OS X 10.4.8ppc, Camino 1.1b, works fine.)

Unfortunately this just isn't that exciting (especially if you grew up there).

May I suggest next time mounting a 1080p high-def jvc camcorder to the roof of your car and doing the drive from all those checkpoints while filming. Then viewers could download an edited-down virtual tour in high def and get a much better idea of the effect you are trying to create. A bit spendy, but a cool idea huh??

Works fine under Firefox & OSX. Do you have your Mac plugged in correctly because mine works fine!

mmm, must be your OS X / Firefox config, mine works fine as does Safari. It seems rather pointless though. The wineoogle however is a different matter.

Of course everyone left for Texas and SXSW this week !

If you want to see what's hip tech wise on the left coast you may wish to check out:

Nice to see where I live is on the map, even though there's no marker yet on your map.

Works fine for me, in current Firefox2 under OS X (current 10.4).
Please, less troll-feeding!

I found a Google maps mashup/personalisation tutorial here:

no mention of austin, this journalist clearly does not know about the US tech industry

www.AlphaConferences.org/Conferences automatically plots the location of events in their calendar on a map; and then people can make a booking.

www.tgresidential.com plots houses for sale or rent on Google Earth so someone can fly in to the area to decide whether to look further.

Works fine for me in Firefox/Mac OS X

Hi,
it seems like you might not have considered one of the fundamental drivers of the valley.

Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto -- that's where most of the Venture Capitalist offices are -- that fund the startups. Billions of $ by now I'd guess (in equity and direct capital)

Not that I've actually been in any of the offices :) still working on the elevator pitch.

Is this News? Please correct me if I am wrong... but I thought this was supposed to be a news blog...

Keep bashing the U.S.. You know we all do bad and evil things and we have nothing to be proud of. We are only a bad influence on the entire world and nothing good comes out of the U.S. Did I cover it or are there more jabs you would like to poke at us?

You also need to visit:

a) Sand Hill Road
b) Bucks Pancake house
c) Frys
d) the HP garage where it all started.

I love Google and I love your use of their maps tool.

Rock on Google and Google-users!

wow, cool! How come u don't show some of the other "points of interest" in the area such as the homeless encampments, toxic waste dumps, ugly urban sprawl, etc.... or is this just another sanitized 'Silicon Valley' showcase and not a realistic "journey through the heartland" of the most class-divided society in the overdeveloped world? p.s. in America, "heartland" usually refers to the Midwest 'rustbelt' anyway

Mac Firefox/Safari is does well. Apple should be represented. They are tech leaders, are they not?

With respect to item #35: yes, you must visit Frys! There are several around here...

Also, you should try to visit NASA Ames while here.

Have fun!

"Oops, this doesn't work in Firefox under Mac OS-X! (no map display, clickable items corrupted)"

Works just fine on a Mac running OSX and Safari.

I'm very familiar with this region, and my wife works in the area. Apple, Google, Yahoo, eBay, and Adobe are the big dogs there.

Hi,

If you come to the Oracle HQ let me know. I know a place for great fish & chips.

Also - come see my home town of Alameda, i will show you the tunnel where the road chase sence in Matrix 2 was filmed.

BTW - Frys is the best

Massbay, just... stop. One Mass. person to another; stop it.

I do have one question... would the people who think this trip was incomplete without seeing the slummier areas be so keen on an American focusing on the areas of Europe you nice people refuse to discuss with outsiders? Or is it a matter of pride to act like none of you are poor, homeless, living in slums, criminals, and so forth? In short, lying? The riots in Paris were not happening because of middle-class boredom.

Wonderful use of the Web, and some really good reporting. I recognize the same Silicon Valley that I have visited and felt the energy from.

Star Eyes..

He should go to East Palo Alto then to Palo Alto, Then back again. - its a short walk over 101, pop in to the Ikea, have a beer at the Four Seasons

Jesus is confused by the focus on unrelated sociological issues in a blog about one specific area of the world and its relation to the TECH industry.

Jesus no like switch of subject without due cause. Repent you sinner!

Oh...and it seems to work just fine using Firefox with Mac OSX.

Too hard to figure out so I gave up.

Wouldn't an index called San Francisco with a headline for each article be simpler and easier to use?

you should also do a piece on the change to DST, what a pain in the A$$ that is... just in the middle of updating my exchange server...

Second all the posts above:

You must visit FRY'S!

don't forget to check out stanford university the brain of silicon valley

if you want to know about silicon valley you need to start from stanford university

Ashley Hinton wrote:
Oops, this doesn't work in Firefox under Mac OS-X! (no map display, clickable items corrupted)

Dunno about that.
I am able to use everything fine, I am using firefox 1.5.10 running under Mac OS X 10.4.8

In fact, I use this same machine to design and test a site that uses Google Map API. Do you perhaps have an older version of Firefox?

I live here in SV, and have for more than 50 years. I'm a mile or so from the Google campus, and just up the road from many of the other luminary companies. I look at some piece of that Google map every day.

It's clear to me that most folks, even from the US, cannot conceive of what's happened here. When I was a little girl, in the late 1950s, there were stop lights on Highway 101, and 60,000 people in San Jose. It was an agricultural region. The growth coming from the technology industry has been unimaginable.

It's also clear to me that we would never have succeeded without help from the rest of the world--India, China, Vietnam, Mexico, and the list goes on. The start of this incredibly diverse place was, by my recollection, some time in the 70's. Today, I have friends teaching in our local schools who often have classes where 25 or 30 foreign languages are spoken at home. In one fateful class, no two children had the same language spoken at home. California has huge educational problems, many related to our diverse, growing population.

Someone asked about the poor, and yes, we have the poor here, slums and problems with housing. We don't have social programs that are nearly as well developed as those in many parts of Europe. And yes, there's toxic waste and other problems. But I also think that if you come to Silicon Valley, dreaming of a better life, there's a good chance that it can happen here. Come and see for yourselves. You can go anywhere here and see anything. You are welcome to find our best *and* our worst.

I've lived in Europe, and have a great love for its history and beauty. Arcitecturally, we lay claim to tilt-ups, which are hideous, and the odd high-rise. And maybe, we don't love the arts like we should, but for me, there is indeed, no place like home.

Spend your whole time in San Francisco, the Marin Headlands and Point Reyes. Indeed, these are the jewels of Northern California. Why waste your time in Silicon Valley business parks and prosaic suburbs anyhow? Ironically, mosy people who live/work in the valley scarsely visit these very same places.

you should go a little farther "south of market" to South Park...what used to be the hub of SF start-ups and now dismally vacant. steps away is the building that used to be home to pets.com

if anyone remembers what that means :\

use

works just fine with me. Using Mozilla's Firefox 2.0.0.2 in San Francisco, CA

Daren,

Presently I am looking for angel funding for my business plan. I won a business plan contest with an idea about managing workflows.

Perhaps, we can meet and I'll give you some perspective on the nerve wracking first months of a start-up.

I am typically in Palo Alto or SF.

If you are going to Silicon Valley, your trip will not complete without visiting UC Berkeley (one of the major sources of engineers in the Bay Area, not to mention one of the TOP universities in the world, beating Stanford) and Cupertino (home of Apple Computers i.e. Mac).

Yes

Your 大象传媒 is biased, they need to come to my country (Kazakhstan) where technology and straw is extensive.

These American companies like google have a monopoly. My friend Carchoo does a much better jobs with his search engine goggles. Please visit for educational experience of a lifetime. Your valleys may be made of silicon, but ours are paved with gold plated goats. Look forward to you visiting and you producing an excellent mash potatoe of our country.

Works great on mac in Firefox and Safari. My only question is that what took so long for this concept to be thought up?

Its a great week to Visit Silicon Valley, supposed to be in the 70f/20c all week.

If you have the time;

Gotta visit Nvidia in Cupertino along with Apple, and then AMD/ATI in Sunnyvale and Intel in Santa Clara, also Adobe's main office in Downtown San Jose could be interesting.

Nice, it's a start for the 大象传媒. Next I expect 大象传媒 weather to use Google Maps then we'd be getting somewhere!

I've used Google Maps to allow people to .

You should go to Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic in the Presidio too.

Visit Santa Clara University. Great school and top notch basketball program where Steve Nash once roamed; hopefully will make the March Madness Tourney. Surrounded by the big schools of the Pac-10 (Stanford and Cal), Santa Clara is one of the smallest campuses with amazing beauty.

I was born and raised in San Jose, some distant time in the past before the term "Silicon Valley" was coined and I am always interested in what visitors think of the area.

I'd like to invite you to come have a look at the company I work for - Codexis. We are a small private Biotech company based in Redwood City who specialise in making industrial biocatalysts for chemical processes. Our enzymes help to make chemical processes greener, in fact we won the Presidential Green Chemistry Award last year !!

I don't get it, what's the purpose? It doesn't show your route, there's no labels for what the coloured markers mean or the letters on them. Is this better than a list, Oh hang on it zooms...

So you've ticked a box, "Ooo I've put news on a google map"

You should be thinking about story telling without the latest trends in mind, you've impressed a bunch of exec geek wannabes (just getting it after 3 years). Impress your audience like you do with the rest site. don't loose focus of what you do best by jumping on the latest geek fantasy, tell the story to everyone for everyone easily accessible.

My father is blind and uses a screen reader to read the web and has no access to the links in the map. This is a shame as there's no obvious gains for sighted people too?

nice try and keep trying but please think about why your doing these things and not just cos it arouses sado execs.

Cool idea. We tried something similar on our vacation to London, the inverse, but couldn't quit get the technology to match up. We HIGHLY recommend a delightful restaurant in Half Moon Bay, late afternoon venture over to Mirimar Beach restaurant and check out the history but don't miss the sun setting on the horizon before sampling some good culinary treats. Get out of the cities and the congestion and you won't be sorry you did, enjoy!

I've been all over the world and, for me anyways, I LOVE CALIFORNIA!!! Yah, everyone has a complaint but Silicon Valley is where I will live someday. I enjoy all the smaller towns and love the big ones too. Rock on and enjoy America! Tell your friends too. George W. will be gone soon and we'd love to have Europeans back visiting - and with the weak dollar, it's a hell of a deal.

Comment number two is incorrect - at least for my Mac/Firefox combo. Mac OS 10.4.8; Firefox 2.0.0.2.

All runs well.

Works like a charm using Safari on my Mac. No viruses, spyware, popups or crashes to get in the way of looking at it either...

Just a note. I live in Stockton, CA. USA and I enjoyed your project and the tour of the area and history from your prospective. It was fun. Fred

Good morning:

You should drop by Cisco, Intel, UC Berkeley Apple. Why?:

Cisco: is the network and no matter how you shave it Cisco is going to run how you get their. Show me a major RFC without Cisco as an author.

With most of their revenue coming from ISP, what is the plan for the wire/wireless to our work and homes?

Intel: The chip is how we will do it.

UC Berkeley: Multi-threading with 60 to 80 core processors on your PC in 5 years. UNIX is our future?

Apple to confirm UNIX is our future?

Been using Google Maps for a while now on my Movie Locations Site - . Currently looking into Microsofts version too.

yeh i think its all pretty cool silicon valley load of techno !

Apple to confirm the marketing of UNIX is our future...;) Only Apple could make a 30 year old OS trendy.

Good use of the technology available (Google map). Keep up the good work

Makhmood Hussain

Another SV local, second generation in the valley even, I would say that there are some critical 'musts' that are missing.

Apple, ya it is not the top operating system, but it still makes a splash, and one can't doubt the impact that iPods are having on the music industry.

Ebay, near Hwy 17 and Hamilton, this is another 'splash' company. It may also be noted that Ebay is more popular (population %) in the UK then US.

Sun Micro systems, "The network is the computer"

As mentioned in above posts, Fry's Electronics should be included. This chain is not well known outside of the valley, but in the valley they are the are meccas (and each store has a distinctive theme) for technically skilled people working on home projects (aka, customer service is not good, but the return policy, product selection, and prices (when on sale) are good)

Cisco should be on there.

Interestingly, before the electronics industry moved in, there was and still is, a rather substantial aeronautical industry. Lockheed Martin has an engineering branch here, and NASA's Moffett field is here.

Facebook is out of Palo Alto.

Yahoo is another valley product.

For the Tv lovers around, TiVo is also out of the valley.

Netscape was out of here and created one of the first major Internet browsers

Stanford must be mentioned, (may it be noted that their team won the DARPA grand challenge, an autonomous vehicle race across 150ish miles of desert)

With them comes Sandhill road, the money bags of the area. That is the same street that SLAC, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is on.

'The Tech' is another place to check out. In the heart of downtown San Jose, The Tech Museum of Innovation is an interactive museum centered around technology and it's impact. Though directed at students, it's fascinating exhibits are also a blast for even seasoned engineers.

One last note that you (Darren Walters, or any readers) might be interested in, is that there is a FIRST Robotics completion [www.usfirst.org] going on March 15th, 16th, and 17th at San Jose State University, if you are still in the area, it is a blast to watch, and some local tech celebrities usually make a showing on Friday and Saturday as judges. (Steve Wozniak seems to show up every year) Additionally, the competing high school students are "Tomorrow's World's" shapers. In 5-10 years, these students will be engineers designing the technology all around us.

--Scott, San Jose

Hi Darren,

I'm a recent Oxford graduate that left investment banking to relocate to the Valley. I recently wrote a viewpoint piece for the 大象传媒 Business section here and would love to catch up with you if you are still out here. I work in the Obvious Corp offices in South Park, San Francisco. They made Twitter, which is making big waves out here right now.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Kulveer

it would be a nice use of Google maps, except you have mashed up the mash up. seem that you have just put it in because its the new fad!

What you can do is place a text navigation, the last thing i want to do is to have to drag a map around to try and find something to click on..

Nice try, but next time learn the software 1st!

Realise this is an experiment, but like it. Like the way I can move the map around on a pick up and drag basis without using the direction keys as it gives a more precise viewing of the area. Can't understand why so many people want to tell you about THEIR experiences, when that was not part of the subject matter!

This is a bit old-hat now isn't it?

There are some really cool uses of google maps closer to home. One of my favourites shows based around underground stations. Great for a busy exec!

Zolly.

"I do not approve this program of yours. It looks like a road map for lazy or ignorant terrorists."

Excuse me? If a terrorist had the drive and enthusiasm to target any of these companies they would. Finding the addresses of companies on this scale is not a difficult job and therefore I think your comments are somewhat hysterical.

For example: - pick an office!

Jim Purdy, you are an over imaginitive idiot.

The Silicon Valley is also located outside SanFran and Santa Clara. I would be interested to read about companies that can bring up something useful for everyone. The movie business seems to be waste of time for me. It does not bring any value to the human kind, except the BS. Real face of Silicon Valley is fake companies for buy-out, Indian companies, few large companies based on marketing (and selling obsolete CPU architecture), military companies financed from federal budget, that's it. Why do you write fake stories?

Doesn't work on my machine

Flickr's got this kind of mashup. It lets people combine maps with photos and link pictures to specific locations like San Francisco, say.

There are around 130 photos already associated with the city alone - take a look at

Alex @ Yahoo!

Took a look at your html - superb

A nice way of sending someone a map - we could all send maps this way. Putting the images on flickr and linking to them - why not. Works fine with IE 7

Peter Walnut's post 84 is amusing. Among the fake companies producing obsolete technologies are Intel, Apple,
Cisco, Google, Yahoo, Oracle, and HP.

Mill Valley Made the MAP!!! That's my home town, one of the greatest places on earth. The weather is always warm and only a 15 min drive to the city.

Another post, places to see... Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale a computer bone yard.

HSC Electronics Supply in Santa Clara an electronics bone yard.

Bits and pieces of old tech, usually working, that you would be embarrassed to say I bought it new when it was $$$.

The map kept becoming unresponsive on my work laptop (but I am using IE6 embedded in Lotus notes for this.
Worked fine in FireFox & Opera on my openSUSE 10.0 & 10.2 machines at home, though.

I've worked for a Silicon Valley company for 2 years, and was a customer for 5 years.

Been to San Jose many times, and can echo the point about Fry's :-) amazing amount of kit, you can spend hours in there, if you could manage it as hand luggage you could pick up a nice 70" flat screen for cheap bucks.

Also for the more important things I'd recommend the Britannia Arms in downtown San Jose, great Fish and Chips, English Football and all the right beers, be careful on the Pear Cider though kicks like a mule.

Nice idea, like it. Provides some nice context around the locations. (I am a geographer after all!)

Sure technology is about the future and not the past???? you should be visiting the makers and shakers and getting info on what is to come not what has been, there is enough on the web to cover this already

Mash-up?
Who are you, some kind of teenager with lowslung jeans and an iPod?
You appear to have put some links to pictures in a map. Perhaps I am missing something, but this doesn't appear to be particularly revolutionary.
Sorry if I'm supposed to respond with "Yeah man, it's like totally mashed up," but you've really lost me here.

Works great in Firefox on my OS-X.
I haven't been to San Francisco since
my boyfriend took me to a Macromedia Christmas party in 2001. I envy you!
He works for Adobe now and says I'd be bored if I went with him to San Jose.