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FLYING
WITHOUT WINGS
by
TV Smith
28/08/06
Why does it take millions of sperm to fertilise
one egg? Because men won't stop to ask for
directions. Now, there is an easy way to
find your way to a location before even
leaving home.
Fly to more than a thousand places in Malaysia
for FREE with MyCen, your new low cost carrier.
From Pulau Jerejak in Penang straight to
the Causeway in JB within seconds. Absolutely
NO delays.
Malaysia Central's new unique MyCen
Locations allows you to go to any
of its listed location, place or landmark
in Malaysia with one simple click. No saving
or re-opening of files is required if Google
Earth is already installed and opened.
(First-time users, please read this)
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Partial
screenshot. Satellite image & Google Earth
interface are the copyright of DigitalGlobe
& Google respectively
Almost all the skyscrapers in the Golden Triangle
area are covered by MyCen Locations. Curiously,
during the beta testing stage, it was found
that Jalan Doraisamy (Asian Heritage Row)
& Dataran Prima in Kelana Jaya were some
of the most popular location searches. By
linking maps & placemarks to the places
frequently queried within our portal, we hope
to enhance the user's experience.
Please bear in mind, that it is still in a
nascent stage and I hope to cover all the
places that are available with high resolution
images, eventually. During the past few weeks,
I have personally verified and identified
over 1000 locations on the ground, in the
Klang Valley alone. To ensure accuracy, a
Garmin GPS
is used to record the coordinates for subsequent
matching. I hope you now understand my recent
lapse in blogging.
Friends and enthusiastic supporters in Penang,
Ipoh & JB have also gathered thousands
of placemarks, all awaiting sorting, double-checking
and uploading. The goal is to include proximity
landmarks or nearby places for every building
covered. For your convenience, most featured
locations come with links and addresses on
the sidebar, where available.
MyCen Locations is partnered with MyCen
Tours. With it, you can click on the
Play Button in Google Earth and it takes you
on an automatic guided tour of an area or
street. Tours currently available include
Lake Gardens, Jalan Sultan Ismail, Jalan Raja
Chulan, Ampang Elevated Highway, Police Stations
in KL and many more places.
I have flown extensively on helicopters conducting
aerial photography. In programming the tours,
I try to simulate a helicopter's flight with
turns, banking angles and hovering movement.
If you are unfamiliar with an area, a quick
tour should bring you to speed.
One thing surprises me, though. While looking
at the satellite images, I realised there
is relatively (or comparatively) little new
development in KL in the last three years.
Is this a definite sign that our
Dear Builder has retired? This
lull is good news (for me) as Google Earth's
current images are about 2 to 3 years old.
They will be updated eventually, we hope.
I was also frustrated by the number of people
who uploaded placemarks of the locations of
their homes (with meaningless tags like 'Ah
Kow's House'), cluttering up Google Earth's
community layer. What's worst, some of the
Malaysian placemarks added there were inaccurate
and guesswork at best.
Many Malaysians installed Google Earth when
it first launched. Understandably, the first
thing many did was to look for their house.
After the initial exuberance, the program's
tremendous potential was never really utilised.
I hope with this new feature, you get to rediscover
your surroundings and have a trusted reference
whenever you need directions. If you find
it useful, please spread the word. Thank you
and see you at your rooftop soon.
A journey of a thousand places begins with
one click:
MyCen Locations: mycen.com.my/location
MyCen Tours: mycen.com.my/tours
FAQ & Help: mycen.com.my/centralgis.html
Google
Earth is a trademark of Google, Inc. The use
of Google Earth is subject to the Google Terms
Of Service. Malaysia Central (MyCen) &
Dua Sen are not affiliated with Google in
any way.
©
2006 TV SMITH
Link to this article: http://www.tvsmith.net.my/duasen/280806_locations.html
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