The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

Watching Google Crawl…
|| 3/18/2008 || 7:42 am || Comments Off on Watching Google Crawl… || ||

Last Friday I removed the electronic Berlin Wall from my website and for the first time in 4 years I’ve released the contents of my website to search engines. Yesterday Google had crawled about 20 pages; half of which were already linking to my website from external sources. Today after last the check, Google has now cataloged about 320 of the 1500+ pages that were submitted with my website’s sitemap. I look forward to looking at the IP logs to see how Google’s robots do their crawling and the latency that exists between crawling and appearing in a search result. From my initial observations everything take at least 24 hours between the crawling and the content’s appearance within a search result. By the end of today, I bet there will be 750 pages indexed….

Welcome Robots and Strangers
|| 3/14/2008 || 1:48 pm || Comments Off on Welcome Robots and Strangers || ||

Below is the text of an e-mail I sent out today:

One year ago today my ugly mug was on the front page of the Washington Post’s style section in David Montgomery’s article “Here Be Dragons.” To celebrate the one year anniversary of this 15 minutes of fame I did something I’ve been waiting a VERY long time to do– I removed the Robots Exclusion Protocols from my website. This means that in a few weeks you will be able to find the contents of my website with a simple search string from your favorite search engine.

Before 12:01am today, you could only search the contents of my website on my website. By preventing my website from being crawled by spiders (or robots as they are technically called) I also prevented anyone [strangers] from freely accessing the hundreds of maps that I’ve made over the last 4 years. Thus the paradox of making maps without being able to be found is now over, and in that respect I am liberating myself from the self-censorship experiment that I’ve been conducting these last few years.

Frankly, dear reader, its a very nice feeling. I am unaware of any website that has opened itself up to the robots with over a 1,000 different pages to index at once. I sincerely wonder what search words will bring people to my website from this day forward. Currently postmodern art is my number one search string (I am currently listed at #5)– and that was only possible because of the article that was published one year ago today. So with that said, today marks the beginning of a new phase in my life, and maybe yours– if you search for the right words.

How to design a better user interface for geographic information?
|| 10/2/2007 || 9:58 am || Comments Off on How to design a better user interface for geographic information? || ||

aka “How do we show this data better?”

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Indirectly referenced in the Sydney Morning News?
|| 8/16/2007 || 10:12 pm || Comments Off on Indirectly referenced in the Sydney Morning News? || ||

Google’s photos of Sydney go all fuzzy
by Asher Moses, 8/13/07, The Sydney Morning News

…
Google has in the past been accused of censoring its maps due to national security concerns by governments, most recently in June when it updated its maps of Washington D.C. but maintained older, blurry images for -most of the downtown area.
…

I believe the author is referencing this article, “Google’s View of D.C. Melds New and Sharp, Old and Fuzzy by Jenna Johnson (Lead story, Metro Section, Washington Post, 7/22/07) which was written because of this blog entry and my subsequent press release.

A new change in Washington, DC’s imagery on Google’s servers
|| 7/10/2007 || 9:42 am || 2 Comments Rendered || ||

For the last 3 years I have followed how the aerial & satellite imagery of Washington, DC has been released, redacted, and remixed. This entry marks another important observation and a new discovery in Google Maps.

Last week I discovered the extent to which Google has updated their servers with the 2005 USGS aerial photography. My findings suggest that Google has censored much of downtown Washington, DC by not using a substanial amount of newer imagery.

Continue reading:

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Google StreetView I.E.D. – Blowing Up The Spot
|| 6/11/2007 || 12:40 pm || Comments Off on Google StreetView I.E.D. – Blowing Up The Spot || ||

Street View Improvised Explosive Device by Nikolas Schiller

So the other day I mentioned I was working on a mash-up for Google’s new Street View feature.

The result is the first google bomb for Street View— an improvised explosive device, with a message called Street View I.E.D..

Check it out: www.StreetViewIED.com
Tune up the volume!

International Geographic: FlickrVision
|| 5/15/2007 || 8:58 pm || Comments Off on International Geographic: FlickrVision || ||

If you have a few minutes to spare, take a look at FlickrVision

I can spend hours watching this.

I’m off google
|| 7/24/2005 || 12:29 pm || Comments Off on I’m off google || ||

Last week I wrote an e-mail to Google because someone from Google had decided to visit my website a couple weeks back and cached the page they visited, even when I requested them to not do so.

In response to my e-mail, Google has completely removed even the listing of my website from their database! Before when you’d google “Nikolas Schiller,” the first result would be a link to my website- without any text just “https://nikolasschiller.com,” and now (if you clicked the link above) it doesn’t display that anymore and the first result is the Washington Post article from July 4th, 2004 on the Adbusters website.

I guess I’m even harder to find now :-)

Google’s Gone “Hybrid”
|| 7/23/2005 || 2:36 pm || Comments Off on Google’s Gone “Hybrid” || ||

Hybrid = Aerial & Satellite Imagery + Roads + Placenames

Anyone who has used GIS software before know that this isn’t special, but for those new to the game of spatial information, Google Maps inclusion of both the road layer and aerial photography layer is pretty nifty. I personally like it better than looking at only the roads layer & only the imagery layer (how it was before). Oh hybrid, you are so cool. I wish there were more cars like you….

Google this yo
|| 7/19/2005 || 3:44 pm || Comments Off on Google this yo || ||

I got an e-mail back from Google today in regards to the e-mail I sent them last week.

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Nikolas Schiller is a second-class American citizen living in America's last colony, Washington, DC. This blog is my on-line repository of what I have created or found on-line since May of 2004. If you have any questions or comments, please contact: