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noreply@blogger.com (H.T. Ohlsen) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:55:00 +0000

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Vista Service Pack 2 gave problems

noreply@blogger.com (H.T. Ohlsen) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:44:00 +0000

The Microsoft Windows Vista on the standalone pc was upgraded with Service Pack 2 a few days ago, and this has had 2 specific problems:

The static IP network setup was partly deleted and still is. Right after the installation the pc was on the LAN but it was no longer connected to the internet. It turned out that the gateway IP in the TCP/IP setup of the NIC was deleted, and till this day can't be saved. With every boot of the pc it is necessary to go to the NIC tcp/ip setup and enter the gateway ip, the address of the internet router.

The certificate that allows access to Den Danske Bank online banking stopped working. A new PIN has been requisited by the bank and hopefully the not being able to save problem doesn't cover the bank certificate as well.

Great job Microsoft...

Spain and Lisbon research trip

noreply@blogger.com (EssentialContent.com) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 08:11:00 +0000

I'm currently on the last legs of a research and photography trip to Spain and a weekend in Lisbon for good measure. I've stopped in Madrid, Vejer de la Frontera, Granada, Cordoba, Seville and Lisbon. Currently I'm in Barcelona and slowly moving North back towards Copenhagen, as I want to spend Christmas at home.

The general theme everywhere has been the upcoming Christmas, and it's interesting to see how a Christmas Tree is not really a Christmas Tree but rather a multi colored tree shaped icon of one. You take a place, often a fountain, and build a tree shaped skeleton around and over it. Add colored lights in different patterns, add power and voila!

The perception of Santa Claus on the Iberian peninsula seems to be that he climbs up a rope ladder to each apartment with a rucksack holding the gifts on his back - small plastic santas climbing up rope ladders hang all over Spain and Portugal. I've bought one which will hang from the office as soon as I get home. Hopefully it won't cause any traffic accidents because it's so unusual in Denmark.

Driving around in Spain and Portugal has made me realize that there are worse drivers than the Spanish, the Portuguese take the prize for opportunism and self centered driving. I hadn't thought that the Spanish could be challenged, but there you go. Some of both the Spanish and Portuguese take something as basic as being overtaken as a deep personal insult, and they insist on pushing their usually small car to its absolute limits to re-overtake you - and then what? They eventually get overtaken again.

When visiting Lisbon I got to see a frightening picture - not only homeless, but poor people everywhere, so many beggars. I read that there is actually a shanty town outside Lisbon which is like the one you know from outside Rio de Janeiro, with people living in cardboard boxes and the like. With several governments a year since the Salazar regime was overthrown in 1974, things are not going well for Portugal. Their joining the EU has helped the country in general because of the massive EU investments in infrastructure and public administration, but this aid has not had any effect for the common man in the street. Most portuguese are poor, poor, poor and can see no end to it. That's not a pleasant backdrop to a Christmas weekend, but if anybody need the extra money you spend visiting it's the Portuguese.

A somewhat similar picture can be seen in Andalucia in Southern Spain. The German tourists for some reason stayed home in 2008, and then the financial crisis hit and a lot of people who used to be employed in the tourism business are facing very hard times. Especially the area West of Gibraltar, on the Atlantic coast called Costa del Luz, where tourists have to find their way themselves because there are no charter tours going there, things are tough. The absense of tourists has a profound effect on the local economy.

Currently I'm in Barcelona and am enjoying the city. It's a great place to go, but this weekend it's like the city has been under occupation by the Spanish police. There's police everywhere and tonight the streets were full of police cars racing through the streets with howling sirens and a police chopper was hanging above Plaza Catalunya. I asked a friend who replied that it's probably because Valencia - a neighboring town - had lost a football match to Madrid. You're thinking terrorism and ETA and what's the deal? Soccer.

Today's pictures have ben downloaded to the laptop harddisk now and it looks promising. There'll be plenty to work with after this trip for several months, and new pages to be made on existing and new websites. It'll get there.

Navteq ignores user assistance

noreply@blogger.com (EssentialContent.com) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Today, October 24 2008, is the one year anniversary of the last batch of 36 updates to the Navteq Points Of Interest and map errors that have been submitted through Navteq�s website. Out of the 36 updates, 5 were actually closed, the rest of them are still open.

Navteq, a main supplier of maps and points of interest to GPS navigators, has a section on their website called Navteq Map Reporter. Apparently you can report errors or missing addresses or Points Of Interest, POI's, through this section. But experience shows that Navteq doesn't really care about keeping their map and POI data up to date, and generally ignores data entered through the website.

On October 11, EssentialContent made the first 16 entries about wrong or missing POI's, mainly of changes to what could be found in the latest version of Mapsource City Navigator, the highest quality maps that can be bought for Garmin GPS navigators. Another 10 were added on October 19 and a final 10 on October 24 - a year ago today. Out of all these corrections or missing things, only 5 were actually dealt with by Navteq, the rest were ignored, and the wrong data is still wrong in the latest version of Mapsource City Navigator.

You would think that a company whose core business is delivering accurate GIS information to GPS terminals would be interested in receiving and updating the errors in their data from locals in these areas that really know what is what and where. The fact that there is a section on the Navteq website called Map Reporter could fool you into believing that Navteq cares about the quality of the GIS data. Unfortunately reality seems quite different.

With this kind of experience with Navteq, it would be wise for everybody who used GPS terminals with Navteq maps in them to be very cautious - you cannot expect the information given to be accurate.

Trying out new picture sizes

noreply@blogger.com (H.T. Ohlsen) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:04:00 +0000

I'm currently trying out new picture sizes for the picture threads on websites. As I can see on the visitor statistics that users have increasingly larger screen resolutions available, the EssentialContent.com websites should make use of this increased screen area to bring larger and more detailed pictures. So far I've used the 600x400 pixel size for landscape pictures and 333x500 pixel for portrait pictures. The webpage about
The Berlin TV Tower I made today features new picture dimensions - 800x533 pixel for landscape pictures and 467x700 pixel for portrait pictures. I've looked at it and it looks fine on a 1280x1024 screen, but it's a bit much on a 1280x800 laptop screen, I will probably still have to keep at least the portrait size somewhat smaller. As I renew the pictures on the different websites that are up to 10 years old by now, I will be using larger picture sizes as well, but the final choice in sizes are still not made.

Research trip to Prague, Austerlitz, Bratislava and Vienna

noreply@blogger.com (H.T. Ohlsen) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:12:00 +0000

The latest research trip went to Prague, Austerlitz, Bratislava and Vienna.

EssentialContent.com is preparing the website www.visitingprague.info to be included in the travel destination website portfolio and needed pictures of this beautiful town. A 3 night stay resulted in some excellent photos of which some of the best will find their way to the website.

After Prague the trip went on to Austerlitz, or today a few kilometers Southeast of Brno in the Czech Republic. This is the location where Napoleon on December 2. 1805 beat the vastly superior sized Russian and Austrian army and established Napoleon and France as the strongest power in Europe. The pictures of the battleground and the Mohyla Miru or Mound of Peace on Prace Hill will be added to the website www.picturingeurope.com - a future trip that passes Waterloo in Belgium will add pictures of the Waterloo battlefield to the Napoleon theme.

On the way to Vienna, the trip passed Bratislava in Slovakia, where a quick stop was made to get pictures of the Bratislava Castle and close surroundings for the www.visitingbratislava.info website.

The next few days were spent in Vienna getting pictures for several different websites, including www.europeanvacationitineraries.com and the Eastern Europe itinerary.

All in all the trip was very productive and increased the EssentialContent.com picture library considerably. Expect the find the pictures on our websites in the near future.