Google Maps StreetView Links and Discussion

Google came out with an awesome enhancement to their Google Maps tool a couple days ago called StreetView. It's remarkable because they've taken 360 degree views from their van about every 20 feet in the areas they cover(SF, Denver, New York City, Miami, and Vegas). The resolution of the images in San Francisco is better than the other areas they covered but it can still be fun looking around there. It's very easy to move around in the StreetView images and if you go full screen it can feel a little bit like you're riding along with them.

I'm so impressed with the quality of this service(and not sure how it'll end up being useful) that I've put up a tool for StreetView link voting and discussion right here. Check it out, look at some links and submit any you think others should check out.

Go to StreetView Links on DavidSterry.com

Queries in Excel

If you're a spreadsheet junky like me, you've learned all kinds of things to do in a spreadsheet. From using $'s in autofills to cross-workbook cell references to pivot tables. There's lots of fun to be had. I've been using Excel and OpenOffice Spreadsheet for years and was pleasantly surprised to find this function the other day: vlookup. It was used to reconcile one statement against another and I think it's a good one to remember.

If you ever wanted to create a form to query your huge spreadsheet without having to go over to Access or some other software, you should take a look at vlookup. Here's an example:

VLOOKUP(D1;A3:B20;2)

What this does to use the value D1 to search the range A3:B20 for a value. This could be like an account or invoice number. Then it returns the value in the second column(given by the 2 as the last argument) as the value of VLOOKUP. This value could be the dollar amount of # of widgets on the invoice.

If you'd like to see it in action, click here to download an example spreadsheet. Enjoy your new querying powers!