Link of the Moment

… Hell, for example, part of Pinckney, Michigan, that is (ZIP 48169). Why did I choose this one? Because you can check online if it has frozen over, of course.

http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/zipdecode/

Source: the internets

What is it: a visualization of USPS ZIP codes. You type in the zip code and on the map the tool narrows the location down. Pretty useful if you only know a ZipCode and want to check where it’s located. Of course, it’s not Google Maps or something but Google Maps and it’s brethren zoom in too far to see the location in context. For quick reference this a lot faster and it’s also a neat visualization.

Also it helps to find out what ZIP area to consider when looking at classifieds or such. Do you know how far ZIPs are spread out geographically? Using the tool, I found these values in under 4 minutes:

• 3 digits given: 840xx spreads ~200 miles
• 4 digits given: 8402x spreads ~125 miles
• 3 digits given: 841xx spreads ~20 miles
• 4 digits given: 8417x spreads less than 1 mile

So if you’re moving somewhere and want to look for used furniture beforehand, checking 841xx may be ok, looking for furniture in 840xx means costly transport. Also adding a digit can reduce the spread by 37.5% or by 95%.

Finally: you can quickly find out that in the US (yes, or in the tool’s database…) the lowest localized ZIP is 00210 (Portsmouth, NH) and the highest is 99403 (Clarkston, WA). Neat. :)

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Source: browsing

What is it: “Astronomy Picture of the Day” this page provides you with a high quality image a day to make you think and wonder what’s “out there” as well as explaining what you see in the sky day and night. Images are a great mixture of NASA images (from a whole bunch of sources like e.g. telescopes), images from other official sources and also submissions from people like you and me. To give you some more examples : comet McNaught on Australia Day, ISS on the Horizon, Mars rover Opportunity . Definitely worth a visit.

http://www.flashearth.com/

Source: UC Berkeley iSchool mailing list

What is it: This site basically gives you one flash interface for several map sites like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, MS VE, Ask,com, OpenLayers and NASA. very interesting to see the differences in displayed imagery between map sites. Also it’s a nice UI for the job, albeit sometimes a little slow when panning quickly.