Author: Mike Holman

Google Street View went live today for Toronto, Vancouver, Hamilton, Kitchener, Waterloo, Windsor, Calgary, Canmore, Banff, Lake Louise, Montreal, Quebec city, Halifax.  Apparently Saint John NB, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg are next on the list.

If you were impressed by satellite images of your rooftop then you will be really blown away by this service.  I know I was – I spent at least half of my work day playing around with it.

What is Google Street View?

It’s an offshoot of Google Maps – you can select an address, then select “street view” and you will be able to see a picture of the front of your house.  You can rotate the view around and move up and down the street.  Faces, license plates have been blurred for privacy.

Are the pictures recent?

No, apparently last April (2009) Google had cars driving around with cameras that can take pictures of different angles.  They covered every street and every angle and then let the Google computers stitch it all together.

What good is it?

I think one of the best uses for this technology is for someone who wants to buy a house.  They can check out a prospective house for things like curb appeal (which might be out of date) and general location ie is there a wrecking yard next door?
Another use I can think of is if you are planning to visit an address then you can check out what it looks like first.  This would be great for a storefront on a busy street where the numbers aren’t always that visible.
Here are some uses that Google has come up with http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/using-street-view.html#personal

How do you use it?

• Go to the Google homepage.
• Click on “maps”
• Type in an address or intersection
• Click on the red ballon which shows the exact location of the address.

In the popup – click on “Street view” which is just under the picture.

Another way to get things started is to drag the little orange person at the top of the zoom bar onto the spot you want to see.

You should be looking at the address requested or in some cases it will be nearby.

Rotate the view

In the upper left hand corner there is a circle with a hand plus 4 direction symbols.  If you click on the up and down symbols the view angle will go up and down.  If you click on the left or right symbol then the view will rotate the same way.  This allows you to point in the desired direction or even do a 360.

Move location

You can actually move the location of your point of view by clicking on the road or any other object like another house.  If you click on the road then a white circle will appear – double click and your point of view will now be where the circle was.  If you double click on something other than the road – such as a house then your point of view will be right in front of that object.

There is also a shape below the navigation circle with a plus/minus symbols – they will zoom in or zoom out.
There is a small screen on the lower right with a little person – you can drag that person to other locations shown on that screen.

Show someone else

If you get a view you want to share with someone else then in the upper right hand corner you can click on “print” or “send” or “link”.  “Print” should be self-explanatory, “Send” means an email is generated with the link to your view.  “Link” just shows you the link to the view and you can do whatever you want with it.

Other ideas?

Can anyone think of other ideas for this neat technology?

Most house or condo owners have experience with doing some sort of do-it-yourself projects fixing up their homes.  Maybe this year you wanted to take advantage of the renovation tax credit.  Whether you were painting a room, redoing a bathroom or fixing up your deck, you probably noticed that some (or all) projects are hard to do and especially hard to finish.
I think one of the big problems diyers have is lack of experience so they don’t know how much work and time is involved in the task they are planning to do.  I know that I get frustrated when something is taking a lot longer than I had thought.  If it takes me 80 hours to build a deck then I’m ok with that but if I think it’s only going to take me 40 hours then I will be getting pretty annoyed by about hour 50 when it’s nowhere near completed.
Once you have painted a room or two then you probably get the idea that your estimate should include things like:

• trip to store to buy paint/supplies and wait while it is being shaken
• moving furniture
• removing painting/hangings
• repairing drywall
• priming
• painting
• 2nd trip to store to buy something
• painting again (2nd coat)
• rehanging stuff
• put back furniture

Whereas your original estimate involved the following task:

• buy paint
• 1 coat of paint
• done

The problem is that a lot of DIYers will do a particular project once and then never do it again.  Or they don’t do it again for many years and forget a lot of the details (and pain).  An example is a new deck.  If you decide to build a new deck for your house – it’s unlikely you will do another one unless you move to a new house so you just don’t have the experience to be able to estimate the time needed to finish the project which can lead to frustration.

Lack of fitness

Another stumbling block to finishing a project is fitness and stamina for physical labour.  Let’s face it – a lot of us spend our work hours sitting in front a computer, in meetings or some situation where we aren’t doing physical labour.  Even if you do exercise outside of work then it’s likely to be a specific type of exercise and for a limited time.  Many weekend warriors try to budget a lot of time for a project on their days off – typically on the weekend.  The problem is that although you might be able to budget 10 hours on Saturday and 10 hours on Sunday for a tiling project – your body will have other ideas.  I remember when I was getting my first house ready for sale I created a “time budget” where I would work 7.5 hours on Saturday, 7.5 hours on Sunday and 4 hours on two evenings during the week.  It didn’t take me long to realize that in fact I wasn’t putting in those hours.  Saturday morning I would put in a good 3 hours before lunch which was quite productive.  After lunch however it was a struggle to get going again and I often would only get another hour or maybe even 2 hours of good work accomplished that day.  Instead of doing 7.5 hours I would usually only do about 4.5 hours.  By adjusting my expectations and work schedule I was able to plan better.  I would only plan to work in the morning and then just do a bit in the afternoon.  Then I would just doing something completely different ie tv & beer.

To all those frustrated workers I have the following suggestion:

Get some help

Having friends give you a hand or hiring cheap labour is a great way to make a project more palatable.  Yes, it might cost more but it’s likely still cheaper than hiring a contractor to do the job and you will still get the satisfaction of doing the job yourself (sort of).  You will feel much better about a project that you finished with a bit of help than a project that you didn’t finish all on your own. 🙂

This is a lot easier to do for some projects than others.  As well, some people have good networks of friends/relatives who have time to help on projects whereas others will have to pay $$ to get some labour.

One thing to keep in mind with cheap labour vs friends is that you can get the cheap labour to spend all of their time doing grunt work whereas your friends might want to share the dirty jobs and expect you to do some too.

This can be done for non-reno projects as well.  For example I’ve hired students to help with waste disposal and cleaning.  Maybe you need to go through your basement/garage and organize things.  Having someone to help (and do the bad parts of the project) can really increase your morale and get the project finished.

This takes a bit of organization.  You have to have some sort of plan in order to use the labour effectively.  If you hire 1 or 2 workers and they spend most of their time with nothing to do then you are wasting your money.  Hiring help works better for larger jobs where there is enough physical labour to keep someone busy most of the time.

Another benefit of hiring help is that it will keep you on track – left to your own devices you might get bored/tired after a couple of hours and take a break that lasts for several years.  Having someone there will help you stay on task.

Some jobs which are good candidates for hiring help.

• most landscaping projects.
• new lawn
• major garden reno
• deck
• patio stones
• fencing
• drywall
• painting
• kitchen cabinets

All these projects could benefit with extra hands.  They are large enough projects with a major labour component.  Tasks where a lot of strength is needed might also be a lot easier with more help.

Projects where you might not get as much benefit would be smaller projects that you can handle yourself.  Ie painting one room only.  More skilled projects like plumbing, electrical, tiling probably won’t benefit as much with extra hands around.

What do you think?  Would you ever hire some cheap labour to help move gravel and patio stones around for you while you do the fun parts of a new patio?

One of my blogger buddies – Lynnae from BeingFrugal.net highlighted a deal offered in support of the American Cancer Society.  After looking at the bundle I bought one for myself since there are several items in there that I was going to purchase anyway.  The total retail value of the bundle is $800 although it is extremely unlikely that anyone can use all of the items.

You can head over to her page to find out more details and sign up if you want.  Remember that she also has a promo code “BEINGFRUGAL3” which gives you another 30% off so the final package will cost you$20.95 US$.  Patrick from CashMoneyLife has also written about this so you can find his thought on the big bundle.

Some of the items aren’t all the useful to Canadians (ie restaurant.com) but check out the list to see what is of interest to you.

These are the items that I’m interested in:

• Mozy Home Edition – 50% off 1 year.  I’ll be reviewing this service.  It is a computer backup service so that allows you to store your files somewhere other than your house (in case it burns down or computer gets wrecked).  1 year is $60 US$ so this is a $30 saving.  This coupon expires on Oct 28!
• GoDaddy – 1 free domain –   This won’t be of interest for most readers but if you are a blogger of sorts then this might be worth around $10 or so.
• Corel Photo Album – I’ve never used this but it is a photo editing program.  I do this sort of thing quite a bit with the blog.  Worth $40.
• Evernote Premium – I’m planning to try out the free service – not sure if the premium service is worthwhile.  This service allows you to easily scan any documents you have and file them electronically for you.
• Foxit PDF creator – Ok, this wasn’t exactly on my “need to buy” list but I can probably use this.  $30.

Here is a link to the entire list – feel free to explain to me what some of the other things are and if they might be useful… 🙂  Subscription to Zagat???

Keep in mind that some of the discounts have time limits so check the details to make sure you don’t miss out.  Also some of the discounts like gap.com are only eligible on purchases of $100 or more.