(Emphasis mine).

Lost in Iceland? suggests that it’s because the government’s price for the GIS data is too high:

Karl Arnar Arnarsson, a staff member from Ísgraf, an Icelandic company specializing in selling mapping software, said that he had a few theories about Iceland’s long absence from Google Maps. “Now that Google has mapped [everything else], they’ve moved on to Iceland and because the maps are owned by the government, they’re not willing to pay a lot for them,” Amarsson said. “They’re not looking at Iceland as an isolated problem; they’re looking at the overall picture.”

Nokia Maps and ViaMichelin are missing Iceland as well. OpenStreetMap, however, seems to have pretty good coverage, especially of Reykjavik. Here’s the Iceland project page at OpenStreetMap.

How to Drive in Iceland is a useful video. In particular the section on seat belts, starting at 4:35, is enough to convince anyone of the utility of seatbelts.

Some short video clips of the Gold Cup and Saucer parade this morning in downtown Charlottetown:

For Maximum Fun, start all playing at the same time!

I’m deep into “finding places to stay and things to do in Iceland” mode this week, planning for our family trip there in late September. When you spend time corresponding with Íslendingur, you start to see interesting names flow into your inbox:

Icelandic has an interesting alphabet and Icelanders have interesting interesting names.

If I understand the system properly, then my name would have ended up as Peter Normsson and Oliver’s name would be Oliver Petersson.

A good way of keeping a watch over a company’s future plans is to watch its jobs website. Here’s Nokia’s, for example, and here’s Apple’s. A few minutes spent searching through the positions advertised can give you a good overview of current and future directions.

A striking absence on company job websites, I think, is a “Suggest a Job” feature. It’s all very well and good to get see the company’s priorities packaged up into job titles, but what about my priorities?

You may be looking for a “Software Test Engineer, Level IV,” but maybe I think you need a “Director of Cross-Pollination” or a “Manager, Making the Software Suck Less.”

Presumably someone who knows a company well enough to not only visit its jobs website, but to be able to suggest a position that best suits both the company and their personal passions and skillset, would be a good employee. Or at least one worth taking a look at.

(Reinvented doesn’t have a jobs website, or even much of a regular old everyday website, but if you’d like to suggest a job, please do).

Here’s some free advice to developers of new web apps that want their application to be adopted, spread, enhanced and embraced by third-party developers: do the API first.

Standard operating procedure with web apps these days appears to be “get the app released, write a blog post about how an API is coming Real Soon Now, wait 6 months, release API.” Sometimes the last step is never reached.

By following this timeline you’re losing 6 months of developer interest, and handing a 6 month leadtime to any competing app to become the standard platform for whatever world-changing thing your app does.

As you might imagine, I’m a keen follower of the YALBS space and at this point any app that’s missing an “API” link in the footer doesn’t interest me, as it means that the service is likely focused on building a walled garden, and doesn’t deserve my attention.

SkyeQuiKey is kind of like Quicksilver for your phone.

Two years ago Olle told me that I should turn off the “ding” sound in my email program that rang every time a new message came in. I did, and it’s changed my life for the better. Redirecting my phone to voicemail is a sister action that’s had a similar positive effect whenever I’ve done it. Merlin Mann’s Time and Attention story is as good an overview of why these were good ideas as I’ve yet come across.

Last August I announced the installation of some open Meraki wireless access points at 100 Prince Street, making free wifi available to my immediate neighbourhood. They’ve been running for a year now without problem, and although I’ve twiddled with the amount of free bandwidth available (turning it down when outsiders were sucking up enough to make in-home use sluggish), the free wifi has been flowing all year long.

Over the year, my Meraki management dashboard tells me, 371 users transferred 113 GB over the network. Although every one of those 371 has seen a splash page upon connection inviting them to send me an email if they find the access useful, the only person I’ve ever heard from is a newly-moved-in next door neighbour who thanked me for the access while he was waiting to have his own connection installed.

My rationale for leaving the access open to any anonymous wanderer-by is completely Marxist in nature. I think of it like I think of hitchhiking: I’ve used enough free wifi out there in the world that I feel I owe it to the world to serve up some of my own when and where I’m able.

Not everyone agrees with this approach, and, like hitchhiking, it has inherent risks. But I think, ultimately, the obivous good of sharing a useful resource outweighs the phantom bad of someone plotting the downfall of society using my bandwidth.