Richard's Tech Reviews

MS Virtual Earth 3D and Bird's Eye

Microsoft's Virtual Earth is not as well-known as Google Earth, but they have some very impressive 3D models and even more impressive "Bird's Eye" 360-degree close-aerial views.

If you go to

http://maps.live.com/

and have the Virtual Earth 3D extension installed, you can navigate around some amazing views

What's interesting to me about the above view is that it's a mix of close-aerial, and (I think) satellite overlaid with 3D models.  Inside the box on the right-hand side you see a real image of Parliament and the Parliamentary Library looking south-ish.  Outside the boundaries of that box (left side and upper edge) is sat image overlaid with 3D models of Ottawa buildings.

Here's a close view, after rotating to look more towards the north (so with the library in back).

This is the highest-resolution imagery I've seen of Ottawa, and very up-to-date (looks like sometime in the early summer.)

Virtual Earth 3D works in both Firefox (I used version 3) and Internet Explorer (I used version 7), on Windows XP and above.  It does not support the Mac.

Vista 64-bit + Airport Express + printer = almost

Just trying to print from Vista 64-bit (HP Pavilion a6530f) over the network to my SCX-4500 printer connected to an Airport Express.

Installed AirPort Utility Setup 5.3.2 for Windows to check IP and proper configuration of Express.

Uninstalled Bonjour (which some Apple thing had already installed - maybe iTunes?) and installed Bonjour 64-bit (link to 64-bit installer), with Bonjour Printer Wizard.

Installed SCX-4500 64-bit driver (link to 64-bit installer).

Ran Bonjour Printer Wizard.  Detected printer.  Installed driver.  Inexplicable error...

"You do not have sufficient access to your computer to connect to the selected printer."

There is an Apple support item - Bonjour for Windows: Printer wizard says "you do not have sufficient access", but the scenarios it lists are not applicable.

Rebooted.
SCX-4500 printer appears in available printers.
Printed from Firefox 3.  No problem.  (Also no problem printing from IE 7.)

Attempted to print from Acrobat Reader 8.1.3  EPIC FAIL.
Same story for Acrobat Reader 9.  (As added bonus, Reader 9 update tries to install Updater 6.0.2, which crashes.)

Long investigation appears to indicate there is an unpatched Microsoft Windows bug affecting reading printer driver properties under Vista 64-bit.  If you application can print without reading those properties, or you're lucky, you may be fine.  Otherwise, the application will most likely crash.

See more information in

Vista 64 installs printers, won't print

It would be really nice if Microsoft would fix this, and in the meantime, it would be nice if Adobe issued some kind of work-around.