Whilst preparing for my trip to Madrid I decided to remind myself what its metro system looks like. If readers click on each image they’ll be directed to the interactive maps of the respective metro service.

This is quite an interesting — albeit fiddly — application of Flash, imo, so I decided to compare it with other cities’ metro maps:

(1.) London

(2.) New York

(3.) Hong Kong

(4.) Paris

(5.) Venice vaporetto map

In tech design and navigation terms, Paris’s site is the clear winner whilst HK is bottom of this list. Oddly, in ease of travel and comfort of trains terms, HK actually has a superior metro system to Madrid, London, NYC and Paris. Carriages are wide and air-conditioned with plenty of seating and standing and the metro stations are spotless. Trains run on time and crime is relatively low.

Anyway, when I travel the first thing I do after I book the flights is go in search of metro maps. I always do this before I book the hotel (if I’m not staying at a friend’s place) because it helps me get a sense of where key places are and how easy they are to get to, relative to each other. Then I can triangulate the ideal area for hotels.

MAPS + MAPPING

The advantage of learning to play chess when you’re 5 is that you readily grasp XY coordinates from the 8X8 chessboard and then the Z dimension of time (because you have a limit within which to move). This later means that Cartesian maths, geography classes and lat-long tags in location-awareness XML files are a breeze. I’ve also played with the Google Maps and Google Earth APIs and KMLs to customize my own maps with video feed-ins.

I may do a custom Google Map for my Madrid photos/videos and post them live.

This week opens with the terrible news from China that steelworkers at the Tonghua Iron and Steel Group factories killed one of their managers in protest against a planned merger with Jianlong Heavy Machinery Group. Merger talks have now been terminated.

* http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/27/content_11779033.htm

In recent months because of the global financial crisis major US and European banks have had to merge with each other and consolidate their balance sheets, resulting in hundreds of thousands of redundancies. Yet none of those employees have ever thought of physically beating the senior management or forcing them to stop the takeovers or value destruction which has taken place to people’s employment prospects, savings+pensions plans or homes.

Likewise in industrial actions at the Lindsay oil refinery, owned by Total SA, and the current postal office workers strike protest is conducted within the framework of employment laws.

Still, the events at Tonghua does spark the question, “What sort of “people power” punishment would Chinese investors mete out if Industrial and Commercial Bank of China / China Construction Bank / Bank of China said their shares had dropped up to 90 percent in value, the bank had asked for US$ billions in government bailout and they were continuing to pay senior management US$ millions bonuses?”

Although tragic, the Tonghua workers’ actions do provide a contrast and an insight into the different approaches in company-employee relations between East and West.

Onto much happier news……………….people who inspire us and advance Humankind………………

(1.) Apple Tablet designers

According to China Times, an Apple tablet (10″ screen) is scheduled to be launched in time for Christmas 2009. If readers click on the picture below, they’ll be directed to the article written in Chinese as hosted on Yahoo!

For non-Chinese readers, please read about it on the FT site here:

* http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a52c9ec0-7a29-11de-b86f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

The China Times article estimates the pricing with be between US$500 — US$800 whilst the FT cites an Oppenheimer Bank analyst’s estimate of US$600 — US$1,000.

I’ve been anticipating this ever since Axiotron Inc. released their Modbook, the first tablet to operate on the Mac OS, in Jan 2007. I even used the original Modbook design as a frame for one of my dynamic Flash files!

Instead of a Kindle DX, I’d like the Apple Tablet for Xmas, please!

(2.) Tom Daley

On 21 July 2009, 15 year-old Tom Daley won the 10m diving competition at the World Championships in Rome and became the first-ever British diving world champion. This is a brilliant achievement for a young man who’s obviously passionate and dedicated to the sport, and who’s had to overcome obstacles to achieve his dreams.

* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/diving/5889170/Tom-Daley-reflects-on-crazy-World-Championship-diving-success.html

* http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article6722656.ece

Here’s hoping he’s selected for the 2012 Olympics and wins gold there too!