---
title: "Control Google Maps by Tilting your ThinkPad"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/6/18/control-google-maps-by-tilting-your-thinkpad.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/6/18/control-google-maps-by-tilting-your-thinkpad.html"
published: "2006-06-18T09:09:00"
updated: "2006-06-18T09:09:00"
tags: ["Cool Tools", "General Software Devel..."]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "\" Another day, another hack . Here's a demo that controls Google Maps using ThinkPad Hard Drive Active Protection sensor. You tilt your ThinkPad and Google Maps roll over. Pretty cool.\" Oh, this is very very cool!…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Control Google Maps by Tilting your ThinkPad

By Roy Osherove June 18, 2006 In [Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools), [General Software Devel...](https://osherove.com/blog/category/general-software-devel)

**Historical article** · Originally published June 18, 2006; technical details may be outdated.

"[Another day, another hack](http://bulknews.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/control_google_.html). Here's a demo that controls Google Maps using ThinkPad Hard Drive Active Protection sensor. You tilt your ThinkPad and Google Maps roll over. Pretty cool."

Oh, this is very very cool! Especially if you have a ThinkPad Tablet PC, like my friend Ariel does, who incidentally, recommended this link to me.

You can download the code that does this from their SVN Repository, which is a good way to see how this hack was created..

## More in Cool Tools

[All posts in Cool Tools](https://osherove.com/blog/category/cool-tools)

- Jul 26, 2006

    ### [Sanjay's cool tools](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/7/26/sanjays-cool-tools.html)

- Jul 19, 2006

    ### [Regulazy Facts](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/7/19/regulazy-facts.html)

- Jun 18, 2006

    ### [CodeRush 2.0 First Impressions - A Nice Surprise](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/6/18/coderush-20-first-impressions-a-nice-surprise.html)

- Jun 17, 2006

    ### [\[Cool Tool\] CodeSmart 2007 for VB6 - The Killer Addin for VB6](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/6/17/cool-tool-codesmart-2007-for-vb6-the-killer-addin-for-vb6.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### Contact

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/