- Open Source Enters The World of Atoms — an academic statistical analysis of open design. We indicated that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source.
- Why I Like Redis (Simon Willison) — coherent explanation of why Simon likes and uses a particular nosql system. I can run a long running batch job in one Python interpreter (say loading a few million lines of CSV in to a Redis key/value lookup table) and run another interpreter to play with the data that’s already been collected, even as the first process is streaming data in. I can quit and restart my interpreters without losing any data. And because Redis semantics map closely to Python native data types, I don’t have to think for more than a few seconds about how I’m going to represent my data.
- © kiwiright (Vimeo) — short documentary about copyright, made to raise awareness of the issues in New Zealand. (just as applicable to the rest of the world)
- Your Movements Speak For Themselves (Jeff Jonas) — Mobile devices in America are generating something like 600 billion geo-spatially tagged transactions per day. Every call, text message, email and data transfer handled by your mobile device creates a transaction with your space-time coordinate (to roughly 60 meters accuracy if there are three cell towers in range), whether you have GPS or not. Got a Blackberry? Every few minutes, it sends a heartbeat, creating a transaction whether you are using the phone or not. If the device is GPS-enabled and you’re using a location-based service your location is accurate to somewhere between 10 and 30 meters. Using Wi-Fi? It is accurate below10 meters. A thought-provoking roundup of the information leakage with modern locative systems. (via TomC on Twitter)
"geo" entries
Where's the map?
Guest blogger Tyler Bell is a geotechnologist with broad interests in open source and place-based information systems He is currently managing Platform technologies at AlikeList, a Sunnyvale-based Social/Local start-up, where he designs disambiguation systems, geo technology platforms, and syndication APIs. Until recently Tyler led the Geo Technologies product team at Yahoo!, conceiving and launching the Placemaker and GeoPlanet geo-enrichment platforms….
Base Map 2.0: What Does the Head of the US Census Say to Open Street Map?
Ian White, the CEO of Urban Mapping, makes his living collecting and selling geo data. For next week’s Where 2.0 has put together a panel of government mapping agencies (the UK’s Ordnance Survey and the US’s Census Department) and community-built mapping projects (Open Street Map and Waze). Crowdsourced projects like Waze and Open Street Map have forced civic agencies to reconsider their licensing.
SkyHook and SimpleGeo Present SpotRank, Now You Can Always Find Where The People Are
In an under-appreciated announcement Skyhook Wireless released a huge set of location trend data. SpotRank, as the data is called, shares out ranking trends for locations around the world. The maps above show the SpotRanks of those locations. Skyhook has been collecting look-ups for the past five years. CEO Ted Morgan shared these stats "We average about 300 million…
Our Future World: Freedom (and Daemon)
I just read FreedomTM the second and latest book in the Daniel Suarez's Daemon series. It was a fun, thought-provoking read and I recommend it to any technologist or sci-fi junkie (it would also make a nice Christmas gift for your favorite conspiracy theorist). This review will focus primarily on the technology of FreedomTM, but I recommend that you…
Haiti: OSM and Sat Imagery for Free iPhone App
Crisis Mappers from around the world have been working around the clock to create maps and other tools for relief workers in Haiti. The earthquake caused tremendous damage to the road network and updated maps are necessary to enable food and volunteers to traverse the island. A free iPhone app with maps of Haiti has been released to the App Store. Jeffrey Johnson worked with a small company, TrailBehind, Inc., to adapt the company’s existing
( offline mapping app, Gaia GPS,) to provide offline maps to relief workers. It combines Digital Globe (.5m resolution), GeoEye (.5m resolution updated on 1/13), and OpenStreetMap (constantly being updated).
Four short links: 13 November 2009
Open Source Design, Interesting NoSQL Use, Copyright Documentary, Location Intelligence
Navigating the Future: Take Me to Bob
Google has just announced a free turn-by-turn navigation app for Android 2.0 in the US (Radar post). Google Maps Navigation relies on Google’s own mapping for routing you. As with many navigation devices you can search Business Listings. However, they are also including data not traditionally available to navigators. In the promo video Google demonstrates that you can ask to be taken to “The King Tut exhibit”. GMN will determine that it’s in Golden Gate Park and route you. This is “because it is connected to the internet it is using all of the latest information on the internet.”
A Conversation with Dr. Walter Scott of DigitalGlobe
Dr Walter Scott founded Digital Globe – a company you are likely not familiar with though you probably interact with their satellite imagery on a regular basis via Google Maps, Bing and others. It is only recently that mapping technology and production has been driven by mainly commercial interests especially in the area of satellite imagery. With this commercialization corporations…
Four short links: 16 October 2009
Audio Geotagging, SF Open Data Stories, Wave Use Cases, Hadooped Genomes
- Wiimote Audio Geotagging — match audio with the map movement and annotations made with an IR pen and a Wiimote. Very cool! (and from New Zealand)
- San Francisco: Open For Data — Two months after it launched, the project is already reaping rewards from San Francisco’s huge community of programmers. Applications using the data include Routesy, which offers directions based on real-time city transport feeds; and EcoFinder, which points you to the nearest recycling site for a given item.
- Google Wave’s Best Use Cases (Lifehacker) — not cases where people are using Wave, but where they want to. Read this as “the Web has not provided all the tools to solve these problems”. Something will solve them, and Wave is trying to. (via Jim Stogdill)
- Analyzing Human Genomes with Hadoop — case study from the Cloudera blog. Performs alignment and genotyping on the 100GB of data you get when you sequence a human’s genome in about three hours for less than $100 using a 40-node, 320-core cluster rented from Amazon’s EC2. (via mndoci on Twitter)
Four short links: 13 October 2009
Open Source, Gov 2.0, Gaming, Education
- Our Open Source School — blog of Albany Senior High School in New Zealand, which only runs open source software.
- Behind The Scenes at What Do They Know — interesting post showing details behind the What Do They Know web site. In the last year there have been only seven significant cases where requests have been hidden from public view on the site due to concerns relating to potential libel and defamation. Three of those cases have involved groups of twenty or so requests made by the same one or two users. While actual number of requests we have had to hide is around 70 (0.4% of the total) even this small fraction overstates the situation due to the repetition of the same potentially libelous accusations comments in different requests. In all cases we have kept as much information up on the site as possible. Our policy with respect to all requests to remove information from the site is that we only take down information in exceptional circumstances; generally only when the law requires us to do so.
- The Complete History of Lemmings — a must-read for videogamers from the early 90s. Theres been much debate over the choice of colours as well, but the colours were selected, not because they were the easiest to choose, but because of the PC EGA palette. With the limited choice, it was decided the green hair was nicer than blue, and with that, the final Lemming was born. I was actually the next person to code up a demo on the Commodore 64, but I only got so far as having a single Lemming walking over the landscape before Dave put me onto another project.
- Google Replaces TeleAtlas — Tele Atlas confirms that Google has decided to stop using Tele Atlas map data for the U.S. Google will now use its own map data. Our relationship with Google for map coverage continues outside of the U.S. in dozens of geographies.