"where 2.0" entries
Where 2.0 Preview – Building the SENSEable City
A lot of information we have about cities comes through direct and intentioned observation and study, but could a lot of the time and expense spent on this research be garnered just as well by mining the data that citizens generate in their day-to-day lives through cell phone traffic and internet usage? That's one of the questions that Andrea Vaccari, a research associate at the MIT SENSEable City Lab, is trying to find out. Andrea will be speaking at the Where 2.0 Conference in May on the research that the SENSEable City Project is doing.
Where 2.0 Preview – Tyler Bell on Yahoo's Open Location Project
Location can be a vague concept to pin down. To a surveyor, location means latitude and longitude accurate to a few millimeters, while to a cab driver, a street address would be much more useful. If you’re German, I can tell you that I live in the United States. To a Californian, I live in New Hampshire. And to someone from Manchester, I live in Derry. Unfortunately, the way that location is currently stored and presented online is both non-uniform and frequently at a level of precision inappropriate for the end-user. That’s part of what Open Location is trying to fix. Tyler Bell, who took his doctorate from Oxford to Yahoo, is currently the product lead for the Yahoo Geo Technology Group. At O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference, he’ll be discussing Open Location.
Becoming Location Aware: Where 2.0 Early Registration Ending 4/13
Despite the downturn the geolocation space is still active. This year's Where 2.0 conference will be highlighting the companies, technologies and people that make the industry go. Where 2.0 is happening in San Jose at the Fairmount Hotel from 5/19-21(the first day is workshops; the next two are all mainstage talks). Early registration ends this Tuesday, 4/13. You can…
Where 2.0 Preview – Pelago's Jeff Holden on Creating Stories Out of Your Life
Tools like Twitter and Facebook have let people share in near real-time what they are doing. Now with a new generation of location aware mobile devices, you can tell your friends or the entire world where you’re doing it. Jeff Holden’s company, Pelago, is one of many trying to come up with a killer application that blends location, images, text and social networking to create a new kind of group awareness. Before starting Pelago, Jeff had a long career as the Senior Vice President of Consumer Websites for Amazon and before that, the Director of Supply Chain Optimization Systems. In this preview of his talk at Where 2.0, Jeff talks about creating stories through location-tagged information, distributing software through Apple’s App Store, his work at Amazon, and the privacy implications of location becoming ubiquitous.
DIY City Releases DIY Traffic
DIY City is a new tech movement aimed at empowering geeks to remake their cities. The site has forums where people can propose projects and then discuss the potential solutions. Since its launch in late 2008 many local chapters have sprung up. Today DIY City is launching its first project, DIY Traffic. It uses Twitter to send an receive traffic updates from subscribers. So far there are three cities that have gone live. You can check out San Francisco, Chicago, and Portland to see the app in action or to participate.
GeoData Explorations: Open Street Map's Growth
Open Street Map (OSM), the open data mapping project, has grown a lot over the past year. It now has almost 80,000 users and 800 million data points. OSM's data is still freely available, but commercial services around it have sprung up. Cloudmade is a startup that recently moved from the UK to San Francisco to be closer to…
Where 2.0 2009 CFP Is Open
The fifth Where 2.0 Call For Participation is now open. This year we're going to focus on location-ware technologies and their implications. The iPhone and Android have paved the way for a new breed of app and Where 2.0 will be focused on it. If you want to join us on stage submit your talk by December 2, 2008….
Over 300 iPhone Apps Use Location Look-Ups
According to Skyhook Wireless over 300 iPhone apps are location-aware as of October 3rd. According to Mobclix there are over 4,000 apps in circulation. If these numbers are correct this puts the location-aware percentage at under 10% — far, far less than I would have suspected based on my own experience. There were 5.5 location-aware apps released per day…
DisasterTech from Where2.0
I was honored to speak with Mikel Maron at Where2.0 about innovation in Disaster Technology, a topic that is extremely important to me. Here is the video: This talk covers the ongoing efforts of: World Shelters, the UN Joint Logistics Centre, Humanitarian.info, InSTEDD, and Humanlink. You can read about the development of SMS GeoChat, the Sahana effort for Burma/Myanmar (Radar…
Where 2.0: Satellites and The Public Interest
Lisa Parks (Professor of Media Studies at U.C. Santa Barbara) has devoted years studying the societal and cultural implications of satellite technology. She very briefly described her research into the use of satellite technology during the War in Bosnia (1992-1995), Rwanda (1996), and more recently the use of satellite images to justify the invasion of Iraq. In terms of conveying…