The Internet Tablet PC a tip on Mauku, and Maemo resources

Here's a handy tip for the lucky few of you that are running around with a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet... man I gotta get me one of these... if I did it would definitely be THE travel workhorse that I need, imagine, no more lugging around the notebook. If you have a tablet and want a fine app to Tweet or Jaiku then check out Mauku - See http://mauku.henrikhedberg.com/
For more advice on apps to run on your tablet or info on topics like Android running on the tablet, the Maemo environment, Diablo, and more, see http://www.maemoapps.com/

GeoWeb 2008 conference recording of presentations, including Google's Michael Jones' keynote

From the cool GeoWeb event taking place in Vancouver this week, the organizers have generously archived recordings of some of the presentations... enjoy...

Michael Jones, Google Earth

Alex Miller, ESRI

Michael Kay, Saxonica

Kimon Onuma, Onuma Inc.




Ron Lake Introduces Michael Jones, Google
See all the vids at http://www.youtube.com/user/geowebconference

Yougetitback - Protect your iPhone, cell phone, laptop

Here's an excellent tip for any company that's ever gone through the head-aches associated with having a corporate mobile device, notebook etc... lost or stolen - Yougetitback.com. The sales pitch... Yougetitback protects and helps recover mobile devices—such as phones, PDAs, cameras, iPods and laptops—while preserving the sensitive information they may contain. The company’s premium service will even replace the device, if it is not recovered. See more here

Formats and tips for online media PR submission

Once again, a tip here for all you PR and marketing professionals on how to distribute and format your PR releases... simple really... think TXT. I receive tons of these every day and they come in all shapes, formats, and sizes. The really nasty things you want to stay away from when you send to online media outlets is PDF and even ZIP files. Once you have your properly formatted PR items be sure to remember some of the following tips:
- include the subject in the email subject line DONT EVER USE ALL CAPS!!!! - really, this one drives me nuts and when I haven't had my coffee I often hit the delete key
- A word document is fine, particularly if you have images as well
- even if you have a Word doc, include a simple text copy in the body of the email
- images are cool (one or two max) if you have high res though, provide a simple link to where they can be retrieved on your server - don't email 2MB worth of JPG files
- Don't create a package of documents, images, corp background info etc... and ZIP it all up, editors really don't want the full media package (although they may ask you for it)
- include a website url and email contact at the bottom of the release
- use a valid email address when sending - i.e. if I hit reply, it better reply to a real person and valid email address
These are but a few simple things that will help you distribute PR to online media outlets - oh, and make sure your news is actually news!

Adobe Acrobat 9 and Adobe Reader 9 and geospatial functionality

Recall that recently, with the release of Adobe Acrobat 9 and Adobe Reader 9 a new geospatial feature set was introduced. Over at the shredding the document blog a nice intro to all the geospatial functionality is given. Read on to learn how to find locations and coordinates, markup, and measure within Reader. The author goes on to list this added detail of functionality:

In Acrobat Pro Extended for Windows you can actually author PDF Map files. You can do this in a few ways.

1. Open a Tiff or Jpeg 2000 file that contains geospatial information in Acrobat Pro Extended. The resulting PDF file that is saved will retain this information.
2. From a Map image file (scanned or already in PDF/image format) if you know the map projection and some coordinate information you can use Acrobat’s Geospatial Registration tool to add coordinate information to the PDF.
3. Add Shape (SHP) files to a PDF file using the Import Layer functionality. This allows the PDF document author a way to create viewable layers on a map that can be turned on and off in the Layers Panel.

For more on R9 see here

Ping all your social networking apps at once

Another suggestion for you new iPhone users... Ping (Beta) enables users to "ping" all of their social networking apps from one place... supports all the major apps like blogger, facebook, myspace, linkedin, and many more. There's a mobile Ping also at m.ping.fm or for iPhone users see "i.ping.fm. The company maintains a blog, there's also an API available so you can have ping users connect to your app - Peter, you see this? See ping.fm or check out the team blog

setting up some preferences on ping.fm

Mobile Mapping Usage up... no kidding!

It was only a matter of time, and a matter of getting devices into the hands of users, along with affordable data plans. Comscore has reported that mobile map app usage is soaring, particularly in the US - thanks to the Nokia N95 (although Joe average will indeed have a huge problem trying to find one in a shop) and the now GPS-enabled iPhone 3G. ComScore reports usage up by 82 per cent in the US and 49 per cent in Europe. n the US, usage increased by 82 per cent in the three months to May 2008, with eight per cent of mobile subscribers using the service, mostly from an Apple iPhone. Given that iPhone 3G has only been around for less than 2 weeks these numbers will indeed skyrocket, with mapping and location-aware social networking apps topping the charts on iTunes store -- why is it iTunes when your buying mapping applications, games etc... isn't that odd? Looking for more LBS apps for iPhone, see here for some tips. See also here for 10 free LBS apps for N95.

Bush approves accelerating VoIP 911 solutions

This interesting item as VoIP leaders applaud Bush on the latest move... From the Pulver Blog - Today, President Bush signed into law the “New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008” (H.R. 3403.) The legislation will help accelerate VoIP 911 solutions by providing direct access to the 9-1-1 network, enabling equivalent liability relief for call-takers, and requiring the creation of a national plan for a next generation 9-1-1 system that uses VoIP to provide breakthrough advances in emergency communications.

Voice enabled Twitter - TwitterFone

LBS and mobile technology period is taking off BIG TIME. Combine all that with some cool Web2.0 apps and social networking services and you have yourself a killer app for sure. Like some of you, I like to Tweet (think Twitter). I started about 1.5 yrs ago when I first heard about the service at WHERE2.0. Now there's a new voice enabled solution that provides voice recognition and tweeting from TwitterFone. The app is in special invite beta (please get me an invite crew) but should be a nice story if it works like it's supposed to. Voice is a huge area of technology, particularly when some of the already great social networking or LBS mobile apps integrate the technology... hopefully we'll see more of that real soon. See http://www.twitterfone.com

Dopplr adds new functionality for users via Twitter, SMS

Dopplr has today announced an updated (Copenhagen) that provides additional functionality for users to share their trips. Now users can update trips via SMS, email and by Twitter using a special direct message functionality. User profiles also have more options that enable the user to limit what info is shared with others. Nice stuff... the mobile updates are a must so this is a treat and may get me actually using it more. See www.dopplr.com
See also the Dopplr blog for detailed info

The Radio Head House of Cards LIDAR music video!

Definitely under the topic of "cool"... Radiohead just released a new video for its song "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows" - see official announcement. No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes. Directed by Hollywood-based Zoo Films director James Frost, "House of Cards" was shot over two days across Palm Beach County in Florida. Certain shots of the exterior scenes came from other parts of the US. Aerotec’s LIDAR system uses a single laser and scans in an elliptical pattern looking 20 degrees forward, 20 degrees side-to-side, and 14 degrees aft to completely scan three sides of each object over which it is flown. Approximately 200,000 LIDAR points per second are captured, thus producing a very detailed image of the scanned exterior scenes.
See http://code.google.com/radiohead
www.aerotecusa.com
http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

Weather Underground Hurricane-Tracking service

This morning online weather provider Weather Underground announced the
availability of a new Hurricane-Tracking service - Wundermap. WunderMap displays the current position, strength and movement of every tropical storm across the world that threatens to become a hurricane, typhoon or cyclone.
WunderMap displays: the current position, Dolly's historical path, the storm's projected path and strength. Currently, Tropical Storm Dolly's path can be seen online at
www.wunderground.com/wundermap/hurricane .

Attention Southwest Users attending the ESRI UC

Mark your calendar: Date/Time: Tuesday, Aug 5, 5:30PM - 7:00PM
Level: (upstairs in the conference center)
Location: Room 24 B

GIS users from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico will be getting together at the ESRI User’s Conference to have a networking social; a chance to meet and greet others in our GIS community to discuss regional activities. See more

Primer on Cloud Computing

Thanks to Tim O'reilly, always full of pointers to clever and innovative goodies.. this time I followed a tweet from him to a resource on Cloud Computing from joyent. I'm still fuzzy on this whole thing but perhaps this will serve to help somewhat... enjoy and thanks Tim

Your Chance to name a satellite

Here's an interesting opportunity for you to donate to a charity and be the lucky winner to name a satellite being launched next month. The contest has very simple rules. Participants will be allowed to submit a name for one or more of the five RapidEye satellites. For each name submitted, RapidEye requests the participant to make a minimum donation of 10 Euro. More details on how to enter and win

Province of BC unlocks digital data and strikes a deal with Google

For some time we've know that the Province of BC and Google have been striking backroom deals on sharing data... Last week, Agriculture and Lands Minister Stan Hagen announced GeoBC, (http://www.geobc.gov.bc.ca/) will provide 24/7 access to the province's geographic database in partnership with Google. This information will be available online at geobc.gov.bc.ca and from Google Earth. Apparently, this move makes B.C. the first government in Canada to supply Google with access to its information. Interesting to see that the Provicne has noted on the GeoBC/Google gateway page that data layers for use within ArcExplorer are coming soon.

According to Mark Zacharias, acting assistant deputy minister for GeoBC (nice position Mark... he was a master's student at U Vic when I was doing my degree in geography/GIS there),
by making this available on Google Earth, "not only will you be able to zoom in on an area and get a high-resolution view, you'll also be able to download about 600 different themes from the provincial geo data warehouse." The Government hopes that this information will drive innovation and new business opportunities in B.C. I'd like to know, can you view and download BC TRIM data files using this method though? TRIM files are 1:20K topo files (digital) that are akin to a USGS topo DRG file - it's been some time, however, in the past contractors had to pay big $$ to get digital TRIM data - a public GIS data product. Source: Vancouver Sun

For data see - GeoBC Web Map Services (KMZ) This package contains a variety of layers such as Agricultural Land Reserves, Contours, Lakes, Rivers, Roads, Railways, Imagery, Lot Lines, Map Grids, and Parks and Protected Areas. Selected BC Park Profiles (KMZ), This package contains links for selected BC Parks to the web page containing information about that park. Note, you can also copy/paste these links into Google Maps for preview.

ZipWho, the demographics mashup

Mashups mashups everywhere.... this new one is from ZipWho and gives you, well... information (basic) on any zipcode. Simple key in the ZIP and you'll get back in return a snapshot of the area you searched for including such variables as: cost of living index, median rooms in home, avg household size, income, and divorce rate... interesting selection of variables really! A small icon identifies if the variable lies within the top/bottom 10% in the nation - handy. I could see realtors or house hunters taking advantage of this for a quick snapshot - there are still realtors needed right? See www.zipwho.com

Educating the Next Generation of GIS professionals

What do Starbucks, Wal-Mart, the U.S. Military, the Mississippi Department of Transportation, and NVision Solutions have in common? They all hire Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists to solve spatial problems. Interesting to read some stories of just what jobs student interns are given in GIS and geospatial these days. Way back it used to be that the intern would do CAD work all day, babysit a plotter, perhaps help with field work, or do tedious digitizing or data entry hour after hour (like you, I also spent a couple of years as a data troll!) Today, students are getting certification, working with ArcMap and ArcGIS and actually doing hands-on GIS analysis. Read on for a great example of how students in Mississippi are being put to work.

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