where2.0 - Wed 14th May (1.15pm - 3pm)

The internet is alive again and it's afternoon on Day 2.

Google Maps = Google on Maps
Lior Ron (Google, Inc.)

Apparently we are about to hear about 9 new launches in the next 9 minutes.

As the title suggests, the basic idea here is that Google Maps are all about everything you can do with Google on a map.

Announcement1 - A layer facility on Google Maps, initially allowing you to display photos /wikipedia entries on the map.

Announcement2 - An 'Explore this area' link on the left hand side to show popular searches in the area, as well as user photos and videos from the area.

OK, I'm getting lost in the numbers here... not sure if these are part of one announcement or 9 separate ones but the demo involves showing how photos, videos, wikipedia entries, web pages, popular searches, ... can all be displayed as layers on a Google Map.

Announcement X... ooh, "starting next week there will be a news layer on Google Earth allowing users to view news plotted on Google Earth map."
This includes news down to the "hyper-local, neighbourhood level".

Interesting stuff.

Something else coming along for next week is the aggregation of all data available around specific places - this includes all of the content mentioned above PLUS anything that can be found via web search such as upcoming events, flickr photos, UGC, ....

All of this will be available via the local search API to allow implementation - check Trail Registry for an example.

Apparently we've had 8 so far... this is announcement 9... "starting 1 hour ago, the API is available to implement maps in Flash."

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History's Best Geo-hacks (Part Deux)
Chris Spurgeon (The Walt Disney Company)

A brief history of Gerardus Mercator - a clever mathematician and cartographer who invented a map projection to allow sailors to navigate the globe by sailing in a fixed compass direction. Very clever.

John Harrison and The Great Longitude Prize. A clockmaker who solved the problem of defining longitude position while sailing on the ocean - but took a long time to get paid his prize money by the government.

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Venture Capital: What's Hot and What's Not on the Geoweb
Dev Khare (Venrock)

Slides of this presentation are available here.

We're talking money now, and how the geo/location world is impacting many traditional industries.

GeoMobile - GPS chip prices are dropping significantly which enables a whole new set of businesses to develop in this space.

GeoCar - "People spend 60 hours per month in their cars in the US, more than the time spent watching TV."

"In developing countries (india, south america, asia, ...) people are going straight to the mobile device and skipping the web/PC."

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Openlocation.org: Location Services for Web Developers
David Troy (Roundhouse Technologies, LLC)

The creator of Twittervision, Flickrvision, etc.

Most recently there have been local variations, e.g. Twittervision Local

"We need some way to rank search results based on the social graph - me, my friends, and everyone else."

Announcing openlocation.org - "A lot of web developers don't get Geo, there are lots of walled gardens and odd appraoches."

"What we don't want are attempts to lock up location data in an effort to become the Facebook of location based services."

"Sometimes maps are not the best way to deal with this type of information...". Hey, the second person to say that yes, "sometimes maps suck" and maybe, just maybe, they aren't always the answer to location based services.

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Earth-Browsing: Satellite Images, Global Events and Visual Literacy
Lisa Parks (University of California-Santa Barbara)

Some interesting questions about the use of satellite imagery and their impact on the real world.

For example, the Rwandan refugees (1996) and how satellite imagery was able to visualise the atrocity taking place on the other side of the world and catch people's attention.

There's something interesting in here about the role of Google Earth and how a satellite image used to be about scrutiny, investigation and would allow quite unique public deliberation, but, with the familiarity of Google Earth we are now becoming more accustomed to these views and the role of this imagery is changing.

I think that's the point anyway.

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Veriplace: Acquiring and Sharing Consumer Location
Scott Hotes (WaveMarket, Inc.)

Family Locator (allowing parents to track the location of their children) has given WaveMarket the experience to deal with sensitive and private location data.

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Digital Cities
Doug Eberhard (Autodesk)

Lots of 3D models of buildings and the benefits these provide architects and construction firms - and then how these relate to the benefits of being able to model cities.

"Autodesk is hard at work to define a new technology vision for digital cities."

A problem exists today in that business is still done on paper and "3D models are (currently) not 'legal' enough".

Some very pretty pictures and animations - the point of difference seems to be that the movement of cars, people etc within the model is based on "accurate and trustworthy" realistic modeling.

It's easy to see how these provide a more useful method of city planning and land use than the current paper-based plans.

Not exactly sure on the specifics though - how easy/cheap can it be to build one of these models? And what makes the modeling so trustworthy?



... and it's the afternoon break... I need several cans of cold diet pepsi, a plateful of cookies, a visit to the bathroom, and a new pair of eyes to replace the ones that have been ruined by sitting too close to the big screen... some fresh air wouldn't go amiss either.