At the recent Local Business Summit in Amsterdam I spoke about my work at the BBC on location services and mapping and tried to make the point that, as far as our users/consumers are concerned, the place name is all-powerful when it comes to identifying location. Other means of identifying location (grid references, postcodes, lat/long [...]
No blogging this morning as I was busy presenting a view of location services at the BBC and then speaking on a panel discussion. Thoroughly enjoyable, and the best panel discussion yet according to @uphamb. Follow #locbiz f you want a rundown of events so far. Now back to sitting, watching, listening and blogging. Joel [...]
Some highlights from day one of The Location Business Summit in Amsterdam. Annette Zimmermann from Gartner began the conference with some analysis and survey results on the usage of location services. Unsurprisingly it is expected by 2014 that a third of mobile phones in use will be smartphones – i.e. phones capable of delivering location [...]
After taking some holiday last week and walking the Great Glen Way in Scotland I’m now back in civilization and enjoying the comfort of sitting down once more. I’ll post an overall review of thoughts from the where2.0 conference in the next day or so but, in the meantime, check out the following information on [...]
The last session of the 2008 where2.0 conference, introduced by Tim O’Reilly.InSTEDD: Humanitarian Collaboration TalesRobert Kirkpatrick (InSTEDD), Eduardo Jezierski (InSTEDD) “InSTEDD functions as an ‘innovation lab’ for developing novel approaches to challenges in the field.“ Their approach is to partner with as many other services and technologies as appropriate. “We learn by failing fast and [...]
The internet is alive again and it’s afternoon on Day 2. Google Maps = Google on MapsLior 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 [...]
Going Places on Flickr: The Significance of Geographical Information in PhotosDan Catt (Yahoo!, Inc. ) Dan outlines the challenge for Flickr around selecting location. How does Flickr take a lat/long coordinate pair and decide exactly where a photo has been taken? This is about reverse geo-coding. “Places have meaning… we (Flickr) should be able to [...]
Day 2 begins at 9am with… Disaster Tech: What is Working and What is ComingJesse Robbins (O’Reilly Radar), Mikel Maron (Mapufacture) How innovative tools can make the bridge between consumer tools and saving lives. “It’s difficult to innovate, but there is a way…“. The key seems to be a step-by-step iterative pattern. Within this space:1. [...]
Heading towards the end of Day 1…Mirror World: Using MMOs for Real World Mapping – Wagner James Au(MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online Game) Examples of Google Earth and Second Live mash-ups which merge the virtual world and the real world, including real-time weather data on the globe, real-time LA airport arrivals/departures, and a project Digital [...]
Ride the Fire Eagle: Open Location for AllTom Coates (Yahoo! Brickhouse) Fire Eagle is there to allow users to:- share their location online- control their data and privacy- easily build location services “Fire Eagle helps sites and services to respond to a users location“ Yahoo Internet Location Platform – if fire eagle is the lens, [...]
11:00am: Best Practices for Location-based Services: Privacy, User Control, Carrier Relations, Advertising, and Moreby Sam Altman (Loopt – a social mapping tool to connect, share and explore in the real world) “GPS is the number one requested feature on a phone in the US, more than a camera.“ Location challenges today (what we want) can [...]
Day one proper kicks off with brief opening remarks from Brady Forrest (O’Reilly Media, Inc.) – ‘Where2.0 has now hit the mainstream‘. —– Then Adrian Holovaty the creator of EveryBlock: A News Feed for Your Block. It’s all about finding news relevant to you because you live there – stories that a journalist would never [...]