Planning the next Satchel Blue Album

My new website

Inspired by the Where2.0 conference in May this year, and attempting to solve my personal dilemma of trying to avoid anything vaguely work related on this website, I've now set up a new blog (Straight To The Point) at www.straighttothepoint.net.

As with any new plan I'm sure the reality will be end up differing from the initial idea over time but as a starting point I've set the theme to be "Location based technology, local content services, and new developments in local media and journalism."

Through to the semi-final!

Last night we (Satchel Blue) qualified as one of the bands to go through to the next round of Surface Unsigned 2008.

Thanks to everyone who turned up on the night and to everyone who voted for us by text.

We do have an audio copy of our performance taken from the sound desk so watch this space for mp3's coming soon.

In the meantime, here's the official review:

"Next up were Birmingham based five-piece Satchel Blue. Delivering another fine performance of their melodic Nu-Folk soundings, they went down very well with the Wednesday evening crowd. On the surface it’s a refreshingly simple, infectious noise that’s instantly likeable and wholly accessible, however don’t be fooled, there’s some real depth (and a nice touch of heartfelt whimsy) in their lyrical content and in the careful arrangement that goes into each track. Excellent material, an engaging and endearing manner, and tight technical ability onstage made for a convincing and impressive set from a band who do things their own way and sound all the better for it."

Read the full review of the night and check out the scoring.

Surface Unsigned - Round 2

Tomorrow night we (Satchel Blue) are playing in Round 2 of the Surface Unsigned competition for 2008 - although noticing that my favourite band in our Round 1 heat, Olly Dabblers, haven't made it past Round 2 then I'm not holding out much hope.

If you fancy supporting us, or just coming along to see what's going on, then pop down to The Factory Bar, Custard Factory in Digbeth.

First band on at 7.30pm and we're hitting the stage at 9pm.

(check out our MySpace or Facebook page for more band details and music.)

where2.0 links

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 O'Reilly website:

• News & coverage
• Photos by Duncan Davidson
• Speaker presentation files
• Video from the conference

where2.0 2008, The End

where2.0 - Wed 14th May (3.30pm - 5pm)

The last session of the 2008 where2.0 conference, introduced by Tim O'Reilly.

InSTEDD: Humanitarian Collaboration Tales
Robert 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 failing often."

A virtual instance of Sahana (a disaster management system) has been put into action as part of the response to Cyclone Nargis.

Interesting use of existing apps such as Twitter, incorporating lat/long positioning data, to communicate with people in the field on mobile phones.

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Lifemapper 2.0: Using and Creating Geospatial Data and Open Source Tools for the Biological Community
Aimee Stewart (University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute)

Lifemapper: Two main purposes of the project
- to create an archive of ecological niche models
- a bunch of web services to expose the data in the archive and allow analysis on the data

Yet another projection of data being shown on Google Earth - Google must be happy.

Lots of data being collected from around 200 institutions, totaling about 6,000 collections of data. Some techie stuff about how the data is gathered, stored etc ("using as many existing standards as possible"), and then accessible via the Lifemapper website.

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Google Maps for Mobile with My Location - Behind the Scenes
Adel Youssef (Google Inc.)

"My Location opens the road atlas on the right page".

Launched in beta in Nov 2007 and launched on iPhone in Jan 2008.

My Location is based around using Cellid as complementary to GPS as a means of determining your current location.

No personal/user information is collected - just information about the location of the cell tower.

Some of the challenges:
- 100's of different platforms
- Areas of interest vs actual location (for example, the cell tower is not necessarily where you are... nor is it necessarily the location you are interested in)
- Noisy data

"A balance between respecting user privacy and providing good useful functionality to the user... the user has full control over the service".

What next?
- improving accuracy and coverage
- continue to improve security
- enabling location for 3rd parties (android, gears)

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A Data Source to Make Mashups Correct, Complete, Relevant and Revisited
Jonathan Lowe (Giswebsite LLP)

Freebase - an open, shared database of the world's knowledge - holds spatial data but is not exclusively spatial.

Freebase has semantically structured data. Semantics is about meaning, providing structured relationships between different objects.

So... semantics is good, structured data is good, Freebase does both of these and is also open... which is good, yay!

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Enemies Around Every Corner: Mapping in an Activist World
Erik Hersman (Ushahidi)

First up, Erik is excited about some of the stuff he's seen at the conference.
These include Geotate, AfricaMap, Buglabs, DIY Drones.

Then onto his coverage of the unrest in Kenya around the recent elections.
One influential local blog was Kenyan Pundit.

"Our Goals:
- create a way for everyday Kenyans to report incidents of violence they saw
- create an archive of news and reports around the same event
- show where majority of violence is happening"

ushahidi.com was created in a couple of days.

Lessons Learned:
- the importance of mapping accuracy
- data poisoning - what happens when an antagonist starts using it?
- verification is difficult
- clarify why it was created and make that obvious
- include a feedback route from the end user, not just pushing data out

Whether you are an activist or an antagonist depends on which side of the issue you are on.

Some examples of activists websites, including I Love Mountains.

Mapping for human rights is different to mapping for activism.


... and that's a wrap.

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.

where2.0 - Wed 14th May (11am - 12mid)

Going Places on Flickr: The Significance of Geographical Information in Photos
Dan 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 give them (a user) back a sense of meaning about the place where they have taken their photograph."

A 'ladder of locality':
- 'neighborhood'
- locality
- county
- region
- country
- continent

Flickr starts at the bottom ('neighborhood') and works up the ladder until it finds a suitable match.

"What does this mean? It means there is a bias of interpretation... and... we are all working with imperfect data."

Lots of stuff about "bounding boxes" which are used to provide a contextual means of location around an area - it's about associating point data with these bounding boxes.

"Flickr is a photo sharing website... it's not about maps." - But, maps do help users get the geocoding correct.

Once again crowd sourcing is mentioned at the conference... this time it's about using the power of crowd sourcing to improve the set of location data to help correctly define where a photograph has been taken... and ultimately to improve our geographical knowledge of the world.

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LocationAware: Standardizing a Geolocation API in the Browser
Ryan Sarver (Skyhook Wireless)

Development thinking is focussed around "what does it mean when a device is location aware?".

"locationaware's goal is to help drive the standardisation of how a user's geolocation is exposed to the website through the browser."

GPS, Wi-Fi and IP are different technologies which require some interesting challenges.

Announced today: Skyhook are working with mozilla labs on a prototype extension to explore geolocation in the browser (available June).

Yelp will be the first 'user client' at the point of launch to help explore some of the particular challenges around making a useful service.

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Lessons Learned in Location-based Gaming
Jeremy Irish (Groundspeak)

Geochaching is a global community using GPS devices to hide and seek hidden "treasure". There are over 500,000 containers in the world."

Whereigo is the next generation of geocaching - "it's a toolset for creating media rich experiences in the real world using GPS and handheld devices - taking adventure games outdoors".

A recommendation for using User-Generated Content in this context. Take advantage of local experts to improve the context.

"Players are manic-depressive - educate, motivate and reward often."

More advice on creating successful games:
- keep games short... under 30 minutes is best
- serialize your game into chapters
- simplify, simplify, simplify
- encourage players to look up from screen

"Remember, you can't control the players, a player can and will go to any length to finish a game."

Finally, "Be aware of legally grey areas", whatever that means!

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Crawling the web for GeoData
Juan Gonzalez (PlanetEye Inc.)

Going behind the markers on a map to uncover the lat/long coordinates... but also gathering other types of location information contained in content on the web.

There is a problem however, current geocoding techniques struggle with the large variety of different types of location data used in the real world.

The solution is, apparently, 'low-resolution geocoding'.
OK, I get it, it basically means that sometimes we can only tag content with a wider area, rather than being able to tie everything down to a specific point.

"Sometimes you need to look beyond the location information" - Useful to spot commonalities in data (for example, different address styles but the same phone number) in gaining a better understanding of location information.

"Why are we doing all of this? - Planet Eye is trying to aggregate all travel information on the web"


...and we're off to early lunch thanks to the fact that the internet is dead (not all of the internet, just our little bit).

where2.0 - Wed 14th May (9am - 10.15am)

Day 2 begins at 9am with...

Disaster Tech: What is Working and What is Coming
Jesse 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. Disaster happens
2. Three is ad-hoc adaptation of some tech tools
3. After the event the better ideas are championed
4. Thereby providing ideas for iterative improvement

An interesting example from New Orleans. Red Cross were looking at Google Maps and assuming the aerial view was a 'live' image whereas a the I-90 bridge (for example) was actually destroyed and no good for supplying aid.

Open mapping, such as OpenStreetMap, could provide better solutions to this problem by allowing users to provide more frequent updates.

Importantly "people who are trying to save lives have very little time" so the role of the champion is crucial to illustrate the positive role of new technology in helping with emergencies.

"Be champions".

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Your Memories: Here, There, Everywhere
Jef Holove (Eye-Fi, Inc.)

A clever gadget - basically a memory card in a digital camera - that uploads from the camera to a number of web services, or the PC, via wi-fi... i think there's something about geo-tagging in there as well.

A unique set of considerations/limitations that helped drive the product development:
- the camera is unaware that this is happening
- no user interface
- network authenticates card automatically
- connectvitiy, upload status

Geotagging - (Geotagging is an onerous chore with todays technology - Stephen Shankland, CNET). "What is the issue? - It is time consuming, cumbersome, expensive, slow, limited".

The solution needs to work with no user interaction, be quick, work indoors, and have minimum impact on battery life.

So...
- The card is inside the camera using wi-fi to detect surrounding networks
- Card uploads photos and geo-data at home or wi-fi hotspot
- Eye-fi service processes network IDs

I like this... I want one.

A good quote to finish:- "Advanced (technology) is simple. Really advanced is effortless."

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Merian Scout Case Study
Jennifer Kilian (frog design inc.)

"Marion wanted to create their own GPS device with premium content and experience for European travellers."

I think this explains the final product.. and this.

It's a physical, electronic device, slightly smaller than a blackberry, which works as a kind of digital Lonely Planet, but using the possibilities available due to the electronic format - GPS, audio content, etc

Think of it as a hand-held Tom-Tom device full of tourist information.

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GeoDjango: Web Applications for Geographers with Deadlines
Justin Bronn (CartoAnalytics, LLC)

From the website - "Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to build GIS web applications and harness the power of spatially enabled data."

"Why? 80% of enterprise data has a spatial component."

GeoDjango is made up from MTV - that's Models, Templates, Views - not Music Television.

Lots of mentions of MySQL, Python, KML, GML ... oh, and we're off into lines of code on the powerpoint slides., ouch!

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Your Car Gets an API
Chris Butler (Dash Navigation)

Dash is the first two-way navigation device available in the car and announced today is a dynamic search API for the product.

Some examples are shown to demonstrate the potential... a weather bug application, a way of accessing radio playlists (mediaguide), and something called Trapster, which shows you were the nearest police presence is and allows you to add your own police sightings to help other users.

People sitting around me seem to like this last idea.

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The Future = Location
George Filley (NAVTEQ)

Talking about the "Mobile Information Revolution".

"The future is here... in Quarter 1 this year, 43% of downloaded services were Location Based Services."

The end user expectations can be summarised as:
- I want to be able to access it anywhere, anytime
- I want to be able to share the information
- I don't want to pay

Connectivity cost is dropping and device capabilities are increasing... and there is "strong advertiser demand for new and innovations advertising forms."

The focus here is on how to monetize and create revenue in this space.

A slightly scary quote about developing local services to the point where a stranger can walk into a neighborhood and know more about the place than someone who lives there.

Or is it just me that finds that slightly scary... and slightly pointless. As a user, would I actually want, or be able to consume, that amount of information?


... and it's morning break and more coffee.