think
Everyone knows about the Nokia aquisition of Navteq (see Directions, Ed Parsons), and there's been a lot of handwringing and speculation about what it all means. Particularly what it means for Google (+Apple). One scenario is that Nokia decides to start limiting who gets their data (i.e. stop selling it to Google).
It's been so long, I wasn't sure I'd even remember how to work this blog. At least I'm in good company. A number of other geobloggers have come out of hibernation recently. Anyway, this is a followup post to my visit to SXSW Interactive back in March, where I was on a panel called "Living in a Spatial Reality." The folks at SXSW have been slowly putting together mp3's of the panels, and mine just got posted yesterday.
A quick post on Where2.0 even though I'm not there. PlanetGS is full of news. I was glued to the IRC channel most of the day.
Schuyler gave a momentous talk. Mapping the Maximum City was about mapping Mumbai to do some social good. Look for writeups about this one.
Andrew Turner's talk was also well regarded in the IRC channel. He's a big GeoRSS proponent and is helping out on GeoJSON. Both truly neo-geographic in scope. He also announced a new version of GeoPress.
Microsoft announced some whizzy 3D stuff in live.local but you need a PC. I did spend some time checking out the oblique views of Boston and around my house again.
I missed a lot of the chatter about Mikel Maron and Ian Holt, but Mikel and Andrew Tuner rolled out a new version of mapufacture today. very nice looking, indeed.
Chris Schmidt outdid himself in his lightning talk, finishing early and wowing the crowd with MetaCarta Labs on-a-stick.
Graphserver sounds really nice.
I've decided there's a category of apps that's going to be a very hard sell. Weogeo fits nicely into that category. It's too hard for "real" neogeographers to figure out what to do with, but too "simple" for the full-time, old-school people to do much with. Maybe that's being a bit pessimistic, because there are some cool ideas, but they seem like they may get lost in the shuffle. GeoCommons is another one of these. Time will tell as the Where dust settles.
I was at the previous 2 Where's and it would be nice to be there now, but staying home has its good side, too...
Drop everything and read this: Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg. For the impatient, there's even a website full of reviews, excerpts, etc. When I heard about this book I immediately put in a request at our public library (cheapskate that I am...). It finally got here a couple of weeks ago and I found it to be pretty fascinating. Originally I thought it might be in the same genre of The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder or Where Wizards Stay Up Late: the Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner.
I really wonder why Paul needs to apologize. Carl Reed pretty much said everything in March. The Michael Jones quotes are pretty "classic Michael Jones" if you've ever talked to him.
Given that OGC says that discussion on KML will be open, this seems like a pretty bad way to start. If I were Google at this point, I would be in the OGC Planning Committee tomorrow asking some hard questions about whether OGC wants to help promote KML as a standard or whether it wants to continue its practice of keeping things under wraps.
I'm generally focused on the geeky side of things so I tend to pay attention mostly to blogs like import cartography, Brain Off, and technical ramblings.
But lately I've been impressed with two blogs that pretty much deal with pure geography and cartography. Strange maps has had some great posts lately, not the least of which is today's post, Europe From Moscow (in 1952). That posting shows a 1952 Time Magazine map of Europe turned on its side, colored with shades of communism and freedom, and distorted in perspective to emphasize the geopolitical situation of the times. Very neat stuff.
The other is Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze! which seems to consistently have interesting bits about specific places or about the geography behind a topic. Today's entry, Geography of Negro League Baseball, is a good example of the latter, talking about where the various teams and leagues were formed and how their locations changed.
Everyone take some time to cheer for Adena on Monday as she runs the Boston Marathon!!! This could be a tough year, with a nor'easter predicted to dump 3-5 inches of rain, temperatures in the 35-45 deg. F range, and a 20-25 mile an hour headwind. Go, Adena!!
(Are there any other locative/geo people running?)All Points has an item about GITA's attendence drop. I've been to one GITA, a long time ago, when someone asked me to talk at a workshop. I've been to a total of four traditional "geo" events. I find them interesting in the abstract, but since I'm not a geographer, I'm really not their target audience.
What really struck me was the percentage of people who were not vendors or VIPs. Of the 1520 people there, only 64% were "actual" attendees. The positive spin by GITA was that there was a 14% increase in seminar registrations. That resonates with me, I want to learn things when I travel to conferences.
I tend to get my news of the day in a few flavors. Mostly I have four lists of sites I visit. General news, Geo blogs, Mac news, and the ever popular for the end of the day Tech and Other blogs. So here I am, ticking along through Techdirt, Slashdot, and The Register and suddenly I come to a screeching halt as I see a Google ad in The Register for, yup, GML!
