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April 23, 2003
mapping the wireless revolution
MAPPING THE WIRELESS REVOLUTION
Rich Gibson & Schuyler Erle
nocat networks
((lots of maps of parks in Texas))
Maps tell stories.
We need maps that tell the right stories, now attention is at a premium [surely all maps ever were about telling stories?]
Telling stories about things that happen in a variety of places.
"attention economy" - have to tell the story the right way to be heard
Nocat trying to work out line-of-sight for 100s of participants - impossible through using normal topo software.
100 participants = 4950 possible links
Communities gather around stories.
We need maps that tell ours.
Too much context - the enemy of attention conservation [nocat topology geographical map reminds me of Tufte examples]
geographical map doesn't tell our story. It distracts.
GPS tracklog map is the right sort of story - but not enough context.
We want systems for the management, acquisition and presentation of geospaial information.
- acquire
- explore - play "what if?"
- create a narrative
Spirit of community - we want others to replicate our efforts.
- Open Source software
- freely available data sources
there's a ton of both! [not in England there's not]
GIS
- layers
- data sources
- coordinate systems
- projections
Layers
- streams and rivers
- roads
- people
Open data sources
[this is going to be US centric]
TIGER
- US Census bureau
- lines and polygons of most relevant features
- inaccurate and wildly incomplete
- free!
GNIS
domestic geographic names information
2 million physical and cultural geographic features
lat, long, elevation
others
digital line, raster graphs
orthophoto quads
Bay area regional database
most cities and counties make data available
Digital Elevation Models
10 or 30 metre resolution
can be converted to contour vectors
- can calculate Line of Sight
make your own -
GPS
netstumbler
journals, diaries, travelogues
RDF?
not covering mapquest et al - commercial, closed, cannot add own overlays
TIGER source not available - it's been "lost"
GRASS - Geographic Resource Analysis Support System - UNIX programs with TclTK front end
Open source, does everything, hard to use
everyone who uses GRASS is in-the-field, or PhD students... not used for mass-market, therefore not designed for it
FreeGIS
All Open Source projects linked here.
OpenGIS
industry consortium
publishes open specs (inc. GML)
PostGIS
geographic objects for PostgreSQL
http://postgis.refractions.net
takes us out of the realm of trying to plot overlays
MapServer
GIS browser
Mapscript bindings for all kinds of languages
handles layers easily
reads lots of kinds of data sources
wifimaps.com - based on MapServer
Personal Telco Project
node maps via MapServer
nodebot - IRC resource
- reports nearest PTP node locations via IRC (e.g. from address/postcode)
GeoWiki - python mapscript plugin for moinmoin
personaltelco.net
(MoinMap)
geocoding - adding geospacial information to other data
nocat maps don't account for:
curvature of the Earth
Fresnel nodes
Ground clutter
building useful map databases is a black art
visualisation tools let us play "what if" - like spreadsheets with numbers
plot supermarket prices onto maps - reclaim data
we need public databases, and facilitate development of new apps
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