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April 25, 2003
physical computing
physical computing
tom igoe
http://itp.nyu.edu/tigoe/pcomp/
hardware hacking for those with little/no interest in electronics
What is physical computing?
Interaction - a cyclic process in which two actors alternatly listen, think and speak. (Chris Crawford)
Physical computing is mainly on the listen side.
Computer only sees us through what we do with our hands - no emotions.
Physical computing is different from robotics because:
PC - low autonomy of device, focus on input, simple programming, relies on user intell.
robotics - high autonomy, focus on output, complex programming, relies on device intelligence
Trying to overcome people's fear of technology. e.g. Squeak - trying to do it on the hardware side.
transduction - the conversion of one form of energy into another.
input - mech, heat, acoustic energy to electrical energy
output - in reverse
Forrest Mims III - publishes books called Engineer's mini notebooks
Microcontrollers
Microcontroller are just computers. I/O, CPU, power and memory.
Basic Stamp 2 - www.parallaxinc.com
[blinking an led is the hello world of physical computing]
BX-24 - www.basicx.com
PIC - www.microchip.com
javelin - www.parallaxinc.com - Java
Communication between people and devices
Sensors
Conscious vs uncoscious actions
conscious - sends the computer a message, physical affordance should be clear and obvious, sensing often in a very contained area - buttons, knobs, sliders, keys, card swipers
unconscious - action has other primary purpose, affordance not obvious, sensing may be across a wide area (too wide may result in false triggering) - door entry sensors, floor triggers, faucet sensors, motion detectors
discrete vs continuous (digital vs analog)
discrete sensors - buttons, toggles
continuous - sliders, pots, knobs - accuracy constrained by a-to-d conversion
how much resolution do you need? double it.
ambient heat and light is easy but real world is messy (smoothe changes)
touch - capacitive field sensor (Quantum QT113H)
force-sensitive resistors interlinkrec.com flexiforce.com
flex sensors - jameco.com , digikey.com
conductive rubber - allcorp.com , surplus retailers
motion
infrared ranger - sharp gp2d12
radio shack ir motion detector - 49-426
others:
polaroid sonar ranger, ultrasonic ranger - acroname.com
object tracking
CMUCam - http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~cmucam/
software
trackthemcolors for director - smoothware.com
cyclops and jitter (Max/MSP) - cycling74.com
BigEye - stein.nl
acoustic sensing
simple - sound level through piezo microphone, multiple piezos for triangulation
complex - frequency analysis thru FFT (hard on a microcontroller)
hard part is balancing the input and output sides - each could take too much time
Communication between devices
normally serial
async - both devices have a clock
sync - one is master, sends clock pulse as well as data
ethernet - embeddedether.net , embeddedethernet.com , edtp.com/packetwhacker.htm
serial-to-ethernet - siteplayer.com - web interface, UDP, serial port
cobox micro - lantronix.com - no web interface, TCP send and receive, 2 serial ports
wireless
RF and IR
rf good for many to many, ir good for one to one
RF - abercom (?) links/lynx (?)
accelerometers...
802.11b interface - iosoft.co.uk
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bbc ican
props to Matt and James for persevering with technical problems
BBCi ican
Matt Jones & James Cronin
BBC just has to make peoples lives better - not make money.
Lowest turn out in general election - did qual and quant study to find out what people are interesteed in. People weren't lazy or ambivilent, but parties getting closer and closer.
People expected same consumer power with the Governemnt. Wanted a different typ of representation to sending an MP to parliament.
How can digital help?
Databank of information, connect individuals and show they can make change happen.
Supplement real life - make real world easier, rather than a different world.
Came to a hard stop.
Ethnography - to figure out what is going on in real life. "deep hanging out" - what people do is very different to what they tell you.
15 people at differnet stages of interfacing with local or national gvt.
4 types -
sympathisers - never done anything, little knowledge of how gvt works, on edge of tipping into doing something. Find triggers to engage them.
first timers - starting to do something, but can't get enough traction to get things done. Normally their local environment that prompted them to do something. Tends to be single issue.
local - care about all issues in locality
crusaders - passionate about a single issue, take it nationally or internationally, don't always think about consequences
address mainly sympathisers and first timers
looked at the process -
same gates and decision points, obsticles and opportunities. Tried to identify pain points, and throw design and technology to address these.
1. discovering
build up body of evidence about what they have in their head - nagging doubt about something. Triangulating the issue.
Design a knowledge structure that allows people to collaborate on issues that may be the same thing. Structure initially designed by library scientists, but designed to respond to feedback very quickly.
Provide multiple ways into an issue.
2. Deciding (whether to campaign or not)
Knowing that you're not on your own
Consumer environment - what will it cost to capaign (time/money/effort)
local noticeboard - centred on locality or town. Shows aggregation of what people in your area care about. Flag issues - not committing to do anything about it.
Looked at last 20, 30 years of work on "social software". Winograd and Flores, 1988, - conversation for action.
1+2 are very very long...
3 + 4. planning + acting
(normally 2 years)
a cycle with a decision point - continue as was, change the campaign, or initiate new campaign on new issue
3. planning
compile a folder of information you find useful - you cna then invite people into using the folder.
Tools with hooks - not completely of this system e.g. email to journal, feeds for existing websites.
tried and tested case studies - editorial effort to pump prime the system.
Moderation - a positive spin - "call an editor" to look at stuff you were thinking of putting out there. Doesn't take content away from you - like letters page in a newspaper.
4. acting
Folder goes live as a window on the group's activity. Start to connect across locality (especially with issues that aren't localised - gm foods). Many different spins on the same topic.
5. retiring
Action dies.
Content produced can by put under any cc licence the user chooses.
TOOLS
Different tools for different scales of activity
dialogue / conversatyion
buddy list / circle of friends
communities of interest
strangers in the aggregate
People realise that their issue has several federated issues, can gather speed and size.
Tried working with stopesso (not in bbc time ;) ) to geocode information and people, create localised mailing lists...
different tools for different types of people
((see slide))
trials start Oct 2003 - one reporter per area (6). Broadcast media primed to follow it.
Real world is complicated enough ((pic of a desk)) [how do you get letters etc. into the system?]
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google keynote
google, innovation and the web
Craig Silverstein, director of Technology
ingredients
a company needs some things to be successful - not universal, but these work for Google:
mission statement - organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful
Can directly tie products to this mission statement - catalogs.google (paper), google on phones (universal access), spell correction (useful)
Keeps the company from straying too far from the field - there's 200 years of stuff to do just with this statement.
Trying to do things that matter - this focus helps them hire people, flexibility to not be evil.
Relentless focus on the user - e.g. advertising - text ads rather than popups
Google labs - trying to find what's useful for people. USer studies just offer limited feedback, better to get it into hands of users and see how they use it.
Switching costs for search engines is very low - just type a new url (all short urls are taken now though).
Brilliant people have good ideas - hiring is the key to Google and their process.
creative environment - attracting good people is easy and hard - free lunch, dinner, massage, keeping people motivated by getting products out the door.
We use process that works:
1. ideas come from everywhere
but bad ideas come from everywhere - have to be able to filter them - but this should happen late in the process.
Touchgraph google browser
2. design for users
think about design very early in the process
advantage as company - comes from hci background
delta force of ui experts that come in in planning stage
tricky business - lots of effort to make it look simple
good user experience isn't just what a user sees, but how they see it - speed etc.
3. compile, discuss, prioritize
has a top 100 (actually 230) of projects Google wants to do, in vague priority order. makes sure keeping all parts of mission statement as followed.
project idea board (sparrow from xerox parc) - anyone can add
All ideas are discussed every week by anyone who wants to join in (product discussion forums) - 5-10 minutes about products that have been added - brainstorm - can get feedback and refine
iterative process - wireless reprioritized after watching stats (big jump in Christmas 2002 (signed new partner))
reprioritized every week - go down list and check still right priority
4. small teams are fast and agile
teams of 3 people - they own product - they do design, code, test, launch - everything! people have to feel comfortable in all the roles. they get to do different things all the time, and also get to launch their own products - very motivating. related teams help each other.
5. communication is key
100 small teams - have to communicate to function. very broad, very regular. teams need to talk to others outside their realm - not hierarchical. design process - project notes are sent to all people in the company (with a few official reviewers) - everyone hired is interested enough to plisten and comment on everything. code is reviewed before is can be used - checks it is well written and easily understood by others (+ stops reinventing the wheel). Content is more important in code than the syntax. 10 inter-teams that oversee communication - volunteer positions (over and above day job).
Tech talks - every week people talk about projects near completion. Videoed, put on web. Can get up to speed on old projects very quickly.
6. tools to organise
editable idea page
launch process checkpoint page
engineering weekly report - everyone writes a few lines about what they've done and what they plan to do. normally takes 30-40 minutes to read it - then people write comments and suggestions and feedback.
internal blogs - foster communication betwenn engineers. first implementation of blogger in google.
7. test, experiment, iterate
used to just put it up and wait for email
now do user study to iron out any big problems that were missed
if not sure how primetime it is, it goes on google labs first.
(bad employees are a time sink - conservative hiring has meant only 1 or 2 that haven't benefitted Google)
((shows three different versions of Google News))
[geeks don't understand the virtue of whitespace]
gave up on information above the fold - never enough room to put everything wanted, so added summary to top, and lets the user scroll if they want more info.
the web changes everything?
what makes this process work - culture, and technology.
Wouldn't have been possible before the web.
Early search technology was sufficient before the web (even early search engines when the web was really small).
Wouldn't be able to communicate as a company. Web allows easy communication between teams (if people use the tech properly) - easy archiving, easy search. Also need users to give feedback - both through logs and email from users. Know they have enough data to prioritise successfully.
Stay true to your mission - + luck! Great stuff that does something useful. Battlefield is in the technology - marketing doesn't give lock-in on the web - user experience does.
Q: Google opening office in NYC - how will that change collaboration?
Hardest is timezones, plus NYC is 9-5, Google often works from 12... have to use web efficiently to keep everyone in the loop. Same development in NYC as west coast.
Q: (Weinburger)
How many pages actually are there? (Google only indexes 3 billion)
crawl as much as we can in 3-4 weeks. Lots of pages they can't - robots.txt.
Q: what about Applied Semantics?
content ad company... can't comment more.
Q: do business decisions change focus and priority?
gatekeepers make decisions - get down from all ideas to 100-200. People have to trust that every idea is evaluated fairly.
Q: google is better than napster for finding mp3s? (stop right there!) what are you going to do about that?
Google doesn't have a music or video search for IPR reasons. Have to respect IPR. Tricky to reconcile with mission statement. Try not to spit in the face of copyright owners - music search has little/no legitimate value.
Q: what are the limits on a workplace culture like Google? Not enough cool people to hire, only works until so big?
Hard to know the answer - companies have to try these things out. Google technique is brittle - so hiring technique is essential. It would only take one or two bad employees to bring down the culture.
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stewart butterfield
this one was hard to notetake - mainly pictures and quotes. Here's the presentation
1992 - Usenet, talk and email
2000 - weblogs, IM, email
((interconnectedness of sylloge, caterina, evhead, peterme......))
What is a game?
Neccessary:
agree that something is significant - to trump the ace, to find a pokemon
((play -> games -> computer games -> MMOPGs))
[we really need the slides here ;) ]
Impossible to imagine six year olds *not playing a game*.
"play is the exultation of the impossible". (?)
Premise for interaction - e.g. weekly bridge game - games create a premise for social interaction.
When GNE was turned off, people cried. They don't do this when you design an e-booking system!
Top 10 social index for GNE [god, that brings back memories]
Made graphs using Touchgraph of all friendships [Selvia Morales rocks!]
culture | code
Most friendship isn't encoded or explicit, they just happen. What you code changes the way the culture works.
culture - we provide polls.
code - we provide the means to programatically enact the democratically produced decisions of the group........
reputation
Player killers - killing a playerkiller was a good thing, so they started killing each other. Changed to an ebay rating system - but everyone killed always rated it as a murder. They gave up and moved to a kp and non-kp server.
http://etcon.gne.net
confab - 2 week build for conference room chat system. Had to add a delay when movign from room to room as it's too fast(!)
you can add sticky notes to people, and drag people into groups [not obvious, good idea tho']
Can't set up groups in IM [or lots of messaging]
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From the margins of the writable web
Before anything. Meg rocks. Hard. I totally agree with her direction. Rah!
From the margins of the writable web
Meg Hourihan
www.megnut.com/speak/etcon
are webloggers self-absorbed and navel gazing? no, we pull things into the centre and analyse.
the weblog equation - the writing side: tools that make things easier to write, and things have progressed (2nd gen tools), but the reading side is difficult: 100,000s of weblogs - how do you find good stuff, how do you find new stuff, how do you find stuff you like, how do you know you cna trust stuff.
Geographic activity
regional - gawker, beastblog
groups such as NYC bloggers
conferences as temporary geographic center [this is really hard to quantify - even here no-one is really connecting blogs together]
navigation by location
geourl
NYCbloggers - turning to a metablog
Mikel Maron's World as a blog - www.brainoff.com/geoblog/
one-way world
loads of blogs picking info from the English language blogs, and republishing (and commenting) in other languages. This doesn't tend to come back into the English language blogosphere.
e.g. a russian kind-of boingboing
social relationships
trusted blog search tool - opml file of friends, uses google api to run search on your friend's sites
FOAF
Conversational relationships
Trackback - creating threads
More Like This From Others
Topics metadata
Easy News Topics - metadata for posts
Everyone is reading the same people - power law causes top 5-10% to be the ones mainly linked. We've begun to build some tools to cope with this.
RSS readers
anti-social software - it's individualistic, greedy, inconsistent, loss of personality (loss of design and presentation - things that make them different). RSS reader by definition is about the technology, not about a user need [amen]. There's a lot of bad headlines [The Register perchance], and syndication is inconsistent - sometimes full post, except, headline, and the seven or eight flavours of RSS.
This wasn't designed for weblogs, but for news headlines - it comes from a different place.
BUT
it's good enough for now...
more social software
Daypop - word bursts as view, working like Google and Amazon, slicing and dicing large volumes of data in new ways
Technorati - highlights newcomers
Lafayette project - expanding existing ideas
The goal is to make weblogs more accessible to general public.
Others:
personal KM
Public KM
non-human conversations (server logs as RSS)
multimedia blogs - vlogs, audblogs, photoblogs, moblogs, mophoblogs [yes!] - so blog means - easy to publish, frequently published, aiding communication
"broadcast" weblogs - mostly output
marketers - finding it an interesting space
Themes
Too much information - what's best for us as individuals.
Turning online to offline relationships
Geek overload!! (is bad) [my god i think i love her!!]
The future?
More ways to enable local information sharing and connecting - ludicorp demo, geourl, indyjunior, GPS - phones with geo-encoded pictures [yes!!!!]
post-rss readers
centralization - probably not the answer (bloggers don't tend to like it)
P2P - connected solutions
post-geek
writing hard, now easy
how can we make reading easier?
[yes, but it's still a small minority that "get" weblogs - we need new terms, new stories, new ways of packaging this up. Also, small group publishing rather than broadcast publishing]
Q: problems with location and privacy
(see Tom Coates' presentation)
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April 24, 2003
clay shirky keynote
Clay Shirky keynote
looking for patterns of long-term large groups
social software - software that supports group interaction
Internet supports point-to-point, two-way, one-way outbound, and one-to-many.
Prior to internet, last technology that enabled group conversations was the table (conference calls are very hard).
Ridiculously easy group forming is new.
No particular piece of software is "social software". Email allows group conversations, but many other things other than group patterns. Weblogs are broadcast, but if weblogs talk about each other, then they're having a group conversation.
You can't specify in advance what a group can do.
Patterns of creating software, and being surprised when groups start interacting.
Part 1
Best explanation for this pattern is JR Byram(?) - doing work with groups of neurotics - together they conspired to quash their therapy. Nothing explicit, but it happened. Do they take action on their own, or are they working as a group? This is unresolvable. Do you view groups are a whole or as individuals? Has to be both. We're all intelligent, and have visceral emotions for one another.
Easy to see group cohesion when a group has a name - a guild etc. But this goes deeper and kicks in much quicker than expected.
You're at a party and you get bored - fails to meet a threshold of interest. You don't however leave. Social stickiness. When one person gets their coat, everyone does, because they're all thinking the same thing - but need a triggering affect. The paradox of groups - there are no groups without members, but also no members without a group.
Byram thinks this is the group protecting itself. There are specific patterns:
groups can devolve into
1. sex talk
group conceives of purpose as salacious talk between pairs of members.
2. identification and vilification of external parties
e.g. Linux in the mid-90s - mention MS.
They may not actually be an enemy, but this causes a pleasant sense of group cohesion.
3. religious veneration
e.g. try actually discussing Tolkein in a LOTR newsgroup
Group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself.
THis keeps it focussed on its own sophisticated goals, and stops it devolving to one of the above.
BBS called Communitree - open access, free dial up. Over time new patterns emerge. A high school got modems - the boys we interesting in fart jokes and sex talk. Communitree was overrun. "that's not the kind of free speech we meant".
The inability to defend themselves - technical or social problem? Doesn't matter. Tech and social issues are deeply intertwined. An attack from within is the pattern that matters. It was shut down by people logging in and posting. Split users into those that wanted it to continue, and those apathetic.
THis happens many many times, everywhere. "learning from experience is one up from remembering" - it's lousy. Not much learning from reading is all this.
assumed certain user behaviours - different to real behaviours. Couldn't decouple tech and social decisions. Lamdamoo wizards tried to only address technical issues - didn't work, had to go back and cover social issues as well.
People working on social software are closer to economists and political scientists rather than programmers. These social crisises are similar to constitutional crisises. Need to have rules for making some rules.
Jeff Cohen - chance of a group having a flame war about getting additional structure approaches 1 as time goes on.
Part 2 Why now?
Revolution in social software going on.
Internet was about how big you could be for last 6 years. Only works for broadcast, and no user conversations. Dense interconnected pattern isn't possible to keep alive on large scale.
mid-size groups (13-1000) are possible. Mailing lists, BBSes, IM, now weblogs, wikis, platform stuff - RSS, quick ways to build on top of infrastructure. - e.g. confab was built in two weeks. Cost is a lot lower now.
Because it's time.
Weblogs have nothing to do with technology - we got geocities instead of weblogs initially. Took a long time to realise people want to talk to each other (rather than scan pics of their cats). Pepys' Diary showed future - statement that blogs are going to be around for 10 years and more.
Now building things that are web-native - not Lotus-juggernaut with lightweight web interface. Not just on the surface - it assumes http etc.
Small pieces loosely joined - like emergent democracy. Same meeting happens in three different ways - conf call, chat (for signalling and annotation) [third?]
Social glue keeps them working together.
Ubiquity - most people have web access. And in some situations *all* have access. This is very different to most. Everyone you work with, your friends, your family are online. software now *assumes* that offline groups will have an online component - lightweight and easy to manage. Two hula-hoop world - one hoop of offline, one hoop for online. Now we're sweeping the hoops together. Face-to-face and online together at the same time.
All meetings now run with chat or wiki or something for those with wifi. Three weeks from never use it to assuming it'll be there [technology is indistinguishable from magic (til they get used to it)].
Part 3
What should we do?
Quit his day job because of Usenet in 95.
What makes a large, long group successful?
It depends.
Social software allows the same code to be run in several places - some work, most don't. Something supernatural (like supernatural anointment).
Universally true:
*have to* accept (happen anyway):
cannot completely separate technical and social issues
(Software determines what people do - up to a point - can't specify all social issues in technology. Group will assert rights somehow. Put responsibility into the group)
Members are different to users
(some group of users cares more than average about the success of the group. this is a core group. They care and garden the environment. Software doesn't always let the core group express itself - but they will find other ways to do it)
(members of good standing and drive by users)
Core group has rights that trump individual rights in some situations
(not one person one vote. It doesn't work when citizenship is as easy as logging in e.g. sufficiently contentious usenet groups aren't created. Wikipedia has volunteer fire department.)
Constitution - formal and informal. Formal is in code and rules.
Design for:
handles the user can invent (like identity). Weak pseudonimity doesn't work - need to be able to reference previous conversations. Best reputation system is in the brain [this is exactly the same as branding]. ebay works in atomic non-iterated transaction - not the same as social software. Has to be a penalty for changing handles - lose reputation or context.
Some way for members of good standing - posts appear with identity. Karma. Sponsors. (show member of good standing when you lose your sponsor's tag).
Barriers to participation - some cost to join or participate. Some kind of segmentation of capabilities - could be in or out, or partial, can/can't post, can/can't moderate. Pulls against ease-of-use. Ease-of-use is wrong - the user of social software is the group, not the individual. e.g. meetings where everyone has a good time but nothing gets done.
Spare the group from scale - scale alone stops conversations. Metcalfe's Law is a drag. Some way to hang on to "less is more".
Value is inverse to size of group - e.g. close friends, friends, acquaintances...
irc and mailing lists self moderate - gets worse, people leave etc. Don't make system large by taking individual conversation and blowing it up like a balloon.
Necessary but not sufficient platform to build on.
Explicit clustering, conversational artifacts (product is a result of process).
Hosting is like landlords and tenants - people behave as though they have rights. Users are there for one another - not for whoever paid for hosting and the software.
(see Tom Coates essay on social software)
cyberspace is not a separate realm - overlaps with real world. Support for communities online is social software - but these may support offline communities.
Q: why aren't we in 3d environments rather than text?
too small window, slow, like being drunk. Non-immersive software tends to have longer term effects - due to small pieces loosely joined. You don't always want to forget everything else going on.
Q: diff communities need different things - round tables, rectangular tables...
Current social software is architectural - have to go to some place. Haven't done well with goal-oriented software. Hard to make decisions in current software - but good for brainstorming. Add social layer e.g. on a wiki on how to use it. on-ramp, off-ramp pattern - do something and publish it - like Groove.
Don't have to design to be all things to all people.
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Macromedia Central keynote
Macromedia - RIA
Kevia Lynch
klynch.com
big change in underlying architecture of the Internet
applications haven't had a revolution yet
web applications have terrible user interface - 20 years step back in time
why can't we use web apps with a good user interface? waiting to process every click and refresh the screen - and can't use offline
more and more going through hotspots, mobile connections...
Applications need their own environment on your machine - not in web browser
98% reach - takes less than a year to get majority distribution of new version
Anyone can put an application on a webpage, Flash lets you install (+ Central if neccessary)
Application is saved on machine, and runs in a sandbox.
You can integrate applications together.
Directory talks to Oracle db at Macromedia, but stores a cache locally. Also loads info from a Notes db, a blog etc.
Want to get users connecting the apps together. Apps are in silos, don't know about each other. You can take some infdormation and send it to another Central app (in common standards like RDF).
Cooler not to send it each time - but to link apps together. Autosend function automatically sends data from one app to another.
Apps just have to agree on a format of data exchange to work together.
If linked app windows are open, it will automatically update every app when you make a change.
Challenge is privacy. Send to menu is handled by Central, not the app. User must make send decision, and can turn off at will.
Easy to charge for apps - and has trial functionality built in.
Apps have little versions, that you can put onto Central bar. 'Dashboard' tiles form part of the central bar, and auto update when possible.
Everything built using FLash MX. 3 days to build a finance system dashboard - most time was taken getting the finance system to output XML.
How to share global data across apps - info and cotext of user.
Can decide how much data to allow access to. Have to put in location data manually atm - but soon it will integrate with GPS.
Developer kit soft launches later this month.
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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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etcon
At Emerging Technology conference in Santa Clara - next posts will be notes as taken. Several of us Mac owners are trying out collaborative notetaking via Hydra and Rendezvous - join the fun!
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April 06, 2003
I'm an N!
I saw someone publish their Myers-Briggs personality type, and you can now include it in your FOAF file, or in any RDF. Also, several people at work rave about it. I, however, am different.
Every time I take the test, I get a different result.
This seems to shock people. In a quick trawl around the net, I took a variety of the online tests (official and unofficial, M-B and Jungian). Here's my results:
Keirsey: *NF* (i.e. INFP, INFJ, ENFP or ENFJ)
Bloginality: INTP
Humanmetrics: ENFJ
Recycles: INFJ
iVillage (based on Keirsey, but different questions): *NF*
So, it appears I'm an N. Some of the tests give an indication of how strong each of the preferences is; N is very strong, the others (depending on the test) are close to 50/50.
Many online tests give lists for each of the 8 letters, and you're meant to decide which fits you more. Normally, I'm really torn between the different lists. It also depends what mood I'm in.
I guess this all has to be taken with a pinch of salt, but I'm sticking with my N.
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RSS readers, and the draw of .Net
Another day, another RSS reader.
Recently downloaded:
Sharpreader
Harvester
Rssbandit
Syndirella
Of course, most exploration is hampered by the fact that Newz Crawler doesn't export subscriptions in a friendly format. Rule #1 of evaluating software: make sure you have an exit strategy.
What is interesting about these is that they're all developed using .Net Development Framework. It's something that I've tried to avoid - a 20Mb download for a start, and the installation went horribly wrong for me. What changed my mind? Most of these apps were developed in a weekend or two. It seems to be a really really quick development environment. Code reuse seems similar (in speed and functionality) to Perl, which is a real plus.
Reading the blogs of the people who built all of these, it also struck me that .Net has a real developer community (carefully cultivated by MS, with minimal branding). This is incredibly important - it's something that pushes a language to the top of the league. I feel Java never really had any buzz, any hackers writing for the fun of it. C# seems to have momentum.
I'm torn. I was going to learn PersonalJava for the P800, but I think that to access most of the nice features of the phone, you have to program in C++. I'm really not much of a programmer - I learn enough to get my idea made flesh - and the idea of learning two or three new languages (the first for 5+ years) is daunting. But there's a real reason to: connected apps on my phone, and real quick desktop programs on the desktop.
And some Perl on a server somewhere to bind it all together ;)
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April 04, 2003
HelloWorld
Is anyone using HelloWorld? Leave a comment - social software ain't much fun on your own.
(HelloWorld is, I think, quite similar to threedegrees, but slightly less onerous requirements (PC + 25 Mb download).)
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April 02, 2003
get London walking
Rather grandly called "a New Perspective to London", I was thrust a new walking map when coming out of the tube (I'd heard about it from blech). It's a Transport for London initiative, run by the Street Management section. It's a good idea, and it's nice to see that they're thinking of walking as part of the transport strategy.
However, the map falls a bit short of what I hoped. Hopefully I'll be able to spell out my main objections here.
a small example of the new map
I'll get my subjective comments out the way first - this map is painful for any Londoner to use. The map breaks a big convention: south is at the top. I showed the map to several people and tried to get them to locate the office. Half of them couldn't. We're used to maps generally having the same rules - tube maps, bus maps, the A-Z, mapping websites (but not bus spider maps, although the larger ones try to have the same kind of relationship with reality as the tube map). They're not all accurate (and don't need to be), but it gives a point of reference to the user.
Although one map tends to be used at a time, the mental model of London is created by using several maps, and trying to link them together. This map doesn't provide many useful hooks that you would expect, such as the Thames. The map is meant to aid findability by showing 3d isometric buildings. This has the potential to be useful, but the simplified detail of the buildings, limited colour palette, and strange isometric viewpoint means that the large landmarks blur into the background, and the smaller buildings are impossible to match from real life to the map.
The landmarks chosen are strange. The biggest are British Museum, Telecom Tower, and, errr Euston and Kings Cross. I'm not sure how many people could name them when viewed from above and behind. The other highlighted landmarks (which, in yellow, are readable and findable on the map) are hospitals, theatres, universities, a few shops, and one or two swimming pools and sports facilities.
The map does not cover a useful area. It covers Aldwych, to King's Cross, Regent's Park, and Selfridges - a pretty random selection. Soho and Covent Garden are covered, at least, but it's odd that they're not connected to the other tourist sights.
The deputy mayor writes, "How many people use the tube to travel between Leicester Square and Covent garden rather than walk?" - the classic tourist problem. This map, however does not have Leicester Square on it!
So, I think this map suffers from a lack of idea of who will use it. It seems to be aimed at tourists, arriving at King's Cross or Euston, trying to find their hotel in Russell Square. Or something. The scale of the map means that it pretty useless to use when actually walking - you cannot fold it to a useable size and still see enough of the map.
Let's hope TfL test this map, and learn from its mistakes, and from research into how people use maps, for planning and on the street. My finger-in-the-air prediction is that there needs to be a tourist-centric map, and one for Londoners.
I'm also worried about the lack of integrated public transport. There's tube stops on the map, but these are small, hard to spot, and offer no information about where the tube lines go. Buses don't get a mention at all. This means the map offers no help for making decisions about modes of transport and multi-modal journeys. There's no building numbers on any of the streets, so it's also not much use when turning an address into a place.
Nice to have on the wall, I guess.
Does anyone do large A-Z type posters of central London?
