In regards to MySQL being more and more competitive in the geospatial area, there was an announcement last week about OGR and GDAL compatilibity for MySQL. With geospatial getting everywhere (you know; RFID, Google Earth, GPS,...), this is great news for MySQL.
From TFA: WikiCalc's potential success, however, also assumes that Bricklin--who in recent years has been consulting, speaking and running his small software company, Software Garden--can effectively get the word out.
This appears to be a main point to me. Marketing and user adoption. The article refers to various existing alternatives: honestly, I don't care that much about having 5 collabo-spreadsheet alternatives, I just want one that will do what I want bugless with plenty of features. Take OpenOffice spreadsheet (I love OOo:-), you can't export spreadsheets to html (xhtml actually) with graphics and diagrams. This is only one example. I want mature OSS, and only once that is achieved, then OSS becomes really interesting alternatives to commercial software. (and yes, I do help the developers to the best of my abilities)
I like what one of our users said: "To summarize: RFID for inventory tracking ==> Good idea RFID for security ==> Stupid idea"
Here below I copy parts a previous comment on another story (which wasn't moderated and thus, probably not read a lot): Anyone interested in RFID could also start with the excellent wikipedia.org entry.
Any computer user would be **surprised** the difference is makes to calibrate your monitors (thus creating an ICC profile). It allows you to synchronize your monitors, scanners, printers, etc. It works better with macs, but also works with windows (I'm in the process of making it work with Debian).
ID Cards for the Brits, wait, here's why they can get angry!
From the Association of British Drivers press release: "The EU is already planning to use Galileo to enforce continental-wide road tolling, and the car-hating British government wants to be first. You won't be able to drive anywhere without the EU knowing where you are going, who you are travelling with, and what speed you are travelling at."
There is a difference between monopolies. The ones that are reached using innovation (and marketing) and the ones reached using illegal (and unethically) means. Of course, there is a blurred line inbetween.
I dont know how much a9 is a competitor for Google
That's what Google might want to add to Google Local/Maps/Earth: Amazon offers street-level mapping, which no competitor does (yet, of course). You can read more about Amazon A9 mapping service here and here.
Well, yes and no, last october: MobileMag have a small article about a 100% organic matter RFID chip developed in Korea, costing only 0.5 cents. From the article: The new RFID Tag chip is able to function on the 30 kHz frequency by only using 100% organic compounds and an inkjet printer. By cutting down the price considerably it will allow for thee mass production through the printing process. The chip can also be printed on any paper, plastic and wood standard.
Of interest, Slashdot already discussed RFID production increases before.
Yes, RFID can be scary, especially in a bank or in passports. Imagine, even Sun cares for RFID.
Anyone interested in RFID could also start with the excellent wikipedia.org entry.
And if RFID and geospatial tech seriously interest you, see my sig;-)
My main gripe with accessories is that they don't work with all the numerous versions of the iPod.
Take this example, I'm the happy owner of an iPod mini (which did not had a long life), but the great iTalk does not (and will probably never) work with the mini. See this Griffin iPod Compatibility chart, you'll find out the huge gap in iPod accessories compatibilities. (no I don't work for griffin, I'm just making a point here, I'm pretty sure other accessories providers have the same "problem"...)
In the Y! family, along with flickr mapping, I forgot Yahoo Messenger contacts mapping as a future feature. I'm not telling you this out of the blue... you can alraedy do this with Jabber contacts. The story will be out tomorrow on slashgeo.org, but I know/. readers can't wait, so here it is:
Flickr and del.ici.us have a bright future at Yahoo! With the convergence of technologies and the explosion of geospatial technologies, expect a lot in the coming years. To keep myself on-topic, here's some links about flickr and del.icio.us
As for del.icio.us, combine it with, again, Yahoo! Maps, you get something close to social mapping, which you get with Platial: http://www.platial.com/
That's only a start. We'll get more. And there's a lot of competition: Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft (and even Amazon with their mapping service) all want a piece of our mindshare. Competition mean, probably, we'll get better consumer-level tools (of course, there's a price tag, but that's another story).
To get back on-topic, my hopes are we'll see more open source flickr and del.icio.us projets. Take a look at Firefox extensions, you'll find del.icio.us wannabes. We're living in an interesting time...
Oh, yeah, my shameless plug... if geospatial technologies is within your interests, which includes mapping in general, take a look at the link in my signature.
Humm.. wanted to find the source of the quote, before being asked. Looked on Jobs' entry on wikiquote and haven't found it. I must say wikiquote isn't very exhaustive on Jobs' account.
TFA is only 7 paragraphs long (with 7 pictures), but this sums it up for me: "Other CEOs may focus on finance or sales. Jobs spends most of his time trying to come up with the next blockbuster product."
He's not there for the money, he's there to change the world. Well, at least, he succeeds in making us believe he's not after the money... Of course, MacOS X is not open source (yet?!), he's running a corporation after all!
I remember his quote: "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me" I don't think a majority of CEO can honestly say this nowadays.
We had to choose between many CMS for our specialized site. There are many CMS out there. Our choice ended with slashcode. slashcode is hard to install and configure, but the thing is, we considered (other may think otherwise) it has a "killing feature" that was worthed the pain in the long run: slashcode's moderation system.
Different CMS shares a lot of features, but some features are unique from one to another and might influence your choice...
But I am a human being, and being told repeatedly that I suck tends to wear a human being down, especially when, on the whole, I think the work we do here is very good.
This reassures me. It happened to me too many times as a non-profit specialized slashsite manager. Some % of surfers complain no matter if you're trying your best or not. Everything has to be contextualized. Sometimes it's jealousy, sometimes it's good comments shared in a rude or inappropriate way, sometimes it's simple whining to ignore.
Some less off-topic comments: - Our slashsite adopted an article format similar to slashdot. Trying to be succinct and remove everything superfluous, generally excluding any opinion from the article header, leaving opinion for the comments space. I believe this makes us more neutral in the views of our users. - Spelling, since our slash "authors" are non-english natively, I can only say we're trying our best to remove any typos. It starts with re-reading everything once before clicking that save button. After, if a typo is discovered, I'll take the minute required to update the story and remove errors.
I know there's a lot of changes planned for slashdot (e.g. moderation system). My hope is your team will accordingly update slashcode itself and provide a simple (as simple as Perl can be;-) mean to update existing slashsites to the new code. Thanks for your great work:-)
From Spatially Adjusted: The new updated Yahoo! Maps Widget works well on my computer and it is very simple to use (just type your search string in the box and hit enter). You can download it from their new site.
But...why? One of the great things about the internet is that, as a general rule, the geographical location of data is completely irrelevant.
If you go on the georss.org website, you'll understand there's plenty of potential applications. One simple example, you may want to tie news story to a place in order to get BBC news only for stories "located in" ro tied to southeast asia.
From their website: Perhaps all earthquake-related items within 20 miles of your home--delivered to your phone, or a feed of traffic accident items along your daily commute? Once RSS feeds contain geographic location, applications like these and more will be possible.
I want GeoRSS, and Google can make it a reality...
on
Gmail Gets RSS
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Not the first time I post about it, but I really see this as the future of RSS: GeoRSS. And you know what, if one company can push the georss standard to general use, yup, it's Google.
What's georss? From slashgisrs: A team is working on Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds. From the overview: "GeoRSS is simple proposal for RSS feeds to also be described by location or Geotagged. We standardize the way in which "where" is encoded with enough simplicity and descriptive power to satisfy most needs to describe the location of Web content. [...] it should serve as an easy-to-use geotagging language that is brief and simple with useful defaults but extensible and upwardly-compatible with more sophisticated formats like the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) GML (Geography Markup Language)".
The Open Geospatial Consortium is really an important body in the geospatial community. They're the one whom just made WMS an ISO Standard.
Slashdot Mirror
In regards to MySQL being more and more competitive in the geospatial area, there was an announcement last week about OGR and GDAL compatilibity for MySQL. With geospatial getting everywhere (you know; RFID, Google Earth, GPS, ...), this is great news for MySQL.
In fact, NASA also has good news for us.
Two weeks ago, the important Landsat-8 was confirmed while NASA also saves a lot of money by simply adopting interoperable practices.
Now, if only NASA Worldwind (and Punt) could get more popularity over Google Earth...
From TFA: WikiCalc's potential success, however, also assumes that Bricklin--who in recent years has been consulting, speaking and running his small software company, Software Garden--can effectively get the word out.
:-), you can't export spreadsheets to html (xhtml actually) with graphics and diagrams. This is only one example. I want mature OSS, and only once that is achieved, then OSS becomes really interesting alternatives to commercial software. (and yes, I do help the developers to the best of my abilities)
This appears to be a main point to me. Marketing and user adoption. The article refers to various existing alternatives: honestly, I don't care that much about having 5 collabo-spreadsheet alternatives, I just want one that will do what I want bugless with plenty of features. Take OpenOffice spreadsheet (I love OOo
I like what one of our users said:
;-)
"To summarize:
RFID for inventory tracking ==> Good idea
RFID for security ==> Stupid idea"
Here below I copy parts a previous comment on another story (which wasn't moderated and thus, probably not read a lot):
Anyone interested in RFID could also start with the excellent wikipedia.org entry.
Of interest, Slashdot already discussed RFID production increases before. Yes, RFID can be scary, especially in a bank or in passports. Imagine, even Sun cares for RFID. MobileMag have a small article about a 100% organic matter RFID chip developed in Korea, costing only 0.5 cents.
And if RFID and geospatial tech seriously interest you, see my sig
Any computer user would be **surprised** the difference is makes to calibrate your monitors (thus creating an ICC profile). It allows you to synchronize your monitors, scanners, printers, etc. It works better with macs, but also works with windows (I'm in the process of making it work with Debian).
a tion_tools.htmi l.cxsa?toolid=1086&num=37&fnd=nfound&refcode=cmmea sure&PID=11713
Read more here:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/monitor_calibr
http://www.chromix.com/ColorGear/Shop/productdeta
and of course:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile
ID Cards for the Brits, wait, here's why they can get angry!
From the Association of British Drivers press release: "The EU is already planning to use Galileo to enforce continental-wide road tolling, and the car-hating British government wants to be first. You won't be able to drive anywhere without the EU knowing where you are going, who you are travelling with, and what speed you are travelling at."
This Vic tech blog do not share where they first got the video, but it's been out for at least a few days. And yes, it's related to Apple patents. Read more here: http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/02/20060212165 558.shtml and http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/02/20060211144 712.shtml
e r_Interface_Patent
This link offers Apple patent application pictures:
http://guides.macrumors.com/Gallery_of_Gesture_Us
Very interesting indeed...
There is a difference between monopolies. The ones that are reached using innovation (and marketing) and the ones reached using illegal (and unethically) means. Of course, there is a blurred line inbetween.
I dont know how much a9 is a competitor for Google
That's what Google might want to add to Google Local/Maps/Earth: Amazon offers street-level mapping, which no competitor does (yet, of course). You can read more about Amazon A9 mapping service here and here.
The real barrier is one of price.
;-)
Well, yes and no, last october:
MobileMag have a small article about a 100% organic matter RFID chip developed in Korea, costing only 0.5 cents. From the article: The new RFID Tag chip is able to function on the 30 kHz frequency by only using 100% organic compounds and an inkjet printer. By cutting down the price considerably it will allow for thee mass production through the printing process. The chip can also be printed on any paper, plastic and wood standard.
Of interest, Slashdot already discussed RFID production increases before.
Yes, RFID can be scary, especially in a bank or in passports. Imagine, even Sun cares for RFID.
Anyone interested in RFID could also start with the excellent wikipedia.org entry.
And if RFID and geospatial tech seriously interest you, see my sig
How far along would they be without those Apple Stores?
Same place. I just don't believe there's enough Apple Stores to make any significant difference. Well, not yet at least!
My main gripe with accessories is that they don't work with all the numerous versions of the iPod.
Take this example, I'm the happy owner of an iPod mini (which did not had a long life), but the great iTalk does not (and will probably never) work with the mini. See this Griffin iPod Compatibility chart, you'll find out the huge gap in iPod accessories compatibilities. (no I don't work for griffin, I'm just making a point here, I'm pretty sure other accessories providers have the same "problem"...)
In the Y! family, along with flickr mapping, I forgot Yahoo Messenger contacts mapping as a future feature. I'm not telling you this out of the blue... you can alraedy do this with Jabber contacts. The story will be out tomorrow on slashgeo.org, but I know /. readers can't wait, so here it is:
Ogle Earth discuss Talk Maps, a site to map instant messaging contacts (Jabber network, including Google Talk) to Google Maps or even Google Earth. From the blog: "You add a bot to your friends list, so that it knows when you are available, and you also enter your coordinates on a special form once. Bingo, yet another way to meet new people from all over the world."
Flickr and del.ici.us have a bright future at Yahoo! With the convergence of technologies and the explosion of geospatial technologies, expect a lot in the coming years. To keep myself on-topic, here's some links about flickr and del.icio.us
To start with flickr, it could/will be integrated with Yahoo! Maps (review):
http://maps.yahoo.com/
Right now, we already have a similar tool, named flickrmap:
http://www.flickrmap.com/
As for del.icio.us, combine it with, again, Yahoo! Maps, you get something close to social mapping, which you get with Platial:
http://www.platial.com/
That's only a start. We'll get more. And there's a lot of competition: Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft (and even Amazon with their mapping service) all want a piece of our mindshare. Competition mean, probably, we'll get better consumer-level tools (of course, there's a price tag, but that's another story).
To get back on-topic, my hopes are we'll see more open source flickr and del.icio.us projets. Take a look at Firefox extensions, you'll find del.icio.us wannabes. We're living in an interesting time...
Oh, yeah, my shameless plug... if geospatial technologies is within your interests, which includes mapping in general, take a look at the link in my signature.
Thanks Nick. I tried to be a good 'net citizen and added it to wikiquote.org. Cheers.
Humm.. wanted to find the source of the quote, before being asked. Looked on Jobs' entry on wikiquote and haven't found it. I must say wikiquote isn't very exhaustive on Jobs' account.
TFA is only 7 paragraphs long (with 7 pictures), but this sums it up for me:
"Other CEOs may focus on finance or sales. Jobs spends most of his time trying to come up with the next blockbuster product."
He's not there for the money, he's there to change the world. Well, at least, he succeeds in making us believe he's not after the money... Of course, MacOS X is not open source (yet?!), he's running a corporation after all!
I remember his quote: "Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me"
I don't think a majority of CEO can honestly say this nowadays.
We had to choose between many CMS for our specialized site. There are many CMS out there. Our choice ended with slashcode. slashcode is hard to install and configure, but the thing is, we considered (other may think otherwise) it has a "killing feature" that was worthed the pain in the long run: slashcode's moderation system.
Different CMS shares a lot of features, but some features are unique from one to another and might influence your choice...
But I am a human being, and being told repeatedly that I suck tends to wear a human being down, especially when, on the whole, I think the work we do here is very good.
;-) mean to update existing slashsites to the new code. Thanks for your great work :-)
This reassures me. It happened to me too many times as a non-profit specialized slashsite manager. Some % of surfers complain no matter if you're trying your best or not. Everything has to be contextualized. Sometimes it's jealousy, sometimes it's good comments shared in a rude or inappropriate way, sometimes it's simple whining to ignore.
Some less off-topic comments:
- Our slashsite adopted an article format similar to slashdot. Trying to be succinct and remove everything superfluous, generally excluding any opinion from the article header, leaving opinion for the comments space. I believe this makes us more neutral in the views of our users.
- Spelling, since our slash "authors" are non-english natively, I can only say we're trying our best to remove any typos. It starts with re-reading everything once before clicking that save button. After, if a typo is discovered, I'll take the minute required to update the story and remove errors.
I know there's a lot of changes planned for slashdot (e.g. moderation system). My hope is your team will accordingly update slashcode itself and provide a simple (as simple as Perl can be
Is he right, and what actual products exist for OS X that would protect against infections?
Euh... MacOSX itself? Or maybe I'm just part of the crowd thinking I'm partially immune just because I use I "safer" OS.
The Great Stellarium (open source):
http://www.stellarium.org/
Celestia (also free):
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
NASA's astronoly picture of the day:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/
Stellarium is really a must-download for anyone even slightly interested in astronomy. It's another open source software success.
There is always the moon from our overlords... but moon through NASA's WorldWind too.
From Spatially Adjusted: The new updated Yahoo! Maps Widget works well on my computer and it is very simple to use (just type your search string in the box and hit enter). You can download it from their new site.
This is indeed really great news. Let's not forget the open NASA WorldWind project also has Java/OpenGL versions in development for MacOS X and Linux and that WorldWind itself has been forked into Punt.
:-)
If you're serious about geospatial, you might be interested in joining us
But...why? One of the great things about the internet is that, as a general rule, the geographical location of data is completely irrelevant.
If you go on the georss.org website, you'll understand there's plenty of potential applications. One simple example, you may want to tie news story to a place in order to get BBC news only for stories "located in" ro tied to southeast asia.
From their website: Perhaps all earthquake-related items within 20 miles of your home--delivered to your phone, or a feed of traffic accident items along your daily commute? Once RSS feeds contain geographic location, applications like these and more will be possible.
Not the first time I post about it, but I really see this as the future of RSS: GeoRSS. And you know what, if one company can push the georss standard to general use, yup, it's Google.
What's georss? From slashgisrs: A team is working on Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds. From the overview: "GeoRSS is simple proposal for RSS feeds to also be described by location or Geotagged. We standardize the way in which "where" is encoded with enough simplicity and descriptive power to satisfy most needs to describe the location of Web content. [...] it should serve as an easy-to-use geotagging language that is brief and simple with useful defaults but extensible and upwardly-compatible with more sophisticated formats like the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) GML (Geography Markup Language)".
The Open Geospatial Consortium is really an important body in the geospatial community. They're the one whom just made WMS an ISO Standard.