The Participatory Geoweb - cyberinfrastructure

Geode not Geoide

ricker — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:24:07 +0000

Endless buzz about the impending release of Geode by Firefox can not be ignored. Geode (looks a lot like GEOIDE) is currently a plug in for Firefox but will be included in the Firefox package soon. Geode will allow websites or web services to read your geographical position and this information could be integrated into specific services. “Loki” is a technology by Skyhook, which tries to identify the position of a computer using a wireless networks. Do you think of a way the geoweb can benefit from plug ins such as Geode?

Spoofed GPS!

ricker — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:51:11 +0000

CBC reports how GPS units can be spoofed. Scientists at Cornell University created a device about the size of a brief case that, when it is placed near a GPS unit, will modify signals that will reach the GPS. The research is a test of the vulnerability of a GPS. What could this mean for neogeographers and the participatory geoweb?

Three major trends in the use of spatial information

ricker — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:18:11 +0000

This article address the issue of major trends in the use of spatial information from two different perspectives.

Jeff Thurston recognizes three major trends...

Increasing use of remotely sensed imagery
The integration of information for GIS / CAD modeling
Graphically rich visualization / simulation environments.

Matt Ball on the other hand identifies a different set of current spatial information fashions...

Data as a service
Do it yourself Data
Custom Analysis

Google's new satellite

ricker — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:31:52 +0000

Everyone is talking about it. Google launched a satellite The Geo Eye-1 satellite will take photos with a resolution of 0.41 cm / pixel.

It is highest resolution commercial remote sensing satellite, launched successfully today an Vandenberg Air Force Base on Saturday September 6.

Web 2.0 for agriculture

ricker — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:22:39 +0000

This inspiring and optomistic segment about how Web 2.0 can help African farmers is definately worth watching. This video clearly explains what Web 2.0 is and great examples of how it is helping in Africa. People are learning to use successful techniques of composting, preserving local knowledge, and helping generate revenue by reading and contributing to wikis.

Sorry I forgot to add the link. Web2forDev

Resources on the Geospatial Web and climate change

admin — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:35:02 +0000

Arno Scharl is best known for his book on the geospatial web. He also runs a Web 2.0 content agregator called ecoresearch, which visualizes, in a variety of contexts, research, articles, etc. on climate change and on the geospatial web (although the former is a fantastic implementation, it does illustrate the hazards of not updating content; the latter site is mostly a plug for his book). His article, Media Watch on Climate Change: Building and Visualizing Contextualized Information Spaces, introduces the technology behind the climate change aggregator and does a nice job in describing the ontological and semantic underpinnings of the site.

Their knowledge planet infrastructure is really cool, if only I could figure out exactly what it was showing (maybe it's my browser).

(And they're running off of the same drupal theme--garland--in their content management system as us.)

MapTube Site

coleman — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:28:20 +0000

'Just came across Maptube in my travels and am passing this along in case people have not seen it yet

The "About" link gives a good idea of what is going on here in terms of map sharing and distributed processing.

While this offers display-only technology at this point, I think it is a neat step in extending Google Maps' native capabilities.

... Dave

-----

Dr. David Coleman <dcoleman @ unb.ca>
Professor of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering
University of New Brunswick

Geospatial Web simulcasts

sieber — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:13:20 +0000

The University of Nottingham is hosting a workshop on the Geospatial Web Services from June 16-17. The organizers are setting up a live webcast of workshop talks and podcasts to benefit the wider Geoweb and GIS community.

The organizer, Suchith Anand, reports that the key aims of this workshop are:

to hear presentations from leading academic and industry players on their research on geospatial web services technology;
to network and develop ideas for future collaborative research in geospatial web services;
to understand current developments in geospatial web services with focus on generalization and schematization research.

Organisations making presentations include CGS Nottingham, Ordnance Survey, ITC Netherlands, ESRI, University of Zurich, CASA UCL, CORILA Italy, e-Science Centre and the University of Cardiff. Here are some of the speakers.

Our new postdoc, Dr. Rahemtulla, plans to attend the workshop and I'm sure he'll have lots to report when he returns.

UPDATE: The podcasts and webcasts are now up. The conferencce is using Accordent software, so the webcasts show both the speaker and his/her slides. Nice.

The Geoweb: a revolutionary and empowering technology?

sieber — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:53:05 +0000

A prime reason that we are attracted to the idea of the participatory Geoweb is that user generated content (UGC) is supposed to revolutionize geography and traditional geographic information systems on the web:

"Websites such as Wikimapia and OpenStreetMap are empowering citizens to create a global patchwork of geographic information while Google Earth is encouraging individuals to develop appplications using their own data."

In the coming months and years we intend to test this hypothesis that citizens are truly empowered by these new technologies (and, indeed, what empowerment means).