So we’re now halfway through WhereCamp. I decided not to live blog the sessions as there was just too much discussion going on to keep up, and I wanted to be involved with these discussions which was a little hard if I was taking notes all the time. I’ll give a quick roundup of the ones I went to here but for more notes (and some alternative choices) you can check out my colleague’s blog here.

4D Mapping This was a pretty interesting look at the ways of representing time-based map data. We discussed the use of sliders for filtering visible data, spirals for representing the passage of time and various other methods. Take a look at the wiki page I’ve linked to for more detail.

Mapmaking and Visualization with Processing This session covered various visualizations that have been done using the Processing graphics toolkit. A few examples were shown together with a brief look at the source code, websites such as Cabspotting, Hackety and Obsessing.

Cyclone Nargis I actually ended up in this talk by accident, I got lost on the way to “Kiev”. It was, nonetheless, very interesting to hear about the ways in which Burmese volunteers are trying to get aid to the people in Burma. A number of resources were also mentioned including Sahana Disaster Management System and Myanmar Cyclone Relief Donations.

Is 3D Shit Steve Coast requested this session to discuss whether all the money being put into 3D virtualization was really worth it. Discussion from a number of interested parties including people from Google and Planet 9. We basically decided that the people involved were generally investing for the future.

Location Tracking The location tracking session was actually organized by me, I’ve been tracking myself at various points for the past two years and have been building a site on-and-off for the past year so I was hoping to get together with some other people doing similar things. We managed to get people from Fire Eagle, Loki and iPoki. We had a good discussion about privacy, about ways to track and about requirements for accuracy but didn’t really come out with too many conclusions. I also kinda launched the site that I’ve been working on but it still needs some more work so I’ll do another blog post on that when I get a little more time.

Xrosspath Xrosspath is a new site that is intending to take location history for a number of users and compare them to find points in time that they have crossed paths. They’re also looking to link in world events and historical events to see what’s happened around you during your life. It was interesting how this session had links to earlier sessions including the 4D mapping and the location tracking sessions. It did seem like they should be linking into what other people are doing in location tracking. I definitely think their premise is valid though and it will be interesting to see what comes out of that.

I wussed out and didn’t stay overnight, I also didn’t get around to doing much hacking. After a couple of beers I was pretty tired. I did end up getting to bed earlier than I’ve managed for the whole trip and got a great night’s sleep. Hopefully that means I’ll be all ready to get hacking today!

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