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Where 2.0: Liveblogging in a high traffic environment
Just thought I’d mention, we’re having major problems with the network at Where 2.0 today so my notes have been lagging heavily. Hopefully it’s going to be better this afternoon, if not I’ll continue to take offline notes and upload them later.
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Where 2.0: Crawling the web for GeoData
Juan Gonzalez
Planeteye started by looking around at the world of information available in the form of mashups. Heard from Google earlier, already > 50,000 using their google maps api. Can only imagine how many data points are available. Would be interesting if crawler could go and collect the data that’s published.
Google has MyMaps, hear there’s > 9 million my maps created by the public.
Highly structured data that is behind these mashups.
Location information not always structured in this way. Are other methods, like an address. Example from NYT referring to a physical location. Easier to crawl address but presents a number new challenges. This is just as valuable as the adjoining google map.
Problem with addresses is that they come in many formats. When analysing worldwide information you can come across many addresses. Humans can figure things out, but not machines.
We experimented with a number of techniques. We tried low-resolution geocoding. Everyblock mentioned going beyond the point marker. We’re going the same way, with these addresses it’s probably possible to get an accurate location, but easier to get a general location. We’re allowing for that exercise and assume we won’t always know the location.
Not the same as geotagging to a centerpoint, different technique. Improves our chances of managing some geocoding though.
Next challenge is the same place being referred to in many different ways. All the different examples will be referring to exactly the same point. The challenge is how to work out they’re the same things. Location is not enough, have to look beyond that. Telephone, elements of the name, etc. can help with this.
Once we have the ability to match the place we can start defining implicit lengths between the multiple sites referring to the same location. If this goes well we’ll end up with a very large number of data points. Current visualization techniques tend to work in two ways: very large dataset would need breaking down and show a few points at a time - good for end user but doesn’t give context of all datapoints; other approach is to put them all on the map and hope for the best - that quickly becomes useful.
Have the ability to take the entire dataset and allow the user to appreciate it, [using circles that get bigger when there’s more elements around a location]. Doesn’t matter how many points there are, they’re returned at the same speed.
We’re trying to create a travel guide by pulling in all the travel information on the web at PlanetEye
Technorati tags: crawling, geodata, planeteye, where, where2.0, where2008
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Where 2.0: Lessons Learned in Location-based Gaming
Jeremy Irish, Groundspeak
Geocaching has been around since 2000, thousands of geocaches. Billion dollar technology to hide plastic containers in the woods. Can use any GPS unit.
Have millions of people using this all the time.
Wherigo - taking geocaching and bringing it into a virtual game.
- A toolset for creating media rich experiences in the real world using GPS and handheld devices.
- Taking adventure games outdoors (“tricking people to go outside an get some sun”)
- Taking mashups outdoors
Unlike traditional computer games: Making people go outside, may factors beyond your control.
Simplify technology requirements.
- Alternate options for determining location
- Reduce need for high accuracy
- Take advantage of the novelty of location
Encourage user-generated content
- Integrate community content
- Take advantage of local experts
- Users will localize the playing experience
- Inspire “Junkyard Wars” design - trying to create an experience out of the location rather than something that works everywhere
Players are manic-depressive
- Physical activity creates strong emotions
- Educate, motivate and reward often (dumb it down)
- Consider your actions with your community
Keep games short First games where 1.5-2.5 hours, way too long
- Mirror casual game design - lunchbreak games, reward them
- < 30 minutes is best
- “Serialize” your game into chapters
- Simplify, simplify, simplify.
You can’t control the player
- A player can and will go to any length to finish a game
- Unexpected environmental factors
- Reward often, punish carefully
Encourage players to look up
- Interact with real world objects We have people watching to make sure people cross roads correctly
- Notify with vibration and sound
- Use reference imagery
- Reduce reliance on the arrow
- Use maps
Building momentum takes time
- “If you hide it they will come”
- Target locally but encourage global play
Consider environmental issues
- foot traffic
- stampede
- negative perception of non-players
- …
Be aware of legal grey areas
Lessons Learned in Location-based Gaming
Technorati tags: groundspeak, geocaching, gaming, where, where2.0, where2008
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Where 2.0: LocationAware: Standardizing a Geolocation API in the Browser
Ryan Sarvar
locationaware.org
We were here last time doing a BoF session. Now here we are on stage presenting. Making an announcement which will hopefully show some good progress.
Started 2 years ago when I started at SkyHook. Wanted to think about what it means to be location aware. How can we enrich the web with a lot of that information. We launched loki toolbar to make these location enabled channels.
Changed this so that sites can call an API to get location to drive relevant content. Basic API to call the toolbar and do something meaningful with the location information.
This type of information and spec belongs a spec for browser vendors. Want the same experience everywhere, laptop or mobile phone.
We’re hoping that people will be able to write an application with HTML and JS rather than, for instance Objective C on iPhone.
“LocationAware’s goal is to help drive the standardization of how a user’s geolocation is exposed to a website through the browser”
Handles privacy and other issues. Brokers information, they get back an accuracy level, latitude and longitude.
We propose to expose this through the DOM. May also do it in HTTP headers. Also different ways of specifying “air meters”.
API looks very simple. 4 lines of JS to get location with a callback. Polling also available, more useful for mobile devices.
Announcement is that we’re working with Mozilla Labs to create a prototype extension. Available in June. We want to work with how we can do this. How do we ask the user what they want to make available and how do we make it available? Also working with W3C to make a charter for this type of thing.
Really important part is that Yelp will also be implementing the API so that there’s a real user of it available. Hopefully other sites will join too.
LocationAware: Standardizing a Geolocation API in the Browser
Technorati tags: locationaware, geolocate, where, where2.0, where2008
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Where 2.0: Going Places on Flickr
Catt (with Cope)
Talking about going places on Flickr. One specific problem. Want to be able to say where photos are taken. We have this “where on earth” database that has lots of places in it. Really good because people may search for places by different names even if the named areas overlap a lot. It’s not so good for reverse geocoding as you might end up saying the wrong thing. This is really hard. Reverse geocoding gets a lot fewer results from a google search..
At ETech in 2007, photos taken would be said they were at San Diego County Jail.
If people are going to take photos and go to the trouble to geotag them, we should be able to describe the places better.
Reverse Geocoding
“Nearest linear object”
We tried to reduce the type of places to a base set of commonalities. First assume at street level, then go to neighborhood, then locality, county, region, country. About a year and a half into this we’ve decided to go with street, locality and airports, “metro”, …
FireEagle uses something very similar. FE have adjusted their model for privacy regions (if you’re in a tiny town, you’re obvious).
Dopplr has a different model. They go by the distance between San Francisco and San Jose. This is all they need.
Geonames, great, gets it wrong sometimes too.
“What’s going on?”
“Imperfectly transmitted code”
People have different ideas of what things mean.
We work with bounding boxes.
I geotagged a photo in Millerton state park, it said it was in “Inverness” which is on the other side of the water.
Showing a slide with bounding boxes. They intersect. Do lots of iterations to filter them out. We should end up seeing that milerton is local and inverness less so. We adjust the measurements on other parameters, but this one was just wrong. We geocoded Petaluma and fixed it.
We take 78 steps to go through and figure out where this could be.
We have a responsibility to do useful things with our users data. So we’re asking for help. In a few weeks time we’re going to ask “Is this right? If not let us know.”
If people keep telling us that things are not where we thought they were, we can take that data back in and start fixing things. This will hopefully roll back into the system and give us more precise data. Like a beach gives us an idea where the coastlines are.
We’ve spent huge amount of effort trying to get this right.
Technorati tags: flickr, geocoding, reverse-geocoding, where, where2.0, where2008
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Where 2.0: The Future = Location
George Filley, NAVTEQ
Incredible being here to see the innovative things coming from us the development company.
NAVTEQ have always been about “Where”. We’ve always been looking to create a single specification that can improve what you’re doing.
Want to talk about the advent to allow location based services to truely come into their own..
We believe we’re in the middle of an information revolution. Where information is accessible to anyone, anywhere, any time. Provides a unique opportunity for developers. The convergence of this information with location and mobility. Will give the next form of the Internet.
“The future’s here”
43% of all downloadable applications were about LBS in Q1 2008. That’s real money and real opportunity.
How do you monetise this? Difficult to do in a subscrition environment. As these applications grow, the expectations of users grows.
[Graph]
[Chart]
[Graph]
Consumers are ok with ads if it’s relevant to context.
Networks and devices are improving, allowing for the ability to create robust reliable solutions driven by advertising. Advertisers are realising this is a viable market place.
Mobile advertising on WAP and some on games.
Our role? We’re an enabler. We deliver unique visuals, landmarks, junction views, stuff, realtime traffic, weather. Gas prices. Changing the nature of what a map is. Individual can walk into a neighborhood and have as much knowledge or more than a native.
2003: Launched LBS Challege for Developers in North America
Have launched similar problems in recent years, will be launching one in Singapore for Asia.
www.navteq.com/developer - gives you access to our content and the ability for you to update our data. Providing developer guides, webinars, forums, 1-1 technical assistance. Optimise your utilisation of the content and map products we support around the world.
NAVTEQ has always been about Where, we understand the value of location and now understand the use of flexible business models. We want to help you.
Please take a moment to come to our website.
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Where 2.0: Your Car Gets an API
Chris Butler, Dash
Your car gets an API (Your content in the car)
Dash is the first two-way internet connected device in your car. Normally provide crowd-sourced traffic but also Yahoo! search from in your car.
Last year we talked about getting GeoRSS and KML into the device. We delivered it in March.
Today we’re announcing Dynamic Search API. Anyone can create search APIs that can be used with your Dash. We also have 5 new partners:
- WeatherBug - shows weather locally.
- myFUNAMBOL - Calendar syncing service - can easily route to appointments.
- BakTrax radio button gives a list of radio stations that you might be listening to, you can then select the station and find out the song they just player.
- Trapstr - shows places where you might find speed cameras and suchlike. Shows them as you’re driving around but you can also upload them too.
- Coldwell Banker - Property information
Technorati tags: dash, weatherbug, myfunambol, baktrax, coldwell, where, where2.0, where2008
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Where 2.0: GeoDjango: Web Applications for (Neo)Geographers with Deadlines
Justin Bronn, CartoAnalytics
Geodjango for rapidly creating online applications. Going to discuss:
- Why
- Commoditization
- Abstraction
- Rapid Development
“Why” “80% of enterprise data has a spatial component” Even if it’s 20%, there’s a lot of spatial data out there. Tends to be highly self-correlated. “near things are more related than distant things” - [missing citation].
In law school, created “Houston Crime Maps”, using django. Wanted to put hacks into cohesive package for putting geo-data online.
“Commoditization” Server operating systems - Solaris, HP-ux, SGI, SCO, AIXL - siloed, but faded into the background as Linux has been adopted in the mainstream.
Similarly databases, big names have been replaced by PostgreSQL and MySQL.
“Abstraction” Django revolves around “MTV”:
- Models - roughly correspond to DB tables, GeoDjango allows geo specific fields.
- Templates - presentation layers, HTML & JavaScript
- Views - Business logic, simple pyhon functions
GeoDjango sits on top of spatial database (PostGIS, Oracle spatial and MySQL spatial) Python ctypes library interacts with GDAL, GEOS, PROJ.4 and provides high level interfaces to make accessing them easily. ctypes gives wide cross-platform compatability.
On top of that are a layer of standards, can export to KML, GML, WKT, GeoJSON, GeoRSS. Can then leverage OpenLayers or other mapping APIs to create complete geo stack.
- Rapid Development
Example of spatial query using geodjango, 2 fairly simple lines. Shows the SQL for it, 7 large and complicated lines of SQL .
Allows you to harness the power of spatial data.
[Demo]
Django has automatic admin interface. Available for all of the models that you’ve defined. You can specify fields to use for search. Demo shows searching for San Francisco and returning neighborhoods within it. Selecting “Downtown”. Can access the basic fields: Name, State, City, Country. Can also have a geographic admin. OpenLayers with OSM base layer, the neighborhood is highlighted as a polygon. Can be manipulated live in the database by dragging polygons.
GeoDjango: Web Applications for (Neo)Geographers with Deadlines
Technorati tags: geodjango, django, where, where2.0, where2008
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Where 2.0: Merian Case Study
Jennifer Kilan
Litle bit about “Frog”. Industrial design company recently a digital design company.
Today talking about “Form Follows Function” we’ve adopted to “Form Follows Emotion”.
Form Follows Function - made famous by a sculpture. Really important when designing objects, with single focus. Three key areas for wayfinding. Landmarks, routes, maps.
“Form Follows Function”
Landmarks - photo of golden “Landmarks are distinctive and should be easily viewable from a distance”
Routes “Routes are abstract and point to point, with the journey internalized and not easily communicable.”
Maps “Maps reveal overall spatial orientation and the general relationships of one place to another.”
“Form Follows Emotion”
Being a Harley owner is all about the entire experience. You not just going somewhere, it’s the journey.
Merian Scout Case Study
This is what I want to share with you today.
Merian is a European brand making tour guides and maazines providing prmium content. They wanted to create a GPS that did the same thing. They came to frog and we talked to them about “form follows emotion”.
We wanted the user to not only be able to program their journey but have the story unfold along the way.
Showing a button that will give you alternatives in the case of needing a plan B, showing you nearby alternatives.
Umbrella icon is a tour guide. Allows the user to feel like they have a trusted advisor. Also allows for mult-faceted search parameters to be used.
Emotional connections - large sense of making memories, photo, how important those are. Saved and suggested images can prompt ideas for a new route.
Wanted to think about personalisation for end-users. “The packaging reflects that sense of the experience being about your trip and your happines.” Tries to detect what user likes and suggest relavent things in the future(?)
Physical design - similar size to a blackberry. Shiny, blue highlights. Make the user feel that this product is something to be trusted. Something to provide a rich experience.
Product launched last year in Germany and won a “red dot” award. frog worked on software design as well as the packaging.
Looking at design of interface. Leveraging as much imagery as possible. Photos. Also nice UI touches. Showing nearby things and the direction and distance of them to give you the chance to flit about and see other things. Make sure there’s a sense of exploration and the user can get cues from the physical world and the POIs.
Technorati tags: frog, gps, merian, where, where2.0, where2008
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Where 2.0: Your Memories: Here, There and Everywhere
Jef Holove, Eye-Fi
Talking about digital memories of plain old consumers. Their frustrations with managing them. Why they don’t geotag and how to make it mainstream.
The Eye-Fi card has a wifi card inside a standard SD card. It runs an OS that allows it to do all this. The card goes inside your camera and automatically uploads photos through the Eye-Fi service where they can be passed on to places you want to save and share your photos.
We anounced earlier this week the product “Eye-Fi Explorer” that has new features: Hotspot Access, upload on the go; Geotagging.
Limitations create simplicity:
- Camera unaware
- No interface - you have no keyboard or whatever to interact with it.
- Network mucst authenticate Card automatically for uploads to Eye-Fi service
- Card enabled at manufacturing and managed at service level
- Connectivity, upload status
Resulted in:
- Integration with Wayport
- 10,000 hotspots across the US at restaurants, hotels, airports… as easy as finding a McDonald’s
- Automatic authentication and uploads. Simply turn on the camera.
- No laptop or log-in
- No separate account or billing
- Notification via Email or SMS
Geotagging:
The mainstream world still uses geotagging and thinks it’s “an onerous chore”, “until now, a pain”. Average mainstream consumer doesn’t like this.
- Time-consumer and manual
- Cumbersome, expensive, slow, limited. Need:
- Automatic, and “Instant”
- No Connection Required at Capture
- Integrated and Power Efficient
Needs to be simple, no user interaction, no long wait, indoors and in cities. We made the data collection separate from processing.
Processing is pushed to the network.
Card is inside camera, detects and stores the nearby wifi networks. Doesn’t need to be authenticated, just see them. Then when you get home or to a network it uploads the data where SkyHook cross references the information and delivers the information to photo sharing websites or your computer.
Got to appreciate the the mainstream doesn’t have the time or the patience. Aiming to automate this for most images most of the time.
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