CNET Explores Mashups

CNET devotes three pages to the mashup world in “Mapping a Revolution with Maps.” It covers much of the ground that’s been covered with the latest quotes from many of the usual suspects. That said, it’s nice to see Mike Pegg (of Google Map Mania) and Rich Gibson (of Mapping Hacks) call out issues.

How much longer will this be the tech story of the day? No end in sight…

The article is part of a series, Taking Back the Web that address how the Web is returning to its social roots. Hmm… the network is the computer and we are the network…

Quote of the Week II

“It just gives us that many places where people can run into Yahoo maps and be delighted by Yahoo maps, and say ‘Gee, maybe I shouldn’t go to MapQuest,’” Jeremy Kreitler, a senior product manager for Yahoo, referring to AOL’s map service, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Quote of the Week I

“It’s not quite Google Earth for New Zealand, but a new online service from AA and digital mapping innovator GeoSmart will let Kiwis step a bit farther into the 21st Century.” The New Zealand Business Review in an article on a new mapping service, AA SmartMap, for the country.

Locating Wi-Fi Users at MIT

Smartmobs points to an article in eSchoolNews that details the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT or around here “the Institute”) new real time mapping of its new wireless campus network. The maps are now shown at the MIT Museum and are available to those on the network. If community members like they can share their identity on the map. While there is no map (why not? security?) there is this description:

Red splotches on one map show the highest concentration of wireless users on campus. On another map, yellow dots with names written above them identify individual users, who pop up in different places depending where they’re logged in.

The article does reveal some less than astonishing patterns.

The maps show, for example, that the bulk of wireless users late at night and very early in the morning are logged on from their dorms. During the day, the higher concentration of users shifts to classrooms.

But researchers also found study labs that once bustled with students are now nearly empty as people, no longer tethered to a phone line or network cable, move to cafes and nearby lounges, where food and comfy chairs are more inviting.

Will U.S. retain Internet management rights?

SiliconValley.com reported today that at the U.N. technology summit in Tunisia that the U.S. will retain control of the Internet’s addressing scheme. The U.S. State Department is apparantly thrilled at a brokered deal that allows the U.S. to keep its technology leadership role in managing the Internet’s "plumbing." Other countries have complained that they do not want to be at the behest of "an American company" and if the Internet is to expand, the U.S. should not have such a dominating role.