Caroline McCarty at c|net offers up a great primer on the challenges facing location-enabled social networking by looking primarily at newcomer (in private beta) Brightkite, old hat Loopt, and older and Google-owned but rarely heard-from Dodgeball.
Key challenges:
- open the network to all or just some - should the app run on all phones, even ancient ones with no GPS and just texting capabilities? should the app be free? should the app be restricted to certain carriers? should you do a private beta and potential limit networks at startup?
- managing privacy and lists of friends - how do you keep annoying messages out of your “inbox”?
- where do you launch/grow such apps? business-y Web 2.0 (Brightkite was launched there) or social SXSW (South by Southwest, an arts, tech gathering) where Twitter took hold in 2007
Definitely worth a read if you are trying to figure out this space!
by Adena Schutzberg on 05/07 at 07:13 AM |
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“All the GIS stuff out there is generally designed for GIS projessionals.”
- Stamen Designs co-founder Eric Rodenbeck in an article in The Inquirer (UK) on his company called “Map fetishist goes round the world and back” The company’s interactive map typically have sliders and other interface tools to make reviewing large and complex datasets easy. See for example, Oakland Crimespotting.
by Adena Schutzberg on 05/07 at 07:06 AM |
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Mashable introduces the startup GeoGraffiti which offers a now free tool to post a “voice mail” and associate it with a location (ZIP Code or lat/lon). It’s accessible via the Web (Google Map) of phone. Bottom line from the “review”: not sure what it’s good for, but that’s what we thought of Twitter.
If we could get the accuracy for the messages and use a GPS… I could see using it as a tool to create a “treasure hunt” sort of game or even audio instructions for a bike ride or run.
by Adena Schutzberg on 05/07 at 06:00 AM |
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A blogger posted the question: Why were so many voters who thought they were on the rolls in Granville County given provisional ballots because they were not on precinct list in North Carolina? The answer, suggested in a comment points to 911 and geocoding.
From talking with Don Wright, attorney at the State Board of Elections, it appears that Granville County has a problem in some precincts where people’s names have not been included on the printout of the poll book. This is because the county’s 911 system hasn’t correlated hundreds of addresses to a GIS coordinate, and the GIS coordinate is what the state elections database system uses to assign voters to the correct precinct. So active voters, particularly with a Hwy 96 or Hwy 56 addresses, did not getting [sic] a precinct assigned to them in the voter registration database. When the county goes to print the pollbooks, precinct by precinct, these voters names don’t get printed on any precinct’s books.
I’ve looked at database now and there are roughly 600 voters in this situation.
Some cry conspiracy. I’m impressed folks figured this out so quickly.
by Adena Schutzberg on 05/07 at 06:00 AM |
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In podcast we invite you to learn how NAVTEQ’s vector map data and DigitalGlobe’s worldwide image data have been specially formatted for the Oracle Database, and how it can be used to enhance customers’ business intelligence and enterprise applications. We will hear from Steve Lytle, a Senior Account Manager NAVTEQ and Jim Beckley, Director of Business Development for DigitalGlobe, as well as Jim Steiner, Oracle’s Senior Director for Server Technology. This podcast also provides an in-depth review of Oracle 11g’s advanced geospatial features including support for 3D types and functions as well as Java programming with 3D and OGC web services such as WFST, WMS and the web catalog services.
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by Joe Francica on 05/07 at 02:20 AM |
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