Tuesday, May 27. 2008

Update: Biggest Drawing in the World (using GPS and DHL)

It's been confirmed as a hoax, as many commenters suggested.

But after bloggers pointed out holes in Nordenankar's claim, DHL confirmed to the Telegraph that the artwork was an "entirely fictional project".

A spokeswoman said they had allowed him to film in their Stockholm warehouse as part of a college project, on the understanding that the work went no further than his art school. The GPS package was never sent around the world.

DHL now intends to contact Nordenankar to get him to clarify the origins of his work on his website.

- The Telegraph (UK)

--- original post 5/22/08 ------
The story goes this was a student's final art project, a self-portrait. He sent a GPS device in a suitcase in a preplanned route around the via specifically selected routes. Those routes were traveled in 55 days by DHL.

Some speculate DHL is behind the viral story.

via Commercial Archive

The Age of Speed – Learning to strive in our “now” faster world

Vince Poscente, a former Canadian Olympic star in speed skiing delivered a rousing keynote address at the Pitney Bowes MapWorld Conference last week, a merged event between the user groups of MapInfo and Group 1. Now a motivational speaker, Poscente provided a exhilarating ride into the world of business strategy and how to deal with a few bumps along the way. And in his case, a bump led to losing a medal at the 1992 Olympics.

Poscente offered that in today’s business climate he defines companies in four categories:
The Zeppelin, a lumbering giant with little forward motion.
The Balloon, something that just floats along with a few ups and downs along the way.
The Bottle Rocket, a high flier at first but one likely to fizzle later and drop like a stone.
The Jet, where alignment and speed must coincide to achieve optimum results.

Continue reading "The Age of Speed – Learning to strive in our “now” faster world"

More Myanmar Flood Maps Available

Respond, an alliance of European and other international organizations, has released maps, including digital data that is freely available for downloading, that were used for flood mitigation preparations before Cyclone Nargis. In addition, UNOSAT, a Respond partner, has produced maps related directly to floods as a result of Nargis.

Google Earth, Tornado, Windsor...

PINPOINT ACCURACY: CNN was reporting on the huge tornado that ripped through Windsor, Colo., days ago when a reporter demonstrated how Google Earth makes it possible to zoom right in on the area that took the hit.

The eye in the sky showed the United States, then focused more and more tightly until there on the camera was an aerial view of the firehouse in Windsor, our Windsor. Wrong Windsor, but still very cool.

- Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, California (near Windsor, California)

Pelago Gets $15 million funding for Whrrl

The lead investor is Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital arm, the T-Mobile Venture Fund. Pelago was also the first to get funds from Apple's $1M fund for iPhone development.

- Venture Beat
- BusinessWeek

NY Times to Offer Open API this Summer

This broke last week and I just saw it on MediaShift Idea Lab. The sad part: few newsrooms even know what that means. The good news: techies do and much is expected. As JD Lasica notes:

Newspapers remain the richest source of news and information, both current and archived, in any locality. For every journalist on staff at a mid-size daily, I'll wager there are at least 10 data jockeys willing to dive into some aspect of its datastream to create an interesting new map, widget, chart, game, animation, virtual space -- anything that feeds off a rich source of data.