Thursday, July 3. 2008

Pachube: Share Your Real Time Sensor Feed

"Pachube (pronounced "patch bay") is a web service available at http://www.pachube.com that enables people to tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices and spaces around the world." For now feeds are findable via a Google Map. Symbols link to the source and nature of the feeds, just a few for now and many are noted as "tests." Some are real world, others are from Second Life. This is, to me, a bit of a Web 2.0 solution for OGC's SensorWeb efforts. It uses, underneath, Extended Environments Markup Language (EEML).

- via Wired

AND Looking for Money; Buyer

GPS Business News reports that Bloomberg reports that the company is looking for an injection of capital or a takeover. I guess having both the Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ acquisitions go through did not play out for the smaller data company.

SatNav's a Treasure Trove for Detectives

Unsuspecting criminals with GPS devices are sharing far more than they may think in their satnav devices. Deleted data, it turns out, is not deleted in some cases, meaning detectives can track past destinations. Further, if used in conjunction with a cell phones, the devices may store old phone records of incoming and outgoing calls. TomTom was not aware of London's Metropolitan Police reporting on the use of devices in crime investigation in a scholarly journal (Digital Investigation). The company states they only turn over data with a court order.

Also of note: Met detectives learned the tricks of the trade from GPS wikis that detail how to share POIs and the like.

- New Scientist

Poizner May Enter California Governor's Race

I heard that on the NPR national news last night, though the main story was about San Francisco Mayer Newsom considering tossing in his hat. Poizner is known in our industry as founder of Strategic Mapping and SnapTrack. (Wikipedia) His website is up and word is getting out. Poizner currently serves as the state's insurance commissioner.

Voice Search for GMaps on Blackberry Pearl

Basically you set the map extent and speak a term to search. And, typical map search results pop up. It's the same technology used in Goog411. It's not completely hands free as you need to push a few buttons to get it to work. For now its "experimental" and will likely mature as more people use it.

- IntoMobile