VerySpatial draws attention to something that would make any yuppie-nerd iPhoner with an interest in open source and public participation GIS get hot under the sweater vest: OSMTrack, the iPhone app for OSM contribution.
…Which I may need to look up in the beginning of 2009, as I just heard from an intern who wants to sign onto my mobile community inventory project (and — get this — to volunteer in advance of next semester).
Adrian Holovaty’s pioneering Google Maps mashup ChicagoCrime.org is over. Holovaty announced it on January 31, 2008, ending the run of a great public service mashup. I included ChicagoCrime.org in an article I wrote about Google Maps becoming one of the few real-world instances of the oft-theorized Public Participation GIS (ppGIS). Though Holovaty’s site wasn’t participatory in and of itself, it was cited as an early example of how the increasingly participatory nature of information was being taken advantage of.
Computerworld’s Mark Hall wrote a short summary of GeoWeb comments related to the democratization of geospatial data engendered by Google Earth, Virtual Earth et al. It’s a bit of a non-article, really, and in addition to misspelling Dangermond’s name, (unless it’s a joke — is it a joke?) Hall cites AutoDesk’s Geoff Zeiss’ interest in democratizing utilities industry data. So at first my brain says to me, it says, “Who the fuck is generating homemade utilities data?” Then I read more closely to find that Zeiss had a very spefic demos in mind: utilities field workers likely to end up dangling from a line. Hall gets a little bit funny with a sarcastic reply, “Good idea,” but it’s not enough to fulfill my ongoing quest to find somebody who is legitimately funny in the world of GIS.
And so goes my inaugural post in a series called “Can’t Any of Us Stiffs Tell a Joke?” So please let me know if you’ve seen bona fide wit in the world of GIS blogging, eh? Because I’m new to the profession and all I see are business jerks and fat robots at these conferences.
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