Simplicitas

I’m sad to say that I’ve only read 4 of the Top 20. (Specifically, numbers 1, 2, 3, and 6). I guess that I’ll have to get on top of my geek literature. Also interesting are the comments from the original post (/., of course); “Reader’s advisory for nerds, books that matter.”

I’ve been thinking about using Google Maps for a couple of projects that I’ve had kicking around in the back of my mind. One of the things that I want to do will require the ability to resolve an IP address to its approximate latitude/longitude. So, I fired up Google and found GeoBytes, which is powered by the same company’s GeoSelect. This tool has the ability to provide quite a bit of useful geographic information about an IP address, including the latitude/longitude, country, state, city, and even the local currency. It also gives the level of certainty with which it is providing that information.

Perhaps the best part about the whole thing is the demo, complete with cheesy superhero and impossibly-proportioned cartoon females randomly bursting out of your browser – whose location we are able to determine using this service, natch…in addition to the city names written across the front of their ample bosoms. To sum up: a useful and simple-to-use tool that’s only $49 (for a developer’s license)…with a hilarious demo video. I might just have to sign up!

Throughout the course of history, the entertainment industry been responsible for driving a significant portion of the technological advances made by man. Architectural feats such as the Roman Colosseum and its modern-day equivalent – the football stadium – are constructed for watching “gladiators” do battle. More powerful (and less traceable) drugs are created so that athletes can be bigger, stronger, faster.

Why does PC video card technology increase at such an alarming rate? Because the video game industry puts so much effort into creating monstrously huge textures and complex algorithms to make their games more visually stunning. How did DVDs and DVD players become commodity items within a few years of their introduction to the public? In large part because the porn industry saw the potential for a cheaper medium on which to distribute a better product to their customers. (“You mean, I can jump to any point without waiting for the fast-forward/rewind? No blurring when you pause? SOLD!”)

Essentially what I’m getting at here is that the instant a new technology is created, the first reaction is something like, “Sweet! Now how can I use this for games or get and watch porn on it?”

Enter Google Maps. While the porn industry has yet to find a way to use geolocation and satellite imagery for their purposes (I’m sure they’re working on it, though), one enterprising young man has realized – correctly! – that Google Maps provides an excellent platform for bringing an element of realism to the classic board game RISK. That’s right, folks: Google Maps Risk.

Aside: I feel for this guy’s server…he’s already been dugg, slashdotted, and BoingBoinged . (Has that last term been coined?)

There was a bit of lag between WorldMap being published to the Internet, presented at ASIS&T, and, finally, blogged (by people other than me), but it looks like it’s gaining a bit of publicity.

(Thanks for the screenshot, Lorcan!)

Kate finally got some pictures online. The first gallery: Halloween!

I meant to post the above on (or at least before) Halloween, but with everything that was going on I ended up not being able to. Thanks, Monster Name Decoder!

In all the rush of the conference (and the rather unkind homework assignment that I was attempting to complete) I completely forgot to post the project that we were presenting! The name of the project is WorldMap, and it is

“…a prototype system that provides an interactive visual tool for selecting and displaying geographically coded data about libraries and collections.”

Even if you’re not in the library biz, you should check it out!

The ASIS&T Wednesday afternoon plenary session was easily as interesting as the talk given by Matthew Szulik on Monday. Pattie Maes is a researcher at MIT who has received, approximately, every award known to mankind. Traditionally, information seeking has been considered a proactive activity – i.e., the user knows what she is looking for, fires up a browser, and keys a few search terms into a text box. The research that she was presenting was an impressive array of projects whose overall goal was to learn about the user and bring relevant information to the user’s attention unobstrusively and without the user actively searching for it. Additionally, there was an aspect of decoupling the user from her desktop computer, allowing her to retrieve information automatically wherever she might be.

For example, the next time you meet someone for the first time and shake that person’s hand, imagine having an earpiece that is capable of telling you the person’s Pattie Maes, who you and that person know in common, and any personal interests or preferences that you share with that person. Alternately, imagine shaking that person’s hand on your fourth face-to-face encounter, and having your “magical earpiece” refresh your memory about recent email correspondence and/or phone conversations with that person. It only got better from there.

Another example given was a college student walking on campus. Suppose that this college student needs a particular textbook for a class. What if this student’s earpiece were able to use GIS to determine the student’s proximity to local bookstores, check the prices for the textbook at each of the stores, and alert the student to which of the stores had the lowest price for that book – possibly even negotiate the purchase with the bookstore computers before she even enters the store? Alternately, suppose the student is browsing in the bookstore and all of the books have RFID tags attached to their dust jackets. What if the earpiece could determine which of the books are likely to be of interest to her, and bring those books to her attention along with their respective reviews and prices?

These are only 2 examples of the sort of thing that Pattie Maes is working on implementing (and has implemented), using various cell phone, GIS, Bluetooth, and RFID technologies. It’s exciting stuff, and watching her presentation – complete with videos of working prototypes – gave me a very “the future is now” sort of feeling. For more space age goodness, check out her presentation [PDF].