GeoWeb, GIS & Neogeography notices

There has been a lot of very interesting "buzz" on the internet about the announcements made last week at the Where 2.0 Conference. Here is a link to the Where 2.0 Web site where you can find links to highlights from the show at the top of the page under the site menu and a very good short description of the conference.

John Henke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth and Jack Dangermond, founder and Chief Executive of ESRI announced the upcoming opportunity to merge GIS Map server information with other neogeographic services that are becoming popular. Here is a link to a video of this presentation.

I found this video on the May 13, Google Earth Blog--here the author Frank Taylor summarized the presentation as follows: "The other interesting thing that happened during John's talk was his strategy to get more GIS data into the Where 2.0 type applications world. John went and spoke to Jack Dangermond, CEO of ESRI, to see if he could convince him to work on ways to better enable access to GIS data. He invited Jack up to the stage and Jack quite enthusiastically described his shared vision with Google to get GIS data more accessible. Apparently ESRI will be intorducing new features in the applications to facilitate KML output of GIS data. Jack said the new features will start rolling out in about 4 weeks. The implication was that it would be possible to create mashups between GIS databases and neogeography databases and tools. They discussed a bit the issues that might crop up between crowdsourced data vs. professional GIS data, but that in the long run it could be for the best. Emergency situations like the California fires was given as an example where both data types proved useful."

Another Blog (GeoScrum) written by Chris Spagnuolo also posted an article titled: "Where 2.0: Overall impressions and a Desparate Plea." Chris notes that "What I am excited about is the rise of numerous crowd sourced data projects. It has always been my contention that local geography and micro/personal geography was missing from most standard"geographies". These localized, micro-geographies can't be built by just anybody, they have to built by the people who live, work, and play in those locales if they are to have any meaning and relevance. So, I'm very psyched to see lots of local crowd sourced projects encouraging exactly this sort of behavior. I think in the past two decades, people have lost their sense of "place" and their connection with their own geographies and these efforts are breathing new life into communities by helping people reconnect with their local geography. I know this sounds very touchy-feelie, but it's important and I'm glad to see it happening.
Finally, I'm really excited about some of the Open Source platforms and frameworks being developed for "GeoWeb" applications. I think that the growth in this area will help fuel serious innovation and advancement in web-based mapping applications."

Another related Where 2.0 article was written on May 13, in the CNetNews.com blog was titled "GIS exec works to unlock hidden geographic data." Stephan Shankland wrote this article and noted "The new version 9.3 of the dominant geographic information system (GIS) software, sold by a company called ESRI, now makes it a relatively simple matter to expose that data for easy consumption over the Internet." Jack Dangermond provided example projects in Portland Oregon and the recent San Diego Forest fires. "We are engineering it so it plugs in. It becomes effectively a support mechanism to the geoweb,"

Encyclopedia of Life - First Version

Last weekend, a friend, who is a "lichenologist" talked a little about the "Encyclopedia of Life" web site project that E.O. Wilson is involved in. I wrote about this project in my Blog almost a year ago, connecting it to efforts to create the Semantic Web and content contributions by interest groups via new social and interest networking efforts. The EOL is using a Wiki type format that is an advance form of the Wikipedia project which has become very popular on the web.

I looked at the EOL project again this week and want to report that it has progressed to become a "First version" work in progress that I thought my friend might interested in looking at and possibly contributing to in the future. The project is looking for species page Curators (authenticators) and "later in 2008 will set up a mechanism for anyone to contribute species-related content (photos, drawings, text, video, etc.). The curator(s) of the species will consider the submissions for incorporation into the authenticated species page."

The home page now has some detailed information about 25 exemplar species to show the rich and extensive information that will be possible with all species in the future.

Just for fun I decided to do a search on EOL for "Lichen" and found that almost all of the information is still to be contributed.

I also did a search for the Lichenologist, Roger Rosentreter, (resume to 1999) who is a Botonist for the Bureau of Land Management in Boise, Idaho. There were many search results and I will add one as an example that I found very interesting titled "Lichens and Wildlife."

Roger and his associates and many scientists, photographers and people with interest in individual species will have much to contribute to the Encyclopedia of Life as it develops in the next few years.

Here Comes Everybody - a book by Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky is a well known educator and writer about social network topics. I have followed some of his work for the past few years. On Thursday April 3, he was interviewed on the Stephen Colbert Report and what he said sounded a lot like the "Common Adventure" group organizing process I have described earlier in this blog.

He has written a brand new and exciting book titled "Here Comes Everybody, The Power of Organizing Without Organizations." And he is providing a new Here Comes Everybody blog to "chronicle and extend the themes of the book."

I have not read the book yet, but I have looked at some of the web reviews and a video of Clay talking about the book. A book review by Elizabeth McKenna of Radar Reviews notes that Shirky "... offers an extremely readable sociological text on how communication technologies (cell phones, Internet, etc...) strengthen the world's ability to form social and political groups with ease and provide significant platforms for even the simplest of citizens."

The video was recorded at the Harvard Law School on March 4, 2008. Here is a link to the video and I will provide a summary of important concepts he talked about. Sharing, Conversation, Collaboration, and Collective Action.

I intend to purchase the book and keep reading the blog and will write more comments here in the future.

Google Maps- Boise, Idaho Street View Embeddable panorama

The Google Lat long Blog posted a note on December 11, 2007 that any available Google Maps Street view panorama can be embedded on a web site or a blog. I decided to try this out and place a panorama of a street showing one of the downtown Boise buildings that provides a creative River artwork scene facing the street. You can move this panorama around in a 360 degree circle and you can also zoom up close to the artwork. If you click on the "View Larger Map" link on the bottom left of the panorama, Google Maps will open and you can navigate around the downtown area of Boise starting at this location. You can also choose to navigate to panorama views of most of the streets of Boise by selecting locations on the "Larger Map."


View Larger Map

Phase 3 - The Internet and World Wide Web

I believe Web site projects can now begin to create interactive social networking interfaces, semantic links, and cross referenced data aggregation opportunities to aid future environmental networking decision making processes at a local, regional, national, and global level. The brief outline below provides a general summary of the important components that are already providing impetus for this developing third new phase of the Internet. Our next web site projects with Mountain Visions will attempt to incorporate these features and I will attempt to explain this process on this blog as time allows.

Geospatial Web
Online maps loaded with Place &TIme Based data about the physical world.
Google Earth/maps, Virtual Earth, NASA World Wind, etc.
Virtual Communities

MobileWeb
The World Wide Web as accessed from mobile devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and other portable gadgets connected to a public network. Access does not require a desktop computer.

DataWeb (Semantic Web)
Expert and Knowledge based Content and Concepts,
Semantic Searching - Much more defined, reputable and reliable search results.
Related to Geospatial place and time all data sources noted below:
Scientific papers, reports, studies, etc.
Environmental Impact Statements, Planning documents, etc.
GIS Data bases from many sources - local regional, national and global.
Other Databases - Government, environmental, knowledge, economic, visual, etc.

OpenSourceWeb
Open Source software, public domain knowledge, etc.
Online web applications, public domain imagery etc.
Shared GIS data and GITechnology

ImageWeb (Images are unique forms of data. See DataWEb)
A proliferation of shared GIS maps, historical maps, paintings, graphics, photos,
video, audio, animation, etc. related to the Geospatial and Data Web.
3D Simulations, Virtualization, and future scenarios and models based on existing data.
Virtual Environmental game scenarios.

SocialWeb
Social Networking 2.0 and 3.0
Education - K-12, Community and College Networking.
Citizen participation, volunteers, public input.
Pubic tagging and rating tools for data, photos, knowledge, etc.
Posting photos, citizen monitoring data, blogs, wikis, and much more public involvement in planning decisions.

Democratic Caucus -Boise, Idaho- Too Full!!

Images below are loaded from last on top to the first on the bottom. I will post this now and come back and organize it better later. Thousands of people were in lines snaking around buildings trying to get into the Arena. We made it into the lobby, but they told us the Fire Marshall said the Arena was completely full. They would take our ballot, and our vote would count. We left and thought we would get a cup of coffee, but the cafe was full too. A half hour later there were still people waiting outside the door. (Top Photo)

Barack Obama - Boise, Idaho - Community and Environmental Service

Senator Barack Obama visited Idaho and gave a campaign speech in Boise, to about 14,000 people on February 2, 2008. (Notice in the photo to the right, taken by Katy Flanagan on a cell phone, that only a few seats are empty and these are located directly behind a curtain and a crowd of standing people hiding a view of Obama) This was an absolutely amazing turnout for a Democrat in possibly the most conservative Republican State in the U.S. The media and conversations on the street indicate that there will probably be a record number of participants in the Idaho Democratic Caucus being held tonight, February 5. Katy and I plan to participate.

Obama's campaign speech was inspiring and full of good ideas of hope and action for our country in the near future. One of the action themes both Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton (and possibly some Republicans) are developing will provide more opportunities for citizens to perform some significant community/public service contribution. This will apply especially to college students who have had to borrow money for their education, and the service will reduce this debt.

I would expect that many of these community/public service action opportunities could be oriented to environmental and ecosystem restoration and recovery efforts. In addition, I assume that people of all ages, including younger students, families, older citizens, and community groups will also be encouraged to initiate or become involved in the same public service projects.

Advancements in Social Networking software, including new ways to explore, create and share geospatial maps, semantic data, photographs and animated visualizations that I have discussed in this Blog are tools that should help make the next generation of participation in environmental social service a lot of short run productive fun. Collectively, this effort should also provide much better and needed long range environmental and ecosystem decisions.