One Billion Cameras -

What Happens When A Billion People Worldwide Become Equipped With The Tools Of Visual Communication?

In the past four years the number of cameras in people’s hands worldwide has increased by 600%. It will double again over the next five years. Total number of cameras of all kinds sold in 2000: 85 Million units. Projected 2008 sales: One Billion units. Pervasive, web-connected imaging and the explosion of user-generated visual content are transforming how we communicate with each other in our personal, work, and community lives.

What happens when a billion users of many cultures, and scores of engineers and entrepreneurs, focus on new ways to enrich customers’ lives through imaging? What happens when R&D is fueled by an order-of-magnitude increase in economic reward? And what happens to the industry’s business models and value formulas?

FutureImage - 6Sight

Barefoot Disaster Pointography

Red Hen Systems has a growing list of international users. In the
immediate moments after an natural disaster confusion is the norm as large
effort is expended to realize the extent and severity on the affected
communities. Spatial multimedia or the indexing of images, video and
audio tied into building of a minute-to-minute dynamic map of that
information as provided from the field then immediately sharing and
distributing that content via the web. Sort of bare-footed-CNN
as an effective pathway to insight and conditions in the immediate
aftermath. Reality is connected to place, access can be understood, and
the immediate needs of triage addresses. A hard reality would be to
claim this content as near-real-time citizens "disaster-casting". This
sort of on-the-sport at the moment personal notice and will likely become
more a feature of our daily awareness than less.

Red Hen Systems wants to help harness and enable geo-photographers,
photo-geographers, and all those skilled in every-day pointography to help
accelerate accurate information to assist all in understanding those
affected, to enable effective timely assistance, and help document the
good, the bad, and ugly of recovery. Sort of big stuff but we are going
to give it a fair go. Interested?


Dartmouth
Flood Archives

As a first step, Red Hen is going to try to enable those of our clients
and any of you with interest and skill and likely guts to assist in the
geo-tagging of this critically valuable information, essentially those willing
to do this sort of "on-call" work, to jump-in and
help, to cross-list on volunteers and commercial outfits
willing "to do first" and "talk later" basis via the following site:

Emergency
Geotagging and Disaster Mapping

Yahoo versus Google - No more Mashing???

Ran accross this today as sort of a foot note and wonder if its an Uh-o, or a dead "bird in the mine" regarding the commercial interests limiting of the total freedom "Mashing" enjoys? If I see the signals right, in the most current licensing facts of Yahoo's APIs versus mashing the results with Google, well I guess Yahoo has decided what is Yahoo's is Yahoo's? I am going to bet its going to be a VERY HOT topic very soon? Flickr's geotagging value didn't come from Yahoo but from several of the very best Mashups that tied Flickr images to Google Earth. But that was way back when mashing was new news within the Wall Street Journal?

Essentially it looks like Yahoo does not want nor will they permit their API to geocode/geotag information that is later mashed or passed-over to Google Earth or Map? Something here IMHO...

"Phoogle Maps (pronounced like Foogle Maps) is a PHP class that integrates itself with the Google Maps API and with the Yahoo Geocoding API to make an easy to use interface to display Google Maps on your site."

Mapperz Note to Users: Check the Yahoo Maps API Terms and Conditions before investing time on this. There maybe infringement using the Yahoo Geocoder with Google Maps.

Mapperz's Phoogle Maps Blog Article

Great Bluetooth GPS Units

Working through how to properly set up BloggerKit to attach Amazon deals on stuff relevant to this Blog. If BloggerKit works according to their offer, 85 percent of the time any related Amazon click-throughs that result in a sale will land in our account - 4 or 8 pecent is the suggestion. Right now all that results is alink to Amazon Gift Cerificates... not a likley solution IMHO. I like the idea but still need to see the actual results... Take a look at their site and comment if you have thoughts...

Thanks,
MidNight Mapper
aka neil

Zooomr's booobr? Viral Marketing of geotagged Porn? - Server kicked over!!!

Wanted to check in on Zooomr's total images stats but they have recently had their servers kicked over by a viral geo-marketing idea posted at the CES that, I guess backfired... maybe booobr-fired is the proper term?

Man, I hope this isn't the start of geotagged porn? I sort of liked the mystery of not really knowing where.... Stay tuned to see if they turn to the "dark-side"?

Well folks, it seems like I’ve gone and inadvertently gotten our beloved Zooomr’s servers pounded (No pun intended ). I posted a set of images up on the “Babes of CES” that’s making it’s way around the Internet on some of the more popular sites out there… Kristopher and I are sitting here at Massimo Cafe in San Francisco working on getting things optimized and back up to the smooth running Zooomr that we all love so much.

Sorry about any inconveniences.

Thomas
Denial of Babes
& Breasts (DOBB) Attack

ISDE5 - aka International GeoTaggers Conference?

Calling all photo-geographers, geo-photographers, and pointographers!!
.


The "earth first" potential of the NASA/Google alliance takes on additional significance given the wide blog-o-sphere announcement of the International Symposium on Digital Earth get-together in San Francisco in this coming June.

On June 5th 2007, the 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth (ISDE5) will open in the Bay Area of San Francisco, California, USA. The symposium will span four days and will address a broad national and international audience across a spectrum of industry, academic, government, and citizen attendees. All individuals who share a common interest in the concept of a digital Earth are urged to participate and attend. The Digital Earth vision embraces a philosophy that any citizen of the planet, linked through the Internet, should be able to freely access a virtual world of information and knowledge resources.

This philosophy supports the dream of ubiquitous education for the people of the planet. A rich convergence of technological advances, active visionaries, and recognition of the paramount need for humans to better understand the Earth and its systems comprises the character and history of this dynamic and exciting enterprise.

This international vision encompasses the virtual and 3-D representation of the earth with vast amounts of scientific, natural, and cultural information that is partially referenced and interconnected with digital knowledge archives from around the planet to describe and understand the Earth, its systems, and human activities.

The Digital Earth community is dedicated to building a virtual global commons to promote "down to Earth" solutions supported by cooperative web-based protocols using standards, databases, analytical and visualization tools that will foster the creation of appropriate applications for a sustainable future. A consortium of global experts founded the International Society for Digital Earth in 2006 to promote the evolution and implementation of the Digital Earth vision.

5th International Symposium on Digital Earth

ISDE5 Nominations

I would like to nominate two candidates that should be IMHO noted contributors to the "down to earth"contributions.

Global Biodiversity Information Facility
(with Google Earth bio-mash)

The GBIF GE Bio-Mash - or where are all those critters?/

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility is building a Internet accessible link to literally millions of "specimens". Most of the world's biologic diversity is located in the developing regions where as the dominate archive of those bio-diverse regions are held within developed nations. Essentially the GBIF is geotagging as much of the known via Google Earth. Put a time line on the collection and its classification and patterns may emerge? Give a HOOT! Don't pollute!

Good managers of natural resources and policy-makers know that their best decisions are based on results from the most accurate scientific analyses. Such analyses are based on solid, documentable data that have been recorded directly from the observation of nature. Such records are called 'primary' data. Biodiversity is a handy, one-word name for all the species on the Earth, the genetic variety they possess, and the ecological systems in which they participate. Another way of thinking about biodiversity is as the 'living resources' portion of 'natural resources'.

A large part of the primary data on biodiversity are the 1.5 - 2.0 billion specimens held in natural history collections, as well as many geographical and ecological observations recorded by various means and stored in various media. In making living resource policy and management choices, decision-makers are often forced to rely on analyses that are not based on primary data. This is because the world's store of primary data about biodiversity is not at present readily and easily accessible.

Biodiversity is found around the world - there are micro-organisms between granules of rock 3 km below the Earth's surface, rootless plants in the Atacama Desert, thousands of species of beetles in a single rain forest tree. However, biodiversity is not distributed evenly across the face of the planet. An estimated 75% of all species are found in the developing world.

Information about biodiversity (natural history collections, library materials, databases) likewise is not distributed evenly around the globe. Three-quarters or more of data about biodiversity are stored in the developed world. However, most of the data that may be needed can't be transferred because either they are not digitised, or capacity to handle digital information is lacking, or both. Facilitating digitisation and global dissemination of primary biodiversity data, so that people from all countries can benefit from the use of the information, is the mission of the (GBIF).

Conservation Air Patrol
(With National Geographic geotagged images)

Conservation Air Patrol

My second nominee group, the Conservation Air Patrol, transverses Africa counting animals, documenting environmental degradation, and from what I hear swatting flies while getting the job done. Read about then add the National Geographic "MegaFlyover" to your Google earth via National Geographic and Wildlife Conservation Societies, “MegaFlyover”. This team plus National Geographic should be considered as enabling one of the original Mash-up".

Google and NASA - geoTagging via GE just gets better

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-18-2006/0004493013&EDATE=

NASA and Google to Bring Space Exploration Down to Earth
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif., Dec. 18
/PRNewswire/ --

NASA Ames Research Center and Google have signed a Space Act Agreement that formally
establishes a relationship to work together on a variety of challenging technical problems ranging from large-scale data management and massively distributed computing, to human-computer interfaces.

As the first in a series of joint collaborations, Google and Ames will focus on making the most useful of NASA's information available on the Internet. Real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3- D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle will be explored in the future.

"This agreement between NASA and Google will soon allow every American to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon or through the canyons of Mars," said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin at Headquarters in Washington. "This innovative combination of information technology and space science will make NASA's space exploration work accessible to
everyone," added Griffin. "Partnering with NASA made perfect sense for Google, as it has a wealth of technical expertise and data that will be of great use to Google as we look to tackle many computing issues on behalf of our users," said Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google. "We're pleased to move forward to collaborate on a variety of technical challenges through the signing of the Space Act Agreement."

Recently, teams from NASA and Google met to discuss the many challenging computer science problems facing both organizations and possible joint collaborations that could help address them. NASA and Google intend to collaborate in a variety of areas, including incorporating agency data sets in Google Earth, focusing on user studies and cognitive modeling for human computer interaction, and science data search utilizing a variety of Google features and products.

"Our collaboration with Google will demonstrate that the private and public sectors can accomplish great things together," said S. Pete Worden, Ames center director. "I want NASA Ames to establish partnerships with the private sector that will encourage innovation, while advancing the Vision for Space Exploration and commercial interests," Worden added.
"NASA has collected and processed more information about our planet and universe than any other entity in the history of humanity," said Chris C. Kemp, director of strategic business development at Ames. "Even though this information was collected for the benefit of everyone, and much is in the public domain, the vast majority of this information is scattered and
difficult for non-experts to access and to understand. "We've worked hard over the past year to implement an agreement that enables NASA and Google to work closely together on a wide range of innovative collaborations," said Kemp. "We are bringing together some of the best research scientists and engineers to form teams to make more of NASA's vast information accessible."

NASA and Google also are finalizing details for additional collaborations that include joint research, products, facilities, education and missions. Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Google is headquartered close to Ames in Silicon Valley with offices through the Americas, Europe and
Asia.

For more information about Google, please visit:
http://www.google.com
For information about NASA and agency programs, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov