Volinteer Humanitarian Mapmakers

Hal Hodsen writes in New Scientist about volunteers producing their own on-line maps for developing nations ("Citizen cartographers fill the gaps in maps", (5 July 2013). This has been done in the past where a disaster has occurred, most prominently for the Haiti earthquake. But the New Scientist discusses mapping to improve conditions, rather than just after a disaster. In May I attended a meeting in Colombo to discuss how to help deal with pandemics, including the use of mapping.

Smartphone Mobile App Mapping APIs

Professor Hanan Samet, from University of Maryland, will speak on "Duking it out at the Smartphone Mobile App Mapping API Corral: Apple, Google, and the Competition",  at the Australian National University in Canberra, 17 April 2013.

The recent introduction of the Apple iPhone 5 and the accompanying iOS6 software environment which, among other changes, replaced the use of the Google Maps API in iOS5 by Apple's own Maps API, has led to significant changes in the user experience with apps that make use of maps and has resulted in closer scrutiny of mapping applications on mobile devices. Many of these changes in the user experience deal with the quality of the data that is being produced and presented to the user, and has led to a wide ranging discussion of data quality and the seeming lack of quality assurance policies and protocols by Apple. These are widely documented in web postings. However, equally important are significant changes in the manner in which the data is presented to the user, but, surprisingly, not much attention has been paid to this aspect of the user experience which is somewhat analogous to the concept of the ``last mile'' when discussing the bandwidth of communications networks and its associated costs. The changes in the presentation and in the amount of data that are presented to the user on the Apple mapping platform, with an emphasis on mobile devices with a small form factor such as smartphones, are tabulated and compared along with other mapping platforms such as the iOS apps of ESRI, MapQuest, and OpenSeaMap (using the open source map data of OpenStreetMap), as well as Bing Maps and Nokia Maps for which no iOS app exists and thus the corresponding mobile web versions are used. Both the pre-iOS6 and post-iOS6 versions of the Google Maps API are included. * Best Paper Award, 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Mobile Geographic Information Systems (MobiGIS 2012), Redondo Beach, CA, November 2012 ** Joint work with Brendan C. Fruin and Sarana Nutanong

Google Maps Challenge in Canberra

Google Engineers will conduct the "Google Maps Challenge" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 29 September 2011, 5:30pm to 8:30pm. Those wanting a more policy perspective can attend the United Nations Internet Governance Forum 'remote hub' at ANU, the same day.

Less talk, more code!

Google (Google)

GENERAL

DATE: 2011-09-29
TIME: 17:30:00 - 18:30:00
LOCATION: CSIT N115
CONTACT: heather.mcewen@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
Google Engineers are visiting the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science. All interested staff and students are invited to attend their hands-on interactive tour of the Google Maps API.

They will take you inside the API and the solutions used to build a fast, feature-full, flexible API beginning with the basics by completing small exercises of increasing complexity.

Free pizza and Google prizes are also on offer.

Who: Computer science students and anyone with an interest in software development.
*Skill requirements: You should be able to write programs of beginner complexity.
**Technical Requirement: Please bring a laptop if you own one to secure a spot.

First come, first serve for lab computers.

What: Google Maps Challenge

When: Thursday, 29 September at 5:30pm - 8:30pm

Where: CSIT N115

How: RSVP

Google Creating Culture Online

Alan Noble, Engineering Director, Google Australia and New Zealand, talked on "Supporting Culture Online - How Google is working to preserve the world's cultural heritage, both by making it accessible and providing platforms for the creativity that enriches culture to thrive" at NICTA in Canberra, 19 August 2011. This was unlike the technical presentations which Google staff give at the Australian National University in Canberra a few times a year. This was a talk for a more general audience, saying what Google does, but lacking technical details about how Google does it.

Alan discussed several Google projects to digitise books and works of art at great galleries and libraries of the world. But also projects to put lesser known culture online. This included projects to encourage oral traditions of the third world to be put online for the first time (Alan also speculated about how much is being lost through the extinction of indigenous languages in Australia). A cynic might say Google is doing this simply top have more web content to put ads on and make money out of. But in the main, Google does seem to be genuinely trying to "not do evil" and provide a cultural contribution (even if does happen there is then more content for them to put ads on).

Alan's talk reminded me of a Workshop on the Use of Technology for Museums of the Pacific Islands Region I conducted in 2005 for the International Council on Museums, UNESCO and ANU. The museums of pacific countries are very vunerable to natural disasters, particularly cyclones and tsunami (the Apia museum we visited was on the seafront, less than a metre above sea level).

Alan also mentioned working with UNESCO on preserving cultural works and opening an office in Paris. I suggested that the Google staff might like to pop along to the UNESCO office in Paris. I had noticed that there were some artworks in the cafeteria on a visit in 2000.

Geospatial Exhibition In Canberra

The Australian Spatial Consortium and CeBIT Australia are running spatial@gov Conference 2010, at the National Convention Centre in Canberra, 5 - 7 October 2010. There is a free Exhibition Open Day,Tuesday 5 October:

Open Day Presentation Program
Time
	Moderator: Jack de Lange, Chief Operating Officer, SIBA
11:00	Open Day Opens
12:00	Location Intelligence & Government - Extending the Reach through GIS Maree Wilson, Technology Services Consultant, ESRI
12:15	Greater Than the Sum of the Parts Milton Lofberg, Technical Sales Consultant, Autodesk
12:30	PSMA Data - Accessing a World of Benefits Richard Lindsay, Chief Executive Officer, PSMA Distribution
12:45	Commercial Applications from State Wide & National Spatial Data Infrastructure Andrew Bashfield, Regional Sales Manager, Intermap Technologies
13.00	Lunch break
14:00	Pathway Opportunities for Women In the Spatial Industry Noel Hamey, A/Director, Building & Environment Centre, Spatial Education Advisory Committee (SEAC) and Jane Tussock, Spatial Information Services Student, Construction & Property Services Industry Skills Council (CPSISC) representing - Surveying & Spatial Science Institute
14:15	Enabling Spatial Data Infrastructures Steve Lieblich, Chairman, Amristar Solutions and i Delve
14:30	Beyond Location Intelligence: Insight = Efficiency Doug Menzies, Public Sector Sales Manager, Pitney Bowes Business Insight
14:45	Close of Open Day Presentation Program

Daniel Nadasi, Google Software Engineer and ANU graduate, will give an open lecture in Canberra this Friday on "Concurrent and Distributed Computing at Google". This is for students of Concurrent and Distributed Systems (COMP2310/6310), but anyone is welcome to attend.

DCS SEMINAR SERIES

Concurrent and Distributed Computing at Google

Daniel Nadasi (Google)

DATE: 2009-10-16
TIME: 14:00:00 - 15:00:00
LOCATION: Chemistry Lecture Theatre T1


ABSTRACT:
Have you ever wondered how Google's massive computing infrastructure works? How Google manages to keep petabytes of data and thousands of machines stable, consistent, responsive, scalable and fault-tolerant? In this talk, you will be presented with a bottom-up tour of Google. Starting from the building blocks of concurrent and distributed computing, you will see how Google's systems are constructed, through the internal systems that are used, to some of the newest products, such as Google App Engine.

BIO:
Daniel Nadasi joined Google as a Software Engineer in November 2007. He currently works on advertising for Google Maps. Aside from this, he has also worked on Google Tasks and open source initiatives. Daniel graduated from ANU in 2007 with a Bachelor of Science with a double major in Mathematics."

Sydney Google Technology User Group Meeting on Tuesday

The Sydney Google Technology User Group (Sydney-GTUG) is having only its second meeting October 6th on "Android, Geo, Docs & Sites APIs". Details of who is speaking is limited, but it it is worth attending, just being able to see the Google bulding (I gave a talk there a few months ago).

Google Maps Real Estate

I tried out Google Maps Real Estate on Canberra, but this showed too many houses for sale and rent. So I narrowed it down the the suburb, there were still to many, so I tired my street. At this point I discovered the home next door was for sale. This is the first I heard of it. It is a little worrying when you have to look in a global database to find out what is happening a few metres away.

The service lists property and apartments for sale and rent through agencies. There is a page with details for Real Estate Agents to upload my listings to Google. There are two options: Data Feeds or the Google Base API. Data feeds require the supplier to export a file and upload this to Google. The Google Base API provides a more direct, but more technically complex option. There does not appear to be an option for individuals who are just selling one house privately and want to list that. No doubt someone will come up with an ad don service for private sales.