Sunday, 11 February 2007

Uni work, Yahoo Pipes and some Apps

It's all gone a little bit quiet on the blog front, which is just as well as I'm having trouble finding the time to stay updated!

At uni, we're delving into a wide range of things, and with teaching now complete it means I'm finishing a whole bunch of projects. These include extending a java Lotka-Volterra model integrated with a Cellular Automate for my environmental modelling project. Finishing a database project that requires us to use HTML to SVG interaction, and running perl scripts to generate SVG directly from a Oracle Spatial Database. Yes, sometimes it feels like it is as complex as it sounds. Then I have an ontology project to finish, whereby we as a group are trying to model a geographic process with an ontology and be able to reasoning with and upon it. I've been playing with some of the stuff at Mindswap.org including their Pellet reasoner, but it's all very complex stuff with barely an example to take inspiration from.

Then I have a project on KML to finish, whereby I'm going to extend one of it's capabilities or address a problem. Not too sure where I am on that yet. Then finally, I need to try and explore the use of virtual worlds to aid teaching. Hmm. And all this on a GIS course. Haven't used an ESRI product for months!

Anyways, the big news I suppose is the launch of the Yahoo Pipes service. I haven't had time to use it myself, but the GE blog discusses it's implications for Google Earth/Map. In many ways this is kind of related to some of the OWL ontology work we are doing now, but on a lower level. Pipes allows you to take the output of other websites, combine/analyse relative to other data or parameters and displays it in some way. It's simple drag and drop editor interface, will appeal to those who aren't complete techies.The Guardian however isn't convinced.

Why pipes? Well, it's probably named after the Unix | character that lets you use/pipe the output of one thing in another. It's certainly an interesting idea, and allows potential novices to do things with data feeds that in the past have been the domain of the programmer only. KML support is also coming.

New Version of World Wind due this Wednesday, according to earth is square Yes Valentines day. Looking forward to it :)

The Chinese are getting in on the virtual globe act too, reports Ogle Earth. Looks like it will be proprietary though.

Finally, James Fee does a great example of how to combine a range of services to do some interesting practical applications - finding a new home!

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