Virtual Sweden and panoramio

A few days ago Stefan Geens of the Ogle Earth blog reported on the news of the Swedish Institute entering Second Life and establishing a presence. Now the news has gone mainstream, with a link to it appearing on the BBC news front page.

It also slipped past me last week, but I'll post it now, is that Panoramio has surpassed the half million photo upload mark. Quite a feat for something that was just a small photo geotagging service a few months ago. Of course, some of my photos are on there too.

Anyone for an island? Sealand for sale!

The Times reports that the smallest country in the World, Sealand, is up for sale, via JD on shitchat. Anyone up for buying it?

Logik IR 100, more internet radio

Having been rather turned off the Acoustic Energy Internet Radio, after seeing it's plasticy rather tacky self in John Lewis a few weeks ago, I'd thought I'd check out the competition. I keep on coming across the Logik IR100 internet radio's on ebay, they go for about £70 usually, so I popped into the Princes Street Curry's store, to have a quick look at it.

What struck me, was quite how bulky and heavy the unit is. Which I actually rather like, compared to the very light-weight fragile feeling AE alternative. Sure, it's black, has analogue style buttons, and doesn't look especially smart (silver is still in apparently) - but I was far more convinced by it, then pictures on the internet suggested.


The unit is powered by the reciva service which keeps track of the many many internet radio stations now available. It's mains powered, a single mono speaker (when will they start taking internet radio seriously!?). Yes you can stream files from your PC, but no you can't access digital radio. Again, why not? It's ridiculous.

Anyway, you can buy it at the various Dixons group stores, for around a hundred pound - though I suggest ebay to get it a bit cheaper. How well it works.. I've no idea at present - and I'd love to hear if you have used it, or any of the other offerings. At the moment however ..this certainly seems to be the most popular high street product, if ebay sales are anything to go by.

Geovisualisation essay

A post in the GE blog on some Second Life and Virtual World stuff..

Also CBBC World

hi-tech cattle branding

Via slashgeo is the story of hi-tec cattle branding. While traditionally we have microchipped pets, and some animals, it has proved to expensive to embed these in cattle, instead them being tagged in the ear - which has some negative sides. This is promising a RFID tattoo by which cattle could be identified.

The All Points Blog runs an article on the semantic web and possible implementations for Google new patent. As the blog states.. it looks like the development of real semantic networks could be more of a money/business issue than for academic good.

The Google Earth Blog reports on KLM releasing a GE network link as a means of promoting it's products. As initially reported in Emerce.nl. It also reveals the real world google earth development business behind this KLM release.

Finally, some of the things we're doing in GEOVIS.. Ogle Earth has a great video about Perceptive Pixel.

Google and Microsoft take to the skies for Australia Day

The Earth is square blog highlights an interesting google maps implementation. I suppose I never really thought about the fact that your data source need not be maps, or aerial imagery, but could be anything really.. This one: Google World Domination!

Also from this very interesting blog, was a write-up of his experiences at the Digital Globe Conference. He has posted the presentation he used, and might be an interesting contact when it comes to considering my GE/WW/whatever else remake of the Gaz data.

The other interesting piece of information I found on the GE Blog was some competition between Microsoft and Google during Australia Day 2007. Having been in Sydney for Australia day last year.. it's pretty cool that both these big companies are using this as a publicity stunt, that should create some great imagery. As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald The Microsoft Virtual Earth blog also reports that they have created a special map showing Australia Day events right across Australia.

-EDIT - There was a huge Virtual Earth update a few days ago, covering some fantastic European Cities. You'll need to install the plugin though.

The animals and street art + second life

First of all, I remembered that I hadn't talked about our GPS tracked animals for a little while. However there is little news. Zahara our turtle is still circling off the coast of Oman, moving gradually South, while Sedna our shearwater has moved a couple of hundred km's further South for presumably richer feeding.

Image courtesy of SeaTurtle.org

As our winter draws to a close, it will be interesting to see the migratory paths northwards.

Next up, someone over at Tailfeathers Network posted a link to some very cool street art. Surely something like that should be at the Edinburgh Fringe? Apparently there is more material, and also another artist who does this. Wow.

I finally gave in to my curiosity and took a peek at Second Life. Bit strange, and interesting, but most of all.. what a lot of time can be wasted! Apparently my university has a Second Life Presence but I was unable to locate it. Don't know if that's because I had to complete some kind of tutorial before I was allowed into the world proper, or whether the location/region that they bought/setup has ceased to exist.

Bits and pieces + dissertation proposal

First of all - doing a course on geo-informatics and one of my coursemates pointed to an excellent flash movie explaining the many dimensions of our universe. It appears roughly adapted from the text we were prescribed by Abbott (1884).

Second, my dissertation proposal is due in fairly shortly, and I've decided to proceed along the lines of converting an online gazzeteer into XML data format, and provide some kind of interface and front ends for this data. This could be in the format of the older traditional website which could be 'cleaned' up, but perhaps more interestingly by providing mechanisms to some of the other means we have for disseminating information. Google Earth, and it's virtual globe peers, seem a good place to start, so one of the interesting projects would be to write some kind of XML to KML conversion.

On the blog front, several blogs reported and commented on the news of digital globe buying globe explorer. Which is interesting as the former is a major provider of data to google, while the other provides to Microsoft. Interesting..

Oh and the earth is square blog found this fantastic little terrain modelling, play gadget! brilliant!