Satellite technology reveals how the network of city streets is being pushed to the edge of capacity. Watch the GPS traces of 380 London taxis over the course of a single day.

Via http://ob23ua.blogspot.com/

Air Jelly

Festo’s “Air Jelly”.  Imagine this and many other creatures casually and quietly gliding through the air although while communicating with each other like cellular automata, while providing us with services ranging from the banal to the absurd.  The creatures should have a way also to sense their environment — perhaps through GPS or other locative technologies such as sonar…etc.

”

(via collective creature.)

BIGGEST DRAWING IN THE WORLD

(via: Thomas Traum) 

Virtual Cable nav system superimposes route guidance on your windshield in 3D

We’ve seen quite a few next-gen nav device concepts, but none with as much potential as the Virtual Cable, from a New Jersey company called Making Virtual Solid. The system uses a laser, a set of lenses, and a moving mirror mounted in the dashboard to project a 3D route-guidance line above the road ahead, as though it’s actually out in front of the driver. Besides making driving that much more like a video game, the company says mass-produced versions will cost somewhere around $400 as a factory-installed option, and can be easily interfaced with existing GPS systems. Sadly, there don’t appear to be any live videos of the system in action, but judging from the number of patent applications and incredibly detailed schematics and explanations on the website, the vapor factor seems pretty low. Check the read link for a set of video mockups of the system in action.

(Via Engadget.)

So You’ve Been Using Google Earth and Now You Want…: “So You’ve Been Using Google Earth and Now You Want Do More

Sure, Google Earth is really cool. Fun, easy to use, easy to pick up and show your friends, you can use your Mac or your Windows machine. But it’s a really limited tool for representing geospatial data that YOU created. If you want to show some points on a map that’s fine and that’s easily done with the Google Earth Plus version, but if you want to make the size of the points change for a certain attribute, you need a more robust tool and GIS software may be your answer.

At Vassar, we have a couple of computer lab locations that have the GIS software ESRI’s ArcGIS installed on the machines, the GIS lab in Ely Hall and the Scientific Visualization Lab in Mudd Chemistry. ArcGIS is only available for Windows machines. We do not have a site license for this software, but that should not limit your access to using this geospatial tool too much.

We also have the advanced Google Earth Pro available only in the GIS lab. This is discussed in more detail below.

Batch Geocode is terrific, easy to use and free. Geocoding in ArcGIS is not pleasant. Success rates hit a high of about 70 percent, in my experience. Batch Geocode is highly accurate and pretty fast.

Your address file must be in tab-delimited text format.

Though Batch Geocode is freely available, if you find yourself using this great tool, please contribute.

Because Batch Geocode gives you a longitude and latitude, you can easily bring your new table back into ArcMap.

Exporting Shapefiles From ArcGIS to KML Format

Using ESRI’s ArcGIS , again in specialized computer labs around campus, you can export a shapefile and bring it into Google Earth.

Here’s the ESRI link to the that nice ArcScript for ArcMap 9.x. You can export a shapefile into a KML file for Google Earth viewing right from ArcMap. I’m giving the ESRI link so they can keep track of the downloads. They like that.

The icon in ArcGIS loks like a little Google Earth icon, shpown below a little larger than in reality.

You can import a variety of data files into Google Earth Pro that makes it seem a little GIS-like. But don’t be fooled. Our GIS lab in Ely Hall has Google Earth Pro loaded on all the machines.

Here’s what you can import or open in Google Earth Pro:

• Enhanced network access for faster performance
• Real-time GPS tracking and track/waypoint import — for upload of data from select GPS devices (Verified support for Magellan and Garmin devices only and Does not support export of tracks or waypoints to a GPS )
• Greater-than-screen-resolution printing – for impressive hardcopies
• Customer support via email
• Spreadsheet importer – to import locations from .CSV files



Google Earth Pro is $400 ‘With Google Earth Pro, it’s easy to research locations and present your discoveries. In just a few clicks, you can import site plans, property lists or client sites and share the view with your client or colleague.’ But what they mean is that you can import shapefiles (i.e., the native files format for ESRI’s GIS software) or .tab files (i.e., native file format for MapInfo GIS files). That’s cool.
What else can you do?

• Import 2,500 locations by address or geospatial coordinates from a spreadsheet.
• You get additional measurement tools (square feet, mile, acreage, radius and so on)
• Export high-resolution images up to 11′ x 17′
• You create your own compressed movies of the zooms and virtual tours you take in Google Earth

“

[tags]google earth, gps, mapping[/tags]

(Via GIS @ Vassar.)

Geo: All geo coordinates from Wikipedia

Stefan Kühn, a cartographer at the University Trier, Germany, has extracted all the geo coordinates embedded in articles on [Wikipedia->http://www.wikipedia.com/]. The [WikiProject Geographical coordinates->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates] is a Wikipedia project for ensuring standardized geocoding of locations in its articles.

Google Earth fans bent on instant gratification can simply download a KMZ file and start surfing. But more importantly, coders and infoviz geeks can get a comma-separated text file (CSV) with coordinates, titles and Wikipedia categories for all points.

Link: [Geocoordinates from Wikipedia for Google Earth->http://www.webkuehn.de/hobbys/wikipedia/geokoordinaten/index_en.htm]

”

(via Code & form.)

[tags]data, database, geo, coordinates, geolocation, knowledge, mapping, map, gps, wikipedia[/tags]

New Google Earth 4 beta – 16-December-2006

Google has just released the latest beta for Google Earth 4 today (December 16th). Windows and Linux – version 4.0.2693, Mac – version 4.0.2694. Here are the release notes posted by ‘ink_polaroid’ at the GEC. Note: there are some great improvements in here. Also, the new touring feature mentioned is really cool. It will automatically pop up placemark description bubbles as you tour through each placemark. This gives you an almost script-like presentation capability.

Release notes:

• Progress indicator for loading network links and models
• Real-time GPS tracking using NMEA (Plus, Pro and EC)
• Greatly improved performance for collada models (textured buildings)
• Tours can display balloons (Tools->Options… then “Touring” tab)
• Driving directions and touring allow a greater range for typed values
• Mac movie-maker supports many more compression formats

KML notes:

• Icon palettes are deprecated (no more root:// for the styles)
• Improved performance on network link hierarchies

Major fixes since last beta:

• Improved compatibility on shared memory architecture ATI graphics cards with
  older graphics card drivers

• Improved success rate of log in over unreliable connections
• Fixed offline mode in Pro
• Numerous GPS fixes (including GPX import)

The bug which affected the Blue Marble Add-on has been fixed. I will be posting a new version which won’t require the little hack I had developed to fix the bug.”

(via Google Earth Blog.)

[tags]google earth, gps,[/tags]

WiGLE – Wireless Geographic Logging Engine – Plotting WiFi on Maps

The wireless world this morning (GMT-6:00).

We consolidate location and information of wireless networks world-wide to a central database, and have user-friendly java, windows, and web applications that can map, query and update the database via the web.

[tags]gps, wifi, network, visualization[/tags]

SourceForge.net: Files

As of July, 2006, the OS/X version replaces the MacGPSBabel AppleScript GUI with a new one written by Karl Smith in RealBasic.

screenshot from the former interface (still accessible)

(Via GPS Babel, mailinglist.)

[tags]gps, software, mac, osx, mapping, kml, gpx[/tags]

bio & emotion mapping: ”

an interesting research project which explores how one can make use of the real-time biological information of the human body. several wearers record their Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) (a simple indicator of emotional arousal) in conjunction with their geographical location. this is used to plot a map that highlights points of high & low arousal, & visualizes where people feel stressed or excited.
the Greenwich Emotion Map project attempts to invent new visualization strategies to represent this data in the context of neighborhoods & communities.
see also bio-responsive server & coca-cola world chill map & gps drawing.
[biomapping.net & emotionmap.net]

“

(Via information aesthetics.)

[tags]emotion, map, mapping, visualization, body, sensor, urban, gps[/tags]