This little bugger caused me a lot of hassle this week.
Rather embarrassingly I lost a single document that prevented me from traveling to Sweden. I was quite impressed with the 4 hour turnaround service, but not so impressed with the price tag (still £10.10 a year for 10 years isn't so bad). Still my own stupid fault, should try and look after this one. Also amazing how fast news travels as the whole office seemed to know.
I did finally make it to MapSweden - however I missed out on the shrimp and vodka party, followed by sauna and midnight swim. The Swedes certainly know how to hold a conference!
Application Mode (which means corporate web applications can now be nicely locked down - may interest a few ICT departments)
Not so nice:
No Plugins (Yet)
Menu all the way on the right
Not on Linux (Yet)
Fears of google data gathering (TBD)
Will we one day see everything running in browsers regardless of OS. Linux may rule on servers and web applications will rule the "Get Things Done" space (goodbye Microsoft OS, don't slam the door on the way out - perhaps not yet,)
Chrome may never be the number 1 browser, but it won't matter. It will shape the future releases of IE and Firefox as they try to take the best features. That is what I believe googke is trying to achive here. Utimatley it won't matter to google which browser you use to look at their content, apps, and advertisments. What they do want is users to demand things like the omni bar, speed dial and application mode in other browsers.
I'm a newcomer to document management, but this new site raised my eyebrows.However I thought online magazine content was just not going to be a workable thing until I saw this site.http://www.mygazines.com/
You do need to sign up to read the magazines, for a web system the interface is sweet!I'm not sure how long this will stay live due to property rights lawsuits - we shall see.
The UI is sweet - it may be trivial but the pages flip horizontally rather than vertically - wake up Adobe - pdfs should be read like this. Just because I create documents in Word vertically doesn't mean I want read them in that fashion
I just love screencasts to demonstrate technology. I truly believe they allow for a rich representation of what products and technology can offer end users. They can be pretty funky at times and can really add an extra dimensions to traditional web content. I've experimented with a couple for one of the products I work with and so far I've seen people at all levels mesmerised by them. There is something quite intriguing to the end user to click play and be swept through a software experience.What kind of technology benefits from screencasts? Visual stuff, eye candy stuff, interactive stuff, - Mapping & GIS stuff perhaps?
A screencast that inspired me: http://www.songbirdnest.com/screencast Could watch this a couple of times... it is quite neat. Mine need a bit of polish and I've yet to sus out how to get audio to sync, but once I do the screencast experience will be complete!
I travel into London less these days. I've become slightly spoilt by being able to drive into the EMEA headquarters. Despite taking around an hour to do 18 miles its still quite pleasant to be cocooned in the car with a radio and a seat!
Despite having traveled every day for 3 years into central London from the suburbs I'm now very impatient with the number of people. This morning at Waterloo, they were manually checking tickets and there was a massive bottleneck. Its just as bad if not worse trying to get to a platform on the way home. SW Trains are in the process of installing ticket barriers at Waterloo - I dread to think what the chaos will be like once they do this. I don't think the platforms are geared up to it - just too narrow. If I look at other big London stations they have barriers set well back from the platform enabling people to filter through.
I do wonder is SW Trains have performed any crowd modelling on the numbers of people that they expect to filter through this system. Certainly some GIS/CAD tools may be capable of doing some of this modelling, but they aren't really geared up for it. Quite an interesting research paper here: http://geosimulation.org/crowds/#candy
behavioural geography - great term
We are living on an increasingly crowded island here in the UK and I think this type of modelling can be very valuable. If you are planning for ticket barrier, a new school or even an Olympic village, these types of models should be very compelling.
There are people far more qualified and experienced than me in GIS, Web, Technology, Academia and dare I say business at this years AGI Conference. I went with a slightly tongue in cheek approach and I hoped to put some fun into the proceedings. I also strongly believe that the people I was speaking to understand Geo better than I do and wanted to show them a different angle on technology.
I didn't talk much about maps or Geo and I struggled with my theme in the run up to the conference. I graduated with a GIS degree in 2003. I my course director had told me 5 years ago that I would be presenting at the conference in 2008 (I would have bitten their hand off) but would never have predicted I would not be talking about Geo. Perhaps it has something to do with the time (around 2004) after a few shandies I told a lot of the top guys at the AGI they were a dinosaur organisation with outdated views and an academic focus.
Do I feel guilty about not talking about Geo - yes a little. I love maps as much as anyone and I paid a lot for my degree to learn about geo.
But then look at the fantastic range of speakers all talking about geo at this years conference and I feel a little less bad. Perhaps the fact that I as a product of the system am not talking about Geo says a lot about where we have come from and where we are going? I have aspirations to take the power of location – the enterprise. I can't do that by banging on about maps and tile servers all of the time (some of the time yes).
Apparently my presentation was old news - but let me summarise the opening plenary:
Someone created a web business understood economics and sold it for loads of money
The Ordnance Survey is now Web2.0
3D models are better for town planners than 2D
Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed these sessions – but sometimes these things rely on who is saying it rather than what they are saying.
The sad thing is I think many people in technology and blogsphere are loosing touch with the fact that there are scores of people in our industry (and outside our industry) that don't understand things like web2.0 is. I wasn't positioning my presentation to the technologists, the bloggers, the evangelists, the serial conference speakers. I was positioning my presentation to the people I meet on a weekly basis. Not everyone has a blog or even reads blogs. Most people I speak to will never know or (need to know) what ajax is. There seems to be a great deal of surprise of the lack of understanding of the ‘basics’ of Web2.0. I think the thought leaders in the industry should take a step back from their blogs for a second. Rather than trying to out do each other “top-trump style” start translating this stuff. I count myself quite ahead of the curve, but way back compared to some of the techie people in the industry. By the time it hits my radar it is old news for the elite – but still relevant enough to help many of my customers and the wider community.
Cheers
Bish
Listening to: Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
