Sorry for being slow in posting, it’s been a crazy morning.

  • Panel
    • Frank Robles, CEO Impalta Networks
    • Dan Dubno, Blowing Things Up,
    • John Hanke, Google, director of Maps, Earth
    • Doyle, MIT Museum working on Museum without Walls Project
    • Gina Bianchini,
  • Doyle’s Museum without Walls
    • MIT is a large campus, 20K on 160 acres
    • 2800 wireless access points
    • Lots there for conferences
    • Many buildings and easy to get lost
    • Location-based storytelling
      • Trying to make it easy for people to contribute stories about places, in this case, places on campus
      • Need a place to store these [video or audio recorded] stories
      • Have a place for others to view these stories
      • The usage for this will be applications like guided tours using handheld devices
    • “Tour 2.0″
      • Handheld device
      • Location sensitive
      • Complete with stories from the online storytelling library
  • John Hanke: Building the Spatial Web
    • 2004 - Made Keyhole
    • Became Google Maps in Feb 2005
    • June 2005 Google Earth launched, Google Maps API
    • Google has an exclusive partnership with a nonmilitary high-res satellite imaging company and provides the satellite basemap for Google Earth
    • 1.5 million places worldwide have been placed by users
    • Google bought SketchUp and released it to the world free
    • Hopes to bring real 3D models to maps by letting users add buildings to the map
  • Dan Dubno
    • Attended many discussions on the ideas that John Hanke actually implemented with Google Earth
    • Problems with current system:
      • Spotty satellite imagery coverage
      • The majority of nonurban areas are not high-res
      • High-res worldwide is important for those rare times when you need imagery, such as providing imaging during earthquakes
    • Interesting use of Earth in partnership with CBS News is the Earthquake monitor
    • You can mashup a feed of earthquake events with their corresponding latitude and longitude and look it up on the Earth along with satellite imagery of the location
  • Frank Robles
    • Did work with Panoramio which geotagged millions of photos
    • CAP - Common Alerting Protocol
      • Government-mandated location-based civil alert system
    • Also using Google Earth to map very tall buildings and show what level of Internet bandwidth are available there
  • Gina Bianchini
    • These technologies are bringing the power of this map technology to the people, where it used to be only (in a lesser capacity) available governments
  • Questions
    • Accessability
      • Want to allow people to navigate the system if they have physical disabilities
      • Need to have ability to read instructions aloud if necessary
      • Working to make this information available in more than one language
    • Privacy Issues
      • Dubno: Somebody’s always going to get concerned when you start carrying around a device that knows where you are, etc.
      • Dubno: These technologies will be opt-in and user-controlled
      • Hanke: The “eye in the sky” fear that spying on people is possible with Maps and Earth products is simply not the case
      • Hanke: on the other hand, satellite imagery has in some cases revealed to people what is happenning near them that they didn’t know about. Things like the rich elite’s mansions or dictator’s military location
    • What can this technology do for Third World Countries?
      • Huge potential. For example in Mexico, many cities that were previously unmapped got mapping online for people to see, perhaps for the first time
      • Another use is in natural disasters when location information is critical, that worldwide geoimagery is tremendously useful.
      • Hanke: Friend runs the Fair Trade organization that labels certain exports like coffee that are being made by places with proper and “fair” production practices