[ Ø ] Harsh's GIS Blog

Quotes:

“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network.” (1985)

“The desktop metaphor was invented because one, you were a stand-alone device, and two, you had to manage your own storage. And that may go away.” (1996)

“Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

“The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television.”

“But we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves.”

“For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

“Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”

“The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

“Simple can be harder than complex.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me.”

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have.”

“The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

“So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives.”

“But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea.”

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.”

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

“I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

Related:
* Letter
* Patents
* Bio

Planning & Technology Today

“Six in 10 Americans regularly use the Internet for news.”

Related:
* Newseum (Map)
* Why the #iPad is not (and was not meant to be) ready for the public kiosk.

This is a little fresh air for an old post that was collecting cobwebs as a draftee:

During this year’s Planner’s Day on Capitol Hill, I got an opportunity to interview Senator Cardin on changing federal policies that affect planning. This is an excerpt from our interview. The full interview can be found at the Division’s website.

Harsh – What are some of your main expectations from the next federal surface transportation bill?

Senator – We face three fundamental challenges with the new transportation bill -

With bridges failing, congested roadways, and transit systems strained to the limit, we need to make a major new investment in the nation’s transportation infrastructure. According to the US DOT, the average annual cost to maintain both highways and bridges at their current level for the next 20 years could reach $78.8 billion, while it would take approximately $131.7 billion per year to improve the condition of both highways and bridges Those figures don’t include the billions more needed for our transit systems and their needed expansions. We must act to make a major new investment in a system that is under extreme stress.

Our transportation policy needs to be reoriented to the nation’s needs in the new century. We need to better integrate our various modes of transportation for handling the nation’s commercial goods. That includes freight rail, harbors, and highway trucking routes, including their interconnection to air freight facilities. Our current system for moving people to and from their work, schools, and recreation also will need to be fundamentally rethought. That will mean a much greater focus on mass transit, alternative modes of transportation, smart growth, reduction in the number of vehicle miles traveled as a policy goal, and so much more. We need a transportation policy that supports our goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reduces the generation of greenhouse gases. The new surface transportation law will not accomplish all of these changes overnight, but the new bill should put us on a fundamentally different path than we have taken in the past.

We will need to explore new ways to fund our national transportation programs. Our current reliance on a static “gas tax” is already coming up short: $8 billion in the current fiscal year. If we are successful in moving more commuters out of their cars and into buses and subways, we will see those gas tax revenues decline, not increase. If we are successful in encouraging people to live where they work and to telecommute, gas tax receipts will fall even further.

Harsh – Given the bridge tragedy in Minneapolis last year and the subsequent findings of the National Transportation Safety Board, do you support in principle the National Plan for Infrastructure Investment, and also as a way to stimulate our economy in a time of financial uncertainty?

Senator – The collapse of the I-35 Bridge was a tragedy for Minnesota and for the nation. The bridge failure resulted in 13 deaths. The accident has already spurred the nation into action.

There are approximately 600,000 bridges on highways throughout the United States. About 51 percent of bridges are state owned, 47 percent are locally owned, and less than two percent are owned by the Federal government or private entities. National surveys indicate that nearly one-quarter of all these bridges are structurally deficient.

In addition to the funds provided directly for the repair of the I-35 Bridge, the Congress provided $1 billion in special funding to address our structurally deficient bridges. Of the 2,584 bridges along the Maryland State highway system, 411 (16 percent) are classified as functionally obsolete.

The American Society of Civil Engineers, the Nation, and others are calling for major infrastructure investments. I support a sustained effort to rebuild our national infrastructure. Doing so will provide an immediate stimulus to our economy and give us the network we need to restore the health of our commercial sector.

Related:
* Senator Benjamin Cardin (Wikipedia)
* US Department of Transportation
* US National Transportation Safety Board
* Planning & Technology Today (2009)
* US GPO
* US Green Building Council
* Data 360

Back in the summer of 2010, as one of the million proud owners of iPhone 4, I noticed a certain setting to switch phone carrier. That setting then portended the change we will see tomorrow. But should you bite the bait? Assuming CDMA and GSM don’t matter, here’s part 1 of my guide:

There is a lot of spin around Apple’s flagship cash cow, or as we have come to know it- the iPhone, which only recently represented about 43% of its overall sales. Not all of the coverage is positive (remember Foxconn?). Apple’s growing pains also include a big lawsuit fight. But for those with out a blind searing faith in Steve Jobs, the genius patriarch, the iPhone may very well be suffocating. If true, could Jobs be repeating his original sin? And if so, should your phone follow his sin to the grave?

iOS works better than Android out-of-the-box. To better understand the genesis of its famed usability and cool minimalism, watch Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. If you decide to switch, be prepared to shell out monies in cool apps and media. From a quick glance, I paid around $750 over 2 years. To Apple. Not AT&T (that averaged around $2,400 for the same time). And remember that MP3s from Amazon, somethings you can’t buy on your iPhone, tend to be less expensive and redownloadable – a big plus for some. And all that precious data would cost even more to put into MobileMe, Apple’s own cloud solution, never mind the naysayers. So more additions to your ever burgeoning monthly bill (Tethering, Personal Hotspot, …).

iPhone’s Mythical Advantage: Apps

Apple still disallows Adobe Flash (or Oracle Java) from iOS. It appears to be more a business decision than a technology constraint, designed to control the sprawl of Flash-based gaming mobile websites where you could buy outside of Apple’s walled-garden. How this affects HTML5 gaming websites is still unfolding, but it certainly helps the lagging QuickTime in the meantime. In any case, it goes against the customer’s best interests by taking away her choice to enjoy multimedia content in one of the industry’s most prolific formats. But Apple has you covered with the most commonly used app: the browser. Mobile Safari, hands down is the best mobile browser out there between the platforms that I tested, namely iOS, Android and Windows Mobile. For the GIS pros among you, Joben blogs about GIS apps for the iPhone. You can always find an increasing number at the App Store, like the iGIS.

Jailbreaking Folsom

So you switch and finally get that toy you were waiting for? Why jailbreak it? Jailbreaking the iPhone isn’t worth the effort, even if it is legal. And even if not upgrading to the latest and greatest release (something that iTunes would handle seamlessly for you, but something that you can’t always do with Cydia because Cydia often trots a step behind) is an acceptable risk, ask yourself if your precious data is too important to jailbreak. After all, you could brick your iPhone and quite possibly provide no way for iTunes to restore it. But if your phone data is not critical ahem, then you can add some developer functionalities by jailbreaking and escape the infamous iTunes bloat. Now jailbreaking could also introduce your spanking iOS to new viruses, but if you must, hope over to Cydia. If you need a copy of the old firmware during jailbreak, grab it from here. Once you jailbreak, remember to download a file browser or explorer, like iFunBox or iPhoneBrowser. You may also want to jailbreak if you want to install a phone firewall out of privacy concerns. After all, Apple did confess to collecting GPS data from iOS 3 and iOS 4 daily. Then again, if that is what propels you, why share your payment info with Cydia’s marketplace (just asking)?

Some quick notes on iFunBox or iPhoneBrowser – You can’t watch your uploaded pics or videos, or play your uploaded songs in their native app, even if you upload them to the folders that the iPhone looks under, say //var/mobile/Media/DCIM/100APPLE/. This is because the iPhone, much like the Android, extensively uses SQLite as its Swiss Army database, and all your uploads need to be first registered in the database, say //private/var/mobile/Media/PhotoData/Photos.sqlite which links your IMG_0001.JPG or IMG_0002.MOV. Now there are Cydia apps like iFile that help add your photos, but videos are still no go. But if you are brave enough to try, download the SQLite Manager add-on for Firefox and test your luck.

PS: More

OK, so tested Google, Bing, Yahoo, ESRI, Openlayers and MapServer mashups on the iPad, and much like on the iPhone, the slippy drag-and-droll interface doesn’t work. Except for one mashup. Take a guess?

Related:
* Safari
* WebKit

Mobile Webinar

Related:
* Mash-ups as Planning Tools
* GISP and AICP
* Technology Division of the American Planning Association (APA) Webinar Series – TECH 101: Mashups for Planning
* APA Technology Division: Education
* APA Technology Division Webinar Series: Event

Category 1: The award for the ‘Best Use of Technology to Improve a Plan or Planning Process’ goes to Marc Schlossberg‘s (University of Oregon) ‘Engaging Citizens in Active Transportation Planning with Mobile GIS‘ for its creative use of technology in improving planning processes.

Category 2: The award for the ‘Best Use of Technology for Public Participation’ goes to Michael Baker Jr.‘s ‘More For 1604 Social Media Program‘ for its good use of technology to enhance public involvement and participation in planning and decision making processes.

Category 3: The award for the ‘Best Use of Technology for a University Urban and Regional Planning Program’ goes to the School of Policy Planning and Development‘s (University of Southern California) ‘Multimedia Boot Camps‘ for its effective use of teaching with technology in preparing future planners for professional work.

Our Award Committee comprised of elected members from the Division Leadership, namely Jennifer Evans-Cowley, Amiy Varma and yours truly. Join us at the award distribution ceremony at our Division Business meeting (National Planning Conference) on Monday, April the 12th (7 AM) in the Hilton New Orleans Trafalgar Room. Congratulations again to all our award winners!

Related:
* Technology Division of APA
* Planning & Technology Today

Nearly 6 months after starting work on a Touch mapping project for kiosk deployment running Windows 7 RC on a HP TouchSmart, it sure is good to see touch taking-off. Slowly but surely:

* Gateway One ZX6810-01

* Sony next with Windows 7 multitouch all-in-one

And yes, I used 3rd-party x64 drivers to turn it from single-touch to double-touch.

So any of you guys working with touch?

Related:

* A Touch of Play

Interesting post @ Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model.

Got Photoshop and Autodesk on the iPhone? Will sketch.

Those investors who are rushing to their brokers for a piece of TeleNav’s IPO (TeleNav GPS Navigator needs extra cash to fight Google Map Navigation, or prep itself for a buyout), note that TeleNav (read LBS) has nothing to do with TeleAtlas of TomTom (read data). Yet.

Wolfram|Alpha is being billed as an Answer Engine for the scientifically-minded, as opposed to a Search Engine: It takes your query, implied or otherwise, that critical step further by selecting from its list of matches, the one objective description, image etc, and lays them out in context. Not that Google never attempts definitive answers [chord], but when it does, Wolfram|Alpha [note] handily beats it to it with background information. START, on the other hand, is sometimes embarrassing. Note that it may not know what to do, but it does not give the wrong answer. Yet.

So Wolfram|Alpha dares to do more than say, Google or Yahoo or Microsoft, and impresses despite its alpha status.

There are inherent risks in such an approach in that it hopes our queries are frequently specific enough, which in some cases, will not be because that is how we generally are. There is also that small issue of assigning culpability to its user for a dumb query. But through consistent performance and by avoiding curation, link-fraud etc pitfalls, Wolfram|Alpha has the potential to wean away some of the Google fan-base, notwithstanding Google Squared. And by targeting the scientific community, it has the potential to emerge as a niche Answer Engine despite semantic ambiguity or crowd-sourcing.

Bookmark it now. And keep checking.

Here are some stumpers:
* What is the elevation above sea level at 38.889483,-77.035254? Wolfram|Alpha v Google v START
* What was the annual revenue of the state of Maryland for Fiscal Year 2007?
Wolfram|Alpha v Google v START
* What is the maximum height of the Guggenheim Museum NY? Wolfram|Alpha v Google v START
* How many symphonies did Sergei Rachmaninoff compose? Wolfram|Alpha v Google v START

Related:
* Developers

Oracle -> Sun -> MySQL

Positioning Timeline

* Oracle buys PeopleSoft (2004)
Ending a long-running and bitter battle: “We won’t do any other major mergers ($200 million plus) until it’s clear to us we have integrated this one to our satisfaction.” (Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle)

* Oracle buys Siebel (2005)
Customer Relationship Management: “Oracle becomes CRM applications company.” (Larry Ellison)

* Oracle buys InnoDB used by MySQL (2005)
Oracle buying Innobase: “If Oracle thought it was threatened by MySQL, this was a very easy move.” (Paola Lubet, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Solid Information Technology)

* Oracle tries to buy MySQL (2006)
Why he turned down Oracle’s offer: the desire to keep his company’s independence: “They’re obviously entrenched in different areas of the market. But is there overlap in the middle? Sure.” (Stephen O’Grady, Analyst, Redmonk)

* Oracle buys opensource embedded Sleepycat (2006)
Linux and BSD UNIX operating systems, and Apache web server, embed Berkeley DB: Embedded databases also include Oracle Lite (mobile) and Oracle TimesTen (in-memory). (Oracle)

* Sun buys MySQL (2008)
We’re acquiring MySQL: “The world’s most popular opensource database.” (Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President, Sun)

* Oracle buys Sun (2009)
Solaris is the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business: While Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing business, is built on top of Java. (Sun)

Related:
* Gartner (2007)
Oracle’s database etc sales: $8.3 billion (up 14.9%) | Market share: 47.9%->48.6%
IBM’s DB2 etc sales: $3.5 billion (up 10%) | Market share: 21.3%->20.7%
Microsoft’s SQL Server etc sales: $3.1 billion (up 16.5%) | Market share: 17.6%->18.1%
Total database sales: $17.1 billion
* Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle
* Jonathan Schwartz (conspicuously MIA from his blog in recent days)
* MySQL Resurrection?
* PostgreSQL > MySQL > Drizzle > SQLite
* My Pick of FOSS4G 2007 Presentation Submissions

Related:
* GISP and AICP
* Mash-ups as Planning Tools

First impressions after testing Microsoft’s Surface Table:

It is a coffee-table sized hardware running Windows Vista and allowing collaborative interaction from up to 4-6 participants. The number of hand-gestures it can recognize is obviously higher than that of a standard touch-screen which can typically handle only a single tap and drag, and maybe multi-touch. On the other hand, the Surface Table can recognize multiple taps, imprecise flicks and resizes, and touch-intensity. Actually, much like a TouchSmart, it can even detect movement just above its surface. Simply put, it is like a giant iPhone.

Application

So how does it lend itself to GIS/Planning application development? Well, it is more eye-candy than useful for its cost at this point and appropriate application ideas may not come readily. If you try to recreate a similar collaborative environment with a series of Tablet PCs, TouchSmarts and Windows 7, you might just be successful. Note that it can’t be detached from its base and wall-mounted since it has a projector underneath.

The Surface Table’s biggest strength lies in its enabling a collaborative environment, and therefore, it is more suited towards “playful infotainment”-type applications. If you develop GIS/Planning applications for the Surface Table, note this: It would be a lot of fun, but maybe not a lot useful. And also, it doesn’t carry any browser application (!) so you can’t simply start using your planning mash-up and development would present its own WPF learning curve for the web savvy. For an elegant GUI design, remember that fat shaky fingers need big buttons. In terms of pricing, Microsoft is currently also charging for its SDK (approx. $3K): Not sure of their pricing model, but it doesn’t seem like a smart idea if their goal is to also encourage the Viral Phenomenon. And although, they don’t yet come pre-installed (!), a wireless card and wheels can easily be mounted to turn your Surface Table into a self-contained unit to enhance its portability.

Sync

There are already some creative applications in-use: Soldiers returning from a patrol dump their head gears onto the Surface Table, and its docking corner instantly syncs their captured data with their sync folder- no fumbling there! Special ID tags can “identify” themselves to the Surface Table, but cell phones running Windows Mobile require a download before they can sync. Selected Omni Sheraton hotels and others are currently showcasing Surface Tables.

Technology

So how does it work? Well, conventional technologies detect touch-location by interrupting:
* Infrared
* Optical Field
* Surface Acoustic Wave
This interception happens just above the screen substrata and its grid coordinates are then translated to screen position. Alternatively, you can do a makeover of your current display using Dispersive Signal Technology (DST). DST integrates chemically-strengthened glass onto existing display. It detects bending wave within the glass radiating to the 4 corners where it gets converted to electric signals. This approach also makes it ideal for heavy-duty use to filter out “noise”, say when outdoors or think glass spills and crumbs in a snack-rich community planning meeting. Then there is Proximity Capacitive Resistance (PCR) for touch-across-surface.

Quotes from the recent Net Neutrality Hearings:

David L. Cohen, Vice-President, Comcast- ‘…on a “very limited basis” Comcast was delaying traffic in limited areas when there is heavy traffic.’”Don’t let the rhetoric of some of the critics scare you- there is nothing wrong with network management. Every network is managed.”

Tim Wu, Professor, Columbia Law School- “I have this terrible fear we are going to have an exam after this on what is reasonable network management. And we are all going to fail.”

Related:
• FCC to Act on Delaying of Broadband Traffic [NYT]
• FCC
• Network Management

I started the year with this ‘Time Management‘ video by Randy Pausch. You may know him from ‘The Last Lecture‘. His introduction is by Gabe- my website mentor at UVA Computer Science Web Team. A must-watch if you haven’t already.

– π

Related:
• 2007
• The Legacy of Randy Pausch

• Medium Maximization: “A medium, for example, points or money, is a token people receive as the immediate reward of their effort. It has no value in and of itself, but it can be traded for a desired outcome. Experiments demonstrate that, when people are faced with options entailing different outcomes, the presence of a medium can alter what option they choose. This effect occurs because the medium presents an illusion of advantage to an otherwise not so advantageous option, an illusion of certainty to an otherwise uncertain option, or an illusion of linearity to an otherwise concave effort-outcome return relationship. This work has implications for how points influence consumer choice and how money influences human behavior.”

• “With the lure of points added to the mix, more than half of students chose the longer task and the less desirable pistachio prize that went with it. Independent of their actual value, ‘points’ apparently give people some satisfaction. That’s just one reason that frequent-flier programs have been so successful for so long.” [NYT]

Related:
• The Power of Ten

1,000 CONTACTS > 100 VISITORS > 10 SIGN-UPS > 1 ACTIVE USER

– π

Related:
• “It is claimed that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like [Silverman, George. Secrets of Word Of Mouth Marketing. 2001]. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior.”
• Bizsum Book Summary [Amazon]

• What if Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
• If Microsoft packaged the iPod…

Related:
• Never the Twain Shall Meet

As far as the OpenHandset Alliance SDK is concerned, in spite of how Jonathan Schwartz feels about it and the 10 million that Google is giving away in developer prizes, the SDK could become an albatross around Google neck, courtesy Java.

Google appears to also have successfully convinced the opensource Mozilla Foundation to promote its own services above and before other compelling interests. This may be akin to special interest groups’ manoeuvrings on Capitol Hill, and certainly begs the question – did Google push the Foundation to go slow on mobile? Certainly, Minimo with its XUL environment and many extensions could have made for a speedier development cycle.

PS:

* Back in 2005, realizing the potential of WAP, I tested XHTML/WML/WMLscript v HTML/Javascript on Nokia emulators, and wondered how best to balance the 2 different development requirements. After all, you want to get the many more people who own a mobile but not a computer, access your services.

* Symbian Python

Bush Official Goes Nuclear in Net Neut Row. The Register. 2007

Related:
• Debating Net Neutrality: A Nutshell
• Network Neutrality
• Network Neutrality in the US

Top 3 Contributions Over $2,000 from the Big 3:
—————————————————————————————————————-
NAME | CITY ST ZIP | POSITION | CONTRIBUTION | RECIPIENT
—————————————————————————————————————-
Microsoft-
• Chen, Ling | Bellevue WA 98006 | – | $4,600 | Hillary Clinton
• Giblett, Leslie | Seattle WA 98119 | Microsoft Visual C++ Box Program Manager | $4,600 | John Edwards
• Gonzalez, Christopher | Glen Ellyn IL 60137 | – | $2,300 | Barack Obama

Google-
• Lee, Alissa | San Francisco CA 94114 | Senior Corporate Counsel, International Affairs | $4,600 | Barack Obama
• Merrill, Douglas | Danville CA 94526 | Vice President, Engineering | $4,600 | Barack Obama
• Cerf, Vinton | Mc Lean VA 22102 | Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist | $4,200 | Hillary Clinton

Yahoo-
• Goldberg, David | Atherton CA 94027 | Vice President and General Manager of Music | $4,600 | Hillary Clinton
• Semel, Terry | Beverly Hills CA 90212 | Chairman and Chief Executive Officer | $4,600 | Hillary Clinton
• Garlinghouse, Brad | Menlo Park CA 94025 | Senior Vice President, Communications, Communities, and Front Doors | $2,300 | Barack Obama
—————————————————————————————————————-
Source:
• Map of Contributions to Presidential Campaigns, New York Times [NYT]
• Presidential Campaign Finance Map, Federal Election Commission [FEC]

–π

PS:
• Political Equilibrium
• Godin, Seth | Irvington NY 10533 | Author, Speaker and Blogger | $999 | John Edwards
• US Technology Administration

–π

Related:
• [my comment]
The Coming Internet Traffic Jam: “…argument on government legislation. It is a false argument that some proponents of non-neutrality wish to spread. Surely, in this age of war-profiteers turning in record-breaking quarters, loose monopolies of mergers and bundles, debatable price gouging etc, it is a little naive to want to believe that all the companies involved will tow some good line on the other side of short-term profits for the greater common good.

If anything, some private companies interfere with day-to-day governance through unabashed lobbying and kickback offerings, creating grossly unfair access to government.

If a government legislation has caused long-term damage in the past, the legislation must be refined or redone and the legislators should be unelected, not have the people’s say through ‘smart legislation’ be silenced.”
[/my comment]
• Making Public Policy: A Nutshell
• Wanted: Proactive Policies

Here are four “events” from 2006 that I consider as evolutionary milestones of our burgeoning SIS industry:

• E2- ESRI finally catches up to GE. Almost
• Virtual Earth- Microsoft adds the ability to add and save shapes, and browser-based GE-esque 3D views
• GE- Google gulps SketchUp and consolidates GE’s usergroups by jumping head-first in collaborations
• Spatial Web Services- Be it ESRI’s ArcWeb Services with GlobeXplorer, or DM Solutions Group‘s MapSherpa Spatial Web Services and Mapgears, spatial web services gain a firmer footing at the enterprise level.

–π

As the Secretary/Treasurer of the Technology Division of APA, I recently had the opportunity to interview Ric Stephens, our Immediate Past Editor:

π: So what got you into planning and publishing/editing?
Ric: I worked as a cartographer/German language translator for USAID during college and was hired by a civil engineering firm to prepare maps during summer break.

After school, the firm offered me a job in their planning department and …voila! There are still some plat maps on file from the late 70s with elaborate compass roses for north arrows. I began helping with a local APA section newsletter out of curiosity. A quarter of a century and thousands of newsletters later, I am still interested in desktop publishing.

InfoTEXT began as a paste-up effort ten years ago and is now ‘completely digital’. I’m still helping with two APA newsletters, ‘Private Practice Perspectives’ and ‘Mountains and Shores’. I’ve also published two books: ‘Plannerese Dictionary’ and ‘International Planning Organizations’ and am working on a third, ‘Dark and Stormy Planning Prose’.

π: Any favorite planning story that you edited?
Ric: There are three unique stories-

Ric Stephens at the Street of Dreams

For several years, I organized the ‘Dark and Stormy Planning Prose Contest’ to collect and share humorous planning stories. One of my favorites is the 2002 Winner, ‘Zone Noir’ by Michael Young who merged the feel of a 50s detective novel with current planning issues. It’s hard to imagine, but Dr. Seuss wrote a humorous poem on regulating signage for the city of La Jolla, California!

Lastly, while living in California, I received ‘The Story of Sexton Mountain Meadows‘. It revolves around the continuous removal of the ‘t’ from ‘Sexton’. I now live a few miles from this very street in Beaverton, Oregon and am a Planning Commissioner for the City. I found the listed author, but he denies writing the story and referred me to a blog author who remembers the incident, but also denies writing the story. The mystery continues to this day.

I am still collecting stories and if you have a ‘hearing from hell’, ‘purple planning prose’ or other contributions, please email a copy to ric@alphacommunity.com.

π: Any thoughts on the New Media?
Ric: We are far from reaching a paperless office environment, but we are clearly moving towards digital information and communication technologies.

For planning in particular, it is an exciting time to expand GIS with numerous databases including satellite imagery. The REAL CORP 007 event will showcase some of these outstanding IT innovations. Our firm, Alpha Community Development, is developing software to link our projects with these databases. We are also developing project-specific websites and looking for new ways to provide online project management.

π: Any thoughts on increasing readership for the Technology Division?
Ric: InfoTEXT contributors have provided outstanding content that is very relevant to practicing planners, agency officials, educators and students. I believe the missing element is visibility.

It would also be helpful for APA to actively promote the Divisions, and for the Divisions to have programs to promote the newsletters to planning departments, governmental agencies, universities and other institutions.

π: And finally, any advice to the new editor[s] of the Technology Division?
Ric: It’s very difficult to find contributors for articles- I’m several weeks late in responding to this interview.

Having a large group of people to help gather material would be ideal. As the newsletter migrates to the web, the publication should probably adapt a monitor-friendly format and be rich in hyperlinks. I enjoyed editing InfoTEXT and am indebted to all who helped make this a memorable experience.

π: Thank you and good luck!
Ric: Thanks!

Related:
• Planning Publications Directory
• What’s New: Books and Documents

One of the pleasures of my current job is the annual opportunity to interact with professionals from around the world, thanks to the International Visitor Leadership Program. During these interactions, I share with the visiting delegations how regional government works in West Virginia.


Mayoral Delegation from the Republic of Tajikistan, 2006


Public and Private Sector Delegation from the Russian Federation, 2005

I always end my presentation on regional governance and SIS with a quick display of Google Earth when we try to locate the remote places the delegation members come from. As can be deduced from these pictures, the members stand in rapt attention of how one private enterprise gives back to the greater common good.

–π

According to TheStree.com, American Online recently bought Truveo. Note that this was predicted by Technology Review earlier.

–π

More crystal ball gazing:

• A tough year ahead for Sony ["fate deserved, although XBox would probably hurt more"]
• AJAX cleans up the Web ["impressive"]
• Cracks appear in Apple’s iTunes shiny armor ["would take more, but also refer to hymn"]
• Telco companies get ensnared in a domestic eavesdropping scandal ["a very tight-rope"]
• A video search company is acquired by a major player ["iFilm?"]
• Municipal Wi-Fi ["refer to South Korea and Japan"]
• Silicon Photonics [ ~ 'integrating light with silicon']
• Social Machines [ ~ 'social web']
• Search ["Google"!]
• Feeds ["RSS and podcasting and videos, need I say more?"]

–Technology Review [π]

Related:
• Gates on Vista
• Directions Magazine takes a swing

1. First there were WiFi hotspots, then hot zones ["even more so"]
2. Cell phones do everything ["right-on"]
3. Internet phone calls become more popular now that major Web companies are making it easier ["about time"]
4. The [MS] Office moves to the Web. Documents, e-mail and spreadsheets move off your desktop computer to the Web ["about time"]
5. Stem-cell research advances despite legal challenges ["right-on"]
6. Biotechs target flu vaccines ["right-on, same for other vaccines"]
7. Even small start-ups go global ["even more so"]
8. Video comes to the blog ["refer to 9"]
9. On-demand video everywhere ["refer to 2"]
10. Clean technologies ["even more so"]

–Top 10 Tech Trends for 2006 [π]

“Building a Better Boom

… The Internet is exciting again, and once again folks are rushing in. In some categories – like search or social networking, for example – there are scores of start-ups vying for pretty much the same market, and it’s certain that, just like last time, most of them will fail.

But regardless of all this déjà vu, we are not in a bubble. Instead we are witnessing the Web’s second coming, and it’s even got a name- ‘Web 2.0′, although exactly what that moniker stands for is the topic of debate in the technology industry. For most it signifies a new way of starting and running companies – with less capital, more focus on the customer and a far more open business model when it comes to working with others. Archetypal Web 2.0 companies include Flickr- a photo sharing site; Bloglines- a blog reading service; and MySpace- a music and social networking site…

Start-ups are leveraging nearly a decade’s worth of work on technologies that are now not only proven, but also free, or very nearly so. Open-source software can now do nearly everything that Oracle, I.B.M. and Microsoft specialized in back in the 90′s. And the cost of computing and bandwidth? You can now lease a platform that can handle millions of customers for less than $500 a month. In the 90′s, such a platform would have run tens of thousands of dollars or more a month…

Or just ask Joe Kraus- a founder of the once high-flying Excite portal. Excite ran through millions in venture capital, then tens of millions of I.P.O. money, before its spectacular demise [Mr. Kraus had left before then]. His latest start-up- JotSpot, is built on open-source software, and cost less than $200,000 to begin.

Mr. Kraus exemplifies the second reason I believe we are not in a bubble: this time, the financiers aren’t driving. Instead, the entrepreneurs and geeks – often one and the same – are. The lessons of Web 1.0 are never far from their minds, and the desire to create something cool that might foster some good in the world is often equally paramount with the desire to make money. The culture of Web 2.0 is, in fact, decidedly missionary – from the communitarian ethos of Craigslist to Google‘s informal motto- ‘don’t be evil’.

Ah, yes, Google. That brings us to the third reason we are not in a bubble: vastly improved search technologies. Recall that the demise of Web 1.0 was predicated in large part on the collapse of the Internet advertising business – people were spending millions buying billboard-like ads that, it turns out, nobody was paying attention to…”

–John Battelle; Co-producer, Web 2.0 conference; Author, “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Reinvented Business and Transformed Our Culture”

Related:
• NYT Article
• Memorandum Excerpt, Alleged

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 9:56 PM
To: Executive Staff and Direct Reports; Distinguished Engineers
Subject: Internet Software Services

“… Ten years ago this December, I wrote a memo entitled The Internet Tidal Wave which described how the internet was going to forever change the landscape of computing… Five years ago we focused our strategy on .NET making a huge bet on XML and web services… We will build our strategies around internet services and we will provide a broad set of service APIs and use them in all of our key applications… This coming ‘services wave’ will be very disruptive… This next generation of the internet is being shaped by its ‘grassroots’ adoption and popularization model, and the cost-effective ‘seamless experiences’ delivered through the intentional fusion of services, software and sometimes hardware… I’ve attached a memo from Ray which I feel sure we will look back on as being as critical as The Internet Tidal Wave memo was when it came out…”

–Bill

PS:
•
From: Ray Ozzie
Date: October 28, 2005
To: Executive Staff and direct reports
Subject: The Internet Services Disruption

“… This isn’t the first time of such great change: we’ve needed to reflect upon our core strategy and direction just about every five years… In 1990, there was actually a question about whether the graphical-user-interface had merit… When we reflected upon our dreams just five years later in 1995, the impetus for our new center of gravity came from the then-nascent web… In 2000, in the waning days of the dot com bubble, we yet again reflected on our strategy and refined our direction… It is now 2005, and the environment has changed yet again- this time around services…

The Landscape:

… In the US, there are more than 100MM broadband users, 190MM mobile phone subscribers, and WiFi networks blanket the urban landscape… We should’ve been leaders with all our web properties in harnessing the potential of AJAX, following our pioneering work in OWA [Outlook Web Access]. We knew search would be important, but through Google’s focus they’ve gained a tremendously strong position. RSS is the internet’s answer to the notification scenarios we’ve discussed and worked on for some time, and is filling a role as ‘the UNIX pipe of the internet’ as people use it to connect data and systems in unanticipated ways. For all its tremendous innovation and its embracing of HTML and XML, Office is not yet the source of key web data formats- surely not to the level of PDF. While we’ve led with great capabilities in Messenger and Communicator, it was Skype, not us, who made VoIP broadly popular and created a new category. We have long understood the importance of mobile messaging scenarios and have made significant investment in device software, yet only now are we surpassing the Blackberry… The same is true of Apple, which has done an enviable job integrating hardware, software and services into a seamless experience with .Mac, iPod and iTunes, but seems less focused on enabling developers to build substantial products and businesses.

… Only a few years ago I’d have pointed to the Weblog and the Wiki as significant emerging trends; by now they’re mainstream and have moved into the enterprise. Flickr and others have done innovative work around community sharing and tagging based on simple data formats and metadata. GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting are very popular low-end solutions to remote PC access and online meetings… VoIP seems on the verge of exploding- not just in Skype, but also as indicated by things such as the Asterisk soft-PBX. Innovations abound from small developers- from RAD frameworks to lightweight project management services and solutions…

Key Tenets:

… 1. The power of the advertising-supported economic model… 2. The effectiveness of a new delivery and adoption model… 3. The demand for compelling, integrated user experiences that ‘just work’…

The Opportunities:

Seamless OS… Seamless Communications… Seamless Productivity… Seamless Entertainment… Seamless Marketplace… Seamless Solutions… Seamless IT…

Moving Forward:

… Platform Products and Services Division- a. Base v. Additive Experiences… b. Services Platform… c. Service/Server Synergy… d. Lightweight Development- The rapid growth of application assembly using things such as REST, JavaScript and PHP suggests that many developers gravitate toward very rapid, lightweight ways to create and compose solutions. We have always appreciated the need for lightweight development by power users in the form of products such as Access and SharePoint… e. Responsible Competition…

Business Division- a. Connected Office… Should PowerPoint directly ‘broadcast to the web’, or let the audience take notes and respond?… b. Telecom Transformation… c. Rapid Solutions- How can we utilize our extant products and our knowledge of the broad historical adoption of forms-based applications to jump-start an effort that could dramatically surpass offerings from Quickbase to Salesforce.com?…

Entertainment and Devices Division- a. Connected Entertainment… b. Grassroots Mobile Services… c. Device/Service Fusion…

What’s Different?:

… Complexity kills… Another simple tool I’ve used involves attracting developers to use common physical workspaces to naturally catalyze ad hoc face-time between those who need to coordinate, rather than relying solely upon meetings and streams of email and document reviews for such interaction…”

–Ray

• “What is Web 2.0″: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software

On the eve of the launch of Virtual Earth, as Microsoft plays catch-up with Google‘s high-rate of innovation, here’s a transcript of some tete-a-tete:

[Sometime before 2000]
Bill Gates: Now that we are in the email business with Hotmail, we need to think of ways to fatten the bottom-line.
Steve Ballmer: Online marketing is the way to go Bill! Let’s just create ahem ahem unnecessary page-views when the user logs-in and put as many graphic-intensive ads on each one of them as possible.
Bill Gates: …something like that SNL skit about advertisements on MSNBC flooding the screen and blocking the anchor’s face?!
Steve Ballmer: …hehehe, something like that! Hey, it’s a free service- the user might as well pay for it through ad views. You’ve got to market these goodies aggressively!
Bill Gates: Yeah, the bottom-line is the key!

[Sometime before 2004]
Larry Page: We need to get into the email business with a Google mail. The current services aren’t up to par.
Sergey Brin: Yeah, but given our relative size we must offer something that is significantly superior to what the market currently offers to make any reasonable in-roads.
Larry Page: OK, let’s start with a clean slate- how do we offer a better email service?
Sergey Brin: It’s all about the user-experience. At the end, if the user likes it, she will come back for more.
Larry Page: So we don’t flood the page with pop-ups and such junk??
Sergey Brin: That’s right! Advertisements should be useful but as unobtrusive as possible.
Larry Page: Agreed, the user-experience is the key!

Related:
• Follow Up [2]: Map Viewer and Google

–π

PS:
• Rudyard Kipling

• dodgeball: Mobile Social Software
• Place Lab: Privacy Observant Location System
• !Cellphedia: Ubiquitous Social Encyclopedia
• Wireless Application Protocol
• Technology Provider for WV E911 Selected

–π

My pick of technology-related headlines from The New York Times Page One 1851-2002:

•
[10/18/1907] Signalizing the opening of the Marconi Service to the public, and conveying a message of congratulation from Privy Councillor Baron Avebury, formerly Sir John Lubbock
•
[01/08/1927] Opening new radiophone service; First private call to The New York Times
•
[10/05/1957] The Naval Research Laboratory announced early today that it had recorded four crossings of the Soviet earth satellite over the United States
•
[07/21/1969] Astronauts land on plain; Collect rocks; Plant flag

Since the most important technological developments in the time period covered occured in the western world, and since The New York Times can safely be assumed to best mirror these developments, notwithstanding the selective sample included in Page One, I consider these to be our most important technology-related headlines from 1851 to 2002. Although, sometimes technological change can seep in without so much as a loud knock or one bold headline [think Internet].

For those wondering about a headline that may seem conspicuous by its absence, say one that heralds the omnipresent automobile, keep in mind the time period covered. It is widely accepted that the automobile, for example, was invented by France’s Nicolas Cugnot between 1725-1804.

• LoC: Auto
• Wikipedia: Automobile
• Encyclopedia: Automobile
• Encarta: Automobile
• About: Automobile History
• Mercedes-Benz: History

–π

PS:
• From the same source, my pick of highly arguable socio-political turning points important to a broad American psyche:

[12/08/1941] Japan wars on US and Britain
[08/07/1945] First atomic bomb dropped on Japan
[05/18/1954] High Court bans school segregation
[04/30/1975] Minh surrenders, Vietcong in Saigon
[09/12/2001] US attacked

Below is a simple inquiry into how natural check could kick-in from a market stand-point to curtail a growing population. Although, a more interesting inquiry would have been “when” would it kick-in?

First, a sample population was divided into 3 basic groups- consumers, laborers and producers. Then the general effect of each on the other because of a growing market and the resulting downward pressure on price was ‘guessed at’.

WHERE
SOL = Standard of Life
c = Consumers
l = Labor
p = Producers
e = Environmental Resources
* = Note: A higher Standard of Life may not always result in a positive contribution to a growing population. It may however lead to a more socially-amicable world environment, thus causing higher SOLe.

Needless to say, this simple inquiry did not even touch the complexity of our market of more than 6 billion. But it did help throw some light on a topic I have been thinking about for some time now- Labor Optimization, which some would say is just another euphemism for Competitive Outsourcing.

–π

Related:
• International Organization for Migration (IOM)

• NOAA: Tsunami Research Program
• NOAA: Tsunami Animation
• USGS: Natural Hazards Support System
• USGS: Earthquake Hazards Program
• UN News Center: Tsunami
• UN Map: “Serving the Information Needs”
• Tsunami Homepage
• IASC: Humanitarian Early Warning Service
• Nature: Photographs
• BBC: Asia Quake Disaster
• ESRI Pressroom: Indian Ocean Disaster
• Penn State: World Data
• webGIS: Tsunami

–π

As the year-end inches closer, let us look at one significant industry trend:
A potential increase in location-based wireless services ["Where are my kids ...no really, WHERE are my kids ...and give me that in Lat/Long"]? This could be brought about by a spread of handy ‘location-aware’ productivity tools, such as a GPS-enabled internet-ready Blackberry phone that also functions as a TV. Such tools could tell you when your family members or selected friends move into your vicinity. Based on industry reports, this might be old news in parts of Japan.

• SmartPhlow: Real-time Traffic Monitoring
• Real-time Mobile Mapping

Related:
• Social Software

The earliest benefit could be in emergency-response which just might be the area most likely to get heavy government funding. Ex: Volunteer Fire Departments being able to access critical layout and hydrant information that they need for machine placement and egress route planning as they respond to a distress call. Or, first-responders being able to retrieve medical history on-the-go. Check out an earlier National Incident Management System memo. Also, take a look at the developments at the WV Statewide Addressing and Mapping Board which plans to implement a statewide Spatial Information System [SIS] using aerial photography etc. The project has been funded in part by Verizon. Its objective is to help emergency-response by integrating mapping with E911, postal and public utility services, and telephone companies. This project was initially started to provide city-style addresses for rural areas so that all areas receive the same level of emergency services. With this broadening of its scope, it could serve as a guide for other states.

• ESRI Library: Challenges for GIS in Emergency Preparedness
and Response
• “Efficient Operations and Emergency Response”

Related:
• Google: SMS, Froogle, [http://www.google.com/wml]
• “U.S. launches a new Global Positioning Satellite”

–π

Interesting blog on Life With Alacrity about Social Software. For the ignoramus, crudely put Social Software or Groupware or Collaborative Software is software that facilitates group interaction. Often, there is “no overt coordination with the group functioning as an aggregation of interested individuals” rather than as a cohesive unit.

Two intriguing perspectives on the internet from the blog:
• “By ‘augmenting human intellect’ we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems” [Engelbart. Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. 1962].
• “To appreciate the importance the new computer-aided communication can have, one must consider the dynamics of ‘critical mass,’ as it applies to cooperation in creative endeavor. Take any problem worthy of the name, and you find only a few people who can contribute effectively to its solution. Those people must be brought into close intellectual partnership so that their ideas can come into contact with one another. But bring these people together physically in one place to form a team, and you have trouble, for the most creative people are often not the best team players, and there are not enough top positions in a single organization to keep them all happy. Let them go their separate ways, and each creates his own empire, large or small, and devotes more time to the role of emperor than to the role of problem solver” [Licklider. The Computer as a Communication Device. 1968].

• Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems
• Open Groupware
• “A group is its own worst enemy”
• Friend of a Friend
• Applications: E-voting, WAP, Blogging [...of course!]

Related:
• “Friendly foxes are cleverer”

–π