Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Great Britain's Ordnance Survey Launches OS OpenSpace - Mashups Made Easy


Det ville være fedt om KMS ville gå samme vej ...
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Way to go!
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Welcome to the OS OpenSpace API

The OS OpenSpace API is free to access and lets developers create amazing web applications and online projects with Ordnance Survey maps.

But OS OpenSpace API is not just for developers.

Although the API uses JavaScript to make web pages more interactive, anyone can create an application by following our sample code and tutorials.

Get Ordnance Survey maps on your website to enhance the service and customer experience.

  • Register
  • Developer area
  • Forum
OS OpenSpace API screen shot

Example of OS OpenSpace API displaying Ordnance Survey data


Read more: http://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/openspace/

Map the State of Play in Your Community!


Beskriv din legeplads ... Vores lokale legeplads er ikke noget at råbe hurra for ... desværre ...
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Map and play ...
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KaBOOM! is a site dedicated to getting people (especially kids) outside to play. There are tips on how to get kids outside to play, and why it's really important to do so. You can get a map (and ratings) of your local playgrounds, too. [...]




Read more: http://playspacefinder.kaboom.org/?playspace_id=92386-hanneberg-kvarterpark

Self-confessed map addict Mike Parker explores modern cartography


Hør Mike Parker fortælle om kort på BBC ...
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Listen to maps ...
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AVAILABLE NOW ON BBC IPLAYER

  1. LISTEN TO THE LATEST PROGRAMME

    Off the Map

    MORE:
    programme information

    (15 minutes)

    Available since yesterday with 6 days left.

    7/10. Mike Parker visits a Cold War military site that was once a blank space on an OS map.

  2. ALSO AVAILABLE

    1. World View

      MORE:
      programme information

      (15 minutes)

      Available since Monday with 5 days left.

      6/10. Mike Parker looks at the picture that maps and atlases give us of the wider world.

    2. The Lie of the Land

      MORE:
      programme information
      related links

      (15 minutes)

      Available since Friday with 2 days left.

      5/10. Mike Parker discovers how maps can be used as tools of power, politics and propaganda.

    3. Social Mapping

      MORE:
      programme information
      related links

      (15 minutes)

      Available since Thursday with 1 day left.

      4/10. How society is now being analysed online in cartographic mash-ups and crowd-sourced data.

    4. Motoring Maps

      MORE:
      programme information

      (15 minutes)

      Available since last Wednesday with 7 hours left.

      3/10. Mike Parker recalls a bygone age of elegant motoring maps.


Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rd8z5

The MapProxy Project


Hvis kort var en virus MapProxy kunne være inkubationsrummet ....
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If maps were a virus this is the incubation chamber ...
/Sik


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MapProxy is an open source proxy for geospatial data. It caches, accelerates and transforms data from existing map servers. Unlike other solutions, the OGC WMS standard remains on client and server-side.

It is a middle-man between existing web map servers (like MapServer or GeoServer) and clients. All existing web and desktop GIS applications can be used, but also modern clients like OpenLayers and GoogleEarth.

mapproxy

Features of MapProxy

MapProxy acts as a WMS, TMS and KML server. It does not render any data itself but delegates requests to other server. It stores all responses and reuses that cached data for further requests. It can requests data from WMS and TMS clients.

MapProxy supports:

MapProxy can:

  • accelerate existing WMS
  • reproject to other SRS (i.e. cache in EPSG:4326, requests in EPSG:31467)
  • combine individual map layers from different WMS services
  • hide the origin WMS servers
  • fill caches dynamic, in advance or both
  • add watermarks and/or attributions to all responses
[...]

Read more: http://mapproxy.org/

Cities at Night - The View From Space


Mønstre af lys som stråler af liv ...
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Patterns of light reflecting the life of mankind ...
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To an observer in space, humanity's footprints on the surface of the Earth are large and varied. They include the regular patterns of irrigated cropland, straight lines of roads and railways running across continents, reservoirs on river systems, and the cement rectangles of ports and seawalls along coastlines. But what about humanity's signature footprint-cities? By day, cities viewed from space can blend into the countryside, or appear as gray smudges, depending on the style of development and size of the urban area. [...]


Everything you ever wanted to know about GPS


Bare det virker ...
/Sik


Just as long as it works ...
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[...]

  • There are always at least 24 active GPS satellites circling Earth, although today there are more than 30, including a couple of spares. Their orbits are spread out so that no matter where on Earth you are, you will have at least six of them in your line of sight.
  • Each GPS satellite goes around the world once every 12 hours. The satellites travel 12,500 miles (20,000 km) above us at roughly 7,000 miles per hour (11,000 km per hour). They have small boosters so they can adjust their path when needed.
  • The first full constellation of 24 satellites was completed in 1994. The first of those 24 satellites was sent up in 1989.
  • To get a reliable position reading, your GPS receiver will have to combine the signals from at least four satellites, although in some special cases, three are enough.
  • GPS was made public due to a tragedy. In 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 entered Soviet airspace after a navigation error and was shot down, killing all 269 passengers. This incident resulted in President Ronald Reagan ordering the Unites States military to make the Global Positioning System available for civilian use once it was completed, so that similar incidents could be avoided in the future.
  • NAVSTAR is the US military name for the Global Positioning System.
  • GPS isn’t just for navigation. It can also be used to get a very exact time stamp. Every GPS satellite has multiple atomic clocks and the time is included in the signal it sends out. With the help of these signals, a GPS receiver can determine the current time within 100 billionths of a second. These signals are for example used to synchronize base stations in cell phone networks.
  • Relativistic effects. The clocks on the satellites, although very exact, are still subject to the effects of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which means that the time of the clocks in the satellites will slowly start to deviate from those on Earth. This is adjusted by control signals from Earth.
  • Ground antennas spread around the world are used to control the satellites’ paths and synchronize their clocks.
  • The 50th Space Wing of the United States Air Force operates the GPS satellites. GPS is owned by and is under the control of the United States Department of Defense.
  • Until 2000, civilian GPS use was crippled by a feature called Selective Availability. It introduced a random error of up to 328 feet (100 meters) in the civilian signal to make GPS less useful for precision navigation. (GPS has different signals for military and civilian use.) Selective Availability was deactivated in May 1, 2000. The United States still has the ability to deactivate the civilian signal, if need be even for specific regions.
  • During the Gulf War in 1991, many US soldiers were equipped with civilian GPS units due to a shortage of military ones. However, Selective Availability made it extremely difficult to properly coordinate troop movements with civilian GPS units, so it was turned off for the duration of the war.
  • GPS is a work in progress. The system is continuously being upgraded and new satellites are being launched. This all means that precision will keep getting better, which will make the system increasingly useful.
  • GPS isn’t the only game in town. There are several other Global Navigation Satellite Systems in existence or on their way: The European Union is working on a system called Galileo, Russia has GLONASS (completed in partnership with India), and China has plans for a system called Compass. There are also systems that offer specific regional coverage, for example Japan’s QZSS and China’s Beidou.
  • The beginning: Satellite navigation systems date back to 1960. That was when Transit, used by the United States Navy, was first tested successfully. Transit used up to 10 satellites, and receivers judged their position based on the Doppler effect on the signals sent out from the satellites. Modern systems like GPS work differently, relying heavily on exact timing, hence the use of atomic clocks in the GPS satellites.
[...]

Read more: http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/03/23/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-gps/

Speed up Map Production


Automatiseret kartografi? Sikkert godt for nogen, men skidt for de fleste ...
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Some things can be automated - some things cannot - is this such a thing?
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AutoLayout

AutoLayout is an extension for ArcGIS. It helps ArcGIS users to quickly produce large numbers of map layouts while maintaining control over the quality and details of the output. It’s built to work with ArcMap around usual layout production process.

AutoLayout lets you automate map production while combining the art of cartography with the quality and precision of a mass production process.

AutoLayout functionalities and tools extend beyond map production and can be used separately for other purposes.

AutoLayout offers great user experience with a user interface that is easy to understand, lots of options to give you control over the application, and connectivity to our web services to help you stay updated and with full support.

Check out some of the Screenshots, or justDownload a trial and start using it now.

Learn More

Learn More

Read about AutoLayout's features and how it can help you.

Screenshots

Screenshots

Take a quick tour of AutoLayout's different functionalities.

Download

Download

Download a trial and start using it now.

Tutorials

Tutorials

Read detailed tutorials on how to use AutoLayout.

Purchase

Purchase

Get a license for AutoLayout oractivate your license.

Support

Support

Got a question? Just contact us or get help from other users in our community.


Read more: https://www.allthingsgeo.com/

Global Wellbeing Surveys Find Nations Worlds Apart


Hvorfor er det lige at vi er så tilfredse ...
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Oh happy day ...
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Gallup's global snapshot of wellbeing reveals a vast divide that underscores the diversity of economic development challenges around the world. The percentage who are "thriving" ranges from a high of 82% in Denmark to a low of 1% in Togo. [...]




Read more: http://www.gallup.com/poll/126977/Global-WellBeing-Surveys-Find-Nations-Worlds-Apart.aspx

Monday, March 29, 2010

Portable Real Estate Listings — but With a Difference


Augmented mashup ...
/Sik


Mashing up the data and the real world ...
/Sik



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Open the mobile phone application offered by a French real estate agency and point your phone at a building along the Champs-Élysées or some other street in Paris. Within seconds, you will see the property’s value per square meter, superimposed over a live image of the building streamed through the phone’s camera.

An illustration of augmented reality technology.

Speed and convenience delivered with the aim of a smartphone. Could this be the new frontier of on-demand property search?

It depends whom you ask.

The application, engineered by Layar, a 10-month-old company based in Amsterdam, uses “augmented reality” technology, or A.R., to harness a phone’s camera, global positioning system and compass. Elements like statistics and 3-D images are, essentially, layered over a live picture so the user gets a single view with all available information.

These A.R. “mash-ups” already are being used to display information about tourist sites, chart subway stops and restaurants, allow interior designers to superimpose new furniture or color schemes on a room, and give crime statistics for a specific area.

The A.R. Beatles Tour, for example, superimposes videos and 3-D models, like a yellow submarine, when a smartphone with the application is pointed at locations in London and Liverpool that were significant in the band’s career.

But, “does it provide users with information that they find valuable?” asked Simon Baker, chief executive of Classified Ad Ventures, the publisher of an online real estate site called Property Portal Watch. “Is there real value in using it? Will it fundamentally replace the way we do things? Or is it a gimmick?”

According to the French agency, MeilleursAgents.com, the results have been positive. Julien Cheyssial, one of the agency’s founders and its chief technology officer, said it took a developer only two days to customize the Layar browser with prices, based on city and agency records, and GPS coordinates. Since the agency’s version of the application was introduced in August 2008, he said, there have been several thousand downloads a week. [...]


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/greathomesanddestinations/26iht-rear.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Paranormal Seizure Activity

Scene from Paranormal Activity

After a young, middle class couple moves into what seems like a typical suburban “starter” tract house, they become increasingly disturbed by a presence that may or may not be demonic but is certainly most active in the middle of the night.

Especially when they sleep. Or try to.
A new case study in Cortex by neurologist Dr. Fabienne Picard (2010) reports on a patient who experienced unusual phenomena during epileptic seizures. She had the convincing sense that several familiar people (family members) were standing before her. This experience of a "sensed presence" is a classic trope in movies with supernatural themes (e.g., Carnival of Souls [available at Internet Archive], The Haunting [trailer for the 1963 version], Poltergeist, Dark Water), but it's generally attributed to ghosts and not to seizure activity.

Here's the case report:
A 62-year-old right-handed woman of normal psychiatric history presented a simple focal epileptic seizure including a complex sensation characterized by feeling the presence of several members of her family in the immediate environment, associated with paresthesia of the right hemibody (excluding the face). The feeling of presences and the paresthesia (numbness) appeared concomitantly and lasted in total several minutes. The episode occurred while she was sitting alone on the sofa of her living room and immediately felt the presence of four persons in her frontal space. She did not see or hear these persons (no visual or auditory hallucinations), but felt vividly their presence in her peripersonal [within reach] and near extrapersonal space [just outside of reach]. She “recognized” them as close family members. Closest was her grand-daughter who was sitting on the floor immediately in front of her, without any left or right lateralization in relation to her body, whereas the three other persons, her daughter and two other grand-children, were experienced to be localized at a distance of several meters. ... This highly vivid and convincing feeling of presences was described by the patient as deeply pleasant, although she guessed that it was not possible that they were really there, as she was alone just before. ... She was treated with pregabalin (300 mg/day) and there was no recurrence of simple or complex partial seizures and no further feeling of presences.
MRIs revealed abnormal findings due to a right hemisphere subcortical stroke 10 months before the episode (Fig. 1A). The patient's stroke affected a portion of the basal ganglia (the putamen and the globus pallidus) and a large white matter tract within (the internal capsule). Left hemisphere findings in the insular cortex were also apparent, and this was the likely seizure focus. Strokes are known to increase the incidence of seizures: in one study 8.6% of those with ischemic stroke [occlusion of blood supply] and 10.6% of those with hemorrhagic stroke [bleed] had one or more seizures within a year (Bladin et al., 2000).


Fig. 1 (adapted from Picard, 2010). FLAIR coronal MR images of the patient. (A) two days after a right capsulo-lenticular haemorragic stroke. (B) ten months later, at the time of the episode of feeling of presence. In addition to the right capsulo-lenticular sequela extending to the insula, a hypersignal is visible in the white matter/grey matter border of the left insular region [already visible in (A)], as well as a diffuse corticosubcortical atrophy, predominating in the right hemisphere, and a leukoencephalopathy [white matter disease].

Picard (
2010) thinks this particular case is unique and not a more typical disorder of body perception:
Most authors consider the feeling of a presence (FP) as a disorder of own body perception, an illusory reduplicative phenomena involving the self. Thus FP would be akin to the three main forms of autoscopic phenomena (seeing a double of oneself) which include a) out-of-body experience. The subjects appear to see themselves and the world from a location above their physical body. The self is localized outside one's physical body (disembodiment); b) autoscopic hallucination, which consists of seeing one's body in extracorporeal space (as a double) without disembodiment; and c) heautoscopy, an intermediate form between out-of-body experience and autoscopic hallucination.
Instead, the felt presence was more akin to a "hallucination" for known people going about normal daily activities. Nonetheless, involvement of the insula, important for interoceptive awareness of bodily states (Craig, 2009), is still suggestive of a disruption in the sense of self and its interaction with the external world.

To end our story, the patient's experience of a sensed presence did not recur once her seizures were controlled with medication. A short neurological horror film resolved by prescription of an anticonvulsant drug might not be a strong sell in Hollywood.

References

Bladin CF, Alexandrov AV, Bellavance A, Bornstein N, Chambers B, Coté R, Lebrun L, Pirisi A, Norris JW. (2000). Seizures after stroke: a prospective multicenter study. Arch Neurol. 57:1617-22.

Craig AD. How do you feel--now? The anterior insula and human awareness. (2009). Nat Rev Neurosci. 10:59-70.

Picard, F. (2010). Epileptic feeling of multiple presences in the frontal space. Cortex DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2010.02.002

Read about Carnival of Souls and an fMRI study of horror films.