Keene on Tech

Late yesterday and this morning, the blogosphere and twittersphere have been abuzz at Twitter’s announcement that it will incorporate geospatial capabilities into the next iteration of the Twitter API to be released soon. This will give developers an opportunity to incorporate lat-log data into user’s tweets to see specific locations of where the tweets are being posted. While this will be an optional feature for privacy reasons, having this capability will open up the doors for some very interesting use of Twitter for real time events such as natural disasters, breaking news, and whole host of other uses. Students and teachers in the field can use this to their advantage as well for fieldwork and data gathering adding an entirely new context to real time microblogging. Remember, its all about location, location, location…

Read the official announcement at the Twitter Blog.

Keene

In today’s interconnected world both the physical and digital worlds collide. There is no ignoring those on the the other side of the world. We share one place, this place called Earth and today’s geospatial technology makes this so readily apparent and seamless that it is almost taken without notice. Its hard to imagine an age when we did not know what lay beyond the horizon, just as those ages ago would have a hard time believing in something called Google Earth. But the connectivity and the technology that makes it possible should be noticed. The new golden age of geography is upon us and its nothing like what you might have learned in grade school. This is all about connections, and seeing how those connections can send shockwaves around the world just like an insect caught in a spider’s web. Move one part and we’ll know you are there… Bringing the geospatial revolution together nicely is a new project by Penn State University Public Broadcasting project.   Dubbed the Geospatial Revolution Project it is one of the first I have seen to bring together what geography truly means in the 21st century, explaining how new technologies have revolutionized our relationship with the planet. It will be brought to viewers via the web in eight installments and will have outreach and educational components. Its seems to be a broad, bold project that highlights this new revolution and evolution of our connectedness. I strongly suggest you check this new series out when it launches.

Keene

Study

Photos, photos everywhere! The world is awash in digital photos so its nice that some researchers have taken the time to look the numbers for the most popular (at least in N. America and Western Europe) photo sharing site, Flickr. The study, which has some interesting results, was done by David Crandall, a doctoral student at Cornell in Computer Science. One surprising result (or not so surprising perhaps) is that the Apple Store in Manhattan is the 28th most photographed place on earth. The Sydney Morning Herald posted a story about this today as well as a link out to the researcher’s PDF if you are interested in diving into the details. Some 35 million images were examined in Flickr. The most photographed place in the world (at least on Flickr)… drum roll please…NYC. Seriously, this is an great study and should be of great interest to those who are interested in what people geotag and what this says about what we find interesting to photograph in the world. Of course there are many caveats and bias to consider in something like this but the researcher is well aware of these. Hopefully we will see more studies like this in the near future!

Keene