Samstag, 12. März 2005
(Titel googlen!)

New semester: Information Mapping 2

I decided to repeat a seminar from a couple of years ago: Information Mapping. This time I want to suggest two optional research topics that I think might be very intersting to work upon: the first is "60 years Hiroshima" and the second is "Deforestation".

I got interested in the Hiroshima topic last year when I accdidentally crossed a website of the "Children of the Manhatten Project". It kicked of a long web research that really totally amazed me.

The Deforestation topic is a tribute to two things: a) the famous Knowledge Navigator video by Apple and b) the software EarthBrowser which I recently obtained and which was improved with stunning high-res images of the earth surface. Here is are two samples - the second shows a zoom to the center of the first view:

Anyway I am convinced that both topics serve perfectly as context for exploring data visualization and information mapping experiments. Generally I am not sticking to topics like these, if students want to work on things to explore that have more appeal to them.

The course starts on March, 23rd. See course weblog. [gefunden bei owrede_log ...] 11:12:35 PM   trackback [] 

(Titel googlen!)

SkypeIn in beta

SkypeIn
Skype’s PR peeps are blasting out press releases about how SkypeOut (which lets you use Skype’s VoIP software to make cheap calls to the regular phone lines) has finally reached one million users, but we’re way more interested in the more stealthy news that they’re testing a new beta which supports SkypeIn, which lets people with regular phone lines call you. A year of SkypeIn will set you back €30, and so far the only phone numbers you can score are from France, the UK, the US, and Hong Kong, but you don’t actually have to live in one of those countries to get one of those numbers and they do throw in a free subscription to Skype Voicemail. So let’s see…we can get one of those new EV-DO capable Pocket PC Phones (like the XV6600 or the Samsung SGH-i730—or even chance it with an EDGE-capable handset), sign up for both SkypeIn and SkypeOut, and then cut back to some barebones bucket of minutes? Sticking it to the Man might make paying through the nose for a data plan almost worth it.


[Thanks, Tim O.] [gefunden bei Engadget ...] 10:54:55 PM   trackback [] 

(Titel googlen!)

HOW-TO: Make your own annotated multimedia Google map

Google map hack 1

One of the great things about Google maps is it has its roots in XML. To translate for the non-web developers out there, it basically means Google maps are user hackable. This how-to will show you how to make your own annotated Google map from your own GPS data. Plus, you’ll be able to tie in images and video to create an interactive multimedia map. We’ll walk you through the steps we took to generate an annotated map of a walk we took recently through our hometown, now that it’s actually starting to get warm enough to want to walk about!

Background

I saw this post by Jon Udell, in which he does a screencast of an annotated walking tour through Keene, NH. Screencast goodness aside, I wanted to figure out how he made the map and how to simplify the process so that the non-web geek could attempt it without too much trouble. The geekiest bit will be where we edit our XML file, but you can essentially think of it just like editing a plain old text file — it looks like garbledy-gook, but it’s not actually rocket science. If you’re new to web development or new to XML, don’t worry — we’ll walk you through it as best we can. Ready? Let’s dive in!


Materials

Getting started

Before we get in to how it’s done, let’s look at the results. Fire up Firefox and install the Greasemonkey Firefox plug-in that allows you to inject some dynamic behavior into viewed web pages; you’ll have to restart Firefox for it to take effect. Relaunch Firefox, and install the Google maps user annotation script by simply clicking right-clicking on the link (CTRL-click for one-button mouse Mac users) in this sentence and choosing “Install user scripts…” Then, load up the URL of our annotated Ithaca map in a new tab so you can switch back to this how-to easily. Click on the “Display Points” link, and you’ll zoom in to our annotated Ithaca walk.

Google map hacks 2

This map works like any other Google map, except for the fact that we’ve created it ourselves and added media to it. You can click on a waypoint to get more information, or generate driving directions to and from points as usual. When you click on one of our points, you’ll notice it will have either a picture or a movie link associated with it:

Google map hacks 3

The best way to follow the map tour is to right-click (CTRL-click Mac) and open the media file in a separate browser tab, because following a link and clicking the back button will break the script and revert the map back to its default state, from which you’ll have to click the “Display Points” link and start all over again. If you right-click the “movie” link in the above example, you’ll see a 30 second 360-degree video we took from the center of the Ithaca Commons. If you right-click on the “1 more” link it will open a tab with a Google query (”Ithaca Commons”) we’ve also linked to — you can add links to any URL on the web, not just your media files. Load up a waypoint with a “picture” link, right-click on it and you’ll see an image we shot at that location.

Now that we’ve seen what we’re about to create, let’s get started.

We’ll leave the finer details of collecting your media files and waypoints up to you — that’s the easy part. Just gather your GPS and camera and have at it, or take your images and geolocate them later using Geocode.com if you prefer that method. Similarly, we’ll let you handle the editing and preparation of your images and video files, and start in at the nitty-gritty stage.

You’ll need a place to host your media files and the XML file we’re going to create that specifies your map data. If you already have a Flickr account, you can host images there, and if you don’t have one, we highly recommend it as a value-added image hosting service. You can host up to 100 images for free, and link to them from elsewhere.

To host video, and to host our XML file, you’ll need access to a web server that allows you to FTP upload files. If you already have a web site or a blog that allows you to upload files, you’re set - you can upload all media and your XML there. Otherwise, there are still free web hosting services out there you can use in a pinch for making a few of these maps. Ye olde Angelfire is still kickin’ it as a free service with 20MB of space. Yes, you have to navigate a minefield of opt-out checkboxes to get there but it takes all of about five minutes to set up a free account and upload your XML file, which you can safely link to from Google maps without incurring the evil spector of the sponsored ads (we tested this to be sure!). You could host some images and video there, as well, if you’re only making one or a few maps. Or, ask around and get recommendations of other free web hosts — most are evil, but if you don’t give them any real metadata about yourself you should be able to emerge unscathed.

Now, you’ve made and uploaded your media files to wherever they may roam. You’ll need to know the fully-qualified URL of any media file you wish to link to, as well as your (coming next) XML file. That’s as good a sequeway as any — let’s dive in to the meat of this project: creating our XML file.

If you’ve seen HTML, XML looks pretty much the same: parameters surrounded by opening and closing tags. We’ll show you an example of how to make two different waypoints, one with an associated image and one with associated video, and show you the minimal rest of the document structure. You can download the following example waypoints file by right-clicking and saving it to disk, then modifying it to make your own map. It includes one waypoint with an associated image and one with an associated video, matching the first two stops on our Ithaca map.

Here’s what the entire XML file looks like with only one waypoint — all the stuff between the <location> tags defines the waypoint. The stuff before and after is just the “shell” of the entire document.

Google map hacks 4

You’ll want to download the sample file and replace the following parameters to match your own map settings:

Next, let’s zero in on what one waypoint looks like, and what changes you’ll need to make for each of your points:

Google map hacks 5

Here’s what you’ll need to edit for each waypoint:

To add another waypoint to the map, just cut and paste everything starting from the opening <location> tag until after the end of the closing </location> tag from your first waypoint, then modify the same bits of data as detailed in the list above for this new waypoint. The entire collection of waypoints lives sandwiched in between the opening bit of code:

Google map hacks 6

And the closing tiny bit of code:

Google map hacks 7

Still with me? That is the bulk of the magic behind the annotation. When you’ve finished stringing together all your waypoints and have nestled them between the opening and closing bits, save the resulting final file as your_map.xml or similar. Then, upload that XML file to whatever web host you’ve chosen. After this, you should be able to load up the following URL in your Greasemonkey-enabled Firefox browser:

http://maps.google.com/?loc=http://yourhost.com/path/to/your/files/yourmap.xml

Your URL is similar to ours (http://maps.google.com/?loc=

http://media.weblogsinc.com/common/videos/barb/googlemaps/ithaca_walk.xml) but replacing the URL after the ”?loc=” with your own XML file. It is the combination of Greasemonkey and the Google maps user annotation script that add this function to Firefox to feed an external XML file to Google maps — although there are other methods of achieving the same goal, this way is very simple.

Click the “Display Points” link and Google maps should zoom in to whatever you listed as your center point, as described above. Then, follow along on your own annotated map tour courtesy of Google maps.

Google map hacks 8

Going further

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what can be done with hacking Google maps. Work up a script to import and convert your GPS data automagically from the output of your GPS. If you’re handy with javascript, you can add all sorts of dynamic actions such as panning and following into your maps. Or, include your custom Google map on your own web page. You can get your custom maps working in other browsers besides Firefox, as well — we just chose the Greasemonkey method as being easy enough to do even if you’ve no experience with XML. For other ideas, try hunting around in the GoogleMapsHacking wiki.

And of course, don’t forget to post a link to your hacked Google map! [gefunden bei Engadget ...] 10:51:15 PM   trackback [] 

(Titel googlen!)

HOW-TO: Use your Gmail account as a personal file server

Transfer

This is a fairly simple and useful trick to score yourself a gigabyte’s worth of free online file storage. If you already have a Gmail account, you can use it as a central file server that is accessible from anywhere you can access Gmail. If you don’t have a Gmail account… read on. We’re going to install a shell extension that will allow you to mount your Gmail account as a virtual drive on your desktop, so you can perform basic file manipulation operations without having to go through the web-based interface. Drag and drop, batch copy, create folders and delete files as you normally would in Windows Explorer, and be able to access your virtual drive from virtually anywhere.

There are some limitations and caveats associated with this how-to: Gmail doesn’t support files larger than 10MB, so you won’t be able to store large movie files or anything, but you wouldn’t be doing that anyway ‘cuz it’s illegal, right? Also, the Gmail drive shell extension only functions under Windows XP, but you’ll be able to access and download any of your files via any operating system and browser combination supported by Gmail.

Be advised that this trick is completely unsupported by the Google folk and so may cease functioning at any time — particularly following upgrades to the Gmail service. As far as we know this isn’t illegal (we actually read the EULA for you — that’s love, people), but we can’t guarantee Google won’t go all RIAA on us and crack down on this app, either, so use at your own risk.

Also, it goes without saying that none of you would dream of using something like this to shuttle around any illegally-obtained or un-DRM’d music, right? ‘Cuz that would make you a criminal, and we can’t advocate that. This is only for personal use storage of your, uh, extensive Powerpoint collection, k? Buckle in and let’s roll.

Ingredients

First up, download the Gmail Drive shell extension. The download page says you need to have Internet Explorer 5 or higher for installation; this just refers to the fact that Internet Explorer is infernally wed to Windows Explorer and you need a version of the Windows Explorer based on the IE5+ engine. If you’re running Windows XP you should be all set with this. No need to actually launch that browser — we wouldn’t conscionably recommend that to anyone.

Installation is as simple as running the Setup program. When the installer is finished running, it will tell you you can begin using Gmail Drive right away, but you may actually have to restart your machine before you can access the new drive. If you don’t see it in the list of locations under My Computer, just try restarting. Otherwise, you should be seeing Gmail Drive showing up just any regular storage device would:

Gmail drive icon

Double-click the Gmail Drive icon, and you will be prompted for your login information:

Gmail Drive login prompt


Enter your deets and Gmail Drive shell extension will happily enumerate your files and log you in:

Gmail drive logging in

If you already have files stored in your account from attachments you’ve received, etc., you will see them in the Explorer window after you’ve logged in. Otherwise, if you have no files or if you’ve just created your brand spankin’ new Gmail account, you’ll just see an empty Explorer window:

Empty Gmail Drive window

Let’s drag and drop some files into our new virtual drive. We’ll choose some image files that we shot ourselves because, as far as we know, it’s not illegal to copy these yet. Just open an Explorer window with some files you’d like to store on your new file server, select them, and drag and drop them into your Gmail Drive just as you would with any regular file transfer. You’ll get a dialogue window with an animation involving a cute little phone that for some reason is sending a letter — some tribute to ye olde modems of yore?

Gmail Drive file transfer

Regardless, it means Gmail Drive is whisking your files happily away and posting them to your Gmail account. When the transfer is finished, you’ll see icons for your files in your Gmail Drive:

Gmail Drive with files

Fabulous. Now — if you have another Windows XP machine you use regularly — your work PC, for example — you can just set up the Gmail Drive shell extension there and have Explorer-type file manipulation on that machine, as well. This could be a really handy solution for sharing files between your two locations. But since we already know how to use Gmail Drive, let’s take a look at what happens when we log in to our Gmail account from a regular old web browser.

Go to the Gmail login and enter your account information:

Gmail login

When you log in, you’ll see a number of new messages - one message per file you just uploaded. Messages corresponding to files that have been uploaded via Gmail Drive appear with a “GMAILFS” prefix in the header, following by the filename and the file size:

Gmail file view

Since we’ve uploaded images, we can view our photos right from within the Gmail interface:

Gmail message view

From here, we can forward the images on to friends, or download them to whatever machine we are on and have instant access to them at any time. Plus, we benefit from all the handy built-in features of Gmail itself; we can easily search for our files by name and tag them to organize them however we wish. All this from the installation of one simple and free utility.

So we know that a lot of you might find this handy, but you don’t happen to have a Gmail account. Well, it’s your lucky day, peeps, because we have a few invites to give away. Obviously we don’t have enough invites for everyone, but we’ll give them away on a first-come, first-served basis until they’re all gone. Just make sure you use a valid email address when you post your comment, because that’s where we’ll send the invite to, dig? Don’t say we never gave you anything. [gefunden bei Engadget ...] 10:43:13 PM   trackback [] 

(Titel googlen!)

Skype to SMS

Skype SMS

The trickier part was getting it so a cellphone could send an SMS text message to a Skype user, but Connectotel has also worked it out so you can do the reverse, too (yeah, it’s already fairly easy to send an SMS from a PC). Basically you just add “smsgateway” to your user list, type in the number of the person you want to bother, and then enter your message and you’re good to go. [gefunden bei Engadget ...] 10:39:32 PM   trackback [] 

(Titel googlen!)

How Paris Hilton got hacked?

Paris Hilton

We may have an easy answer for how someonw was able to break into Paris Hilton’s Sidekick account and grab her address book and emails. Turns out they didn’t hack into the server or guess her password. Rather, they guessed (correctly) that she wasn’t quite savvy enough to realize that everyone already knew what her answer would be to the secret question T-Mobile asks when you forget your password: “What is your favorite pet’s name?” Enter the correct answer and T-Mobile lets you reset the password to whatever you want. Yeah, we know that required some serious l33tness on the part of the hackers (hey, but if you’re so smart, why weren’t you logging into her account months ago?), but it was only yesterday that T-Mobile was even made aware of the, uh, vulnerability in Paris’s account and fixed things. [Via Waxy] 10:34:07 PM   trackback [] 

(Titel googlen!)

AdSense Secrets

It's no Secret: I love AdSense. I talked about it at last year's Gnomedex, and I feel even better about AdSense now. If you didn't get a copy of today's USA Today, you'll have to picture a nice, juicy quote from yours truly splashed on the front of the Money section. I suppose if you're going to be in an international paper, that's the section to be in. There's an online version of the AdSense article as well, but it doesn't have the same impact.

There's an AdSense eBook out there that speaks the plain ol' truth, although its value is underestimated. I personally would have sold it for 10x as much, but that's because I know if you read it, you'll make 100x as much with AdSense as you are today. I've got a few more ideas I'm kicking around, including doing an AdSense afternoon seminar up here in Seattle. I'll keep you posted. Until then, read the eBook:
This is a real, recent screenshot of my AdSense stats page. With Google's permission, I'm able to reveal how much I'm making with AdSense. But they've asked me to keep details of my CPM and CTR private, so I have blacked them out in order to comply with Google's terms of service. I'm not a renegade and I value my relationship with Google too much!
And if you haven't yet signed up for Google AdSense yet, get going - sign up for Google AdSense now. [gefunden bei Chris Pirillo ...] 9:23:55 PM   trackback [] 
(Titel googlen!)

Nofollow and Tags

According to one of the interviews we did at SES, nofollow isn't really going to work - largely because it targets dead sites. If once-living pages include the nofollow tag, eventually spammers might stop attacking all of us on the Web. Then, according to one of the panelists we saw, tagging is going to fall victim to spamming soon enough. I (honestly) believe that will happen. One day in the not-so-distant future, wikis will come under spam attack, too. It's all in the name of Search Engine linkage - so, who's to blame? The spammers are just exploiting weaknesses in the system. It's one reason I had to turn off live comments and trackbacks across Lockergnome's channels. I deal with enough spam in my inbox. My feeds, however, are still spam free - and will remain that way from now until the end of time. [gefunden bei Chris Pirillo ...] 9:12:40 PM   trackback [] 
(Titel googlen!)

The Web Site Idea Generator

The world is completely incomplete without: They were probably all funded in 1997. Ideas courtesy of The Web Site Idea Generator. [gefunden bei Chris Pirillo ...] 9:08:44 PM   trackback [] 
(Titel googlen!)

Madrid: Terrorism, the Internet and Democracy

UPDATED
From the International Summit on Democracy, Security and Terrorism in Madrid, my working group on terrorism and the Internet has come up with what amounts to a set of principles and suggestions. I'll post them below.

First, a special word of thanks to Martín Varsavsky, who spearheaded this conference and had a special interest in this working group, and to the group's moderators, Joi Ito and Marko Ahtissari. Martín is a remarkable man, a fabulously successful entrepreneur with a powerful sense of social responsibility and justice. Our group was a bit out of place, as Ethan Zuckerman notes (see Ethan's near-transcript if you're interested in the nitty-gritty; David Weinberger also took excellent notes), but I hope we got something useful done.

Keep in mind that this is a draft, the result of several days of work, not the Final Word. You can join this conversation more directly -- you can help edit the document to make it better -- by visiting the Global Voices wiki at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The Infrastructure of Democracy
Strengthening the Open Internet for a Safer World
March 11, 2005

I. The Internet is a foundation of democratic society in the 21st century, because the core values of the Internet and democracy are so closely aligned.

1. The Internet is fundamentally about openness, participation, and freedom of expression for all -- increasing the diversity and reach of information and ideas.
2. The Internet allows people to communicate and collaborate across borders and belief systems.
3. The Internet unites families and cultures in diaspora; it connects people, helping them to form civil societies.
4. The Internet can foster economic development by connecting people to information and markets.
5. The Internet introduces new ideas and views to those who may be isolated and prone to political violence.
6. The Internet is neither above nor below the law. The same legal principles that apply in the physical world also apply to human activities conducted over the Internet.


II. Decentralized systems -- the power of many -- can combat decentralized foes.

 1. Terrorist networks are highly decentralized and distributed. A centralized effort by itself cannot effectively fight terrorism.
2. Terrorism is everyone's issue. The internet connects everyone. A connected citizenry is the best defense against terrorist propaganda.
3. As we saw in the aftermath of the March 11 bombing, response was spontaneous and rapid because the citizens were able to use the Internet to organize themselves.
4. As we are seeing in the distributed world of weblogs and other kinds of citizen media, truth emerges best in open conversation among people with divergent views.


III. The best response to abuses of openness is more openness.

 1. Open, transparent environments are more secure and more stable than closed, opaque ones.
2. While Internet services can be interrupted, the Internet as a global system is ultimately resilient to attacks, even sophisticated and widely distributed ones.
3. The connectedness of the Internet – people talking with people – counters the divisiveness terrorists are trying to create.
4. The openness of the Internet may be exploited by terrorists, but as with democratic governments, openness minimizes the likelihood of terrorist acts and enables effective responses to terrorism.


IV. Well-meaning regulation of the Internet in established democracies could threaten the development of emerging democracies.

 1. Terrorism cannot destroy the internet, but over-zealous legislation in response to terrorism could. Governments should consider mandating changes to core Internet functionality only with extraordinary caution.
2. Some government initiatives that look reasonable in fact violate the basic principles that have made the Internet a success.
3. For example, several interests have called for an end to anonymity. This would be highly unlikely to stop determined terrorists, but it would have a chilling effect on political activity and thereby reduce freedom and transparency. Limiting anonymity would have a cascading series of unintended results that would hurt freedom of expression, especially in countries seeking transition to democratic rule.


V. In conclusion we urge those gathered here in Madrid to:

 1. Embrace the open Internet as a foundation of 21st Century democracy, and a critical tool in the fight against terrorism.
2. Recognizing the Internet's value as a critical communications infrastructure, invest to strengthen it against attacks and recover quickly from damage.
3. Work to spread access more evenly, aggressively addressing the Digital Divide, and to provide Internet access for all.
4. To protect free speech and association, endorse the availability of anonymous communications for all.
5. Resist attempts at international governance of the Internet: It can introduce processes that have unintended effects and violate the bottom-up democratic nature of the Net. [gefunden bei Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc. ...] 9:06:09 PM   trackback [] 
(Titel googlen!)

NASA Hubble Space Telescope Daily Report # 3814

[gefunden bei SpaceRef Top Stories ...] 12:06:11 PM   trackback [] 


© Copyright 2005 Georg Berg .
Last update: 17.03.2005; 23:19:36 Uhr .

Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. Valid CSS! Subscribe to "Georg Berg's Notizen" in Radio UserLand. Click to see the XML version of this web page. Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

Google
 
Web georgberg.de
erftkanu.de tennis-grevenbroich.de