Grasshoppermind

Found this amazing journey from the edge of the universe to the smallest discovered particles. The blog commentary is in Japanese?, but the commentary on the images is English.
Warning: lots of pictures, so possibly long load time.

Can I have geo with that please?
There has been such a lot of buzz about Google Earth, Mapping Hacks, Location based services and Geo ‘Everything’, that I think it’s time for a quick list of definitions and related links to benefit those who are new to this field. Please feel free to add comments if I’ve missed anything, or you have a link to a better definition.

Please note: this post is regularly updated with new information, please check back again. If you would like to add something to the list, please comment. Last update 10th Nov 2005.

Geoadvertising

adverts displayed in the geospatial/mapping world. [from Geobloggers]

Geoblogging

attaching location metadata to blog posts resulting in articles being associated with a specific location or locations.

Geocaching

Geocaching is an outdoor sport that involves the use of a Global Positioning System (”GPS“) receiver to find a “geocache” (or “cache”) placed anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small, waterproof container containing a logbook and “treasure”. Geocaching is a unique take on an earlier game called Letterboxing in that it uses two recent technologies, the GPS and the Internet. Participants are called geocachers.
[from Wikipedia]

Geocasting

1. In networking - Geocasting is the delivery of packets to nodes within a certain geographic area [from arxiv.org]

2. podcasts associated with geographical coordinates

Geocoding

the process of assigning geographic coordinates (e.g. latitude-longitude) to street addresses, as well as other points and features. With geographic coordinates, the features can then be mapped and entered into Geographic Information Systems (GIS). [from Wikipedia] [Google]

Geolocation (Geotracking)

1. the technique of determining a user’s geographic latitude, longitude and, by inference, city, region and nation by comparing the user’s public Internet IP address with known locations of other electronically neighboring servers and routers [from Linuxjournal]

2. A method of determining a location of a mobile-station (cell-phone, mobile phone) [US Patent 6950664]

Georeferencing

1. A GIS term to describe the process of scaling, rotating, translating and deskewing an image to match a particular size and position.

2. Synonym for Geotagging [from Stephan at Ogle Earth]

Geospam

location based SPAM. In map based interfaces, popular locations may attract Spamlinks [more on this at Geobloggers]

Geotagging

the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds or images. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude and placenames. [from Wikipedia]
[Google]

Geotargeting

advertisements targeted at a specific geographical region, area or location. [from Masternewmedia]

Geovlogged

a tag proposed by vlogmap.org for identifying geotagged video clips

Geovlogging

Videoblogs linked to geographical coordinates

Geoweb

The internet incorporating geographical metadata or location based references. [From the Geoweb blog]

I recently asked Rev Dan Catt of Geobloggers to add a date filter to the output from his site. I had a few reasons for the feature request but I don’t think I could put it as well as this…

…What happens to all the stuff we leave anchored to physical places but floating in virtual space year after year?…
…Think about all the tourists that come to take pictures of the Duomo, once they start tagging their pictures with that location, we’ll end up with thousands of pictures tied to that place. Now imagine that ten years down the road, someone visits the Duomo, would that person be able to say, find the photos their father took at that location?…

Better still, broaden geotagging out past just pictures. Include recordings (podcasts?), articles, impressions, diaries, emotional responses, videos, poetry, literature, related links. I want a rich, multi-sensory experience linked to a location with a history. My location aware device (of the near future) will be able to present this to me as I choose.

The developers of Tagzania have been busy adding new features since their launch earlier this year. One of their latest offerings allows you to easily paste maps into your blog or website. This is useful if you want to display the location of an article you are referring to. You can also resize the map to fit your site easily, e.g.

Although you probably won’t want to go smaller!

On September 8th, I wondered when geograph.co.uk would provide KML output of their incredible photo database of almost every square kilometer of the British Isles, so you could browse via Google Earth.
Well Barry Hunter kindly pointed me at a few links back then, but now things are a whole lot easier to use because of this page. Use Geograph with Google Earth.

A couple of weeks ago John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing advised his readers thus:

Look, I’m not going to waste too much time trying to convince you that people are searching for every kind of business, right there in you hometown, using the Internet. Every major search engine is rushing to become the next local phone book and you need to get your business listed now, while it’s still free.

So, without further ado, can Google Local, Yahoo Local and MSN Local let the rest of the world (outside the US) register their businesses?

Please?

Whew! it’s been a busy few days since my last post. I’m in the middle of setting up my own business and this has required a lot of my attention. A LOT! If anyone ever tells you that putting together a business plan is easy, then they are lying…