Summary from afternoon event at UCL on the future of imaging. Organised by UCL Advances, left half way through afternoon, got a bit fed up with the hard sell on how well academia can solve all industries research needs. Had planned to listen to the Space Syntax talk but missed it. Notes below.

'Google Earth - Changing our View of the Earth'
Ed Parsons (Google - from the Geo team - maps, earth, sketchup etc.)

Organising information geographically to make it universally accessible. 3 billion users can have access to google earth images of their own home. Half the population of the world. Nice example of photos being placed vertically on the surface of google earth - when you move to the position the picture was taken you can see it in the context of google earth.

"People like google earth because it is personal - the first thing you do is zoom into the place where you live or a place that you like." The context is provided straight away. Learning from that observation the focus of future work will be on google earth as the context not the content. He mentioned that KML had been accepted by Microsoft as a defacto standard for marking up geo info and the increased use of geoRSS in apps like flickr.

He mentioned 3 other cool things:

Have you played the google earth flight simulator? - hit Ctrl + Alt + A to turn it on.

Google teamed with Amazon mechanical turk to try and find Steve Fossett using recent imagery from google earth - didn't find him but did find 6 other crashed planes.

mentioned the work with chris anderson (http://www.diydrones.com/) and pict'earth real time mashup of google earth and live video from UAV's

Couldn't resist this. Played with the iPhone in Apple Store, SF. The touch interface including typing is pretty cool and the web page navigation was pretty useful - e.g. tap to resize to column width. You end up just trying gestures and they work. The resizing of images etc was very nice. So, when can we get one....

[more photos]

Nice example of time lapse photo. Posted on Flickr but saw via everyoneforever - amazing photograph currently showing at the Seoul City Museum in South Korea.

In 2005 all members of the Chinese Politburo were engineers

I want one of these...

Nice example of an interactive facade and building as a device that can be altered by the public. What makes this different from other similar projects is the fact that you can interact with the building *screen* via a kiosk. A distant camera then takes a picture of your artwork and emails it to you. Visit the site to see what images others created.

This competition, aimed at finding an original idea that could help many impoverished people gain access to safe water and effective sanitation, needs your creativity and enthusiasm. There are many ways to get involved - participate by proposing a new solution, or promote the competition, encouraging others to help make a difference.

The closing date for entries is 5pm (GMT) on 31 January 2007. Entries must be submitted to drawing.water@arup.com. More information about the competition and details on how to submit can be found by visiting: http://www.arup.com/arupcause.

The competition jury will include:

Sir Christopher Frayling (RCA)
Ken Shuttleworth (make)
Marcus Fairs (icon)
WaterAid directors
David Glover and Jo da Silva (Arup)

I thought this was urban myth but maybe not, anyway, good story from our current chairman...

Haier, China's largest white goods manufacturer prides itself on after-sales service. A high number of washing machine faults started being flagged by their maintenance staff and when they took the machines apart found vegetables cuttings trapped in the filter. Oh, said customers, we use the machine for washing our vegetables too.

Rather than ruling the warrantee invalid, Haier took the challenge back to R&D and within a week had found a solution; modify the pump, open the filter a bit, etc, and within a month had the new model back on the market proclaiming best for washing your clothes and your vegetables!

Sales leapt again.

Staying in Hotel Skt Petri tonight. Nice website but just wanted to find a picture of the place... also led me to find http://www.designhotels.com/ which looks handy for trying to find nice hotels for those city stop overs...

Alvise found this when looking for reviews on the new laptop he is getting.... nothing like seeing other peoples experiences. I like the quote from the guy who posted this *It is only a matter of time until such an incident breaks out on a plane*...

WindGURU at Southend
Tides at Sheerness
WindGURU at Queen Mary

Found these from posting to Make site - what an excellent use of *spare* bits and pieces.... the blinky bugs

GpsActionReplay have been looking for this kind of GPS tool for a while - should have thought to look for an application made by / for windsurf speed sailors... Just need to download a .gpx xml file (i use easygps) containing data for a route and then load it into the gps actionreply applet to analyse your speed over a journey (on the bike, motorbike, snowboard or windsurf session)

A nice way of getting the message across...

Want to find images on Flickr? Just sketch the kind of image you want on retievr. Here is my effort to find trees in a field with blue skies and green grass.

Two great examples of persistence of vision. One is at the planned public library in Minneapolis where LED's on the outside of the lift reveal letter by letter words describing the titles of books being checked out. The second came via Make magazine - one for the kids - SpokePOV - LED bike wheel images - look at the how to on instructables...

From Arup Bike User Group - gmap-pedometer. You can plot routes, work out distances and even get plots of elevation along the route - great for cycling.

Came across mashups of earth lights on google maps and Moon maps showing moon landings - excellent. On the former i was amazed to see the comparison of light levels in Middlesbrough and the NE compared to London and SE.

This technology has been around for 30 years (Mecanum wheel, Wikipedia) or so but this is the first time I have seen it in action. The movie is much more compelling than an image or sketch of the concept.

[from - Signal vs. Noise by 37signals]