Some of David Anderson’s Citizen Cyber-Science websites

Dave's talk last week for Geolunch was AWESOME. Here are some of the sites he mentioned. Get started with your distributed computing and thinking people! SETI@Home Climateprediction.net Stardust@Home Distributed Proofreaders Rosetta@Home Just to summarize, they have 500k active participants and 700k computers making up about 2 PetaFLOPS of juice.

Podcasts are so 2004

Apple has recently filed a patent for podmaps, podcasts' spatially enabled cousins. Apparently they plan on dynamically assembling maps, directions, and spoken guides to be loaded on your iPod and help you get from A to B. Sounds like an innovative way to bring interactive maps to those who aren't interested in cell phone data plans. Check out the filing with a bit of commentary

.

Star Wars

The US is set to shoot down a broken spy satellite. This all follows last year's action by China, which fired a missile at one of its old weather satellite. The destruction of the Chinese satellite produced about 28% of the debris that is now in orbit, which poses a major threat to functioning satellites. In contrast the US plans to destroy their satellite as it reenters the atmosphere, allowing the fragments to burn up on their descent. Satellites leaving orbit and entering the earth's atmosphere is not uncommon, but military officials say that this case is being given special consideration due to hazardous materials on board.

Maps for the Blind

Great story on KQED QUEST the other day: tactile street maps for the blind. This is about TMAP, a project that essentially aims to make a street map GIS for the blind, including web-based delivery of images that can be printed on an embossing printer, and phone-based request for mailed maps. You can learn a lot about the technical details in this Google Tech Talk given by Dr. Josh Miele (a Cal alum).

Spreadsheet Mapper 2.0

John Deck was way ahead of Google when he created Berkeley Mapper. His service includes a feature that allows users to input point data into a Google Documents spreadsheet. The data is then added to a database and displayed in Google Maps. Well, Google has just released its second version of its spreadsheet mapper. Similar to Berkeley Mapper, users simply enter their data into a spreadsheet and the appropriate KML and Google Map are generated. There are still many differences between the two tools and Berkeley mapper is more tailored to the needs of collaborative research. Nonetheless, Spreadsheet Mapper offers yet another option for compiling and mapping tabular data.

It’s not just for gaming anymore

Can you imagine using these visualizations in forest management modeling/scenario applications? Seems cool to me.

He’s no Jack Dangermond

This profile of Ron Eastman, the creator of Idrisi, was featured in the Boston Globe. I may be the only one that this is of interest to; but if nothing else, it is interesting to read a lay article about GIS/RS.

OakMapper’s inspiration gets a makeover

The USGS Earthquake mapper gets a makeover. The original site was the inspiration for the OakMapper.

Call for biofuels work

Today's NPR story by Richard Harris and related article by Tim Searchinger et al. highlight exactly the concerns with global biofuel production that prompted us to put in our grant (with Norm Miller and Dave Sunding) to BP and EBI on campus. What are the social, economic and environmental tradeoffs associated with widespread biofuel growth? How can we plan to spatially optimize use of landscapes so that increased carbon emissions do not result? Anyway, cool stuff.

Historic maps galore

If you have a hankerin' for historic maps (*cough* Maggi *cough*), take a look at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Historic Cities site. Lots of maps scanned from old books or stand alone maps. Search and browse by year, city, or even your favorite old-timey cartographer. We know you all have one.