Two Cents of Place

The Art of Project Management

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:30:00 +0000

When I first started out as a Product Manager, I had the naive perception that simply gathering information on customer feedback and competitive offerings would be all the input you'd need to chart the course for product development. If I had a good handle of what the customers were asking for, and what the competitors also provided, than all I had to do was to prioritize those things into a product road map and feature requirements.

I couldn't have been more wrong. As Apple and other game-changing organizations have proven time and again, successful product strategies are all about divining what the market values and is willing to pay for. That can be, and more than often is, completely different from what users say they want, and from what competitors currently provide. We didn't know we needed an iPhone, or a Tivo or DropBox, etc, until the product wizards conjured them up.

I'm starting to believe the same thing rings true with Project management. It's relatively easy to do user interviews, come up with a requirements checklist and execute towards a finished solution. The more difficult question to answer is - what will truly make that solution successful in the organization? The old saying "Be careful what you ask for" rings true here: do customers really understand what they've asked for, and will their stakeholders embrace and make it successful?Are we taking into account the complexity of learning and using the final product? Does it ultimately make the task simpler, or is just another thing to learn how to do?

The risk for not taking this into consideration as a project manager, is that your solution may ultimately fail at the customer's organization despite your successful project delivery. When the customer gets everything they ask for, seldom do they get what they really need.

Critical Infrastructure? � geoMusings

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:20:00 +0000

Wanted to summarize Bill's post earlier this week:

Critical Infrastructure? � geoMusings

if you're looking for the most reliable forms of communications in and after an emergency here in the U.S.0, they appear to be:

1) a land-line telephone
2) your mobile phone's data connection
3) your mobile phone's voice connection

Bill didn't review home broadband connections, but I'm suspect here as well: our Comcast service was down for 8-12 hours on Tuesday after the quake.

So if you're like me and are too cheap to have a land-line in your house, make sure your cell phone has a data plan and you know how to reach the outside world with it -- don't expect to be able to call anybody or for them to call you!

Data visualization of foreign owned U.S. national debt

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:24:00 +0000

courtesy of this post, here's a nifty map that shows off TileMill.com ~ timely, too...

#WhereCamp Awesomeness

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:00:00 +0000

Lots of warm fuzzies at the Ignite Spatial evening at the inagural WhereCampDC this past Friday. I met a lot of folks, some of whom I've only known via blogs and Twitter so far, including
ebwolf and DruidSmith, but also reconnected with some familiar DC faces including ajturner and geomantic. Here's my take on the presentations - which I'm hoping will be posted online soon:

best use of hand-gestures

WMS is Dead – Sophia Parafina (@spara)

best summary of multiple disertations that wanted me to go out and learn more:

The Future of the National Map: A CEGIS Overview – Eric Wolf (ebwolf )

best geonerd feel-good time

GeoHerd – Homophily in the Geonerd Community – Anthony Quartararo ( tonyquartararo)

most interesting product pitch

Mobile Mapping Project of Washington DC – Michael Quan

Nokia & Microsoft - what now for maps?

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:47:00 +0000

Last week, Nokia and Microsoft formally announced a not-so-secret plan to leverage the two companies' technologies in the wireless marketspace. Nokia will get much-need access to a modern (if not yet popular) mobile device OS, while Microsoft gets a still-major hardware vendor to dedicate itself to their platform. I learned a great deal of background info from this post on the 'mobile opportunity blog' (thanks to Marc Piroleau for sharing). And on Monday we learned as well from the Journal that Mr. Elop is getting significant aid from their friends in Redmond to implement this new OS.

So what does this mean for both Bing maps, and Ovi maps - surely only one of these technologies is really needed. Microsoft has been developing its online map products for several years now, and it competes and shows well alongside the likes of both Google maps and Mapquest. Nokia relies on Gate5 technology that it acquired through NAVTEQ a few years back, and has now integrated into it's free mobile navigation solution. Evidently, Microsoft sees enough promise within the Gate5 technology, to bring some of that into Bing. From a content perspective, and for access to content and services outside of the US, this may be a good thing for Bing. I have my doubts however, that Ovi maps in its current form will win over customers in North America. A few concerns I have:

- an online web platform that is not battle-tested: currently you can see Ovi maps at work in their portal, and also at NAVTEQ.com. I seriously doubt either portal has been tested to scale, the way Google, Mapquest and Bing have.

- a user experience that is still very European-centered: go to Ovi maps, search for an address and invariably you'll still get results in the US that are StreetName-first and discount the US state (Pennsylvania Avenue 1600, Washington, USA) - yick)

- a navigation experience that has great promise, but is also untested outside of Nokia's core market. Nokia Gate5 has a big jump on google with their hybrid Nav (offline map data is easily updated via a PC) and I think this could be a boon in the US, where wireless service is spotty compared to many of Nokia's other markets. If only there were more Nokia handsets involved to give me more peace of mind, that there solution is better-tested here.

And that frames up the larger problem for Nokia in the US - no relationship with the wireless carriers and no market presence to ensure a positive 'geo-experience' with their maps and navigation software. Microsoft may help, but things aren't going to change overnight.

Visualizing your LinkedIn Contacts

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Saw this on Google reader - very interesting:

from NRGS Geospatial Blog

Visualizing your LinkedIn Contacts:
"LinkedIn. People like it and people hate it….or in some cases people have no idea what it is. I ignored the first few requests I had to join it – Now I try to add at least a contact a week.

For the uninitiated, It’s Facebook for business…Minus all the pictures of your friends kids and tales of drunken parties.

On the heels of Facebook’s map of users you have this:

Give it a shot at http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com"

a bigger HMI is still an HMI

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:30:00 +0000

I have to disagree with the telematics experts at Continental here - I don't think the answer to ease-of-use and minimal driver distraction is porting cell phone content to a larger screen on the car. it's still a distraction - maybe an easier-to-read distraction.

A better solution is already out there - audibal navigation with turn-by-turn directions and spoken street names accomplishes this for the most part. I'm more impressed with technology like Ford's Synch that makes this so much easier and less intrusive.

The interview on LBS Zone:

http://www.lbszone.com/content/view/7075/45/

Nokia Interview - Aiming for the perfect integrated mobile phone-vehicle navigation solution

"as Continental points out, displaying navigation information on a small and static mobile phone screen while inside a car is the wrong human machine interface (HMI)."

Buzz vs. Places - the first round

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:05:00 +0000

I wish Google had done better launching Buzz. It's an awful shame that they did such a poor job of pushing this out the door - literally shoving it down the throats of anyone that had a Google account. Despite the big brother-style default privacy settings that Google initially chose, Buzz has a lot of functionality, a lot of flexibility, and is wonderfully integrated with Google apps that I use on a daily basis. My top-3 reasons to like Buzz:

it's in your Gmail window - so easy to find or ignore
it's in Google maps mobile - so easy to add geo-aware posts and ID related places
public/private control - in twitter you have to do this with separate accounts. probably not as flexible as with Facebook places, but pretty straightforward

Ode To Latitude (of the Google kind)

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:01:00 +0000

I have a feeling Google Latitude isn't the most prolific location app on the web. It doesn't get nearly as much press as Foursquare, Places or the like -- and I have a terrible time getting any of my aging Gen-X friends to use it. I have a feeling that the idea of having Google track your location is just too Big Brother for most folks my age. Admidtedly, I have similar qualms -- especially if the combination of some terrorist event and a neo-neocon government would persuade Google to relinquish their records elesewhere.

But I really find Lattitude interesting and useful. For several reasons:

1) It's on my phone, and can be on most any phone
I have a Nokia device, so definitively outside of the North American smart-phone market. FB Places (and most every other location-sharing service) does not have a Symbian app. Google maps though works on everything . So I'm covered with Lattitude.

2) It works in the background - I don't have to interact with it or 'check-in' anywhere
This perhaps is the most important point: I don't have to do anything - no check-ins or notifications, etc. Latitude tracks and shows my position without my interaction. I don't need one more thing to do on my phone.

3) Privacy controls are comprehensive
I can share detailed or city-level positioning. I can shut it down anytime or hide it from anyone in particular. I know Buzz had a very bad, heavy-handed start with respect to privacy, but I'm relatively happy with Google now.

4) It's baked into other Google apps
Not another app to download or fool with - it's integrated with maps (along with Buzz) and I already use that on a pretty regular basis.

5) It creates data about my life that could indeed be helpful.
Disconcerting perhaps to some, I am just amazed at the data that Latitude is able to discern based on my daily positionings. Where is home, work and 'other' - and how frequently I spend time at the others. Plane flights with to/from airports - its all there. And as long as I believe that I am the only person with access to this info, I'm OK with that. Its a fairly accurate portait of my geo-life right now -- which admitedly is not terribly exciting due to the twins that arrived this summer :)

Virtualization and the Geo Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:15:00 +0000

Two events, happening within a month of each other - but on opposite sides of the continent, prompt me to write a little on the affect of hypervisors and cloud infrastructure on geospatial applications and platforms. For one, VMware has recently wrapped-up their annual "vFest" in San Francisco at VMworld. Highlights this year include the branding and consolidation of their PaaS offering called vFabric. vFabric, which is essentially their SpringSource acquisition, nicely packaged and ready-to-sell with the likes of IBM and Oracle. And VMware (and MS, and Citrix, etc.) all want us to have our own Platforms and Infrastructure - because we all like having our own washing machine inside the house. vFabric is intended to give us that option - to sit alongside offerings like vCloud that will hopefully sell well as MSPs. Offering both allows VMware to hedge their bets - laundromat or washing machine - you choose! (please please please buy the Maytag!)

VMworld segues nicely into this month's Geo Cloud event, where the good folks at Directions Media gather us together to contemplate how this brave, new cloudy world will shape our servers, desktops, globes and Earths. While we all know that our ArcGIS server will run on a VM, the question is how long will it run before bringing down the house. ESRI lets us know in no uncertain terms that you should fear the hypervisor -- give that piggy as much slop as you can afford to! To be sure, VMware is a little more optimistic, pointing out different options to get you near-physical performance by tweaking among other things your storage setup. (Go NAS or go home...)

Nevertheless, we'll most likely need a new, cloud- and hypervisor-aware set of technology to really take advantage of the new cloud offerings. The geospatial software community is prone to thinking we're special (remember that "unique," spatial database?) No doubt the performance requirements will remain substantial, but as with all trends, we'll see better compatibility emerge. I'm looking forward to the Geo Cloud event this month - the speakers come from a broad swath of geo and cloud backgrounds. I'm sure they'll help us figure it out!

(photo courtesy of Creative Commons/ Flickr: http://flic.kr/p/8tUwEZ )

FW: Public beta for Geographic Information Systems Q&A site - Area 51 - Stack Exchange

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:34:00 +0000

FYI - this was an interesting site I noticed earlier. Hoping that they get some traction...

From: Area 51 [mailto:do-not-reply@stackoverflow.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 4:52 PM
Subject: Public beta for Geographic Information Systems Q&A site - Area 51 - Stack Exchange

The new Geographic Information Systems Stack Exchange site is now open to the public!

After just 7 days in private beta, we've already got 234 users who have asked 113 questions and written 327 answers. We're off to a good start, and it's time to unleash this baby on the public and see if it flies. (Sorry; mixed metaphor.)

Tell all your friends, blog about it, tweet about it, and write the URL (http://gis.stackexchange.com) in chalk on the sidewalk in front of your neighbor's house. Or paint. No, never mind, better use chalk.

Most importantly, go to the site now and start earning reputation and badges! We'll see you there! Right now!

http://gis.stackexchange.com <-- that is the URL again
http://gis.stackexchange.com <-- it has not changed in the last 10 microseconds

All the best,

The Stack Exchange Team

Questions? Comments? Let us know on our feedback site. If you no longer want to receive mail from Stack Exchange Area 51, unsubscribe from all Area 51 emails with a single click.

SMS quotas in Chat

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:20:00 +0000

interesting concept @Google, with SMS quotas in Chat

Setting up Mail For Exchange on the Nokia N97 | Brightpoint GB Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:12:00 +0000

Just got a used N97 that I’ve been trying to setup for Exchange mail. Is fairly easy, except for one thing – if it’s used and already has an Exchange E-mail profile, you must delete the old one first. You cannot just change the credentials – you have to create a new profile from scratch J

http://blog.brightpointuk.co.uk/setting-mail-exchange-nokia-n97

Oh – and don’t let AT&T give you some BS about needing a 2GB DataPro plan, with Exchange option – the 200 MB plan works just fine. Really, they ARE just a big, dumb pipe :)

Love the free GPS navigation, with on-board maps from Ovi/Nokia/Gate7. More to come on that hopefully soon…

Free voice nav with MapQuest 4 Mobile

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 16:39:00 +0000

Free voice nav with MapQuest 4 Mobile: "

MapQuest 4 Mobile, the free navigation app from MapQuest, is now available with turn-by-turn voice prompts for iPhone and iPod Touch users.

#Where 2.0 - Day 2: Good Ideas but Lots of Questions

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:30:00 +0000

"What's different today? It's the smartphone. It is the hardware platform that offers the advantage of connectivity and interaction. It's the game-changer that is catapulting lots of ideas and lots of questions."

#Where 2.0 - Day 2: Good Ideas but Lots of Questions: "Where 2.0 Day 2 (or Day 1 given that the plenaries were held on Wednesday March 31) offered up great ideas and lots of questions:Should "government be a platform" to support the development of applications that allows citizens better acce...Read more"

Google's New Bike Directions: a quick Sunday-morning review

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:54:00 +0000

The bicycling community was in a tizzy this week, when Google announced their new directions for bikes - of course, in beta form, per Google's standard modus operandi. This is a big step forward for the bicycling-geo movement: it is a much more visible and mainstream site for routing with a bike. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Google got around to this particular transport mode. (can multi-modal be far behind??!) Prior bike-routing efforts included the OSM-based Ride the City, and of course a very famous proof-of-concept application developed on ESRI's ArcGIS Server a few years back.

Now, of course the directions are beta - what elese whould you expect from Google?! There is already some belly-aching already around the route quality I understand. So I decided to take a quick look at the routing quality myself, based my own personal experience...

In Chicago, I commuted about twice a week into the Loop: a quick look at Google's suggestions found them accurate for the most part. For the lakeshore route, I saw a couple of issues though:
1) their data was missing a connector at Buena and Lakeshore - without it, Google directs you 2 blocks north and out of your way to get on the trail

2) On the other hand, they do show a connection in the loop that I was unaware of: in the directions below, they show running the riverside walkway, which I never tried - (my concern there is how to get up from the river walk, to the surface streets)

For the quicker route down halstead-lincoln-wells, their directions were accurate, but I question the route time: 36 minutes. I think that's a bit on the fast side: I would give yourself 45 minutes, more if there's a headwind (wind, in Chicago?!)

Finally, I was pleasantly surprised by a routing suggestion at our new location in Reston. Now I am well aware of the OD bike trail that I've used to get to the office, but the connection getting onto the trail has been tricky. Google maps suggested a connection, highlighted below, that I never knew existed. (instead, I'd been off-roading it at Town Center Parkway, which has almost ended in mud-splattered disaster once or twice...)

So - a good start, Google. Compared to Ride The City, it is easier to use and faster on the map rendering. Directions however are a wash: some positive, some negative. It's all about the data, right?!

What is the holy grail?? Turn-by-turn GPS navigation for bikes. If you think about it, with online bike directions, we're basically at the MapQuest stage from a decade ago. We're really not going to get where we want until you get that sweet little nav voice telling you "in 100 feet, steer your bike right onto the lakeshore trail"

Adobe Lightroom

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:17:00 +0000

I was hoping not to get enamoured by this app - it is $300 by the way. Hopes dashed - it is very cool. Very fast (64-bit version even). And I'm very smitten.

Photoshop Elements 8 was on the other hand a huge disappointment - slow, and unstable on my 64 bit Windows 7 OS.

Workflow-wise, I'm not quite there yet, but learning and it's looking good so far.

Waze review

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 01:18:00 +0000

I've been using waze.com - a freeware turn-by-turn navigation app for smartphones. The company is based out of Israel I believe, where they appear to have a significant market share there.

The unique concept I think waze brings to the table is the nature of the street data: crowd-sourced.

Here's the skinny: I like the app. For the most part, because it's fast and easy to use. In about 15 seconds, while I'm walking out the door, I can program in my destination and hit 'go.' I challenge most PND users to do the same. The biggest reason it's fast: google search. I know i need to go to a UPS store? Hit 'search-google local search-"ups" and you're done.

It's not mission-critical worthy, yet: the street data is suspect at times, and there's an annoying habit to give guidance directions (turn) when the map on the screen obviously wants you to keep going straight. That, and it is a bit unstable on my Nokia N82 means it's not ready for all of your nav needs. However, its a good quick and dirty solution for the most part.

Did I mention the price? No - because there's not one :)

Here's a review - not many of them out there, it seems. I should do one!

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:19:00 +0000

Why would you choose Nokia ...

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:27:00 +0000

... to be your preferred platform, to share location-based info?

http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/18861/28/

Nothing new here - Google maps mobile / my maps can do all of this, AND public transit directions. The last bit alone sold me on google maps mobile.

Nokia Support Discussions - Re: Can't install Maps3.0 on N82 - Maps, Navigation and GPS - Nokia Support Discussions

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:47:00 +0000

Nokia Support Discussions - Re: Can't install Maps3.0 on N82 - Maps, Navigation and GPS - Nokia Support Discussions

Shared via AddThis

T-mobile charge plan

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:41:00 +0000

For some reason or other, I am OBSESSED with paying as little as I possibly can to my cell phone carrier. I generally see them for what they really don't want to be - dumb pipes. Give them as little of your hard-earned cash as you can :)

here's a good overview of T-mobile's rate charges

Nixle

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:02:00 +0000

I saw this service advertised on Facebook today. Although fairly limited in scope, and no provisioning yet for mobile location updates (hook into FireEagle or Lattitude, guys!), it appears to be the kind of thing that could have potential for significant safety & security impacts. I heard Joe Francica speak about the need for things like this at a location conference a while back. Add weather advisories (tornado warnings, etc.) and you've got yourself a real nice piece of work.
I signed-up - lets see what happens...

Mapumental

noreply@blogger.com (Kevin) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:35:00 +0000

a nice example of the kind of functionality that would be REALLY helpful on real-estate search sites...