Source: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1358

Source: http://where.blip.tv/file/2143974/ via @googlemaps

The Department of City Planning's Bytes of the Big Apple family of data, applications and base map files now has an RSS feed of new product releases and notices about existing products.

Beta version of OASIS

The beta version of OASIS is now online and the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center is looking for feedback.

A video tutorial of the site's new features is available at http://www.urbanresearchmaps.org/oasis/tutorial.htm and a summary of how the OASIS maps have changed is located at http://www.urbanresearchmaps.org/oasis/about.html.

via the GISMO Yahoo! Group.

So far I've read the following articles:

• Two Essays: "Simulacra and Science Fiction" and "Ballard's Crash" by Jean Baudrillard
• "'The Closely Reasoned Technological Story': The Critical History of Hard Science Fiction" by Gary Westfahl

Best YouTube comment, by Mysanthropyc: This film is a documentary, by the way. This really happened. This is how we won the Cold War.

Source: YouTube

Simulacrum (plural: -cra), from the Latin simulacrum which means "likeness, similarity," is first recorded in the English language in the late 16^th century, used to describe a representation of another thing, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god; by the late 19^th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original. Philosopher Frederic Jameson offers photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, where a painting is created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real. Other art forms that play with simulacra include Trompe l'oeil, Pop Art, Italian neorealism and the French New Wave.

Read the entire article

Source: Future of Web Apps Expo

This is an impressive presentation! More than just Google Maps (Andrew didn't choose the title), it should be called "Evolved Maps, deconstructed."

Andrew begins with a brief history of mapping, including African story mapping and Polynesian navigation maps. Along the way he touches on the intersection of geography and meaning (psychogeography), slippy maps & spinny globes. Turner's Introduction to Neogeography (O'Reilly) is worth checking out if you haven't already.

So where next? How to do real rich geographic applications?

In computing, the Internet of Things refers to a network of objects, such as household appliances. It is often a self-configuring wireless network. The concept of the internet of things is attributed to the original Auto-ID Center, founded in 1999 and based at the time in MIT.

The idea is as simple as its application is difficult. If all cans, books, shoes or parts of cars are equipped with minuscule identifying devices, daily life on our planet will undergo a transformation. Things like running out of stock or wasted products will no longer exist as we will know exactly what is being consumed on the other side of the globe. Theft will be a thing of the past as we will know where a product is at all times. The same applies to parcels lost in the post.

If all objects of daily life, from yogurt to an airplane, are equipped with radio tags, they can be identified and managed by computers in the same way humans can. The next generation of Internet applications (IPv6 protocol) would be able to identify more objects than IPv4 which is currently in use. This system would therefore be able to instantaneously identify any kind of object.

The Internet of objects should encode 50 to 100,000 billion objects and follow the movement of those objects. Every human being is surrounded by 1,000 to 5,000 objects.

Read the entire article

David will talk about the themes of his new book, Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (New Press). Viral Spiral is the first comprehensive history of the "free culture" movement and "sharing economy" that is empowering ordinary people, disrupting markets and changing politics and culture. Bollier will talk about the rise of free and open source software, Creative Commons licenses, the new forms of non-market creativity (Wikipedia, blogs, remix music, videos) as well as fascinating innovations in open science, open education and "open business models."

Monday, 18 May 2009. 7pm
Courant Institute
251 Mercer Street (Warren Weaver Hall). Room 109
The public is welcome (photo id required).

Christy Gurga (theMechanism) will present different perspectives on formatting type online and demonstrate methods you can use right away. While only basic CSS knowledge is required, Christy will cover advanced techniques that are applicable for front-end developers of any level.

You'll learn how to establish the CSS foundation for your type using relative font sizes and ems, implement text replacement practices for specially formatted headers and polish your typography with extra detail.

16 April 2009 . 7:00 pm
theMechanism
440 9th Avenue 8th Floor
New York, NY 10001 [map]

RSVP now!

Please note—This meetup is currently full and the waiting list is quite long. If you know you won't be able to make it, please update your RSVP.

Please contact theMechanism if you'd like to present at a future New York Web Standards meetup.