Brady Forrest

photo_brady_m.jpgBrady Forrest is Chair for O'Reilly'sWhere 2.0 and Emerging Technology conferences. Additionally, he co-Chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Berlin and NYC. Brady writes for O'Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.

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    Brady Forrest是O'Reilly的Where 2.0会议新技术会议主席。另外他也是Web 2.0博览会在旧金山、柏林和纽约的联合主席。Brady在O'Reilly Radar上写博客跟踪技术变革。他以前为微软的Live Search工作(微软收购了MongoMusic他也来到了微软)。Brady住在西雅图,在那里他构造Burning Man上的汽车,运营Ignite。你可以通过Truffle Honey看他的Web旅行。

    GIW Day Five: We End with Lansing and Boulder

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-03-05

    Today is the last day of Global Ignite Week. We are still pulling together the number of speakers and attendees, but with over 60 Ignites in one week we know it was a lot. The videos are starting to roll, but in the meantime you can check out some of the slides that are being posted to Slideshare. I've embedded the slides fro Amber Case's excellent talk on parabolic geometry.

    If you still need a fix you can watch videos on the IgniteShow or streams from Ignite Lansing (stream) or Ignite Boulder.

    GIW Day Four: Bangalore, Boston, Jakarta, NYC, and Seattle

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-03-04

    The fourth day of Global Ignite Week is the strongest. There are 31 Ignites happening today around the world. I'll be hosting Ignite Seattle tonight.

    We have already posed the first videos from Global Ignite Week. First up is an Ignite talk on the creation of OK Go's latest video featuring a Rube Goldberg machine. It's done Adam Sadowsky, the designer of Rube Goldberg machine. The video took months of preparation and 20 consecutive 18 hour days.

    Ignite Ann Arbor
    Ignite Baltimore
    Ignite Bangalore
    Ignite Boston
    Ignite Brisbane
    Ignite Bristol
    Ignite Cardiff
    Ignite Denmark
    Ignite Fort Collins
    Ignite Hamburg

    (the other 21 are after the jump)

    Ignite Houston
    Ignite Iowa City
    Ignite Jakarta
    Ignite Lisbon
    Ignite Liverpool
    Ignite Lyon
    Ignite Minneapolis
    Ignite Missoula
    Ignite Monterrey
    Ignite Silicon Valley
    Ignite Nashville
    Ignite New Haven
    Ignite NYC
    Ignite Oporto
    Ignite Italia
    Ignite Salem
    Ignite Salt Lake
    Ignite Seattle
    Ignite Tampa Bay
    Ignite Tulsa

    GIW Day Three: Bangkok, Beijing, Brussels, Budapest, Dallas, Toronto, Cincinnatti, Raleigh and PDX

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-03-03

    201003030123

    There are 13 Ignites happening on 3/3 (the daily total will peak on Thursday with >30 Ignites). The very first one starts soon in Bangkok at 6AM EST (for those of us in the US). Yesterday, I attended Ignite SMX in Santa Clara . Matt Cutts talked about Google's newly released SEO Report Card. Danny Sullivan talked about the history Google's logo doodles.

    Ignite Montreal reported the following about their inaugural event: "14 speakers, 217 attendees, and we even raised $2000 for charity (to be split between Doctors without Borders & the Red Cross in Haiti)." Ignite SF was sold out.

    On Tuesday we also had out first sets of streaming Ignites. I watched a bit of the Ignite Alberque. Ignite SMX and SF were also broadcasting. Tonight I'll be attending Portland; it will be streaming. The streams will be available on the Ignite video site.

    Here are today's events:

    Ignite Bangkok
    Ignite Beijing
    Ignite Brussels
    Ignite Budapest
    Ignite Cincinnati
    Ignite Dallas
    Ignite Madrid
    Ignite Portland
    Ignite Raleigh
    Ignite Sacramento
    Ignite Sebastopol
    Ignite Toronto
    Ignite Waterloo

    GIW Day Two: SF, Denver, New Mexico, Philly, Sydey, Melbourne, Montreal, Manila, Princeton and More

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-03-02

    crowdeye ignite traffic

    Global Ignite Week (GIW) is in full swing. Yesterday there were 7 events and today there are 13. Thursday of this week has over 30 events scheduled. As you can see from this Crowdeye graphic there are a lot of people talking about GIW.

    The very first Ignite of the day will be starting very shortly in Autralia.

    Ignite New Mexico
    Ignite Anchorage
    Ignite Casablanca
    Ignite Denver
    Ignite London
    Ignite Manila
    Ignite Melbourne
    Ignite Montreal
    Ignite Philly
    Ignite Princeton
    Ignite Bay Area
    Ignite Sydney
    Ignite Wellington

    Just in case you aren't familiar with Ignite: from March 1-5 there will be >65 Ignite events happening around the world. Ignite is an opportunity for geeks to share their passions and ideas with local peers. Each speaker gets 20 slides that each auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of just 5 minutes. The result is bite-size chunks of information that inform the crowd on new topics. There are lots of Ignite videos online.

    Where 2.0: Early Registration Ending & Ignite Where

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-03-01

    Where 2.0, our mapping and geolocation conference, is at the end of March in San Jose and early registration is ending tonight. We are also opening the selection process for Ignite Where.

    Where has a full program. We've got a number of great thinkers returning. We are also welcoming first-timers like Chris Vein (San Francisco's CIO), Jeremy Stoppelman (Yelp), Blaise Aguera y Arcas (Bing Maps), Josh Williams (Gowalla), Walter Scott (DigitalGlobe) and Michael Arrington (Techcrunch). And returning for the first time in several years is Tim O'Reilly. Tim and Michael Arrington will discuss their views on the mobile and location industry.

    Today we will start accepting submissions for Ignite Where. Ignite Where will happen on 3/30 as the conference kick-off. Speakers will get a discount to the conference.

    GIW Day One: Germany, Los Angeles, Savannah, Milwaukee and Manchester

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-03-01

    Global Ignite Week (GIW) is kicking off today in Germany! From March 1-5 there will be >65 Ignite events happening around the world. Ignite is an opportunity for geeks to share their passions and ideas with local peers. Each speaker gets 20 slides that each auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of just 5 minutes. The result is bite-size chunks of information that inform the crowd on new topics. There are lots of Ignite videos online.

    Mashable has a fun piece with 10 Reasons Why You Should Attend an Ignite this week. Here are the Ignites that are happening today. The very first Ignite of the week will be in Germany and the day will end in LA:

    Ignite Berlin
    Ignite Frankfurt
    Ignite LA
    Ignite Manchester
    Ignite Munich
    Ignite Savannah
    Ignite Milwaukee

    Global Ignite Week is sponsored by Bing and Facebook (and supported by many others). You can find an Ignite near you or start your own.

    Lessons From Haiti Will Aid Chile

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-02-27


    google chile relief apps

    Earlier today Chile experienced a massive earthquake (you can see images of the damage on The BIg Picture). Now, just hours after the event online disaster relief sites are being spun up to aid the survivors. These are all variations on sites that were created to help Haiti survivors.

    Google quickly sprang into action reusing many Haiti built-tools:

    Crisis Response - This serves as a portal for all of Google's efforts. From here you can donate to victims, track the news and view the latest maps.

    Person Finder: Chile Earthquake - Built on Google's AppEngine, this app aims to let people enter and retrieve information about people on the ground. It has an API and rich search functonality. News organizations agreed to update Google's application in an attempt to create a central repository (to avoid the conflicting data issues that happened in the wake of Katrina).

    Mapmaker Download - Google's Mapmaker allows you to map the world from home. It then releases the data under licensing that enables NGOs and relief organizations to use it ( though many find the wording of the license quite confusing their data is actively used).

    The Crisis Mappers have also reacted quickly. They have launched chile.ushahidi.com. IN Haiti the Ushahidi portal took in tens of thousands of text messages and plotted them on a map for NGOs and relief workers. The Crisis Mappers had teams working around the clock to convert the texts to english. The team is already working to set up shortcodes for the SMS service in Chile. Ushahidi uses Open Street Maps and will be relying on its network of volunteers to build out those maps.

    I have written about how these disaster-relief applications were used in Haiti and the people behind them. We are now seeing the emergence of the disastertech platform. As Jesse Robbins says it a pattern of reuse. Each disaster will build upon the previous platforms.

    If you want to help Donate, help out online, go to a CrisisCamp (there's one happening in DC today) or spend some time working on the maps of Chile at Mapmaker or Open Street Map.

    Global Ignite Week: Starts Monday with 65 Cities, 6 Continents, 500 Speakers over 5 Days

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-02-24

    giw logo

    From March 1-5 there will be ~65 Ignite events happening around the world. Ignite is an opportunity for geeks to share their passions and ideas with local peers. Each speaker gets 20 slides that each auto-advance after 15 seconds for a total of just 5 minutes. The result is bite-size chunks of information that inform the crowd on new topics. There are lots of Ignite videos online.

    Ignite has spread with very little prompting on our part. Almost all of the ~65 cities participating next week were self-started and community organized. As Tim said, "Self-organization enables amazing scale". Global Ignite Week is definitely and example of that happening. Anyone can throw an ignite -- they just need a laptop, a stage, ideas and a community. To be successful they will also need the backing of that community and in most cases the community has come together to make the event happen.
    bing giw map

    This week has taken a lot of coordination and planning. The independent Ignite organizers have all shown a great willingness to band together to make this happen. It's been really impressive.

    Next week you can participate by attending one or watching them streaming online. In the following weeks we'll get >500 videos from all of the different events (events often have ~15 talks). I will personally be attending the Ignites at SMX West (3/2), Bay Area (also 3/2), and Portland (3/3). I'll be hosting Ignite Seattle on 3/4.

    Here are the events happening on Monday (on Thursday there will be over 30 Ignites).

    Monday, March 1st

    Ignite Berlin

    Ignite Frankfurt
    Ignite LA
    Ignite Manchester
    Ignite Munich
    Ignite Nairobi
    Ignite Savannah
    Ignite Milwaukee

    I've included the whole list after the jump. They are listed by date. Attend if you can.

    Tuesday, March 2nd
    Ignite New Mexico
    Ignite Anchorage
    Ignite Casablanca
    Ignite Denver
    Ignite London
    Ignite Manila
    Ignite Melbourne
    Ignite Montreal
    Ignite Philly
    Ignite Princeton
    Ignite Bay Area
    Ignite Sydney
    Ignite Wellington

    Wednesday, March 3rd
    Ignite Bangkok
    Ignite Beijing
    Ignite Brussels
    Ignite Budapest
    Ignite Cincinnati
    Ignite Dallas
    Ignite Madrid
    Ignite Portland
    Ignite Raleigh
    Ignite Sacramento
    Ignite Sebastopol
    Ignite Toronto
    Ignite Waterloo

    Thursday, March 4th
    Ignite Ann Arbor
    Ignite Baltimore
    Ignite Bangalore
    Ignite Boston
    Ignite Brisbane
    Ignite Bristol
    Ignite Cardiff
    Ignite Denmark
    Ignite Fort Collins
    Ignite Hamburg
    Ignite Houston
    Ignite Iowa City
    Ignite Jakarta
    Ignite Lisbon
    Ignite Liverpool
    Ignite Lyon
    Ignite Minneapolis
    Ignite Missoula
    Ignite Monterrey
    Ignite Silicon Valley
    Ignite Nashville
    Ignite New Haven
    Ignite NYC
    Ignite Oporto
    Ignite Italia
    Ignite Salem
    Ignite Salt Lake
    Ignite SMX West
    Ignite Seattle
    Ignite Tampa Bay
    Ignite Tulsa

    Friday, March 5th
    Ignite Boulder
    Ignite Lansing

    Some weren't able to get their venues next week so there will still be Ignites happening throughout the month. Tomorrow is Ignite Bend 4 and a bonus one on 3/11/2010, Ignite Novato

    Blaise Aguera y Arcas' TED Talk on Augmented Maps

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-02-18

    Blaise Aguera y Arcas (creator of PhotoSynth, founder of Seadragon and now Architect of Bing Maps) gave a talk at TED last week. In it he showed off some of the latest Bing Maps has to offer. He demoed the fluid zooming capabilities based on Blaise's own Seadragon technology and the 3D capabilities provided by Silverlight. He also demoed how images and live video can be overlay Photosynth-style on top of the map (these were both made possible by the mapping application platform that was recently added to Bing Maps).

    bing map flickr page

    The app platform is how Bing includes Twitter, Flickr and geolocated blog content. The screen-capture above shows a Flickr photo overlaid on the Bing's Streetview product. Google just released a similar product the other week. Both companies are taking advantage of Flickr's huge repository of geolocated photos. In January Blaise told me that the apps are built in C# and that the API is only available internally -- for now. There's a great list of the various map apps on the Bing Maps Blog (including one for viewing before/after imagery of Haiti and for following the Olympic games) .

    Blaise will be speaking at Where 2.0. The three day conference runs March 30- April 1 in San Jose. Radar readers can register with this discount code for 25% whr10pcb.. Early registration ends March 1st.

    And here's how to actually get your photos included (possibly):

    And, now you want to know how you can get your photos up there. In order for your photos to potentially appear in the Streetside Photos Technical Preview, you’ll first need to setup an account on Flickr. Once you get your Flickr account set up, create a folder of images and upload them. Now, you’ll need to set your images to a specific set of Creative Common settings that allow us to consume these images with your permission. So, under the photo you’ll see “Additional Information.” By default all images are set to “All rights reserved” which means it’s your photo and we can’t use it. To change this, you need to click the edit link and change the settings to either (1) Attribution Creative Commons, (2), Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons or (3) Attribution-NoDerivs Creative Commons. Finally, ensure your images are geotagged. This will help us identify where to begin associating your image with our Streetside photos.

    Where 2.0 Mapping : Mobile : Local

    Brady Forrest @brady 2010-02-16

    where 2010 logo

    The Where 2.0 conference program is almost complete. The focus is on the tech industry's advances in Mapping, Mobile and Local. Each of these areas are being treated equally and each will have its own afternoon track. Coming back this year we have great speakers such as John Hanke (Google), Jack Dangermond (ESRI), Ryan Sarver (Twitter), Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) and Dennis Crowley (Foursquare).

    Mapping

    Maps have moved from flat and static creations to rich representations of the world. And now maps are moving to realtime. The idea of constantly-updated community maps are now the norm and the modifications are constant. The base data of the map you are looking at could have been updated in the past couple of days in time those updates will be instantaneous. The data layered on maps has also changed. No longer is it expected that data will be siloed or have restricted access. In addition to being realtime data is increasingly open and available for all to use. This is especially true when a community has been called on to create a dataset for an application. The combination of almost-realtime maps and open data have enabled mobile applications

    Some mind-blowing talks in Mapping include Blaise (the creator of Photosynth and Chief Architect of Bing Maps) talk on The Map As An Information Ecology, Digital Globe's CEO Walter Scott talk on satellite imagery, and a collaborative talk on Haiti: Crisismapping the Earthquake. We're also going to have conversations with Google Earth's John Hanke (about PlaceRank, the move to mobile and Google Place among other things) and Tim O'Reilly will talk with San Francisco's CTO Chris Vein (about DataSF and other geo initiatives of the city).

    Mobile
    In two short years location-awareness has become an expected feature of a mobile device. This is entirely due to the increasingly open development available on smart phones today. The App Store and other mobile market places are filled with location-aware apps. Gone are the days when one could easily slip away, or get lost. Advanced consumers now expect their todo list to know where are they are (even if their (i)phone can't use a background process to take advantage of these apps). Location-awareness has brought increased attention to new mapping data (and a big push towards 3D), new interfaces (such as augmented reality) and the occasional awkward social situation.

    Some choice sessions in this area include Ryan Sarver, the Director of Twitter's Platform, talk on Geostreams, GDGT's Ryan Block's Locative Devices panel, Josh Williams of Gowalla's talk on Moving People with Pixels, Dennis Crowley of Foursquare's talk on using g Jason Grigsby's talk on hybrid mobile apps, and of course, several talks on Augmented Reality. In mobile we'll also look at mobile intersects with machine learning and how computer vision and apps like Google Goggles will change the mobile experience.

    Local
    When I stand on a corner I can now know more about it than ever before. I can immediately look up what businesses are nearby and where my friends prefer to go. Businesses are increasingly realizing that their online reputation (via local search and sites like Yelp) will affect foot traffic as well. A consumer can quickly and easily evaluate a store moments before stepping in.

    People talking in this area are Yelp's CEO Jeremy Stoppleman, Danny Sullivan is going to talk with Local Search Engines, and MG Siegler will be examining how social mobile services affect the local space.

    We'll be discussing these Mapping, Mobile and Local trends with Google and Yahoo! (and others) at Where 2.0. The three day conference runs March 30- April 1 in San Jose. Radar readers can register with this discount code for 25% whr10pcb.

    Twitter Acquires GeoAPI: Now a Messaging AND Location Platform

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-12-23

    200912231519

    Twitter has announced the acquisition of Mixer Labs the creators of GeoAPI. GeoAPI is a location services platform. They have been collecting data (like Flickr, Foursquare, YouTube, Weatherbug and of course Twitter) and made it query-able via their API. For any location you could reverse geocode it and for any place you can get the lat/long. Finally, the cloud service also allowed for applications to create objects and annotations.

    Simply put this drives home the importance that Twitter puts on location. The platform team is headed by Ryan Sarver, a recruit from Skyhook Wireless (the company behind your iPhone's wifi location). The company was founded by Xooglers. I am sure that helped.

    First and foremost, it will help with Twitter's current GeoTagging API. The new API accepts a location with each tweet. Twitter already has Trending Topics and we've always pictured them having Trending Topics via geography. Now they will be better prepared to add more context with the addition of these other data sources. Twitter will also be gaining a scalable geoplatform to that can support ad hoc queries.

    Second, does this herald Twitter's moves into being a location provider? At Sarver's previous company they had a location-brokering service called MyLoki that never gained ubiquity. Twitter has the opportunity to become a major location broker. Twitter currently has a very simple on/off switch for location. To become a full-fledged consumer location service (like Latitude or Fire Eagle) they will need to build in more controls.

    200912231513

    Finally, does this herald a new services business model for Twitter? GeoAPI was a cloud service aimed at developers. The business model is to charge per X thousand of queries per day. So far their product pages are still online and they are listed as "All your location needs in one API. A service from Twitter" Twitter charges for access to the firehose and they already have 50,000 applications using their API. Will this become an additional service that those developers can pay for?

    This sets us up for a very interesting year in locations services. Google Latitude is due to release a full-fledged API (as opposed to their sneaky one). Facebook may actually wake-up to the potential of location services. I can't picture Apple not wanting to take advantage of all those location-aware iPhones with a new MobileMe service. Will these services work together? Location doesn't have to be zero-sum game and I'll put my money on the players who don't treat it as such.

    Playing With Foursquare Data

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-12-21

    Foursquare is the new Dodgeball. Which is to say that it is my (and many other people's) method for tracking where we go (and in most cases our social activities). On a daily basis I use the iPhone app to announce some of my whereabouts to friends. I share specifics selectively, but in aggregate my information is shared publicly. (Disclosure: Foursquare is an OATV investment)

    Foursquare has a lot of data about me and I willingly give it more most days. Foursquare lets me check-in to a specific location. I earn badges based on where I check-in, how often, and with whom for the various cities I am in. In addition to letting me share my movements with friends I am building up a history of places -- not just points. Foursquare uses OAuth to let me share these places.

    brady foursquare map

    WhereDoYouGo is an ITP project that creates a custom-colored heat map of your Foursquare haunts. You can generate maps for any city you've used Foursquare in. It was written in python and runs on Google App Engine. The team also acknowledges the following projects: Mike Knapp's OAuth library, the Google Maps API, the gheat-ae (and gheat) Google Code projects, jQuery, and Blueprint CSS.
    (via Gizmodo)

    200912211136

    Last Night's Checkins, created by the seemingly ubiquitous Barbarian Group, sends me a mail (almost) every day listing the previous day's venues. I diligently fill in a brief note under each checkin about what I did and mail it back. I never have to visit the site. I love apps that interact with me only as much as necessary (Tripit is another great example of an email using webapp). I had signed up for this as a lark after reading about it on Techcrunch, but now find it to be a useful tool.

    Mobzombies is a soon-to-be-released iPhone game (I first played it several years ago on custom hardware) . The game overlays a virtual game level complete with obstacles and zombies to chase you. You can save your character by running around (the game uses the accelerometer to track your movements). The Foursquare tie-in is not intuitive, but is pretty clever. The number of checkins influences the number of zombies spawned -- more friends equals more zombies. Sometimes there are advantages to drinking alone. The app has been submitted to the App Store.

    Foursquare isn't just a geo platform. One of the things that sets it apart is its use of game mechanics to incentivize people to keep using it. The more you use it the more badges you get. Soon Foursquare will open their platform and allow custom badges to be created. Until then to get a custom badge you'll have to use Waze, the only external service that has its own Foursquare badge. The pairing makes sense as Waze uses game mechanics to get people to use their GPS program (Radar post).

    You can see all of the current Foursquare API apps (like place-ranking site SocialGreat) in their developer portal.

    Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare and Dodgeball, will be speaking about the use of game mechanics at Where 2.0 this March.

    Global Ignite Week: 40+ Ignites Coming Next March

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-12-16

    GIW logo global ignite week

    Just over three years ago, Bre Pettis and I threw a geek night in our home town. We called it Ignite Seattle. About 200 people joined us for a hectic night of geek contests, five-minute talks, and beer. I've been hosting them ever since--we just held our 8th Ignite Seattle and had over 700 people in attendance. Since that first amazing night in 2006, Ignite has spread to over 60 cities, bringing together thousands of geeks and generating hundreds of videos of Ignite talks.

    This March, it gets much, much bigger. O'Reilly is launching the first-ever Global Ignite Week, to bring together as many local Ignites as possible. As of right now there are almost 40 Ignites scheduled from March 1st through the 4th. The Ignites will span the globe and you'll be able to watch them streaming online every day. So far, Global Ignite Week is represented on 4 continents and 9 countries. Our goal is to have participation from all 7 continents (Nairobi is looking good, and we're working on Antarctica).

    I'm happy to say that Bing has stepped up as our first sponsor, helping us make Global Ignite Week possible.

    If you'd like to be apart of Global Ignite Week (either by throwing an event or as a sponsor) contact us via Ignite@oreilly.com. Here are the participating cities (so far).

    Ann Arbor, MI
    Atlanta, GA
    Auckland, NZ
    Austin, TX
    Baltimore, MD
    Bangalore, India
    Bay Area, CA
    Boston, MA
    Boulder, CO
    Brussels, Belgium
    Calgary, Canada
    Cardiff, UK
    Columbus, OH
    Denver, CO
    Fort Collins, CO
    Los Angeles, CA
    Lansing, MI
    Lisbon, Portugal
    Madrid, Portugal
    Missoula, MT
    Montreal, Canada
    Nashville, TN
    New Haven, CT
    New York, NY
    Paris, France
    Philadelphia, PA
    Portland, OR
    Pune, India
    Raleigh, NC
    Salt Lake, UT
    San Diego, CA
    Sault Ste. Marie, Canada
    Seattle, WA
    Sebastopol, CA
    Sydney, Australia
    Toronto, Canada
    Waterloo, Canada
    502/Louisville, KY

    Visualizing and Categorizing the 911 Wikileaks Data Set

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-12-10

    wikileaks

    On November 25th, Wikileaks released 500,000 text pager intercepts from the 24 hours surrounding the horrific 9/11 attacks. The personal, corporate and governmental come from the Washington D.C. and New York City areas. These can be found on their own subdomain at http://911.wikileaks.org/ and are released under the CC-BY-SA license.

    As with the AOL search logs and the Enron email archives this data set will be examined and visualized. I am sure that the hope of the will be to gain an understanding of the thoughts and feelings of the people on the ground. Two applications have already been created.

    911pagers is a site devoted to searching and community annotations of the corpus. You can see the theoretical communications with Guiliani (New York's Mayor at the time), random messages or the recommended . Built on Google Appengine, 911pagers will add ratings, timelines and keywords. You can track their progress via @911pagers.

    911 text intercepts word viz
    The second project is an analysis of the frequency of 100 phrases such "flights cancelled" and "call home". Jeff Clark selected only the content from 8AM to 8PM on 9/11. He created a set of timeline graphs for each phrase (above). After the jump I've embedded a timeseries video of these phrases.

    Here's the video:

    Pager Data from 9/11 - Phrase Cloud Visualization from Jeff Clark on Vimeo.

    Jeff says this about the video:

    This is a visualization of text phrases taken from pager data during September 11th, 2001 from 8am until 8pm. The larger the text the more frequently it was used during the 12 hour period. Text appears bright during the times of high usage and fades away otherwise. Color hues are cosmetic.

    GWT Now With SpeedTracer

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-12-09

    speedtracer google

    Google is releasing v2 of GWT (pronounced "Gwit") tonight at a Campfire One in Mountain View. The open-source Google Web Toolkit enables developers to code Ajax web apps in Java. This latest release is focused on speed (just like the latest iPhone) and improved dev-designer collaboration.

    I was on a call with Bruce Johnson and Andy Bowers to learn more about the release. There are three new major features being released tonight.

    Of the three SpeedTracer (screenshot above) seems to have the greatest implications. It is a separate application that allows developers to watch "where time goes" as a page is being loaded. The example Johnson gave was a recent re-write of the AdWords Campaign Manager. There's a 100-row table that is a part of the application. In the first iteration the table took several seconds to load. Using SpeedTracer they realized that the order of the UI statements was delaying DOM translation. They changed a few lines and the table loadtime dropped to half a second.

    SpeedTracer only works with Chrome. Google is making a play for the developer. And by focusing on developer tools they are likely to succeed. The speed improvements should translate to other browsers and in reality they have to. Focusing on speed improvements for a currently-minority browser would not win over many devs.

    Code Splitting, the second feature, is a way of segmenting out non-essential portions of an Ajax app for future, as-needed download. The example given was that for a mail app you don't always need to be able to write or the settings tab. You could download the code for those functions on demand. Wave apparently uses this functionality to keep their loadtimes down.

    Finally, UIBinder is aimed at improving developer-designer workflow. It allows designers to hand over HTML elements in an XML Template. They can also use GWT Widget library for certain elements. Developers can easily plug their application into this XML presentation layer. This is a far cry from being able to use Photoshop mockups to generate code ala Flash Catalyst, but if the design department knows HTML it should be very handy.

    GWT is increasingly being used on Google's own applications. It was quite famously used to make Wave. It is also used on the revamped Orkut (I hadn't been there in over a year, it has had quite a makeover), AdWords, Google Squared (labs), Google Profiles, and Moderator (20% project). DoubleClick is being converted to GWT and a lot of Google's internal infrastructure is built using it. Quite notably some of Google's mobile app have been built with it: Mobile Maps and Latitude for the iPhone. It's great to see Google putting it's money where it's mouth is (quite literally with AdWords), but I really wonder if we'll ever see GMail powered by GWT.

    In the future I'd be surprised if there wasn't increased support for HTML5 elements such as Canvas. I also expect that they'll add explicit support for mobile app. Of course, using GWT doesn't block a developer from using non-GWT functionality, but having explicit support always helps.

    Ignite Seattle on 12/1 (tomorrow): iPhone Apps, Ben Franklin and Rubik's Cube

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-11-30

    The 8th Ignite Seattle is this Tuesday, 12/1. We've got an amazing set of speakers and fun opening activity. We are once again at the King Cat Theatre in Downtown Seattle.

    Doors open at 7PM. The contest will start at 7:30 and the talks will begin at 8:30. You can track Ignite Seattle updates at http://igniteseattle.com.

    Here is our list of awesome speakers:

    Benjamin FranklinIntellect: without an outlet in the world

    Do we remain in awe of Ben Franklin’s capacity and accomplishments or do we take on his mantle of “Doing the best with what we have” and look at our issues and do something about them? Better yet, WWBFD? [Brady's note: This is going to be a presentation by someone done as Benjamin Franklin. You can learn more on his site.

    Wendy Chisholm (wendyabc) Challenge your assumptions. Innovate. Change the world.

    Most designers are taught to design for the average user and as a society we hold many assumptions about the characteristics of those users. However, products are used in unexpected ways and by unexpected audiences.

    Sarah Schacht (sarahschacht) Overcoming Cacophony: Making Gov 2.0 Work for You

    What can you do, as an individual to make your voice heard in the lawmaking process and what tools do you use? Learn how to make your email float to the top of a pile of thousands, how to stand out from the crowd, and how to do so without losing your sanity.

    Eugene LiniPhoning my way to retirement, $.70 at a time

    I want to be rich. Steve Jobs promised it. App after app, the Apple gods got angry with me. Until finally, with nothing but an accelerometer, two dozen naked women, and the nation of Japan, I had a story to tell.


    Scott Berkun (berkun) Everything you need to know about philosophy in 5 minutes

    I’m the sad owner of a philosophy degree. I’m convinced i can give people a better education in philosophy (and make them realize how much they already know and love philosophy) in 5 minutes than I got in 4 years.

    Jason Carmel (defenestrate99) Defamation and Twitter - A Practical Guide to Covering Your Ass

    I will provide a few practical ways that might protect your right as an American to roast the bejeezus out of the people of the world, without getting sued into oblivion.

    Jeremy Bingham (captain_tenille) An Astronomical Viewing Shelter on the Cheap

    Using your telescope in the city can be frustrating with all the stray light all over the place. You can’t do much about the skyglow, but you can shield yourself from stray light sources nearby.

    Richard BaileyMore blink in less time? Manufacturing electronics for art projects.

    The Groovik Cube required a custom surface mount circuit board for each of the 56 facets. Early estimates showed that this would require well over 150 hours of time to accomplish. The Groovik electronics team created an assembly line and produced 90 boards in one day.

    Mike TykaCubes in the Sky

    We went through about 10 designs each trying to achieve the same goal of somehow raising the 15×15x15ft Groovik’s Cube, weighing near 4000 lbs 10 feet in the air within a fairly tight budget.

    Arianna O’Dell (arianna) How to Sneak into Bars

    I am a 19 year old student at the University of Washington. Most people don’t know this because they never ask. I’ve been attending networking events all summer and most people think I’m out of school and already graduated.

    Greg Dunlap (heyrocker) How to not suck at pinball

    Pinball is hard. Luckily, getting better at pinball, not great but respectable, is actually pretty easy.

    p>Jon Bell (jonbell) Usability Beyond the Classroom

    It wasn’t until I spent a year at frog design as a developer that I realized everything I learned in art school was either wrong, outdated, or only told half the story.

    Norman Guadagno (thinktone) Amazon Archaeology OR Swimming In Our Own Clickstream

    Every time we buy from Amazon, we give their algorithms a little more information about ourselves (or at least the things we buy). But, do we have our own algorithms to help us make sense of purchase after purchase across time? What can we learn about ourselves through the things we buy?

    Peter Wilson (peterwil) Google vs. Microsoft: An Insiders Guide

    Google vs. Microsoft: where will the battles be fought, how will each companies strategies and blind-spots impact the outcomes, and who will win? The speaker spent 9 years at Microsoft and 4 at Google, and so thinks he knows something about this…

    Ron Burk (ronburk) Three Strange Definitions of Computer Programming Legendary computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once said: “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” But if programming is not about the computers, what IS it about?

    Veronica Sopher (Shih_Wei) Jewelry: It’s What Geeks Know!

    Elizabeth Taylor and Ivanka Trump may have their own jewelry lines, but it’s geeks like you/us who are the experts in jewelry. Yes, it takes a real geek to know jewelry, cut through the salesperson’s bs, and shop like a pro. Let me show you why.

    Dylan Wilbanks (dylanw) Everyone Core Dumps: Death and Loss For The Geek

    We are all going to die. But handling loss is something geeks struggle with. Learn three things you should do when a friend dies, three things you shouldn’t do, and ways you can preserve your existence online.

    Tonight: Radar/Ignite/Laughing Squid Meetup in Philadelphia

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-11-23

    triumph

    Scott Beale of Laughing Squid and I are going to be in the Philadelphia area today. We want to meet up with people while in town, so we're having a Drinkup at Triumph Brewing Company in the Old City area of Center City starting at 7PM. Facebook has the details. If you are involved in Ignite Philly, read Radar or Laughing Squid, or are doing cool things with technology then Scott and I would love to meet you.

    Ignite NYC on 11/16: Gov 2.0, Body Hacks, and Hi-Tech Craft

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-11-15

    200911151439

    The Web 2.0 Expo starts tomorrow, 11/16, in NYC. We're kicking off the conference with an Ignite featuring 14 great speakers. The event is at the New World Stages. I'll be co-hosting with Ignite NYC organizer Tikva Morowati.

    As always each speaker gets just five minutes on stage. Their presentation will each be just 20 slides that each auto-advance every 15 seconds. The Speakers include:

    * Alison Lewis, http://www.iheartswitch.com/ (high tech craft)
    * Brady Forrest, http://radar.oreilly.com/brady/ (Burning Man as tech incubator)
    * Casey Pugh, http://www.starwarsuncut.com/
    * Hilary Mason, http://www.hilarymason.com
    * Jennifer Pahlka, http://www.codeforamerica.org/ (Gov 2.0)
    * Jonathan Brill, http://Productlust.com, http://www.multitouchmaven.com
    * Judy Shapiro, http://trenchwars.wordpress.com
    * Kevin Marks, http://epeus.blogspot.com/
    * Leesean Hepnova, http://www.leesean.net
    * Lauren Schmidt, http://www.mit.edu/~lschmidt
    * Molly Wright Steenson, http://www.girlwonder.com
    * Nora Abousteit, http://www.burdastyle.com
    * Patrick Davidson, http://Whereikeepmythingsontheinternet.com
    * Quinn Norton, http://quinnnorton.com/ (body hacks)
    * Ray Beckerman, http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com
    * Tony Haille, http://tonyhaile.com

    Here is a rough schedule for how the night will go:

    7:00 pm – Doors Open for Conference & Expo Plus Pass holders
    7:30 pm – Doors Open for Expo Plus Pass holders
    7:45 pm – Doors Open for general public attendees (pending capacity)
    8:00- 8:15 – Mobile Music Competition
    8:15- 9:45PM – Ignite Talks
    10PM -- Bar closes

    We are going to start the evening off with an Ignite Mobile Music Competition, giving you a chance to win a FREE pass to Web 2.0! We will provide the mini cord, you provide the mobile instrument. Recommended apps include Sonifi, Drumbanger, and Bloom. Please fill out this entry form if you'd like to show off your mobile music making skills! http://bit.ly/IgniteMusic

    We will also randomly choose one lucky Twitter user who tweets using http://bit.ly/IgniteWeb20 to win a FREE pass to Web 2.0 Expo NY. You must show up at Ignite to win!

    RSVP on Facebook

    Ignite Show: Andrew Hyde on The Posting Economy

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-10-30


    Andrew Hyde runs Ignite Boulder and works for Techstars. In this week's episode he shares his thoughts at Ignite ATL about the rapid economic shifts that can be caused by user-generated content. Andrew calls this the Posting Economy.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

    Navigating the Future: Take Me to Bob

    Brady Forrest @brady 2009-10-29

    Google has just announced a free turn-by-turn navigation app for Android 2.0 in the US (Radar post). Google Maps Navigation relies on Google's own mapping for routing you. As with many navigation devices you can search Business Listings. However, they are also including data not traditionally available to navigators. In the promo video Google demonstrates that you can ask to be taken to "The King Tut exhibit". GMN will determine that it's in Golden Gate Park and route you. This is "because it is connected to the internet it is using all of the latest information on the internet."

    This is huge. To be able to request implicit destinations based off of realtime information is something that has never been available before. What new queries will be available to us because of this? Google has a lot of data. How much of it can be assigned a location? Lots. There are millions of KML files out on the internet. Here are some of the useful queries

    "Take me to Bob Smith" - If Bob is your friend on Latitude then Google Maps Navigation can take you to him. If Bob moves then GMN could even re-route you. I wonder if they will enable the chase scenario.

    "Drop me off in time for the #48 bus" - Google knows the public transit schedule. So not only can it drop you off at the nearest stop, it could drop you off at the stop that will ensure the shortest multi-modal trip.

    "Show me homes under 500K in Capitol Hill" - Via Google Base, Google has real estate information (it has had neighborhood data for quite sometime).

    "Take me to my next appointment" - If you use Google Calendar and you accurately fill out the location field then this is a snap.

    "Take me to the nearest Winter Coat Sale" - Using Adsense for Google Maps, GMN can easily lead you to local sales.

    "Take me to the bar my friends go to the most" - Using Social Graph API and the new, experimental Social Search to tap into Foursquare, GMN can determine where you friends go, aggregate their destinations and lead you to their favorite watering hole.

    "Take me to the largest event" - Using a combination of Latitude and its new access to the Twitter Firehose (which will soon include location - Radar post), Google can determine where people are.

    "Take me on a tour of the top 10 historical sites here" - Using Wikipedia Google can determine what the sites are and where you should be taken. Alternately, Google could take you on user-generated tour.

    "Take me to the most picturesque place near here" - Several years ago Google bought Panoramio, a location-based photo site. Google can determine which place nearby has had the most photos of it taken.

    "Take me on a tour of the site from Around the World in 80 Days" - Google already geoparses many of the books it scans (just see this map). This routing is quite possible.

    "Take me to the EPA's protected sites" - Government data is becoming more available. This is just one possible governmental query. You could also ask to go on a tour of TARP fund recipients or Democratic donors.

    Obviously not all of them will be enabled, but I bet that within a year some of them will be. What other scenarios can or should they implement?

    user/brady_forrest.txt · 最后更改: 2010/01/02 由 radarman
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