edparsons.com

First off.. if you have a digital camera and you are only storring your precious pictures on your computer, you need to get online quickly and make use of one of the many picture sharing sites, this is where the “cloud” really can have an impact, as your pictures will be storred on literally hundreds of separate computeres professionally managed, safe from fire, theft and dropping your macbook down the stairs!

You could of course use Facebook which actually has very good controls as to who you allow to see your photos, although as we are all aware these change frequently so there is a danger you may end up as the face of a protesting blogger.

I’ve been a happy user of Flickr professional for many years, and I still really like the service, however over the last month or so I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to move my digital memories to Picasaweb. It turns out that this is not a simple process and moving 1500 pictures could be very time consuming, because while there are many tools to bulk upload your images there are done to do the reverse and download them, but fortunately for the geek both systems have api’s, that with some effort, can make the migration of your pictures a viable proposition.

The key component to the migration was a python script I found developed by Nathan Van Gheem last year, which used both services api’s to migrate not just pictures but albums and much of their metadata between the services.

So here we go, these instructions are for  mac users who are in the lucky position of having python installed by default, but for windows are pretty similar are you have installed Python.

From a terminal window, install the two photo service api’s and the threadpool packages for Python

easy_install-2.6 gdata
easy_install-2.6 flickrapi
easy_install-2.6 threadpool

 

To use the python script you will need to authenticate against each of the services to access your pictures, for picassaweb this is your username and password, for Flickr because you are using in effect an external application to access your pictures you will  need a Flickr API Key and secret.

From your Flickr account go the App Garden and apply for your own non-commercial API key. You need to provide a few details, but will end up with the api key  string and a separate secret key string, something like..

Key: e97df11b147f9c46c2ec002b29f479df
Secret: 8fe34c331abbce32

 

Now you have all you need..

Remember to make your downloaded script executable

chmod +x migrate-flickr-to-picasa-nokey.py 

 

And run it

migrate-flickr-to-picasa-nokey.py

 

You should be asked to enter firstly your picassweb details, then your flick api key and secret, you should then be taken to a flickr webpage to confirm you want the script to have access to your pictures.

This script will move all the photos and sets from flickr over to picasa.    
That will require getting authentication information from both services...    

Authenticating with Picasa...
Picasa Username(complete email):edparsons@gmail.com
Picasa Password:
Authenticating with Flickr..
Flickr API Key:e97df11b147f9c46c2ec002b29f479df
Flickr API Secret:8fe34c331abbce32
Press ENTER after you authorized this program

 

Confirm that it’s ok, go back to the terminal window and press enter for the script to continue.

The process will take some time, so go grab a coffee and look forward to seeing your pictures in picasweb !

Written and submitted from the Windsor Hotel Taichung, Taiwan (24.179N, 120.623E)

For the last twenty years or so, every car I have owned has had an Apple sticker proudly displayed on the back window. For many years fellow Apple enthusiasts have expressed our devotion to the Mac and our membership of a small but we believe righteous minority by such tribal markings.

Last week I took delivery of a new car and now face a dilemma .. I still love Apple stuff and spend more than ever in the temples known as Apple Stores, but I’m just not sure about the sticker anymore. It was fun in the late 1990’s spotting another car with an apple sticker because you knew there was another rare individual returning to their Mac.

Now of course it seems everybody uses a MacBook, iPhone or iPad, the sticker no longer has the same meaning..

So Dear Readers what should I do sticker or no sticker?

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

 

Sorting out the database behind www.edparsons.com, I came across this blog post from 2005.

At the time  I was asked by my then employers to remove it from the blog which I did, but rather than delete it I just set it to private, it’s now public.  It’s really interesting how far the UK GI industry has come in the last 5 years, and it’s hard to imagine now why it caused such concern then..

So cast you mind back to April 2005, the month Tony Blair called the 2005 election and MG Rover went bust, a time before OS Opendata…”Open source mapping in the Press”

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

 

Last week I attended and spoke at the annual EMEA Google Faculty Summit at the Google offices in Zurich. The event brings together researchers and academic staff for a few days to present their work, talk to Google Engineers and for Google and academia to work together to developer common research interests. Most of the academics present were from a Computer Science departments, some specialising in privacy and policy as well as those interested in software engineering and natural language processing a subject core to Google’s success.

Also core to Google’s success is the exploitation of geospatial technology, yet there were no academics from the GIS community present.

Perhaps this is due to the focus on computer science, but  then I have always believed that GIS needs to become closer to CS as the use of geospatial technology becomes more mainstream.

There is I think a need for a debate as to where  the focus on GIS research and as a result GIS teaching is directed. Clearly there is a value in training people to apply GIS to applications in other fields of study, but where does the fundamental research geospatial technology take place ? And related to this point, to what extent does the GIS community interact with the broader Computer Science discipline ?

So if you are part of the academic geospatial community, take a look at the Google University resources here, perhaps you can make the event next year ?

Written and submitted from the Geospatial Middle East Conference 2011, Abu Dhabi (24.41N, 54.48w)

This is something I have been waiting to see since the Google Earth API was introduced a few years ago. The Earth Knowledge Virtual Globe is a project which is creating an application with a selection of data layers as an alternative to the layers offered by default in the Google Earth client. All the building blocks have been available for a while, alongside the Google Earth viewing api there is KML , an industry standard way of encoding and displaying geocoded data that can be authored and served by any organisation regardless of its size.

For Google it’s a real challenge trying to identify which of the approximately 2 billion KML files out there to include by default in the Google Earth Application, sites like the Earth Knowledge globe offer a partial solution allowing the development of thematic globes or globes publishing a single organisations data. Key of course to this scaling and providing universal access to this information is of course search, something we have dear to our hearts…

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)