Month: October 2007

Categories
Google Maps opensource

OSM on the iPhone.. not in Dubai !!

I have just returned home from a well earned family vacation in Dubai, a destination that is a cross between SimCity and Disneyland as my wife describes it.

Of course I took my laptop along to keep up with email and stuff, and was thus quite impressed to see Mikel’s post about getting OSM onto the maps application on the iPhone !

Now in my mind this is one of those things that is cool that is can be done but actually nobody would do for real unless maybe they lived on the Isle of Wight, and whats wrong with Google maps anyway 🙂

However the reason for my story is that actually I could only imagine what OSM looked like on the iphone as my access to Mikel’s blog or to be precise the images on mikel’s blog was restricted.

brain Off

So all I got was broken graphics icon, and if I clicked on these to force the images to be displayed I got this..

blocked

So what does the government of the UAE have against OSM on the iphone..

Nothing, actually the web filter was rejecting the images because they were served from flickr and well there are all sorts of images there that may be inconsistent with the religious, cultural and moral values of the UAE !

So I had to wait to get back home to see Mikel’s hard work, although for a few seconds I did think dark forces were at work !!

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
neogeography OGC virtual earth

Welcome back.. Microsoft rejoins the OGC

In another example of the overlap between neo and paleogeography Microsoft announced yesterday on their Virtual Earth Blog that they have rejoined the Open Geospatial Consortium the industry standards body for “professional” GIS. Along with the new support for KML in virtual earth, I would say the geoweb is beginning to develop quite nicely !

Written and submitted from the IRLOGI Conference 2007, Dublin, using the bitbuzz 802.11 network.

Categories
Technology Thoughts

Beep..beep..beep – The legacy of Sputnik

Moscow Event

I just love working for Google, an organisation happy to celebrate the great technological advances of our times despite criticism from some. I was lucky enough to be asked to present at a event organised by Google in Moscow to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sputnik.

The celebration involved presentations of Sky in Google Earth, Anecdotes from Cosmonauts including Alexander Volkov, a charming man who just happens to hold the joint-record for the longest space-walk in history and was Commander of Cosmonauts at the Cosmonaut Training Centre, and a presentation by Greg Maryniak on the Google Lunar X-Prize.

It would be wonderful if the X-Prize could rekindle the enthusiasm for space and science and technology in general that the original space race developed around the world. Clearly the political motivation is no longer there and that of course is no bad thing, however we are all the beneficiaries of the massive boost in funding for science that the space race produced.

30 years after man set foot on the moon, the mash-up generation will be back with technology that has its roots in the boost in science and technology funding that came as a result of that iconic beep-beep sound.

Written and submitted from the O’Callaghan Mont Clare Hotel, Dublin, using the hotels broadband network.