Gary Hayes of http://www.personalizemedia.com has produced an insightful short film entitled The ‘Social Virtual’ World’s A Stage. The film takes a look at over 50 virtual world systems that currently make up the Metaverse as we know it.
Its interesting to note that amongst the first person style words no one system stands out from the rest. Its been 10 years since we started work in the Metaverse and as we noted in our post Second Life/Web 2.0? Virtual Worlds Circa 1998 Is Where It Was At… not too much has changed in the last decade.
Gary’s film is embedded below:
It is also interesting to note that the term Metaverse is coming back into fashion. It become distinctly unfashionable to talk about the Metaverse after the first web bubble burst with the term being replaced by ‘Virtual Worlds’ or ‘Virtual Environments’.
Perhaps web based terms that come into and out of fashion is the subject for a future post – how many people have used the term ‘Cyberspace’ in recent articles or conversation (?) perhaps 1998 was where it was at after all…
A year ago we ran a post on tracking a train using the Nokia N95 and Sports Tracker. The iPhone 3G is perhaps playing catchup but with a rash of new navigation orientated applications in the Apple Store it is now possible to add tracking capabilities to Apples phone. We took the free InstaMapper application for a spin on a Thames Clipper over the weekend to see how the iPhone 3G’s GPS tracking shapes up.
InstaMapper stands out from the crowd as a free service that allows you to track a person or vehicle online in real time using a GPS-enabled cell phone. Simply install the app, tie it to your free account with InstaMapper and if you allow sharing anyone can see your location update via Google Maps in real-time.
The data sent to InstaMapper includes location (latitude, longitude, speed, etc.), a timestamp, and a randomly assigned id. By default the iPhone tries to transmit location data to InstaMapper every 5 seconds if you are moving 20 mph or faster and if someone is currently tracking you online. If you are not moving, the minimum update rate is 60 seconds, if are not being tracked online, the minimum update interval is 30 seconds.
The track can be download as either a KML or CSV file, we used the application to map our route on the Thames Clipper from Waterloo to Woolwich, London. The movie below illustrates the route exported to Google Earth using the timeline function:
With battery life coming in at around 4 hours, InstaMapper is an excellent application, let down slightly by the need of iPhone Apps to run in the foreground. The iPhone maybe playing catchup in terms of applications but it is perhaps the first dedicated GPS in a mass consumer device. As such, InstaMapper is, in our view, the iPhones first ‘must have’ app.
Of note InstaMapper also works with the old iPhone using cell triangulation or known Wifi locations. We will be taking a look at other navigation apps on the iPhone 3G over the coming weeks – notably one that allows integration with OpenStreetMap.
A year ago we ran a post on tracking a train using the Nokia N95 and Sports Tracker. The iPhone 3G is perhaps playing catchup but with a rash of new navigation orientated applications in the Apple Store it is now possible to add tracking capabilities to Apples phone. We took the free InstaMapper application for a spin on a Thames Clipper over the weekend to see how the iPhone 3G’s GPS tracking shapes up.
InstaMapper stands out from the crowd as a free service that allows you to track a person or vehicle online in real time using a GPS-enabled cell phone. Simply install the app, tie it to your free account with InstaMapper and if you allow sharing anyone can see your location update via Google Maps in real-time.
The data sent to InstaMapper includes location (latitude, longitude, speed, etc.), a timestamp, and a randomly assigned id. By default the iPhone tries to transmit location data to InstaMapper every 5 seconds if you are moving 20 mph or faster and if someone is currently tracking you online. If you are not moving, the minimum update rate is 60 seconds, if are not being tracked online, the minimum update interval is 30 seconds.
The track can be download as either a KML or CSV file, we used the application to map our route on the Thames Clipper from Waterloo to Woolwich, London. The movie below illustrates the route exported to Google Earth using the timeline function:
With battery life coming in at around 4 hours, InstaMapper is an excellent application, let down slightly by the need of iPhone Apps to run in the foreground. The iPhone maybe playing catchup in terms of applications but it is perhaps the first dedicated GPS in a mass consumer device. As such, InstaMapper is, in our view, the iPhones first ‘must have’ app.
Of note InstaMapper also works with the old iPhone using cell triangulation or known Wifi locations. We will be taking a look at other navigation apps on the iPhone 3G over the coming weeks – notably one that allows integration with OpenStreetMap.
Our latest working paper is now available for download – entitled Mapping for the Masses:Accessing Web 2.0 through Crowdsourcing.
Abstract
The paper first develops the network paradigm that is currently dominating the way we think about the internet and introduce varieties of social networking that are being fashioned in interactive web environments. This serves to ground our arguments about Web 2.0 technologies. These constitute ways in which users of web-based services can take on the role of producers as well as consumers of information that derive from such services with sharing becoming a dominant mode of adding value to such data.
These developments are growing Web 2.0 from the ground up, enabling users to derive hitherto unknown, hidden and even new patterns and correlations in data that imply various kinds of social networking.
We define crowdsourcing and crowdcasting as essential ways in which large groups of users come together to create data and to add value by sharing. This is highly applicable to new forms of mapping. We begin by noting that maps have become important services on the internet with nonproprietary services such as Google Maps being ways in which users can fashion their own functionality. We review various top-down and bottom-up strategies and then present our own contributions in the form of GMapCreator that lets users fashion new maps using Google Maps as a base.
We have extended this into an archive of pointers to maps created by this software, which is called MapTube, and we demonstrate how it can be used in a variety of contexts to share map information, to put existing maps into a form that can be shared, and to create new maps from the bottom up using a combination of crowdcasting, crowdsourcing and traditional broadcasting.
The paper concludes by arguing that these developments define a neogeography which is essentially ‘mapping for the masses’.
Gary Hayes of http://www.personalizemedia.com has produced an insightful short film entitled The ‘Social Virtual’ World’s A Stage. The film takes a look at over 50 virtual world systems that currently make up the Metaverse as we know it.
