soutschek.com - dive into the map

Quite a while ago, in 1989, Mark Monmonier used the term “geographic brushing” in the context of exploratory geostatistical analysis. When one specific representation of data is highlighted, another representation of the same data also gets highlighted. While Monmonier can be regarded as a pioneer, working with scatterplots and maps to reveal insights, today the geographic brushing and linking method is widely used in the Geoweb-World of Google Maps mashups and virtual earth applications - Try either or both of the websites loc.alize.us and locr - you can bring up a set of thumbnails and a map with markers for each of the images on it. By moving your mouse over any of the thumbnail photographs, the corresponding location marker gets highlighted and you gain a much better understanding of how the images relate to the map and different places on that map. The same idea works for videos, comments, panoramas… Now if I am planning a walk and want to prepare myself by studying the route, I quite like to have a view where I can get the full context. I want photographs to give me a vivid idea about the landscape I can expect, I want to know where the photographs were taken by having the location markers highlighted on the map. Then, I want to see the location of the places on an elevation profile line to give me an idea whether I will be about to climb or descend when I get to the viewpoint. I also want to hear a sound taken at that location and how about some comments that other people left there? I want the full context and I want it all in one place, all in view! - I want geographic brushing to the max!

After the metaphor turned into something real that we can witness growing bigger and bigger every day, a dedicated journal was well overdue. So here it is: The International Journal of Digital Earth. Some good reading by Prof. Michael Frank Goodchild and Timothy W. Foresman.

These two were among the first to deal with the digital earth topic way back, when Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth and the increased public interest in the digital earth idea hadn’t taken off yet. Well worth having a look at some of Goodchild’s previous presentations, in which he covers the subject. For example, have a look at Digital Earth - Recent Technical Progress or What does Google Earth mean for the Social Sciences. A more recent presentation to look at is The Spatial Web - Visions for a Geographically Enabled Future.

You can also read one of Goodchild’s earlier papers on the topic. In Discrete Global Grids for Digital Earth Goodchild already envisions that the digital earth will provide a “one-stop shop for geospatial data“. We aren’t yet shopping for geodata in Google Earth, but who says we won’t be soon…?

Good reading to spark some thoughts on why some things are free, why even more things may be free in the future and why in the end nothing is free.

Yeah, right!

I wrote about how spring is driving away winter really early this year. Well, we thought we should do a trip to Zipfelbob’s home. May quite well be the last chance for some Zipflbob action this season. Since I presented the flower shot yesterday, here is another proof for global warming - end of February and we’ve got the butterflies coming out. Hope the little bugger will find some of those flowers we saw yesterday, otherwise he’ll have a hard time waiting for the nectar to become available.

The slopes that are more exposed to direct sunlight loose snow earlier. So while there is still a fair bit of snow on the slopes that get only a few hours of sunlight during the day, you can pretty much walk on browns grass on the sunny slopes already.

And here we are - this place is called “Zipfelsalpe” and it is where Zipflbob was born. Seriously this is where Zipflbob grew up and went to Zipflbob school. He also met his first Zipflbob girlfriend here, before he decided to look for a dignified rider, leave home and see the big world to enjoy the real adventures.

He used to play on the roof - he actually still enjoys doing that.

Too bad we didn’t have much more time to take Zipflbob out on the home slopes for some spring riding. I’m sure he really appreciated the trip though!

Seems like winter season is slowly but surely coming to an end. Decided to go far a late afternoon walk up some mountain to watch the sunset, which we thought should be good today. There was still some snow left on the upper slopes of the mountain, but in general it was more of a spring walk than a winter tour. The flowers also have to adjust to global warming and they seem to do OK.

Anyway - managed to reach the top about 20 minutes or so before sunset. So how do you kill time and not start getting cold?

Of course you take in the view…

And you practice a bit of mountain parkour.

Until  it is finally prime time…

Sometimes, the light that you get just after sunset is even better.

Then it was time to get moving - snow sliding into the dark - should have brought our Zipflbobs, damn - next time we will!

OK, just thinking… Mobile phone beeps. Not the text message beep though. Different beep. It’s the get up and get moving, I’ve got a great idea beep. Oh no I think - I’m really tired and exhausted - it’s been a long working week and I’d greatly appreciate some sofa time. Ah well - let’s see what is recommended right now. I open the message, the application starts and I’m told that I’ve got 10 minutes to put the running shoes on and get ready for some action. Oh dear, I haven’t even finished my cheese cake. 10 minutes later I get new instructions. Start running down the street at a warm-up pace. So I do. Turn left at the church. Follow the road. Sure. Oh yeah, one of my favourite songs to get me motivated starts playing. Now I’m there. 5 more minutes and I see a group of runners a few hundred metres ahead. I’m told to catch up. Shouldn’t have had cheese cake before, damn it. Increase the pace and eventually catch up. At least it’s heaps more fun running with a bigger group now. Now I realise… everyone’s got the phone and the earplugs. This is all planned and scheduled. Not bad - figured out that I hadn’t gone for a run in a while, was lazy all afternoon, there were 2 hours of daylight left and the groups was about to pass by. I’m sure I won’t have to finish the loop back home by myself. At least not until the last few hundred metres.

I reckon straight ahead…

It is not just about the location. It’s about the time of the day, the time of the year, whether you are tired or not, whether you are happy or not, whether you seek specific information or whether you just browse to kill time. It’s about the temperature, the climate, the current whether conditions, your immediate surroundings, whether you’re hungry or not, about your likes and dislikes, whether you’ve got money to spend or whether you are on a tight budget. Is it a working day or are you on leave? How about what’s next on your schedule and what you just did before. How about your hobbies? All kinds of other preferences? Did you ask for it or not? What’s your cultural background? How old are you? How tall? Are you a male or female? Married? Engaged? Single? Who are your friends? Your family? What languages do you speak? Can you hear? See? What do you already know? What have you experienced before? Are you moving? At what speed? I could go on and on… How much of all this context is really considered today? How much of it can be derived from location? At least partly? How much can be derived from time?

Tagging has not just become popular - tagging is often described as a very important concept to enable a successful transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 (whatever both of these terms may actually mean to Joe Public). There are a lot of interesting discussions about multi language tags and geographic tags already - at the moment, I’m quite interested in practical applications of temporal tags. Consider temporal tags as tags with some kind of time stamp. There could be temporal tags for birthdays and other calender events - tags could also be generated based on weather reports. Or how about tagging a big sale in a local store - tagging a scheduled airline flight with “cheap seats” - but only as long as there are actually still cheap seats left…. I think this may have some interesting applications in location based services applications - combine it with the geo bit and you can think up all sorts of cool Google Earth applications or Google Maps and Virtual Earth mash-ups, which could display spatio-temporal information based on an analysis of geo tags and temporal-tags. Geotagging ourselves as fit or exhausted based on a just-in-time analysis of our heart rate monitoring device with the information from the device automatically generating tags and and feeding them straight into the web to let all the people know that, on my daily run, I’m on my last leg 2km away from home - the ultimate exhibitionism, tagged for the Web 3.0 world right in place. Hold on - would I be tagging myself then? More thinking and research to be done before this can go into production…