Four short links: 16 November 2009

Visualizing Adventures, Droid Deployments, Fly Vision, and Mass Meat For You

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 0

1. Choose Your Own Adventure -- numerical and visual analysis of the Choose Your Own Adventure novels. The distinguishing characteristic of My Kind Of People is that they appreciate the quantitative study of the commonplace. (via Bryan O'Sullivan)
2. Tracking Droid Numbers -- uLocate, the makers of the Where app for Android, have been tracking the growth of the Droid phone using the data they get from the Android app store. (via BoyGenius Report)
3. Fly Eyes Makes Better Robot Vision -- to make smaller flying robots, researchers would like to find a simpler way of processing motion. Inspiration has come from the lowly fly, which uses just a relative handful of neurons to maneuver with extraordinary dexterity. And for more than a decade, O’Carroll and other researchers researchers have painstakingly studied the optical flight circuits of flies, measuring their cell-by-cell activity and turning evolution’s solutions into a set of computational principles. [...] Intriguingly, the algorithm doesn’t work nearly as well if any one operation is omitted. The sum is greater than the whole, and O’Carroll and Brinkworth don’t know why. Because the parameters are in constant feedback-driven flux, it produces a cascade of non-linear equations that are difficult to untangle in retrospect, and almost impossible to predict. (via Slashdot)
4. Meat Band Aids and Mass Production of Living Tissue -- Apligraf is a matrix of cow collagen, human fibroblasts and keratinocyte stem cells (from discarded circumcisions), that, when applied to chronic wounds (particularly nasty problems like diabetic sores), can seed healing and regeneration. This Gizmodo Q&A is informative.

It's in the Bag! The Apple Tablet Computing Device

by Mark Sigal | @netgarden | comments: 26

In the past 25 years, the personal computing revolution has evolved from tethered (desktop) to luggable (portable) to joined-at-the-hip (mobile).

Via the iPhone Platform (including iPod Touch), Apple has set the bar for mobile computing by seamlessly integrating computation, communications, and media across hardware, software, and service layers.

No less integral, Apple has significantly evolved ecosystem development models by cobbling together developer tools, media relationships, marketplace/e-wallet functions, one-click software distribution, explicit platform governance, and a simple, but compelling, approach to sharing revenue with developers.

But, the pièce de résistance has been a touch, tilt, sensor, and virtual keyboard-based user interaction model that has rendered the traditional physical keyboard plus WIMP-based model (i.e., windows, icons, menus, and pointing device) as so last century, the proverbial horse-and-buggy to Apple's Model T.

The end result is that the iPhone has become the first truly personal computer; more personal to its owners than the PC ever was, a truth that bubbles to the top again and again when you talk to the 50M (combined) iPhone and iPod Touch owners.

Thus, the core thesis of this article is two-fold. One, that while Apple remains committed to cultivating its position in the legacy desktop /portable segment via the Mac, they understand that they will never be the leader of the PC market.

Two, given their dominance in mobile computing platforms, Apple will expand upon their iPhone strategy by attacking an "undefended hill" (an HP axiom) that's less hospitable to desktops/portables; namely, the bag-carrying consumer (think: purses, backpacks, briefcases, and the like).

(continue reading)

Four short links: 10 November 2009

DIY Diagnostic Chips, Genetics on $5k a Genome, Cellphones as Diagnostic Microscopes, AR-Equipped Mechanics Do It Heads-Up

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 0

1. A children’s toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips -- microfluidic chips (with tiny liquid-filled channels) can cost $100k and more. Michelle Khine used the Shrinky Dinks childrens' toy to make her own. "I thought if I could print out the [designs] at a certain resolution and then make them shrink, I could make channels the right size for micro­fluidics," she says. (via BoingBoing)
2. Complete Genomics publishes in Science on low-cost sequencing of 3 human genomes (press release) -- The consumables cost for these three genomes sequenced on the proof-of-principle genomic DNA nanoarrays ranged from $8,005 for 87x coverage to $1,726 for 45x coverage for the samples described in this report. Drive that cost down! There's a gold rush in biological discovery at the moment as we pick the low-hanging fruit of gross correlations between genome and physiome, but the science to reveal the workings of cause and effect is still in its infancy. We're in the position of the 18th century natural philosophers who were playing with static electricity, oxygen, anaesthetics, and so on but who lacked today's deeper insights into physical and chemical structure that explain the effects they were able to obtain. More data at this stage means more low-hanging fruit can be plucked, but the real power comes when we understand "how" and not just "what". (via BoingBoing)
3. Far From a Lab? Turn a Cellphone into a Microscope (NY Times) -- for some tests, you can use a camphone instead of a microscope. In one prototype, a slide holding a finger prick of blood can be inserted over the phone’s camera sensor. The sensor detects the slide’s contents and sends the information wirelessly to a hospital or regional health center. For instance, the phones can detect the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, or note an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infection, he said.
4. Augmented reality helps Marine mechanics carry out repair work (MIT TR) -- A user wears a head-worn display, and the AR system provides assistance by showing 3-D arrows that point to a relevant component, text instructions, floating labels and warnings, and animated, 3-D models of the appropriate tools. An Android-powered G1 smart phone attached to the mechanic's wrist provides touchscreen controls for cueing up the next sequence of instructions. [...] The mechanics using the AR system located and started repair tasks 56 percent faster, on average, than when wearing the untracked headset, and 47 percent faster than when using just a stationary computer screen.

Games Top the Charts in the iPhone and Android App Markets

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 2

While it might be true that the number of Book apps is growing at a faster rate, Games continue to dominate the list of popular U.S. iTunes Apps. Games accounted for about a fifth of all iTunes apps over the past week^†, but the category continued to have a disproportionate share of the Top 100 charts, accounting for 52% of the Top Grossing, 56% of the Top Paid, and 50% of the Top Free apps:

Since most Book apps are actually individual e-books, the Gaming category would have a hard time keeping up with the ever increasing number of Books. Once publishers figured out how to turn their titles into iPhone apps, the number of Book apps started growing faster than Games. Nevertheless Games continue to rule the Top 100 charts.

A similar story is playing out on the Android platform: the most popular Android apps are primarily Games. (In the Android taxonomy, most Books are in the Reference category.)

Returning to the top iPhone apps, the price of the Top Grossing apps stabilized somewhat last week. Except for the top decile (rank 1 through 10) for which the median price was about $7, the median price across the other deciles was around $5.

Over the last week, the Top Paid Games were slightly more expensive than apps that made the overall Top 100 Paid list. iPhone Game developers will tell you that (visually) compelling and engaging iPhone Games are far from trivial to design and market^††. So it's no surprise that the creators of the most popular Games are starting to charge a little more for their software.

(†) Data for this post was for the week ending 11/1/2009.
(††) First, designing for such a small screen poses a major challenge. Secondly, the sheer number of Game apps (close to 20K last week) makes it hard to create something that turns into a long-running top-seller.

Google Shrinks Another Market With Free Turn-By-Turn Navigation

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 10

Google has announced a free turn-by-turn navigation system for Android 2.0 phones such as the Droid. Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US right now. Google's release of a navigation is huge, but not unexpected blow to Tomtom (owner of former US mapping data partner Tele Atlas (Radar post)), Nokia (owner of mapping data provider NAVTEQ), Garmin and other personal navigation devices (PNDs). That it is free will fundamentally change the industry (and sell a lot of Android 2.0 phones in the process). Assuming that Google Maps Navigation makes it onto the iPhone and Blackberry platforms it will become a race to the bottom for navigation apps in their respective app stores.

Google Maps Navigation has many impressive features aside from being free. As snipped from the main page:

• Search in plain English (watch video). No need to know the address. You can type a business name or even a kind of a business, just like you would on Google.
• Search by voice (watch video). Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): "Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco".
• Traffic view (watch video). An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch toggles a traffic view which shows the traffic ahead of you.
• Search along route (watch video). Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.
• Satellite view (watch video). View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google's high-resolution aerial imagery.
• Street View (watch video). Visualize turns overlaid on Google's Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.
• Car dock mode (watch video). For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm's length.

The satellite view looks very sexy in this screenshot. Another advantage to this app is that Google is also making use of its business listings and (presumably) its web crawl data. In the video above MIchael is able to get directions to "the museum with the King Tut exhibit".

The use of streetview to show what turns will look like and how to find your final destination is also a real advantage. The app will sometimes know which side of the street your destination is.

This comes shortly after Google announced that it was going to be using its own mapping data in the US. This data has been derived from its own streetview trucks, satellite imagery and, increasingly, its users. Google now owns or has created almost every layer of its geostack in the US (it uses third-party satellite imagery). It's expected that they will roll out their own data across the globe. The question is hat will they do with this data? Will they continue to make it available only by their own services or will they actually release the data publicly for commercial and/or non-commercial use? Regardless of Google's ultimate decision it just became a tough day for all navigation companies out there.

iPhone Killers, Blackberries and Chicken Parts

by Mark Sigal | @netgarden | comments: 5

There is an unfortunate tendency to confuse delivering a bunch of 'chicken parts' with producing an actual living, breathing chicken.

MG Siegler, over at TechCrunch, has written an excellent article that shines a light on the cycle from hype to disappointment that goes with being dubbed an 'iPhone Killer.'

BlackBerry Storm, Palm Pre, the G2, and now Droid have all been touted as contenders to the mobile computing crown, yet the iPhone continues to kick butt.

No less, Apple has levered its market leadership position with iPhone (and the iPod Touch) to create a halo effect on the rest of its business, generating bottom line results that are industry-defining (see analysis of Apple's Q4 results HERE).

Meanwhile, conventional wisdom, shaped by the history of Apple vs Microsoft during the PC Wars, tells us that Android is 'destined' to be bigger than the iPhone worldwide.

And to be clear, would-be iPhone slayers are indeed establishing strategic positions that have the potential to become compelling and differentiated within the mobile market. Examples include:

• Android: We are more open than Apple;


• RIM: We are more enterprise-ready;


• Palm Pre: We are more web-native;


• Android, RIM, Nokia, et al: We are a heterogeneous device platform.

But, alas, there is a fly in the ointment. Many of the above solutions are at a functional stage where they still fail to deliver a 'more than the sum of the parts' experience - at a time when Apple is clicking on all cylinders from a product innovation and new product pipeline perspective.

(continue reading)

The iPhone as a Gaming Platform: Share of Top Apps By Category

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 4

As a follow-up to my recent post on the Top Grossing Apps list on iTunes, I examined three lists highlighted in the app store: the Top Paid, Top Free, and Top Grossing Apps. Believing that many users scan these lists, developers covet a spot on any of these Top 100 charts.

In my previous posts, I've highlighted that Games is the largest^† category, accounting for about 20% of unique apps. The graphs below show that the gaming category has a much larger share^†† in each of the three Top 100 lists:

68% of the Top Paid, 67% of the Top Free, and 50% of the Top Grossing apps were Games. Other categories that had disproportionate share of apps in the Top 100 rankings include Social Networking, Photography, (and to a lesser extent) Sports, and Utilities.

In contrast, three of the five largest categories (Books, Travel, Education) were severely underrepresented in each of the U.S. iTunes Top 100 Charts.

(†) Size of a category is measured in terms of unique apps.
(††) Data for this post was from the two weeks ending 10/4/2009. I consider an app as being in the Top 100, if it was listed among the most popular (free, paid or grossing) apps, sometime during those two weeks.

The Price of The Top Grossing iTunes Apps

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 5

In response to developer complaints that more expensive apps were getting buried at the bottom of popularity rankings, Apple recently introduced a separate ranking based on revenue. (The Top 100 Paid apps ranks apps are based on number of downloads.) In this post, I'll validate that compared to downloads, the Top 100 ranking based on revenues does contain pricier apps.

For each decile, I calculated the MEAN price of the Top 100 Apps over the 2 most recent weeks. Notice that for the most recent week, the MEAN price for each decile^† of the Top 100 Grossing apps is more than $5. In contrast, none of the deciles for the Top 100 Paid apps had a mean of $4 or more. There isn't much of a relationship between rank and price although there was a slight downward trend in the price of the Top Grossing apps over the most recent week: except for the blip in the 5th decile of apps ranked 41-50, the top deciles tended to have higher MEAN prices.

The same situation holds when one looks at MEDIAN price during the most recent week: each decile of the Top Grossing apps had a MEDIAN price of $3, while no decile in the Top 100 Paid apps had a MEDIAN price of $2.

Unique Apps by Category: About two weeks ago, the U.S. iTunes store crossed 90,000 apps^††. Last week, the Travel and Education categories displaced Utilities, to claim spots in the Top 4 largest categories:

(†) I refer to an app as being in the Top N, if it was listed among the N most popular (paid or grossing) apps, sometime during the given week.
(††) Since inception, 90K different apps have appeared at some point in time. Over the most recent week, more than 85,000 apps appeared in the U.S. iTunes store.

Mobile Banks in the Developing World Prove Simpler is Better

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 4

Recent initiatives designed to make U.S. consumer financial products simpler and intelligible to customers, reminds me of a study we did on Mobile Banks^† in the developing world. Designed to work on the simplest mobile devices and originally targeting the unbanked, mobile banks evolved from simple services (transfer of mobile air time) to become widely used money-transfer and mobile payment systems. In the Philippines, over $100M flows through the GCASH system daily. GCASH and rival SmartMoney are accepted in establishments that take credit cards, giving the unbanked the ability to conduct cashless transactions, a benefit previously limited to credit card customers. In Kenya, the number of transactions that flow through M-PESA is comparable to the number of all ATM transactions in the country.

A key observation we gleaned when we studied Mobile Banks in the developing world is that the most successful services not only have easy-to-use products with low transaction fees, the terms and fees involved are spelled out clearly. The financial products they offer are by design easy for consumers to understand. A recent CGAP survey found that 1 in 6 mobile banking users in the Philippines previously had traditional bank accounts, and 7 in 10 viewed mobile banking services as easy to use.

Among other things, the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency will work to ensure "... consumers get information that is clear and concise, and to prevent the worst kinds of abuses." It's unfortunate that large financial services companies have to be strong-armed into simpler offerings, when there is a large market for such products. Fortunately smaller companies aren't waiting for regulatory changes and are beginning to offer simpler products.

There's more to the successful mobile banks than meets the eye, some of the large players have become world-class financial services providers. While it's technically easy to roll out a rudimentary mobile payment system, the most successful mobile banks in the developing world use complex software systems that handle more (near) real-time transactions than traditional banking systems. Unecumbered by legacy software systems, business rules and practices, mobile banks are innovating at a much faster pace than traditional financial services companies. At the height of the banking crisis, Clayton Christensen offered the following advice to JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon: "Go to the developing world and buy a phone company!" Not surprisingly, traditional banks in the developing world are eagerly forging alliances with fast-growing mobile banks. GCASH has agreements with several Philippine banks allowing fund transfers (and other forms of inter-operability) between their customers.

Over the long-term, mobile banks have, in many countries, become the first step^†† towards financial inclusion. Once unbanked consumers get comfortable using mobile banks, they become more likely to adopt other products such as micro-insurance and (micro) loans.

In a recent survey article, I discuss in detail the profound impact mobile banks have had in the developing world, as well as some of the main challenges they face. But let me highlight the following statistic from a recent CGAP survey of M-PESA users in Kenya: the income of rural recipients increased 30% since they started using M-PESA.

(†) Insiders like to distinguish between mobile banking (mobile phone access to existing bank customers) and mobile banks (financial institutions that arose with mobile phones).
(††) Moving into the realm of science-fiction, some technocrats in Japan recently "speculated" that mobile payment services could open the door towards eliminating cash altogether.

Resetting Expectations: Some Augmented Reality Links

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 9

1. Mobile Devices and AR: Besides employing the location of users (Wikitude), there are generally two ways to overlay data onto the real world: through markers ( (2D) bar codes) or through automatic object/image recognition algorithms ("markerless"). The Economist gives a good overview of the different mobile applications that are starting to emerge and lists a few areas where AR makes sense such as shopping (letting house-hunters which properties are for sale) and events (giving sports fans access to stats and player bios).

2. 5 Barriers to a Web That's Everywhere: @gnat linked to a recent RWW post, that lists high-level challenges the AR industry needs to address, including spam and security, interoperability, user experience, and openess.

3. For technical challenges facing AR developers, I recently had a chance to visit with computer scientist and Everyscape CTO/founder, @mok_oh, who's also been blogging about AR. In the first of two posts, he points out that accurate object and image recognition remain formidable^† technical hurdles ("accurate registration of the virtual objects with the real-world image"). Without object and image recognition, Mok points out that some of the more well-known AR apps may not actually be augmented reality apps in the classic sense (" ... there’s not much difference between this and Google Maps on your mobile phone").

In a follow-up post, Mok warns that too much hype may be worst thing that can happen to AR. Serious technical problems need to be resolved:

I still think we need to continue to expand/expound on vision algorithms (e.g. image tracking, image detection/recognition, etc.) and couple that with other sensors (e.g. Wifi, RFID, Bluetooth, accelerators, gyros, GPS, compasses, etc.) to more precisely tell people what they’re seeing in an interactive and augmented sense. The level of precision provided by current apps are good from a mapping perspective (i.e. the 2D “aerial” view), but not good enough from a first-person’s ground perspective. ... Perhaps, we need to reset people’s expectations somehow, or rebrand the words to something else. Because I really do think that there’s plenty of use for AR-inspired technologies as being defined by Layars and Wikitudes of the world.

Everything I read indicates that the more likely scenario in the near future is that AR applications will use a combination of sensors (like a GPS) and markers. In contrast, accurate markerless AR is a distant dream, that will remain locked away in the world of science fiction for years to come.

(†) Mok was at Foo camp last month and I had a chance to talk to him about AR and related topics. Given that he has long worked in the relevant fields within computer science, I take his word on the state-of-the-art in computer vision.

Four short links: 8 September 2009

Mobile jQuery, API to Google Book Search, Open Learning, Popularity Algorithms

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 0

1. jQTouch -- jQuery library for mobile web app development. (via brian on Delicious)
2. GData API to Google Book Search -- search full text, get back metadata, modify "my library" collections, etc.
3. Open and Free Courses at the CMU Open Learning Initiative -- rather than just a lecture and handout dump, it has interactive exercises and questions to help you practice and figure out whether you've learned the subject. (via timoreilly on Twitter)
4. How to Build a Popularity Algorithm You Can Be Proud Of -- description and brief analysis for the popularity algorithms in Hacker News, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Linkibol. A basic collective intelligence technique that's not obvious. (via Simon Willison)

The Most Popular iTunes Apps Aren't Always The Cheapest

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 5

While the most popular aren't always the cheapest, on average, the Top 10 Paid apps^† tend to be cheaper than less popular ones (those ranked 45 to 55 or 91 to 100):

The situation varies across categories and in this post I'll briefly examine a few of the larger ones. In both the Books and Games categories, the mean price of the Top 10 most popular paid apps tend to be lower than less popular ones. In other large categories, such as Navigation^†† and Travel, the situation isn't as clear: the mean price of the Top 10 most popular paid apps aren't always lower.

(Click here for a larger version of the chart above.)

Since the mean tends to be susceptible to outliers (a few high-priced apps), I decided to graph the price distributions for the top paid apps in the categories displayed above (click here for the graph). I looked at statistical densities^††† on three dates: 3/8 (24 weeks ago), 5/31 (12 weeks ago), and last week. In the Book category, the top 10 paid apps now seem to be dominated by lower-priced (99 cent) titles. In the Game category, the top 10 game apps were comparatively lower-priced 24 weeks ago but things have changed slightly: the top 10 game apps are no longer substantially cheaper than less popular ones (rank 45 to 55, or rank 91 to 100).

(†) I refer to a paid app as being in the Top N, if it was listed among the N most popular apps, sometime during the given week.
(††) For display purposes (i.e. to avoid distorted looking graphs), I omitted a couple of popular (top 10) but unusually high-priced Navigation apps (MobileNavigator and TomTom).
(†††) Based on small samples, the approximate densities drawn are far from robust, but they provide another tool for comparing categories. Boxplots over time would be another method.

Why is HTML Suddenly Interesting?

by Simon St. Laurent | comments: 16

Web developers couldn't stop talking about HTML and its evolution during the 1990s. New features were usually tempting, though not always workable, and the Browser Wars meant that vendors competed by providing and copying features. The HTML standardization process had its twists and turns, moving from the IETF to the W3C, developing standards that reflected immediate needs and tried to channel developer energy in more productive directions.

Then, suddenly, HTML was incredibly boring. The dot-com bust was part of that, but a more fundamental change doomed the conversation: Microsoft dominated the space. Whether because of the dominance of Windows, the technical quality of key innovations like Dynamic HTML, or the disappearance of Netscape into AOL, the stark reality was that Internet Explorer ruled the browser world. Outsiders asking Microsoft for improvements to Internet Explorer invariably heard that Microsoft would be willing to upgrade IE "when our customers ask for it" - which was an almost polite version of no.

As a result, the last decade, even for those of us who turned to Mozilla, Opera, Safari, Chrome, or other browsers, has been one long exercise in making the most out of tools that took their last major steps in the late 1990s. There was enough in HTML 4.01, Cascading Style Sheets 2, JavaScript, XML, HTTP, and XMLHttpRequest to keep us busy, especially as users acquired higher-speed connections and faster computers. There was also constant frustration with browser limitations, driving the development of more flexible plugin approaches like Flash and Silverlight, though none of them succeeded in replacing the traditional Web, however dull it might have become.

Today, though, the HTML conversation is reborn. Standards development around HTML seems to actually have a chance of influencing user experience in the browser, and Microsoft itself is participating in the HTML 5 conversation despite still holding roughly two-thirds of the browser market. While Microsoft's market share is only slowly eroding, developer mindshare seems to have shifted decisively to the band of WHATWG upstarts, Microsoft's competitors.

The reason for this, I think, is that HTML 5 clearly has a bright future in a place that Microsoft can't presently block: mobile web browsers. When I ask people about the future of computing, the word I keep hearing in their answers is "mobile". Even if it's small now, it has a much greater effect on how people evaluate what's coming.

Microsoft has a mobile presence, certainly, but it's hard to argue that it has anywhere near the visibility of the iPhone, or even the Android. Mobile web browsing has kept Opera going for years, but the iPhone and Android give Apple and Google much more visibility for their HTML 5 work, and Apple's decision to keep Flash off the iPhone in particular gave developers further cause to rethink their dependencies. (The WebKit browser engine these share will also be integrated with Blackberry soon, and is also on the Palm Pre.)

In the mad rush to build mobile applications, HTML 5's competition isn't even desktop web browsers, but other mobile development toolkits. As my co-worker Keith Fahlgren put it recently:

Speaking from personal experience, I've had a lot more fun writing an HTML5 application based on CSS3, the database API, and jQuery that runs out of the box on all of the hot mobile platforms than I ever would have had writing some silly Objective C app for a locked down App Store (or Java for an open one).

This creates a whole new world for the "where should HTML go?" conversation. Web developers certainly have pent-up demand for new features, but previous conversations about revising HTML always foundered on the "but will Internet Explorer support it?" question. Today, when that question feels less important, the ice is finally breaking. (Microsoft is even participating in HTML 5, though it's not yet clear how committed they are to implementation.)

It will doubtless be years before developers can safely deploy fully-featured HTML 5 sites without concern for older browsers, but for the first time it is plausible that changes to HTML will find wide adoption, and hope is rising. That hope, of course, brings its own risks. I can't say the HTML 5 process has done credit to either the W3C or the WHATWG - it feels to me like an ugly scramble - and there are plenty of specific decisions that deserve careful questioning. That the broken process is actually important to people, however, is a huge sign in itself that HTML is relevant once again.

After years of quiet, it's worth paying attention again!

Where 2.0 2010 CFP is Now Open

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 2

The CFP for the sixth annual Where 2.0 is now open. The three-day conference about location, mapping and geodata will be held from 3/30 to 4/1 in San Jose, CA. This year our focus will be on location-enabled platforms, mobile apps, user-generated geodata, sensors, and augmented reality. Here is more about the conference below,

Mobile: The iPhone, Android, and Symbian mobile OS’s are continually advancing the state of the art. By creating a wide-spread platform that allows for third-party development and geolocation they are bringing along the whole industry. The phone is going to become the primary I/O device for geodata in the near future. What new applications are you building for it? How are the social aapps effecting society and our notions of privacy?
Realtime Mapping: Mobile phones are being used to generate maps and other geodata. Sensors across the world are capturing more data every second. Reality mining systems are being used to release this data to users in realtime. Who is making the most of this deluge? How can they handle these new data sets?
Temporal Information: Realtime data requires the element of time to be added. This is uncharted design territory. How should time come to the Web?
Rich Analysis: Web mapping is moving past just allowing the display of data (aka red-dot fever). There are now many tools online that help people analyze data and could, in time, challenge traditional GIS systems. How is the Web different? Will end-users take up richer tools?
Geolocated Web: Every updated browser can now geolocate it’s user. Websites are now going to start using this information. What should they do with the information? What new services can be created?
Mobile Advertising vs. Services: Will people pay for their mobile apps directly or through ads? Which makes for a better product, a better user experience and a more stable revenue stream?
Augmented Reality: The combination of a camera, a GPS and a compass on a mobile phone is going to let us layer information on top of the world. What do you want to see? How will you edit the layers?
3D: Photosynth-like apps are becoming more commonplace. Google’s 3D Warehouse is filled with models. It’s safe to say that 3D is here. But do we need it? What are its limits?
Open Data: Governments are treasure troves of data. Increasingly they are releasing it online for free. How does open data effect the web? How can this data be widely available and yet maintain its creators? How is this critical information being put to use?
Crisis Mapping: The tools of neogeography are being used to spread the word of humanitarian and natural disasters. What are some of the best (and worst) examples?
Open-Source: The backbone of any independant mapping site is open source software. What are the newest tools that can be used to handle the location-enabled web?
Workshops
Where 2.0 will have a full day of workshops where participants can dig deep into a range of issues and leave the conference armed with new tools and skills. Workshops are one hour and fifteen minutes in length and will be held on Tuesday, March 30, 2010. Topics we’d like to explore include, but are not exclusive to:
Geo Support in Web Application Frameworks: As people design their own mapping applications, there has been a need for built-in geo support. We’re looking for workshops that teach about Mapstraction, Modest Maps, Open Layers, GeoDjango, GeoRuby, MapCruncher, and other tools.
GeoStack: As locations apps are brought in-house, companies need their own geostack. What are the best tools?
Mapping APIs: The location space would not have gotten as far as it has today without all of the innovation in the mapping API space. How can you test the limits of these free resources?
GeoTargeting: Knowing users’ locations has never been more important. Identifying it accurately can be difficult and expensive. What are the best methods?
Privacy Implications: As you are collecting user data, keeping track of your users, or collecting geodata, are you aware of the relevant laws? What would you teach others?
GeoBrowsers: Google Earth and NASA WorldWind are both amazing geobrowsers. How can you get the most out of them?
Data Management: Geo applications work with massive amounts of data. What are the tools, tips, and tricks that can be used to manage it?
Protocols and Formats: GeoRSS, GML, KML, EXIF, Microformats, Geo OpenSearch. Which formats are on the way in and which ones are on the way out? These are just some of the technologies and transformations we’ve noticed and represent just the starting point for the program. While we’d like you to tap into the theme as your inspiration in writing your proposal, feel free to wander. What are you working on that will change the world, or at least the world you’re in? What project is bringing you pleasure, or teasing your brain? Surprise and delight us; shake us out of our assumptions. We’re angling for shorter talks with longer breaks so you’ll have more time for one-on-one interactions.

IN adition to plenary talks and workshops we will also have opportunities for startups to launch, Ignitte talks and opportunities to experiment with RFIDs. The CFP closes 10/13/09. Submit a talk now.

Touch Traveler: London, Paris and only an iPod Touch

by Mark Sigal | @netgarden | comments: 26

Recently, I spent two weeks vacationing in London and Paris with only an iPod Touch for communications and connectivity.

As I wanted to honor the fact that the trip was to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary, my wife/I didn't bring either a mobile phone or a PC/Mac.

Mind you, I am not suggesting that this was a wise thing to do, but it's what I did, and this post captures the good, bad and ugly of the experience.

First off, the revelation (for me) was how much the Google Mobile Maps App on iPod Touch completely changes the equation when traveling. Touch-based control with a virtual keyboard is the perfect UI for zooming in and out of geo-locales, and Mobile Maps offers a workflow whose predictability and logical structure both de-mystifies and anchors foreign travel.

Moreover, Maps allows you to visually navigate in Real-Time (very different from the experience on my Blackberry), all the while push-pinning favorite destinations, and determining routes in just a few clicks. It is the consummate reality augmentation application for travel, a sort of "magic compass."

Case in point, is a context traversal function whereby you search for and find a destination. Right clicking on the pin reveals listing info, and left clicking takes you into Street View, revealing a 360-degree panoramic view of the target destination.

Street View provided a form of error-correction since you could visually confirm that a given destination was indeed the right destination, an extra bit of piece of mind when visiting a new area.

Candidly, I wish that Maps was even more autonomous about capturing my real-time travels and indexing them, as then I would never need to re-trace my steps, not to mention the entertainment value of being able to replay the day's travels at a later time.

Similarly, if you could somehow overlay your interaction data with that of locals, professionals (e.g., Fodors) and other travelers, you could create a very potent social fabric that is data rich, and can be filtered on parameters such as user-generated, professionally mastered, crowd-sourced and/or curated.

To frame this one, let me give you a specific example from my trip. I was walking through St-Germain in Paris when I had a flashback to the last time I was there (eight years before).

Back then, I had eaten at this incredible sandwich place nearby St-Germain. The restaurant made their own breads, had good sandwich combinations, and was an earnest, warm place. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember its name or specific location.

I remembered, however, that the sandwich place became a retail chain in New York. (It's good, but nowhere near as good as the original shop.)

While I couldn't remember the name, I did remember them having a branch near Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, so I opened the Yelp app on my iPod Touch, and typed in "sandwiches" near the geo of Rockefeller Center, and up came Cosi. (Note: Yelp had limited data for London and none for Paris).

Next, I fired up the Maps App, typed in "Cosi," and a pin dropped on the map.

I clicked on the pin, and it confirmed that I had been staying less than two blocks from this place for the past week! I then left-clicked, and saw a picture that took me back eight years.

Lunch? It was everything that I remembered.

Meanwhile, another App that we used throughout the trip was Facebook. My wife and I were sharing one iPod Touch, and Facebook really delivered in terms of being very easy/seamless to log into and out of our respective accounts, not to mention providing (relatively) full access to Facebook's services.

In fact, it was through Facebook that I loosely tracked the vacation that my brother and his family were currently taking in Israel, Jordan, and Greece.

I had some short exchanges with my niece, and there was a reference to a London overlap, but it didn't seem like the times meshed.

Days later, my wife and I are walking from the Kensington Park area where we were staying to Harrods in Knightsbridge.

45 minutes later, we are ogling over the sweets and pastry section of Harrods (if you have never been there, it is a spectacle; they have everything). Suddenly, a voice chimes out, "I didn't think they let your type in here." I turn around, and it's my brother and his youngest son.

It turns out that he had tried to call me the night before to let me know that he had changed his itinerary, and that they were going to be in London while we were there. But, I brought no phone so I never got that message.

Similarly, he had emailed me, but it turned out that he sent it to an address that is not received on my iPod Touch, so I never got that message.

Finally, he had gotten the wrong hotel information from my parents (we booked our room just days before we left), and so he couldn't leave us a message at our hotel either.

Yet, just hours after landing in London, here we were face to face at Harrods in London.

Kismet, to be sure, but I am left wondering whether technology helped (the Facebook exchange with my niece), hindered (wrong emails, unanswered phone calls), or was simply a neutral observer in this outcome.

Keeping it real, one paradox presented by relying on the iPod Touch as the sole connectivity device was that connectivity was, by definition, intermittent since the iPod Touch depends upon ready access to Wi-Fi for connectivity, a sketchy bet for mobile travelers.

In London, this meant that 99% of the time, I had decent Wi-Fi connectivity at my hotel but no connectivity when mobile. This was key as we walked a ton, and took the Underground a lot (it is a great service).

Not having reliable connectivity in mobile contexts crippled some of the utility of Google Mobile Maps since it essentially removed the Real-Time goodness of the app. Moreover, it crimped the ability to search for nearby restaurants when on the move.

By contrast, in Paris we were able to grab onto "gray" connectivity within 5-10 minutes of trying to do so. This, at the very least, gave us a sense of intermittent connectivity being reliable.

Gray connectivity was captured two ways. One was via a discovery of Wi-Fi connections within the Settings tab, and jumping from one connection to the next until we found live access. Primitive, but fungible.

The second was that we discovered a service provider that offered different tiers of Wi-Fi access on-demand, including a "20 Minutes Free" option, which was like getting a lucky board game roll.

Armed with some sense of being able to queue up requests, messages, grab map views and the like, geo navigation became tactile, a virtual, but distinct, overlay to our physical navigation.

The ability to visually follow block-by-block, and see the storefront of a business blocks or miles away was very powerful.

At times, it felt like Mobile Maps was a divining rod pulling us to our destination.

What was almost magical was how Maps seemed designed to watch proactively in the background for a live connection so it could autonomously update location data when connectivity was intermittent.

I was more than once surprised to discover that Maps had used a sliver of momentary connectivity, and updated location with no prodding from me.

That said, it seems that Apple could make MobileMe even more essential for iPod Touch owners by bundling into it a Boingo-like Wi-Fi Universal Pass so at least queue-level store and forward services can autonomously be negotiated for the mobility-oriented user.

A couple of final notes: One is that my wife realized tremendous utility in using the Notes App to capture daily food & water intake and other related health data. This was a simple, powerful, and recurring workflow for her.

Two is that during the trip I finished my first Kindle book on the iPod Touch, 'Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando.'

I absolutely loved the fact that when I found myself with a five-minute slug of time (waiting in lobby, bathroom, at coffee), I could read a chunk of pages and click out as easily as I had clicked in (since the Kindle App automatically bookmarks where you left off).

It, like the iPod Touch itself, was a perfect travel companion.

Related Posts:

1. "Right Here Now" services: weaving a real-time web around status


2. Nine Essential Truths for Entrepreneurial Success


3. iPhones, App Stores and Ecosystems

Four Short Links: 24 August 2009

Distributed Version Control Systems, Ideas Tracking, OO Survey Results, New Barcodes

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 1

1. Making Sense of Revision Control Systems (ACM Queue) -- good introduction to the subject from Bryan O'Sullivan, author of Mercurial: The Definitive Guide (aka Distributed Revision Control with Mercurial) that covers Subversion, Mercurial, and git. Under the distributed view of revision control, every commit is potentially a branch of its own. If Bob and Alice start from the exact same view of history, and each one makes a commit, they have already created a tiny anonymous fork in the history of the project. Neither will know about this until one pulls the other's changes in, at which point they will have to merge with them. These tiny branches and merges are so frequent with Mercurial and Git that users of these tools look at branching and merging in a very different way from Subversion users. The parallel and branchy nature of a project's development is clearly visible in its history, making it obvious who made which changes when, and exactly which other changes theirs were based upon.
2. Ideas Are Awesome -- Ideas Are Awesome is a web culture aggregator tracking emerging marketing, design, and technology memes. We are currently tracking: simplify, empower, give, inspire, connect, adapt. (via cheeky_geeky on Twitter)
3. OO Concepts Survey Result -- There were 3785 people who completed the survey. These charts show the proportion who gave the different possible responses for each question. If you're an OO programmer, use this to determine how aberrant your practices are (hint: most people are neither zealous nor consistent).
4. Bokode -- a new camera based interaction solution where an ordinary camera can detect small optical tags from a relatively large distance. Current optical tags, such as barcodes, must be read within a short range and the codes occupy valuable physical space on products. We present a new low-cost optical design so that the tags can be shrunk to 3mm visible diameter, and unmodified ordinary cameras several meters away can be set up to decode the identity plus the relative distance and angle. The design exploits the bokeh effect of ordinary cameras lenses, which maps rays exiting from an out of focus scene point into a disk like blur on the camera sensor. (via waxy)

Waze: Make Your Own Maps in Realtime

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 5

Waze (blog) is using mobile phones as sensors to collect data. The Israeli-based start-up (though now with offices in SF) is relying on users to create its maps, to report realtime traffic and to teach it how to route from place A to place B. Along their drives the user gobbles points for every action. Use the app and gain recognition within the Waze community. The company is doing all of this through its free turn-by-turn navigation apps (sorry, iPhone and Android only for now). This is exactly what I've expected to see from the Tele Atlas/Tomtom and NAVTEQ/Nokia acquisitions, but that hasn't happened yet in either case.

Whenever you use the Waze mobile app you are contributing to their data store and their community. You can use the app to find an address, a business or to store favorite locations. The map view will display traffic conditions. Upon selecting a destination Waze will give you directions. Right now those directions are not necessarily going to be very good. So they ask that you leave the app on and just drive to your location - Waze will learn your secrets to generate a better route next time. As you drive to a destination you will get relevant alerts (hazards, speed traps) and be given points based on your distance.

The map above was generated with just one week of driving data in SF. The base maps are all from the TIGER data set, but that set is old and not always kept up-to-date. Here is the same view on Google Maps.

This is a Portland part of the map as seen on the Waze site in an admin interface. Though Waze uses TIGER data (Radar post) and mobile data as its base it still needs human input. Any place you see a 6 that is a road that needs to be verified on the website. Sometimes you can just add the direction (like in the pink spots) other times the fixes need to be more advanced. Waze has promoted several community members to be area managers. These super users can approve changes and fixes to the map. On the Waze website you can watch a realtime stream of alerts from users. The Live Map shows cars driving around in cities.

One of the first questions that many geo geeks ask of Waze is what about whether they could use OpenStreetMap's data. CEO Noam Bardin is wary of the OSMs licensing and would rather start from scratch. Waze definitely intends commercialize their maps and does not want to have any issues with that. He views the two projects as fundamentally different. He wants Waze to be a realtime mapping data source that includes road closures and traffic (whether or not OSM participants would agree that they aren't realtime is another story). The choice to not use OSM data is not difficult in the US where TIGER data provides a great free resource for geo apps. However Waze intends to go to Europe, where each country has different rules governing their geodata (one of the reasons OSM began their). When Waze does go to Europe they will have to consider using OSM data and they hope that the licensing is compatible by then (or they may have to use a more costly service like Tele Atlas or NAVTEQ).

Waze is sure to raise some privacy-oriented eyebrows. However, the company is currently storing all traces anonymously, so similar Google and Loopt they are quickly dropping identifiable data and not storing history. This is another fundamental difference between OSM and Waze. OSM is being created by volunteers. Waze's maps are being created by users who are trading their location in return for a service (routing, search and traffic). Waze will be storing aggregate information about its users. On your Dashboard page there are stats on your usage (miles driven, alerts) and (coming soon) data (times) on your daily commute.

As mentioned Waze plans on making revenue off of the maps. As Bardin says in an email: "Waze plans on making revenue off the data set it is building - real time maps, traffic and road information. In the very near future Waze will be releasing an API which will be free for non commercial use and will work out a revenue share for commercial applications."

There are many companies that are aimed at the realtime market. These companies are collecting people's thoughts, tweets, actions and environmental data. Waze is the first that is trying to draw a map in realtime and publish it out to the web. By offering a valuable (and improving) mobile service in exchange for data Waze has the opportunity to create a new type of map. I expect Waze to get some competition from Tele Atlas/Tomtom and NAVTEQ/Nokia. However, those multi-billion dollar acquisitions with their huge hardware base have not made moves this bold. I expect them to pay a lot of attention to (and learn from) Waze's progress.

(continue reading)

The iTunes App Store Rolls with the Travel Season

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 3

Sometime last week, the iTunes app store passed 70,000 unique apps (70K apps have appeared in the app store since it launched). One of the fastest-growing categories in the U.S. iTunes app store has been Travel, displacing Education to move into the top 5 largest categories. Welcome to summer vacation!

Next to the Book category, Travel is the most competitive category, with each seller averaging about 6 unique apps during the most recent week. A quick inspection of recently released Travel apps included a lot of travel guides -- which like the Book apps, are fairly easy to create compared to apps in other categories.

The other milestone I wanted to highlight is the iPhone's growing importance to Apple's bottom line. Two years after its launch, last quarter was the first time the iPhone surpassed the iPod in terms of revenue:

In a recent conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer noted that one of the main reasons for developing the iPhone was the anticipated drop-off in sales of iPod products. What's been impressive is how things worked out exactly as Apple hoped: the transition from one product line to the next has been remarkably smooth.

Data for this post was through the week ending 8/9/2009, and covers the U.S. iTunes app store.

iTunes App Store Incubation Period Increases In Most Categories

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 4

Over the last few weeks, media coverage of the iTunes app store often touches on concerns about Apple's approval process. Some apps drew enough complaints that Apple pulled them off the app store. With thousands of developers wanting to launch apps and Apple unable to come up with a more efficient vetting process, I'm revisiting an earlier post on the duration of incubation periods by category:

Individual apps also have release dates, which based on Apple's recent changes to the app store, represents the date developers upload their apps to iTunes Connect. The period between the release date of an app and the date it first appears in iTunes is when Apple performs a series of undisclosed QA tests. Because it translates to a more favorable position when users sort by release date, most developers prefer this incubation period to be as short as possible.

The number of new apps has been on a steady upward trend since February. The spike that occurred during the holidays (12/21/08), which I highlighted In my earlier post, now pales in comparison to the number of new apps that are being launched weekly. (Over 3,000 apps launched the week ending 6/7/2009.)

With many more apps being launched each week, Apple is surely having to sift through more apps. Not surprisingly, the incubation period (i.e. time between release date and the date an app actually appears on the app store) has gotten longer. In all but the Travel category, the MEAN incubation period has been trending upward:

Note the difference in the incubation period across categories: while many more Games are launched each week, on average Music apps spend a few more days locked in Apple's approval process. (It probably doesn't help the Music apps that the iPhone already comes with a music app!) In June, the typical Navigation app spent 3 weeks waiting to get approved.

As Symbian recently found out, when it comes to evaluating mobile apps, relying purely on automatic scanners isn't sufficient. Human inspection is important, but Apple needs to figure out how to meet the growing number of new apps being submitted. A combination of more transparency (allow developers to communicate with Apple referees via email, interactive chat session, ...) and crowdsourcing (have the thousands of developers and avid users flag questionable apps) could help shorten the incubation period. Any other suggestions on how to improve and speed up the iTunes app store approval process?

Data for this post was through the week ending 7/26/2009, and covers the U.S. iTunes app store. Click here for a larger version of the Incubation By Category chart. In my previous post, I computed the MEDIAN incubation period in days.

Four short links: 28 July 2009

UI Library, 3rd Party Wave Server, Mobile Phones + Parasites, Single API to Cloud Providers

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 2

1. CNMAT Resource Library -- The CNMAT Resource Library is our fast growing collection of materials, sensors, gestural controllers, interface devices, tools, demos, prototypes and products - all organized and annotated to support the design of physical interaction systems, "new lutherie" and art installations. (via egoodman on Delicious)
2. PyGoWave Server -- first third-party Google Wave server, based on Django.
3. Mobile Phones Identify Parasites and Bacteria -- UCB Researchers developed a cell phone microscope, or CellScope, that not only takes color images of malaria parasites, but of tuberculosis bacteria labeled with fluorescent markers.. The sensor network is built out, and the computers in our pockets surprise us with their uses. (via BoingBoing)
4. libcloud -- a unified interface to cloud providers, written in Python and open source. Covers EC2, EC2-EU, Slicehost, Rackspace, Linode, VPS.net, GoGrid, flexiscale, Eucalyptus. (via joshua on Delicious)