A year ago and XTech '08

A year ago, Peter talked on behalf of Quakr at O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, California. Some pictures were taken, and we talked about it here. The talk has now appeared on four sites as an Audio file:
1) itc (check out that angry face!)
2) earideas
3) podfeed
4) mefeedia

We're kind of expecting it to be in video format sometime, but we'll see.

We've all got too busy in our normal lives, or broken our leg, or doing too much generally so we are NOT going to be attending XTech this year - after being accepted. It's a pisser, but sometimes it happens that way.

We haven't done very much to the Viewr or the Taggr in recent months, and do not have any kind of list of urgent fixes to make.

What's this?

So. I talked. People seemed to listen (although it was fairly hard to look into the eyes of 800ish people in a huge ballroom) and then asked sensible questions of me after it. I would have said that 24 hours worth of travel for 15 minutes of talking was some poor economics, but the geekworking potential proved irresistible. It was really good to meet the organisational wizzo and his various helpers, re-acquaint myself with Schuyler Erle and the good folks from Loki, and meet up with variously interested and interesting people.

A dead one of those...

Coverage:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/x180/520716031/in/set-72157600280624429/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gisuser/520279393/
http://think.random-stuff.org/FrontPage/archive/2007/05/29/where-2-0-lightning-post
http://sensorymetrics.com/2007/05/29/where-20-conference-oreilly-trademarks-where/
http://ipid.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/where-the-2nd/
http://www.edparsons.com/?p=468
http://ubikwitus.blogspot.com/2007/05/where-2.html
http://www.juicygeography.co.uk/blog/?p=158
http://www.txtst.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/215
http://where2-0.blogspot.com/2007/06/morning-session-day-12.html
http://threeminds.organic.com/2007/05/updated_where_is_here_at_where.html

Quakr-centric Highlights:

Google CEO of Maps steals our words "It's attempting to show what it's like to be there" - some 30 minutes before I get to say them!
Everyone seemed to use "GeoRSS" somewhere in their talk.
The money for map data and applications is coming from Real Estate and Tourism in the main.
GeoVector have a phone plugin thing with a digital compass and talked about an agreement with phone manufacturers to insert one into all new models? talk details.
A number of people mentioned an SD-RAM memory card for camera's with 1GB of space AND a GPS device which automagically EXIF's the images taken with GPS data - called Eye-Film, the website is http://www.eye.fi/.

A 2nd gig to follow SWIG

Quakr is most proud to announce that it managed to stand up in front of the uber geeks that are SWIG and make their *thing* make sense. The 20 allocated minutes were split into three basic parts - an intro, a demo and a SWIG specific ending. This seemed to work. We're thinking that the article for XTech may well follow these lines.

If you were there and want a recap, or weren't and want to know what we said, http://www.quakr.net/~katie/SWIG has all the links we used. It doesn't have a copy of the words we said, but hopefully it covers the gist of the talk.

On the back of what seemed to us to be a well received talk and post-talk-public-house discussion, we've got a second "gig". This time it's locally run Oxford Geek Night to be held on the 11th April. See you there!

Quakr presentation at XTech 2007

We, the Quakr gang will present our musings on Thursday 17th May at XTech 2007 in Paris, France.

Now... whether to have one of those presentations that consist of random colourful photos (creative commons, naturally), with just one word in white in the corner? Or is that just sooo 2005? Or, like flares, has it come around in a circle... ?

OK, I think what we'll do is put the viewr on autopilot on the screen behind us. I find walking through the floor and into the white void particularly vomitous.. perhaps we can set a record for mass induced motion-sickness...?

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