The Memory Leak

Interesting O’Reilly article, quoting Kurt Cagle …

I suspect that this feed model will increasingly end up replacing the sometimes more cumbersome repositories in various verticals (such as Geographic Information Systems, or GIS).

The internet has cut into classified ad revenue at local newspapers.

I think newspapers can still play a role, though. Most cities require permits to be purchased for garage sales. Some cities, like Bryan TX, display garage sale maps, but don’t do a very good job at it.

I think newspapers could mashup garage sale permit locations, and add value by allowing garage sale vendors to purchase additional advertising, upload photos, and list the items they have for sale. This would then support a slick map based web gui.

Additionally, SMS based LBS could allow cell phone users to get a list of nearby garage sales when out shopping.

I’m guessing the doppler weather sites get a lot of hits.

A typical use case is “when will the storm reach my house”?

Seems to me weather sites could provide a tool that allows the user to place two markers, on different timesteps of the image. The software could then extrapolate a timeline to allow the user to predict when the storm will hit.

Advertisers could be offered an option to purchase ad space that appears along the timeline.

The Washington Post has rolled out LoudonExtra.com in an attempt to get hyperlocal.

In their announcement, they note:

Key to the hyperlocal strategy of The Post and many other papers are searchable databases. Anecdotal evidence indicates that they attract considerable viewers. In December, Gannett Co.’s Asbury Park (N.J.) Press dumped three huge public-record databases onto its Web site: local property sales and ownership, and state employees’ salaries. By May, the paper had added searchable databases for local crime, school test scores, state deaths and public school employees.

But when I go to the Asbury Park Press, I don’t see those databases. I really think the key to hyperlocal journalism is map based views of these databases (maybe Asbury has them, but I can’t find them).

(BTW, The Washington post has been scooped by Fortius One, in finding some strange pattern to the DC Madam Scandal.)

Here in San Antonio, local government maintains foreclosures and crime, while the Texas Education Agency maintains boundaries as well as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandated school report cards. However, the San Antonio Express-News’ website shows none of this information. With a good user interface, these datasets could quickly hyperlocalize a newspaper.

Token rant: who’s idea was it to have two Harris middle schools in San Antonio - one in NEISD, the other in San Antonio ISD? Whoever it was, they should be put in detention hall. I googled for Harris and went to the wrong one. My son missed his basketball game.

The news about Sprint dumping 1000 subscribers because they were costing too much makes me wonder about the economics of software support.

A bug report can be valuable, potentially allowing improved software quality - a benefit that can far exceed the cost needed to process the report. Yet, at least with ESRI, bug reports submitted by those not current on their maintenance are ignored. This doesn’t make sense to me. Seems like a system could be implemented that allows sites to submit useful bug reports in lieu of maintenance payments.

But not all bug reports are useful. Many are useless, and therefore costly as Sprint realizes.

Therefore, if a site submits a lot of useless bug reports (of things clearly documented), perhaps their maintenance cost for the coming year should increase.

(Submitted while anxiously awaiting feedback from a bug report).

Not long ago Don Henley was accusing Clear Channel of homogenizing the airwaves.

Clear Channel now seems to be changing directions. They’ve been bought by a private equity firm. They’ve been selling a lot of their assets.

They announced recently they are rolling out HD radio in 48 large markets. With HD radio, it appears hyperlocalization will be possible … I wonder if it will ever extend beyond traffic reports. Clear Channel VP Jeff Littlejohn says:

“HD Radio is the future for broadcast data delivery, allowing us to not only deliver traffic data, but provide additional services a well.”

Clear Channel is localizing in other ways too, with a localized version of Facebook. For example Dallas has KissNation, while San Francisco has Wild Space. I can’t tell if differences between the sites are a result of different local culture, or simply different pre-ordained music formats.

The Express News quotes Clear Channel VP Evans on why they want to be local:

“Our feeling was that our listeners wanted to connect on a local level”

.

I dunno about all this … when I want to feel connected with a local community on the radio, I just listen to the News from Lake Wobegon.

The drop in the number of Microsoft developers has received a bit of attention lately.

What attracts programmers to a platform? Certainly robust APIs, good documentation, and market demand. But there’s something else too, at least for GIS programmers. While programmers in general are migrating to Linux, I think GIS programmers often choose a platform where they feel they are part of a community that is doing something.

In spite of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Microsoft doesn’t instill programmers with a feeling they are working on a platform that’s making a difference. Google (do no evil) does. And of course, so does ESRI.

Google’s management understands Human Scale GIS. Instead of focusing on tools for sophisticated statistical analysis, they focus on tools that allow one to quickly drill down to individual people. Writing in Google’s Geospatial Organizing Principle, Michael Jones (Google CTO) says:

“Zooming to the human level of Figure 9, we move
from an abstract awareness of 300,000 deaths to the
remembrance of just one, M, as told by her brother,
a Zaghawa man from Miski. Does news of her death
feel less, more, or exactly 1/300,000 as powerful as
the total?”

Jonathan Gurwitz’ article piqued my interest about Paul Slovik’s paper, “If I Look at the Mass, I will never act: Psychic Numbing and Genocide“, published by the Society for Judgement and Decision Making. Slovik offers an experiential (and yes, even statistical) basis for human scale information.

“Numerical representations of human lives do not necessarily convey the importance of those lives. All too often the numbers represent dry statistics, ‘human beings with the tears dried off.’”

ESRI has a long history in humanitarian aid. In the realm of Human Scale GIS, ESRI offers ArcExplorer. Unlike Google Earth, it has the ability to do very sophisticated geooprocessing.

How about GIS for Microlending?
It would be interesting to spatially enable Kiva to support coordinated lending. Kiva already manages information about microlending at the human scale. What’s missing are the more traditional GIS scales. These other scales of information would allow lending to be more coordinated. For example, suppose one lender is considering loans for dairy processing, other lenders could offer loans for cows, by browsing through maps of recently funded dairy processing centers. This would allow lenders to collectively focus where they can have the greatest regional impact.

The Google Earth Grants program would allow something like this to be implemented without the usual license costs. ESRI also has a grants program.

National Geographic has an interesting write-up on Swarms.

Spread out over a large area, a group could function as a powerful mobile sensor net, gathering information about what’s out there. If the group encountered something unexpected, it could adjust and respond quickly, even if the robots in the group weren’t very sophisticated, just as ants are able to come up with various options by trial and error. If one member of the group were to break down, others could take its place. And, most important, control of the group could be decentralized, not dependent on a leader.

It also mentions the Centibots project. Check out the specs for mapping performance here. Given how these systems seem to be parallelizable, perhaps they will be the ones that carry the torch for Moores law.

My only complaint about the NG article is that it doesn’t mention the downside of swarm behavior in people. Swarms of otherwise intelligent people often do very stupid things. See ochocracy.