Mapping The Vast Indoors - Google Maps 6

A few years ago, my old friend Brad McCallum (who is now at APOS integrating BI and GIS) and I were doing a trade show for ESRI when Brad had a thought.  All of this trade show should be in a GIS, not just in a paper map.  And you should be able to use it to find what you want and navigate the show.

To which I said, all space can be mapped, including indoor spaces - and not just malls and airports and bus and train terminals, but casinos and libraries and you name it.  Including the space between your ears.  This is where GIS and CAD show their common parentage. 

Another good friend and colleague and GIS developer extraordinaire Kurt Gunther did just this - with hospital beds, in his great eBeds software that manages hospital beds, and the folks in them and serving them, just like they were GIS features.

Today, Google made it real for the average person.  "Google Maps 6.0 for Android brings the freestanding map directory to the palm of your hands," announced today on the Google blogs. These detailed floor plans automatically appear when you’re viewing a map and zoom in on a building where indoor map data is available.

For now, the data is limited - Ikea, a few Macy's, the Mall of America, a few major airports.  But we all know where we're going.  Where Brad said we would, more than ten years ago.  And the possibilities, for those of us in GIS land in general, and in ESRI and APOS land in particular, are infinite.

Flash Mobile Dies Quietly - Or Does It? - As Adobe Kisses Apple's Ass

Copyright, Joseph Lackow 2011

An Adobe blog post today by Danny Winokur, VP & GM of Interactive development, included this little tidbit.

"Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores.  We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook."

Why?  And for what, do they break the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill your technology without having a full replacement on tap?"

Universally supported HTML5, that's why.  But most developers will find that the current functionality of HTML5 is not on par with what you can do with Actionscript.  And it could hurt Flash, and its developers and their refined skillsets in general.

For future generations of premium video and gaming, that's for what.  Read: kissing Apple and iOS ass.  In the short term.

HOWEVER.  This represents real movement towards a standard based web.  Towards that end, how will this affect Microsoft plans for Silverlight?

GeoLoco Conference Convenes Tomorrow In SF

GeoLoco convenes tomorrow at the Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF in San Francisco!

Geo-Loco is a location based services and advertising (LBS and LBA) conference where executives from Starbucks, Google, Waze, Facebook and many others will address the convergence of social media and LBS in what promises to be a highly interactive setting, with lots of potential investors lurking.

        

http://www.julieblaustein.com/

The keynotes will be from Bernardo Hernandez,  Head of Global Emerging Platforms for Google; Adam Brotman,  VP & GM for Digital Ventures at Starbucks; and Paul Adams, the Global Brand Experience Manager of Facebook


Here's the full agenda - this promises to be a power-packed day of learning and networking opportunities, and we'll report the highlights.  And if you can make it tonight, you can catch The Locals Awards, celebrating the best offerings in LBS and LBA. 

Conference sessions will include:

- The Future(s) of Location Based Services
- The Brands are Coming, the Brands are Coming!
- Tap, Tap: Is the NFC Tipping Point Finally Here?
- The Future of Geo-Loco Investment      
- Daily Deals Suck! Why and What to Do about It
- The Future of Mobile-Loco Commerce
- The Great Indoors: the Future of Indoor LBS & LBA
- API overload: Making $$$$ and Sense with Data, Context, and Infrastructure