O'Reilly Media Where 2.0 Conference

Mapping space and the heavens is harder than anything found on Earth. Chris Spurgeon introduces us to the measurement tools for tracking the moving objects as they march across the sky. From major celestial objects as close as our Moon to the far out reaches of Jupiter and beyond. The science of space mapping is challenging but endlessly interesting for those curious enough to investigate.

In this Where 2.0 talk Ted Morgan, co-founder of Skyhook Wireless, has three things to say about the explosion of location based applications: the breadth of apps now available is excitingly diverse (and he has examples to prove it), fascinating usage patterns are emerging (and he has the data and analysis to demonstrate it), and web developers interested in adding location into their websites should know about Skyhook's new service Loki.

Perry Evans, CEO of Local Matters, discusses the differences between the daydream of LBS advertising and the reality in this Where 2.0 presentation. If 'more precision is better', then highly targeted geographic advertising that location based services (LBS) and applications allow should mean greater returns for small businesses and application developers. Yet very few local advertising ecosystems have emerged, and Evans, with over 10 years experience in developing LBS applications, knows a lot about why.

Rob Shanks discusses web based GIS technology and the features available in Arc GIS online. Showcasing the free databases and webkits available within the online community for publishing and sharing data this short talk gives a small preview on the future of GIS within the cloud.

From tracking flu outbreaks to traffic updates a tremendous amount of information available within a city is open to exploitation by savvy citizens. Adapting the decentralized chaotic morass of the Internet to the modern city John Geraci discusses adapting rich data about the city through the open source website DIYcity for citizens and city planners.

One drawback of most maps is that they only show two dimensions. In this program from Where 2.0, Brandon Martin-Anderson discusses examples of maps which attempt to depict events in three or four dimensions.

Do virtual worlds provide us the best tool to learn about the real world? While geo-location technologies let us create and play GPS-enabled adventures in the real world, they also allow us to simulate and model real physical geography within the virtual worlds of MMO's. Jeremy Irish, CEO of Groundspeak, and W. James Au describe how the latest geo-location applications are expanding the pathways between real and virtual geographies.

Geo is impacting many industries including automotive, retail, telecom and advertising. Emerging from these current technologies are applications for the GeoWeb, GeoMobile, GeoCar, and GeoVoice. These entrenched industries are wide-open for investments and this presentation provides some guidance and perspective for those looking to cash in. In this show, Dev Khare, partner at VC firm Venrock, discusses the current landscape on the GeoWeb from a VC perspective.

What do you get when you apply Moore's law to robotics and GPS? Chris Anderson, of Wired magazine, explains what you get in this Where 2.0 presentation. Cheap and ubiquitous location technologies combined with robotic toys have given birth to a thriving amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles community. Though these sophisticated spy toys, which are powered by open source software, are usually flying just for the fun of it, the federal regulators are trying to figure out what is even legal, in this brave new little world.

Five years from now, chances are you'll be dependent upon web-based GIS applications at home and in the office. And it's likely that those GIS applications will evolve from the work of John Hanke. In this session from the 2008 O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference, Hanke discusses the progress and tremendous growth of the Geoweb. In describing Google's response to this growth, Hanke introduces a new partnership with ESRI. The new initiative will allow developers to pull data from even more GIS servers.