Recently NORC released a Street View type service for several towns in Austria.  It is a nice (if basic) web app, but it is a pity for them that the Google Street release in Austria is imminent.

As always we can expect some cheap journalism around privacy issues like this one, but my local free paper Tiroler Woche have surpassed themselves with a journalistic extravaganza on NORC’s application.  The leader starts:

Luxusvillen von Mafia ausspioniert.  Ostmafia hat Innsbruck im Visier.  Per Mausklick koennen sich Ostbanden einen perfektem Ueberblick ueber Innsbruck verschaffen.

Tiroler Woche Do, 15. April 2010

Which basically translates as something like:  ”Mafia spying on luxury villas.  Eastern european mafia have Innsbruck in their sights.  With a mouse click eastern bandits can get a perfect view of Innsbruck.”

So the fear of burglaries is standard in any Street View story, but the Eastern European Mafia sounds impressive.  The link?  Well NORC is based in Bucharest so they must of course be Eastern European Mafia.

What a journalistic masterstroke, combining privacy fears, crime and Xenophobia all in one story.

Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response.  From BBC News

And I love this little story:

Plymouth Ski Centre at Marsh Mills was forced to close on Wednesday due to the icy conditions.

(from bbc news)

What?!

I really enjoyed the BBC radio programme Archive on 4 – In the Beginning Was the Nerd by Stephen Fry. It is great retrospective in the ridiculousness of the Y2K panic ten years ago and a broader reflection on society’s relationship with and attitudes to computing in the C20. I was working in Local Government in the years preceding 2000 and there were some ridiculous efforts going into Y2K projects. IT contractors were the only winners! It is well worth listening just for revelling in the wisdom of hindsight. Perhaps there is also a pertinent lesson in how the media can poorly understand technology issues but still stir up a frenzy (think about the recent crazy privacy stories on Google StreetView).

So I have started to use Prezi.com (a ‘cloud’ based presentation tool) as I have been interested in any alternative to slide based presenting. The real test was my presentation at AGI Geocommunity. So far it has been well received by audiences and I am enjoying the ’single canvas’ format.  

An introduction video is here.

My thoughts on prezi so far are:

• It is great for sharing your presentation and easy to insert into a blog. In fact it is all about sharing, as soon as you have created a prezi it is shared (no conversions, uploads etc). In fact you can share before you present (great for those projector/beamer failures!).
• It is a great way of working on a single canvas, you can work on a high level structure first and then start filling out the details.
• Editing is tedious! It is a lot slower than working with powerpoint and it takes a while to learn. I now realise how much I use copy and paste! When I need to do something quickly I still use powerpoint.
• It seems to work best when you have a high level view of the structure, zoom in to see some detail, then keep on zooming out again to see where you are in the structure. See these tips.
• Paths can help with a formal presentation, but navigating free-hand is great too.
• It is simple to download your prezi for offline presenting and less stress.
• I will carry on using it (and may even part with some $$$$ for the pro version!)

Give it a go… Happy presenting!

I went for the 15-inch 2.66GHz Mac Book Pro

So some thoughts after a few weeks are:

• I feel like a poseur on the train/plane
• I’ve dropped it once and it survived.  Phew!
• I love the slim form (it slides into my bag nicely)
• Windows 7 is really just as good as OS X.  Apple is just better at marketing!
• I’m still struggling to see the benefit of the snow leopard upgrade (apart from a pretty wallpaper of a snow leopard).
• But where it wins hands-down is with the ability to run multiple operating systems (using something like Parallels) which is something every geek needs.  This reason alone has won me over…

I am moving my base to Innsbruck (to spend more time in the mountains and learn some decent German), setting up a consultancy and I will be working with Axon Active among others (who are based in Luzern)

So who are Axon Active?

Axon Active provide ‘Decision Support’ services for organisations.  They do this by supplying detailed socioeconomic data, undertaking process design and providing sophisticated modelling/analysis.  This includes developing applications that allow organisations to monitor their business and model scenarios themselves.  All of this is tied together by looking at problems from a spatial viewpoint (they have a long history in the GI business). In a sense it is ‘real’ GIS…

More blogging is to follow on what this means in reality and I will be talking about some examples at AGI Geocommunity and the AGI North event.

I am working with Axon Active on International Technical Sales, so I will still have plenty of travel.

Oh, and Axon Active have have a cool HQ in a ‘castle’ overlooking Luzern:

A Morse Code iPhone app that can encode and decode.  Pity no one uses Morse Code any more…

For me Diana’s Cafes in Innsbruck is the perfect blog.  It has a simple purpose and theme, it has considered opinions and even has maps.  Oh, and I love cake and coffee!.  Perfect.

Keep it up Diana, you have many more cafes to visit…

(click image for full size version).

Made using Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE).

In homage to Ed Parson’s more glamorous travel panos!

from the BBC.