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Obama’s speech seen by 38 million viewers, this is the headline that was used by  NPR on this story
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94112461 from Associated Press.

Then they put this line in at the bottom “Obama’s audience might be higher, since Nielsen didn’t have an estimate for how many people watched Obama on PBS or C-SPAN Thursday night.”

And thus when MSM (Main stream Media) can not monitor what is going on it can not understand it and use dumb words like “might be higher”.  Also the article doesn’t mention that the democrats.org website also had the speech streaming as well.(via silverlight so I didn’t get to check it out)   Then to make things even more confusing this was global.

I and many other people I know watched the events live from all over the world, I was tlaking in the twitter back channel to people in Melbourne, Sydney, San Fran, Brisbane, Perth e.t.c about events as the CSpan stream came in.  At which point I switched to the ABC local stream and told all the people on my twitter list and in my office to watch that version).  So there were hundreds of people that I have some form of contact watching Obama’s speech.  And mainstream media says “Might” .

Thanks to twitter I had a copy of the speech as well before he said it and could see what he was saying line for line and how he improved small parts (very impressive skill) and drop quotes into my twitter timeline.  But don’t forget the audience “might” have been bigger.

It is this grass roots tech approach that paid for his campaign, it is why he refused public funding (he can make more from people on his sms list) that got him to where he is now and shows why someone at 47 years old is a major shift in how things could and should be done.

Now of course being an Australian I cant vote for him but given the effect that Bush had on this country I sure as hell will be hoping that he gets over the line.

If he gives any more speechs along the way myself and most of the people I know “might just watch” as well.

Tags: General, Media, twitter by Me
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http://code.google.com/android/adc_gallery/

“The final phase of Android Developer Challenge I is now complete. Out of 50 teams of finalists, 10 teams received a $275,000 award each and 10 teams received a $100,000 award each.”

First of all I must say congrats to all the finalists and winners but I must say there is a common theme to a lot of these finalists… 90% of them are location based.  That is no small number and given how google have moved from the search to the location business in the last few years you can see how location is the tech of the future.  A future that is now.

Having a GPS in your car is now considered necessary and unless my taxi driver speaks fluent english and drives a black london cab I want my taxi to have a GPS as well.  But now phones are GPS devices with most manufactures putting them in not only high end models but midrange devices now as well.

I geotagged tweets and photos create KML files e.t.c, but soon and very soon there will be tech that says I am here and what is around me.  Some of these Android apps will flow back into the market on other platforms some more than others.

For example Compare Everywhere will change the face of shopping and shopping districts in a very short period of time.  Image a world where you scan the bar code, your phone then looks around where you are and lets you know if there is a cheaper item online or at another store say walking distance away.  This will not be a small shift in how we shop but will result in a fundimental shift on how shops work.  Perhaps even service will make a come back into a lot of these increasingly homoganised shopping malls.  When a store 3 shops up has something cheaper and you don’t have to go there to find out then you will reconsider you purchases.

Sure a lot of people are going to whine about geoprivacy but like all things there are levels at which you can interact and places you can and wont.  My home is my space for example, but lots of people know where I live and people can work out a lot about you even without computers.  Sure it makes stalking easier, but if we pander to the few bad apples then Newton would never have sat under the apple tree and we would have GPS

Tags: General, google, gps by Me
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Been up in Sydney for a few days for a planning workshop with the Sydney crew which was all very nice, amazing how much work you can get done in a 5 minute face to face conversation over a nice glass of red (Thanks for the invite to your place Chris).  And got to spend sometime with my sister and by time I mean complete a set of tasks revolving around setting up and fixing various bits of tech in the house.

But that aside… and back to the non work stuff, I managed to squeeze out some photos on the flights up and back and get some new GPS traces for you to look at in Google Earth.

When I finish the project at work that is a month late due to my lack of calcium intake and low immune system I will be playing some more with the plug in version of Google Earth and will try and get my KMLS to work off this site directly.  Also hopefully soon my ISP will get off their arse and put PHP 5 on my damned server and I can run some more scripts at this end to show off some of the data I have.

Anyway click on the images for the bigger versions of these Nokia N958-gb geotagged photos and then click here to download the following KML Files…

Sydney-to-Melbourne-Flight2.kmz and Melbourne-to-Newcastle-Flight.kmz Both of which have the taxi and take off sequence although the gps lost fix due to the rapid climb in height.  They are not the cleanest traces either but getting a fix inside a 737 is never easy, especially when you put your phone into flightmode and then put it away as well.

This Photo doesn’t look like much at this size, and infact only looks good once you get up to the larger sizes, but it is Canberra at Night. There is a touch of a reflection, but given that I use only a camera phone on Night Mode with the general vibrations of an Aircraft and a few glass of wine before the trip this worked out better value than I anticipated.

Tags: General, Photos, gps, n95 by Me
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I finally found the bit of software I was after for my n95-8b.  It was a raw NMEA183 sentences log generator.  See the Sports tracker logs are o.k.  And yes it does create a very nice KML file for google earth.

But really three is a lot of data missing….  For example..  I can see only the average speed the max and min speeds.  With a Nema Log file I can see the speed and elevation e.t.c at any point of the trip.  Of course you need other software to deal with these files, but I have that from running things like OziExplorer on the R2H.

the software is called eGPSTrack .  A Java App that hooks into the internal GPS and writes all the raw GPS data at an interval that is configurable by the user.

This is from there about page….

“eGPSTrack is a gps tracking Java application for mobile devices with J2ME and a Bluethooth , internal or serial gps receiver. It isn’t a navigator, it is a positioning tool that tells you were you are at each moment, and which route you have been travelling. It is primarily aimed at outdoor activities such as trekking, hiking and cycling

eGPSTrack can load calibrated maps (cartographic or satellite images), and show your current track, position and direction on the map, providing you a global view of your trip. Old tracks can be loaded and showed at same time as your current track. Tracks can be exported to GPX and KML files so that you can view and edit them on a computer.”

There are some issues with the software, for example it doesn’t handle the rotation of the screen very well, and occasionally wigs out a little.  But it is a very low version number and it does what I want.  So if you really want to track yourself with your phone, rush out and download this FREE application.

Oh yeah… and one last dig….  Try and do that on your non jailbreaked Iphone… leave a gps task writing in the background whilsts listening to music, making a log file via Sports Tracker and taking a call :-)  Sorry had to get that in.

Tags: gps, n95, nokia by Me
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As most of you should be aware I am a bit of a geotagging/gps nut (acutally I am just a nut).

with 99% of my photos geotagged on Flickr and a tendency to send out geotweets (is that even a word, guess it is now)  I am always trying to show people how to set up their phones to do it….

Well Kevin Anderson has written a great blog post based around an n82, flickr and geotagging.  And with him being a much more bettera writer than I am…. I figure I will just give you the link to his post and you can read it all over there.  It works for the N95 and N78 roughly the same as well.
Howto: Geo-tagging photos for an easy map mashup

P.S

I may have finally found the raw nema writing for the n95-8gb that I have wanted for a long time, but I didn’t read the manual for the software so I have yet to get it working properly (will get back to you on this shortly)

Tags: gps, n78, n95, nokia by Me
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