Ere I Go

GPS vs. Paper

admin — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:27:30 +0000

A research study done by Toru Ishikawa, in Tokyo showed that students who used a GPS navigation device “traveled longer distances and made more stops during the walk than map users and direct-experience participants. Also, GPS users traveled more slowly, made larger direction errors, drew sketch maps with poorer topological accuracy, and rated wayfinding tasks as more difficult than direct-experience participants.”

I’d be interested to see what kind of hardware they were using.

GeoTagging

admin — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:52:40 +0000

I’ve been looking into the idea of geotagging, trying to figure out the easiest way to do it. I came across this little gadget, but from all reports the accuracy just isn’t near what I’d like (we’re trying to get within 3 meters). But really all that gadget does is keep track of when and where you were. Then it syncs up with your camera’s time code, and you’ve got an easy way to tell where your photos were taken.

So now I’m wondering if you can do the same thing with a more accurate GPS unit. I’ve found a few helpful links, and will add them here in case anybody else is interested.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/24549
http://oregonstate.edu/~earlyj/gpsphotolinker/
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/20893

And perhaps the best resource I came across:

http://birdhouse.org/blog/2007/12/29/experiments-in-geocoding/

I’m going to give this a whirl, and I’ll report back on how hard it is to do.

Right Place Training

admin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:53:34 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of georelevant content or instruction. In the world of instruction there is concept called ‘just in time training’, referring to training that is delivered not all at once, perhaps in the training office removed from where the information will be applied, but rather the training is delivered out on the floor at just the right time. The training on how to use the machine is given when the machine needs to be used.

Georelevant content, then, refers not to when information should be presented, but where. The information that is relevant to a particular location is presented because a person has entered the area. An example of this might be how to work a sprinkler system. You don’t need that information at the office, you need that information when you are next to the sprinkler console.

The concept behind just in time training is that you don’t overwhelm the student with all the information up front. The power comes that they are given the information in context, and when they need it. Georelevant instruction has a similar concept, delivering content when and where the user needs it. The power behind georelevant instruction lies in the fact that the instructional designer can use the location of the student to determine what information is presented to the student.

The Next Big Thing

admin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:03:22 +0000

It’s easy to spot revolutions or major events in the past. The shrinking of computer parts in the 70s, the PC revolution of the 80s that led to the Internet explosion of the 90s, etc. At the beginning of the new millennium, we had at our fingertips millions of pages of information. It wasn’t a question of ‘is it out there somewhere’, it was a question of ‘it’s out there, how do I find it?’

Enter Google. Google wasn’t the first search engine, nor was it the last, but it quickly became THE search engine because they did something different. Google created a search engine that took all of that information and made it useful and relevant. They did it not by teaching the machine to do it, but instead by teaching the machine to observe what we humans were linking to. By tapping into the social side of information, Google quickly became the best search engine for finding the information in the sea of content.

So the latest ‘big thing’ has been the socializing of the Internet. We now find sites like Digg, reddit, Del.icio.us, etc. that help us wade through all the rough to find the diamond. The buzz word surrounding all of this has been ‘Web 2.0′. This socializing has gone a long way to making sense of it all, but is there more? What is the next big thing?

Realtors have been giving us the answer for years, although they didn’t know it. The next big thing is…’location, location, location’.

Think of how we access all the information of the Internet. We do it at a desk where wires keep us attached to a specific location. Laptops
help us branch out a bit, but even then we are tied to a wireless connection. Go too far and you no longer have access to information.

Mobile devices have begun to allow us to take this information with us, but we are still stuck in an old paradigm. If I am standing in the Madrid, Spain train station, there is a good chance I want to ride a train somewhere. But when I connect to the Internet on my mobile device, I’m stuck finding information the old way: through keywords. Somewhere out there is information that would help me, but all I have our my not-as-useful keywords.

The next big thing is to organize, tag, and link information to a specific location. Think of the last time you were at a national park. It’s a very good possibility that the only information you had about the park fit on a tri-fold paper that you picked up at the visitor’s station. In the information age, how is this acceptable?

Instead, imagine visiting the park where hundreds of visitors have linked information to specific locations. You have the architect of the visitor’s center who tells you the history of the building. As you move around the park you access information provided by geologists, geographers, botanists, biologists, environmental scientists, conservationists, hiking enthusiasts, bikers, etc. etc. etc. The information is useful because it’s relevant to the location. And it becomes manageable in the same way that the 10s of millions of pictures on flickr have become manageable, through tagging.

If I’m driving down a dirt road, I can access the Internet, enter in the keywords, “eat, roast beef sandwich’. The next time I pass within 5
miles of an Arby’s, my device let’s me know. Or if I have my mountain bike on the back of my car, I search for the keywords ‘mountain bike
trails’. Every time I come within a few miles of a trail, my GPS device alerts me.

We’re beginning to see the first threads of this next big idea. Pictures and Wikipedia articles are now linked to Google Earth. You can access information about a location, but it’s still at your desk. The real revolution will come when this information can be accessed completely and easily from a mobile device, while you’re at that location.

Today we have access to an unfathomable amount of information. Web 2.0 has helped us begin to organize and make sense of that information. Tying information to a location is the next step and will literally open up a whole new world.