Geo-Search & GeoCams

Join us on our usual third-Tuesday-of-the-month date for a pair of interesting talks on Geo-Search & the NASA GeoCam project -- you could say, part of our "Geo-X" series..

WHERE WE MEETUP: Note our change of location. Our usual location, Kiev Training Room in Google Building 40 is offline for remodeling. Our new location is (listen carefully, now) is the Bodega Bay Tech Talk room in the Google building at 1950 Charleston Road, Mt View, located a little west along Charleston of the Googleplex, proper (our usual location). Check in with Google Security at the Building 1950 Lobby. Here's a map (https://www.meetup.com/webmapsocial/venue/1292197/?forceUrlname=true&pop=true) to zoom in on - pushpin marks the Lobby.

Google will again be generously providing us with dinner. Talks start at 7:00 PM. If you'd like to partake of dinner, please arrive earlier than usual (latest 6:30 PM) at the Bodega Bay room and, with Google Security's guidance, pick up dinner at the adjacent Nourish Cafe. Note, Bodega Bay will only have chairs set up (no tables); so either arrive early and eat at a table in the Cafe or be prepared to balance a plate+drink on your lap during the talks.

Why Search is the Problem

Tyler Bell, Director of Product, Factual, Inc. (http://www.factual.com/)

http://cdn.oreilly.com/radar/images/people/photo_tylerb_m.jpg

Search has proved a boon for the consumer Internet but has hobbled attempts to create an holistic data intelligence underlying the internet: the search paradigm is now so prevalent that the need for human disambiguation is intrinsic to any information retrieval mechanism. This presentation looks specifically at the role of search in Geo APIs, and highlights a few exceptions. It concludes with a brief discussion how URLs are being employed as URIs, why entity resolution services such as google-refine are increasingly needed, and the shape of the forthcoming landscape.

Tyler Bell is the Director of Product for Factual (http://www.factual.com/), an LA-based startup that is, amongst other things, creating a global coverage of the world's POI and businesses. He previously taught archaeology at Oxford University and, more recently and topically, was the Product Lead for Yahoo's Geo Technologies Group.

GeoCam: Sharing Disaster Information with Mobile Devices

Trey Smith, CMU Silicon Valley (http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/) / NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group (http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/tech/asr/intelligent-robotics/)

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ZDkbR2SJf48/TPgknuFJ5AI/AAAAAAAAFQc/N1RRB-X6KSA/s1600/trey.jpg

GeoCam develops open source software to help disaster responders share map information with their mobile devices. Our tools have been deployed to fires in http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/m/groups/intelligent-robotics/thumbs/geocam.jpg (http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/m/groups/intelligent-robotics/geocam-overview.mp4) California and earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.

So far we've mainly focused on supporting organized teams in the field but we'd love to exchange ideas about how to get more people involved in disaster response.

Trey Smith leads the GeoCam Project (http://disastercam.blogspot.com/) and has been developing technology for disaster response since he joined NASA in 2007. His goal is to make disaster information systems cheap, usable, open, and interoperable so that responders and ordinary citizens can collaborate more effectively.

Dinner is generously sponsored by Google.

Thanks always for your support and participation. YOU make this Meetup great.

Catherine and Alec

catherine[at]endpointenvironmental[dot]com
ada[at]dara-abrams[dot]com