"Twenty-five years on, the disaster at Chernobyl casts a long shadow over the nuclear industry, which has been compounded by recent events at Fukushima in Japan. Nuclear power had a rapid rise in the decades after World War II, but the growth in reactor numbers has levelled off. Use the map and audio commentary below to see how civil nuclear power has spread across the globe, and hear about the challenges it faces."
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13159407, 2011)
BBC presents very simple but interesting flash based map on their website.
In 2009, MIT and Audi researchers created AIDA, which stands for Affective Intelligent Driving Agent. The first generation of the project produced a somewhat creepy and 'very friendly' in-car robot. AIDA 2.0 - the second generation of the project looks however more like the product of a science fiction movie. It uses 3D graphics projectors to display interactive map on a dashboard of a car!
AIDA 2.0 identifies goals of the driver?
AIDA 2.0 is meant to be a highly intuitive navigation technology that using the current location-destination-waypoint model and analyzing drivers behavior will identify goals the driver would like to achieve. That means it tries to help you locate food you like when you're hungry, movies you might like to see, or places you might like to shop. It will be as well connected will social networks so that the driver will be informened not only about places nearby that may be of particular interest but as well about people, friends and family.
AIDA 2.0
AIDA 2.0 learns your habits?
AIDA 2.0 allows for a gesture controlled display that also handles the stereo and climate controls. It’s designed to learn your driving habits, preferred destinations, and typical routes. It offers you advice for your trip by determining your objectives and goals. It learns things like your favorite restaurants and activities and will make suggestions to you based upon your favorites. The more you use the system, the better it becomes. It “learns” more about what you want to do, see, and where you want to go. The display on the dashboard is optimized to help you achieve those driving goals. It takes into account real time weather and road conditions, including traffic delays. Using 3D graphics and a detailed map of the surrounding business, residential, and shopping districts, AIDA 2.0's truly stellar feature is the virtual display: it uses the whole of the car's dashboard and side mirrors to display and relay information.
Things that we used to watch in the sci-fi movies are now existing technologies. AIDA 2.0 is aiming to redefine the way we look at navigation systems. We will see if the concept succeed.
Bronwyn Agrios, Esri technical marketing, discusses the use of crowdsourced information and how to analyze its value in space and time. It's an interesting example of using Tweets to analyze global information flow.
Loopt is a checkin app founded in 2005. The company produces mobile Location-based services that allows you to discover new places, download coupons, and share your location with selected friends. Not a bad idea but on the saturated market of location based social networks and some functional issues (spamming text messages) the Loopt was not a big success.
Location-Based Services with Groupon?
Loopt seems to be trying everything in order to survive in a saturated space. It is now partnered up with Groupon Now! in Chicago in order to provide Loopt users with locationally relevant realtime deals around them. Notifications of users will work even when app is not open, and the time sensitive Groupon deals will also appear on place pages within Loopt, so users can see and share with friends their favorite relevant deals. Currently the specific Loopt service is only available in Chicago but the company is planning to spread it nationwide.
Loopt has basically beat Groupon to bringing this Location-Based Service to its own app, while with Groupon users still have to type their zip code to get more locationally relevant deal notifications. But Groupon recently acquired Pelago, the company that have created Whrrl so their are probably working on a similar functionality right now.
According to Groupon 14% of subscribers interact with daily deal push notifications. So strategic partnership between Groupon and Loost seems to be mutually beneficial. But one can't help but wonder when Groupon will apply this same technology to its own mobile app, what exactly that will mean for Loopt long term?
Zaarly is a web and mobile service that connects buyers and sellers in a localized market place. In other words it links people who want to buy something with those who want to provide it. Zaarly was officially lunched to the public today.
Start-up
Zarly is a story of an incredible start-up. The company’s founding team built the prototype for Zaarly in February 2011 at Startup Weekend Los Angeles. The company won this competition, raised 1 mln dollars funding from business angels and investors, including Ashton Kutcher, Felicis Ventures, Paul Buchheit, Bill Lee, Naval Ravikant and Lightbank and then debuted a test run at SXSW in March, where Zaarly processed over $10,000 in transactions in less than 48 hours.
How does it works?
Basically you post what you’re looking for using mobile application, how much you’re willing to pay for it and how soon you need it (for example "Tickets for a concert in 90 minutes for 100$". Zaarly will then share your request in the local community through the platform, as well as Twitter and Facebook. People or businesses nearby can access and see your request and then anonymously message each other to complete the transaction of delivering the cupcakes you want. Sellers bid for the tasks, and the buyer chooses the best one, with Zaarly connecting the two via an anonymous Twilio-powered phone number. You can use cash or Zaarly’s integrated credit card payment system to pay for the transaction.
What's innovative about it?
It is actually the first time when buyers are in charge of what they want to buy, how much do they want to pay for it and how soon do they want it. So basically it is the first service based on buyer driven model instead of seller driver model. It's an innovating way of approaching the market. It creates new way of looking at a time value of money: How much are you willing to pay for something to be delivered in 5 min versus if' need to wait for it for 3 couple of hours.Time will show if consumers will go for it...
There is the new Geospatial Revolution episode available online. The episode title is Mapping Power to the People and it presents use cases of GIS to help people all around the world. Unfortunately it the last episode of the series. We are waiting for similar projects!!!
