The Japanese National Tourism Organization co-created a map of Hakone, Japan with Gainax, the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion a wildly popular 1990s anime which is currently undergoing a resurgence. The JNTO and Hakone area are taking advantage of this resurgence to encourage anime fans from around the globe to come for a visit.
From the AnimeNewsNetwork article, JNTO notes there is great interest in the US alone with significant attendance numbers at anime conventions…Anime Expo in Los Angeles (40,000 attendees), New York Anime Festival in New York (21,000), and Otakon in Baltimore (27,000) not mention interest from other english speaking countries.
If you are heading to Japan on vacation you may want to get one of these maps so you can spend time somewhere other than the shops in Akihabara.
Sue came across another great National Geographic project for this week’s web corner called Enduring Voices. The project seeks to document those languages that are disappearing through disuse or death of a culture. They estimate that we lose a language about every 14 days! From the project website:
Under the National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices Project, the team will journey to meet with last speakers, listen to their stories, and document their languages with film, pictures, and audio to help communities preserve their knowledge of species, landscapes, and traditions before they vanish.
While NatGeo is supporting this effort it is Drs Gregory Anderson and David Harrison who are the linguists who are behind the project and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. In addition to the NatGeo project they are also the heart of the 2008 film “The Linguists” which follows them in some of their early work and which is availalble from the film’s website. If you have seen the film, please leave a comment since people seem to rave about it.
A quick reminder that if you are planning a trip to San Jose for the Where 2.0 conference, you only have until Tuesday, 9 April, for early registration prices. Take advantage of not only the early registration discount, but also our 20% discount using the discount code ‘whr10vsp’.
If you are in education or non-profit you can save even more (up to an additional 65% for students) using codes on the Where 2.0 registration page. All of these discounts will still work after Feb 9th, but you won’t get the early bird discount.
For those of you who will be at Where 2.0 Sue and I plan to be there so be sure to say hi.
Since we’ve been giving a lot of attention to the upcoming Census 2010, I had to head over to Pembroke, NC this afternoon for Robeson County’s only stop on the Census Road Tour. The travelling setup features one of the Census 2010 vans and they set up a little booth with information and swag, and are there to promote the importance of participating in the census and to answer questions. Robeson County is a very rural county that has limited resources, so it is definitely one of the areas that could really benefit from an accurate count. The Census is really pulling out the stops to promote this year’s count, so if you see the Census Road Tour in your area, send us your pics or even video!
Last week while the rest of the world was talking about the role of the iPad and other tablet/touch solutions, Adapx announced their newest hardware product, Capturx Mobile. You have probably seen our videos and discussions about how the Capturx pens capture data in the field using a unique pattern in the background of your printed map or form (Excel, OneNote, or PDF) and allow you to dock the pen when you return to the office and instantly add the stored data to the appropriate geodatabase or file.
Capturx Mobile is a bluetooth solution that allows users to save themselves a trip back to the office for the dock/sync by pairing the bluetooth enabled pen with a Blackberry or WinMo smart phone. The pairing allows the data to be captured by and sent through the phone’s cell network either as an email with attachment or synced to a SharePoint server. Just like the docked version of the software you get some metadata with the device including data, time and author stamps on the data and as with the docked version files associate themselves with the appropriate software when you open the attachment.
I am not sure what the bundle price is with the ArcGIS Desktop extension, but Capturx Mobile looks like it will offer a great field based experience and provide a better solution for those field workers who don’t return to the office often. It does away with the need to carry around a portable PC and pen dock for those who want a true field data solution since we all carry work phones anyway. Adapx has a couple of webinars highlighting Capturx Mobile in February if you want to find out more.
Before there was Avatar and even before Fisher-Price Viewmaster, there was stereoscopy or stereo photographs that presented scenes in life-like three dimensions similar to a Viewmaster. A recent book on one set of Stereoscopic photos of 1850’s village life titled “A Village Lost and Found”. It is a picture book that evokes the Victorian times of a specific village through a series of 3-D images meticously gathered over a lifetime of research. But one of the most fascinating aspects of the work is its relevance to geospatial and social networking technologies today. The authors, Brian May and spent years searching to determine if the village was a composite of multiple villages or a specific location, but it wasn’t until 2003 that they asked for help through the Interent community and someone responded with a, “Well, I live there” that it was solved. How many other geographical mysteries big and small have been solved or are waiting to be solved by the world’s increased connectivity?
Frontline, a great program on PBS here in the US, will be airing the premiere of Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier on Feb. 2nd. The show will look at the rise of the Web and digital media, including virtual worlds, digital media in the classroom, the social impact of these technologies, and other topics. I’m really looking forward to seeing the show, as I’m hoping it will touch on a lot of the issues I’m dealing with in my own research as well as many of the topics we discuss on VerySpatial.
The Japanese National Tourism Organization co-created a map of Hakone, Japan with Gainax, the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion a wildly popular 1990s anime which is currently undergoing a resurgence. The JNTO and Hakone area are taking advantage of this resurgence to encourage anime fans from around the globe to come for a visit. 
