Author Archives: Barb

Although this post is a little late for Halloween, I’d like to think of it as a project to start now for next October. Ray Keim of Paper Model Purgatory at Haunted Dimensions creates printable 3D papercraft models of spooky buildings he has crafted including New Orleans Square and the Bates House. If you are more inclined to ghostly gingerbread houses, he has plans for those too. He states that “I created these models for entertainment purposes only. They represent months of work, taking hundreds of hours to design.
I am now offering them for free to any mansion fan who would like them, as a token of appreciation for all the phenomenal support I have received since starting this site, and also in the hopes that it will encourage others to share their art and ideas freely online.” There is an interesting panel with Ray Keim so, “You want to be a theme park designer” from Inside the Magic. It illustrates huge scope for 2D and 3D visualization as a career and a hobby.

According to MarketWatch, Mitsubishi will be offering the world’s first online test drive of an Outlander Sport Nov.1 – Nov.10, 2010 on their website. The advertising concept was created by 180 LA and B-Reel, a hybrid production company. B-Reel has created an evocative, interactive, music video for Arcade Fire, The Wilderness Downtown personalizing the video by hometown or location. The types of jobs open to creative people with geospatial skills keeps expanding as geospatial technologies become an expected part of everyday life. It is interesting to see how marketing to a person’s personal location is changing advertising. What a challenge.

Haunted places, there’s an app for that, really. When I went searching for haunted places apps for Halloween, I thought that there might be one or two apps out there. Instead I found several categories of haunted apps. First there are the local area apps such as the WeirdNJ which is a guide to NJ legends like the Jersey Devil. Haunted historic tour apps like the WickedWalks app for New Orleans, Savanah, Key West, and New York. Traditional haunted apps like what is happening in Salem, Massachusetts.The SyFy Ghost Hunters show has a haunted house finder app. But probably the most useful of all is the haunted hotel stay apps so that you know where to stop or not, on your next trip out of town. Don’t bother asking if there is a app for trick-or-treating. Iconosys, Inc is offering a free app trick-or-treat app to track your child using your smart phone through Halloween.

The Globe and Mail has a story about Lillian Alling, an adventuress who mapped out a route across North America to Siberia by foot and became a legend. According to Tom Hawthorn, “Her story – a mystery with a beginning but no certain end – has inspired novels, films and an opera, which is to debut in Vancouver later this week.” The Vancouver Opera’s Lillian Alling is about Lillian Alling who came to New York City to find a man called Jozéf and walks across North America to find him. The Vancouver Opera has a http://vancouveropera.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-lillian-alling-book-club.html which reviews books on the Canadian immigrant experience, women travelers, and her legend itself. Several blogs and books are dedicated to Lillian Alling including one called “Walking Home” by Susan Smith, The Woman Who Walked to Russia: A Writer’s Search for a Lost Legend
by Cassandra Pybus which was the first historical book which follows Lillian Alling’s journey.

Don’t let the lolcats of Icanhascheezburger fool you, Graphjams showcases some pretty sophisticated presentations of spatial data. This post of Red Riding Hood, created as a Swedish Future Short in 2009, is a great example. It was inspired by Royksopp’s Remind Me 2005 video. Other funny It would be nice if GraphJam’s Chart Builder included an easy to use map section.

The BBC online has a story on a composite index of “water threats” including issues such as scarcity and pollution which researchers from City College of New York presented in the journal Nature. This is not the only water data project that City College of New York faculty and students have done this year. A “Bio-Math Mapping: Water Quality Analysis of the Hudson and Gowanus,” project in Summer 2010 provided math students with a chance to participate in interdisciplinary research with epidemiology, microbiology and environmental studies through a four-week investigation of water quality of the Hudson River and Gowanus Canal.

The Wall Street Journal has an article that highlights the money to be made in the convergence of real places and their virtual counterparts in games. Much like many seaside resort towns the beautiful Atami hot springs used to be Japan’s honeymoon spot but due to competition from Hawaii and Australia was experiencing a serious downturn. However, in the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ Atami is still a vibrant, romantic destination for virtual steady girlfriends and their real life boyfriends. The town of Atami hit on a great marketing strategy when they decided to recreate the virtual experience in real life by creating a LovePlus + destination vacation. Much like how movies such as Twilight can create tourism for their respective locations, games are another great tourism cross over idea. This should be in every great marketing textbook next to the Got Milk? Campaign and movie product placement.