We are looking for a specialist in hazards research, especially someone who is working with a meterological bent to talk on the podcast about the impacts of this summers combination of tornadoes, floods, and drought, not to mention the weather we can still expect for this summer. If you are not the person we are looking for but have someone to suggest please send us an email. If you are this person you can contact us via email or phone/skype.

For those of you heading to San Diego a little early, say a full week early, keep mind that the annual San Diego Comic-con will be taking place July 24-26 at the San Diego Convention Center. The VerySpatial crew REALLY wanted to make it this year but we just can’t afford to take a vacation. But someday we will be able to bring you a week of comic coverage from southern California

I found this wicked cool video over on Gizmodo on a Google Earth Hologram Device You’ll Want and want to see. It is pretty cool to see how many new interfaces are being built to interact with maps and virtual globes.

Holographic Google Earth from Nicolas Loeillot on Vimeo.

During Sony’s keynote at the Tokyo Games Conference in 2006, the former head of Playstation, Ken Kutaragi, briefly mentioned his vision for the PS3 and specifically talked about a global mapping system for the PS3 (see our previous post here). Last week in Tokyo, Sony held a strategy meeting open to the press, where they showed video previews of 2 upcoming Sony products that are part of this vision of an interconnected local and global virtual world. Since I was trapped in North Carolina without broadband access, I didn’t get a chance to post about it until now. The first preview, for Home, has already gotten a lot of attention and is currently in closed beta with a release later this year. The second demo, however, is much more interesting and I had not heard anything about it until now. It is called the Life With Playstation service, and seems to be a virtual globe application with real-time web services. Over at Digital World Tokyo, you can see the brief video demos for Home and Life With Playstation (the second video). Since the audio is in Japanese, I wasn’t able to get the particulars that were being discussed with the video. Still, it looks pretty cool, and is part of a growing interest in offering virtual globe applications and web services through networked gaming consoles.

Via techradar

If you live in the UK (or are just interested in improving their access to data), you can now add your idea to a growing movement to make more public information available to the public. A competition called Show Us A Better Way, from the UK government’s Power of Information Taskforce, has just been announced which offers prizes of up to 20,000 pounds for ideas for new products that utilize public information. One of the examples of data sources that can be used are the Ordnance Survey maps available through the OpenSpace beta . Many of the other data sets available, such as Carbon Footprint data or FixMyStreet.com are also crying out for spatial solutions, so if you have an idea, be sure and submit it before the competition ends at the end of September. According to the FAQs, you do not have to reside in the UK, but all solutions would be implemented for use in the UK.

Via The Guardian

Now that it is less than a month before we leave for the airport and the ESRI International User Conference, Education User Conference, and some of the Remote Sensing Summit, I figured it was close enough that I can start pointing out that we will be doing our second ‘live before a studio audience’ from this years ESRI UC. This year we decided to start early enough to get in the printed agenda but in case you want to write down the details, we will be starting around 5:30pm on Tuesday, August 5 in Room 13. The show will probably go about 45 minutes but we will definitely be wrapped up by 6:30 (as long as I can get the recording equipment set-up and working in a timely manner). We haven’t started rounding up the guests yet, but we have a few folks in mind and we will try to post the line-up by the end of the month.

If you are going to be at the User Conference be sure to swing by and say ‘hi’ either during the live show, or feel free to grab us in the halls. It is always great to talk to you guys and get ideas for future shows. Oh, and if you are going to be at the EdUC and want to help us do a test of our mobile set-up on Saturday evening (time and place to be determined) give me a shout.

A VerySpatial Podcast
Shownotes - Episode 154
June 29, 2008

Main Topic: Ken Schneider of Adapx

Click for the detailed shownotes

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Click on the image to the see a larger version…no really, if you like Star Wars even just a little you must see this life size statue version of Princess Leia. But this isn’t your standard bikini clad Leia, it is the re-envisioned for the Clone Wars cartoons Leia. She is in her full Episode IV, A New Hope, original Star Wars my-unknown-father-just-took-over-my-ship-and-I-have-to-hide-these-plans-in-an-R2-unit-that-belonged-to-my-mom-though-I-will-never-know-that-bit-of-info glory complete with buns and white flimsy “dress” and laser gun. Our local(ish) comic store got this in for one of the customers and while the picture does this (5 foot tall) statue some justice…it is still one of those things that must be seen to believe. This may take the title of “coolest statue” from the current holder, a (larger than) life size Hagrid made out of Legos that I saw in London.

The latest mass email from ESRI regarding the International User Conference had a small blurb on a new Remote Sensing GIS Summit that has been added to the event on Sunday August 3 from 8:30 to 5:30. The preliminary agenda includes keynote and case study presentations as well as the expected technical presentations. If you are going to be in San Diego for the UC and will be in town on Sunday then you may want to check this out. We were thinking of hitting Lego Land that afternoon but I will try to mix the Remote Sensing GIS Summit (RSGS?) with the EdUC sessions in the morning.

Also, go ahead and put our live show on your schedule for Tuesday afternoon.

Ubisoft, maker of… well… LOTS of video games, is working on Far Cry 2. For those not in the video game know, Far Cry has pushed the limits of PC gaming hardware in the last year. Far Cry 2 looks to raise the bar even higher. The game takes place in Africa and features a game world of over 50 square kilometers, which is the biggest game world I think I’ve heard. There are a lot of innovative features in the engine, like a custom wind engine and the destructibility of everything in the world itself, particularly with the foliage (which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a MAJOR improvement in gaming technology). Even if you aren’t into games, the possible applications of an engine like this for serious games or real world gaming can’t be ignored. Shacknews features a 20 minute demo video of the game (WARNING: the video is R rated!)