2007-02-24
My First Wikipedia Article -- WA SR-204
I wrote my first article for Wikipedia last weekend.
Washington State Route 204 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I had done some reformatting on the SR-203 article (using the SR-202 article as a guide), because I drive both SR-202 and SR-203 fairly often, and I noticed that there was no article for SR-204. From the work on SR-203, I knew where to find all the required info, so I wrote the article on SR-204. When I get some more time I hope to write the articles for SR-206 & 207 as well.
Working with highway data like this info makes me want to get back into traffic engineering, and perhaps I can use the Wikipedia work to move me in that direction.
I know enough about the kind of information that WsDot probably has in their databases to know that much of the information about the Washington State Routes could be written and updated by bots. Furthermore I might be interested in writing some of them.
Washington State Route 204 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaI had done some reformatting on the SR-203 article (using the SR-202 article as a guide), because I drive both SR-202 and SR-203 fairly often, and I noticed that there was no article for SR-204. From the work on SR-203, I knew where to find all the required info, so I wrote the article on SR-204. When I get some more time I hope to write the articles for SR-206 & 207 as well.
Working with highway data like this info makes me want to get back into traffic engineering, and perhaps I can use the Wikipedia work to move me in that direction.
I know enough about the kind of information that WsDot probably has in their databases to know that much of the information about the Washington State Routes could be written and updated by bots. Furthermore I might be interested in writing some of them.
Idea: Open Road Logger
I think it would be useful to have open and publicly available photo and/or video logs of various roads and highways. These logs could serve as source material for projects like the WikiProject U.S. Roads and even for highway and civic planners.
To be really useful and readily available the logs probably need to be tagged with some kind of open license, like a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. This way information from multiple logs and be combined to produce reports, plans, etc., without worrying about getting the rights to use the data, which is a common problem with mapping and GIS data today.
There are a couple of ways that these photo / video logs might be facilitated. The one option might be to write GPLed a Mono / .Net application to integrate photos and/or video with GPS data in real time (as it is collected) then post the resulting log to sites like Flickr, YouTube, Wikimedia Commons, Internet Archive, etc. Another option might be to develop a flash application that would capture images and GPS data and submit it to some kind of central repository.
Logs of major highways could be collected quite frequently if open minded truckers got involved. Minor highways and local roads would likely require efforts by local supporters and/or local governments and would probably get updated relatively infrequently.
At some point I hope to try some experiments with the same road for which I wrote the original Wikipedia article, WA SR-204. It is short at about 2.4 miles and not very far away from where I live. I'd need to get a new GPS as I still haven't replaced the one that was stolen from my Jeep a couple of years ago.
Anyone know anything about controlling cameras and/or GPS receivers through USB in Mono / .Net? Also anyone have references to XML schema for geotagging images and/or video?
To be really useful and readily available the logs probably need to be tagged with some kind of open license, like a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. This way information from multiple logs and be combined to produce reports, plans, etc., without worrying about getting the rights to use the data, which is a common problem with mapping and GIS data today.
There are a couple of ways that these photo / video logs might be facilitated. The one option might be to write GPLed a Mono / .Net application to integrate photos and/or video with GPS data in real time (as it is collected) then post the resulting log to sites like Flickr, YouTube, Wikimedia Commons, Internet Archive, etc. Another option might be to develop a flash application that would capture images and GPS data and submit it to some kind of central repository.
Logs of major highways could be collected quite frequently if open minded truckers got involved. Minor highways and local roads would likely require efforts by local supporters and/or local governments and would probably get updated relatively infrequently.
At some point I hope to try some experiments with the same road for which I wrote the original Wikipedia article, WA SR-204. It is short at about 2.4 miles and not very far away from where I live. I'd need to get a new GPS as I still haven't replaced the one that was stolen from my Jeep a couple of years ago.
Anyone know anything about controlling cameras and/or GPS receivers through USB in Mono / .Net? Also anyone have references to XML schema for geotagging images and/or video?
Labels: creative commons, highways, open source software, roads
2007-02-19
Yet another example...
... of why the time is right for serious reform of the IP laws.
Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - Samantha M. Shapiro - New York Times:
(usual annoying NYT free registration required.)
It's no wonder that the RIAA companies are reporting declines in sales, they're treating their most important supporters as criminals. If these DJs tell their fans to boycott the major labels, what would you expect the outcome would be.
End the nonsense, support the creative commons.
Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - Samantha M. Shapiro - New York Times:
(usual annoying NYT free registration required.)
It's no wonder that the RIAA companies are reporting declines in sales, they're treating their most important supporters as criminals. If these DJs tell their fans to boycott the major labels, what would you expect the outcome would be.
End the nonsense, support the creative commons.
2007-02-17
Why Web 2.0 Matters
This video shows a little of why web 2.0 matters. I didn't create this, I just found it and share it with you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
2007-02-05
Cousin in the news
2007-02-01
First YouTube Video
I posted my first YouTube video last night. It was amazingly simple. I had set up an account several months ago so that I could rate some videos, so after confirming my e-mail address (clicking a link in an e-mail message) I filled out four blanks on a web form and uploaded the raw video file from my camera. The result is this:
Copyright by Tom Sayles.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.
