Launch of Navipedia

Satellite navigation is progressing swiftly, in fact so swiftly that its printed textbooks can’t keep pace – so ESA has introduced its own wiki-based information source, Navipedia, which is also the first ever ESA technical wiki opened to the public.

On March 14, Dr Javier Traveset-Ventura presented Navipedia at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit. Javier was the one who had the idea of creating a knowledgebase of GNSS and making it available to users worldwide.

“This new website is intended to serve a wide range of users from GNSS institutions and industry to academia and the public interested in knowing more,”

said Javier Ventura-Traveset, responsible for the development of Navipedia and in charge of managing GNSS education activities for ESA.

“Navipedia articles have therefore been classified into three categories: basic, medium and advanced, with target audiences ranging from highly knowledgeable GNSS specialists to the general public. I am convinced Navipedia will be an excellent tool for promoting and supporting GNSS education in Europe.”

It all started back in 2010 at a kick-off meeting in Villanueva de la Cañada, near Madrid at ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre. GNSS Experts from ESA and GMV teamed up to start developing "the reference for Global Navigation Satellite Systems". On behalf of DNV Knowledge Management Advisory Services I was asked to join the team to take care of all technical aspects of the website, designing the interface, designing content management processes and drafting the initial information architecture for Navipedia.

ESA and GMV took on the task of writing all the articles to be available at launch, some 400 articles. Each and every article was reviewed following the content management procedures.

It was a pleasure to work alongside these experts. I proudly present the result so far.

Global knowledge used locally, with a mobile app.

Today Maarten Lens-FitzGerald (whom I follow on Twitter) shared images of a mobile application ING Bank is launching built by his company (SPRXMobile) in collaboration with Wikitude. The application is called Wegwijzer ("signpost"). It helps you find ATMs where ever you are, with your Googlephone (G1). By turning the G1 to camera-mode and pointing the camera to the environment around you, an overlay on the screen will show you where the nearest ATMs are. A so-called location aware augmented reality mobile application, i.e. it augments the reality you see through the camera with an overlay projecting information on the image. This information can be virtually anything geo-tagged. The picture below demonstrates the augmented reality camera view of Wikitude Augmented Reality on a G1 phone from the Dam square in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The device displayed is a G1 Google phone, running Android.
Photo taken by: Maarten Lens-FitzGerald (SPRXmobile)

Wikitude is a mobile travel guide based on Wikipedia and Panoramio. Search landmarks in your surroundings and view them on a map, list, and on an Augmented Reality (AR) camera view: What you see is an annotated landscape, mountain names, landmark descriptions, and interesting stories.

Bear this in mind and read my previous post on the role of location based services in the enterprise. Or even better, contextual services. Contextual Services are more then just Location Based Services. Your context can also be a virtual presence like a chat room where you are talking. You share the context with the people you chat with, but have a different physical location. Zcapes is the first service that is contextual. Wait and see what Zcapes will bring.

Privacy?

The importance of failure

If at first you don't succeed from Ben Fry on Vimeo.

How people really use the iPhone

How people really use the iPhone

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: development interaction)

Cote d'Azur for business

This week I'll be travelling to Cannes. A city in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in southeastern France. It is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera. It is a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. The population was of 70,400 as of the 2007 census. Cannes is the home of numerous luxurious houses and mansions as well as many high-end gated communities. The city is also famous for its various luxury stores, fancy restaurants, and prestigious hotels.
I won't see any of it... After landing at Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azur, it will be taxi to business partner, meetings, taxi back to Aéroport Nice Côte d'Azur. In and out on a day. Like previous trips to the City, travelling with Blackberrying suits. For some it's business as usual, for me it's less usual still, but I'm getting used to it. It's fun really.

Effective Twitter usage... some insights

I found myself cogitating. Happens often really. While getting a grip on Yahoo! Pipes, I wondered what one could derive from Twitter time lines (feed from a Twitter account). Trying various options of ingesting RSS feeds, processing them and forwarding them again, I found myself on the Twitter track. Twitter is used both by people to stay in touch with their network of friends, and by commercial bloggers to announce new write-ups on their blog. Elaborate insights about Twitter usage were posted by Jeremiah Owyang, web strategist.
Twitterazzi with hundreds of followers are hardly able to know who is who among the crowd following them. Right? Or the one's following hundreds of others? Some balance between followed and following might be a measure for twitter usage. Let's consider the Twitterazzi sending shed loads of messages, are they merely garrulous or do they have a mission? Are they narrow casting? Might they be deity prophets? What if the balance between outbound and inbound traffic is 100:1? Last but not least, messages versus replies counting 1:100 might be interesting, 1 message out and a 100 replies to others, this might be a sign of a new Apollo at Delphi? Three measures found so far:

• Following : Followers
• Inbound : Outbound
• Messages : Replies
• Inner-circle : Outer-circle

In the meanwhile I managed to get Yahoo! Pipes working for me and even got Google Charts' API geared towards my needs of displaying numerical feeds. Visualising Twitter usage was just too far fetched in the time at hand. Guess what? Xefer.com managed to build the thing! Using Twitter timelines, Yahoo! Pipes and Google charts API. I must admit they even paid a lot of attention to the visualisation of data (Edward Tufte would probably approve of it).

Interpreting the charts leads to some understanding of the type of Twitterazzo you are looking at. Is it someone rambling all day long, hardly ever replying to others? Might it be someone knowledgeable answering questions? Someone getting messages from others within his own circle, or even from an outer-circle? I'm not finished analysing yet, but for now it's up to you!
Try the tool on your own Twitter profile and tell me what you think!

Multi-tool Twitter

Half a year ago I moved to Amsterdam. Great city, many interesting people, many cultural events, vast amount of bars, ... How to find your way around, how to meet great people, the right places to eat, the places to buy honest ingredients, ..? I put my money on Twitter and got lucky. Twitter got me in touch with new media researchers, promising entrepreneurs, social events, #blog08, ... it even got me interviewed in a large newspaper. Twitter is a multi-tool and I like it! 836 tweets in 3 months got me connected with 50-60 people. 15 of them I actually met in real life. NRC / nrc next journalist Marie-José Klaver interviewed me about the role of Twitter in organisations, specifically about its role as a knowledge management tool.

@blog08 on Friday 23 October

• Pete Cashmore, 10th blog of the world, Mashable.com
• Hugh MacLeod, well known cartoonist and blogger at Gapingvoid.com
• Boris van der Ham, member of Dutch parliament and blogger
• Scott Rafer, former-CEO of MyBlogLog currently CEO of Lookery
• Tim Overdiek, chief-editor of the Dutch broadcast news programme NOS Journaal and blog evangelist
• Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, well known Dutch internet entrepreneur
• Nalden, music blogger living of his experimental blog, Nalden.net
• GabeMac, videoblogger from Madrid
• Piet Bakker, scientist, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The role of Local 2.0 in Enterprise 2.0?

Last Friday I attended The Next Web Salon for the second time in a row. Got to meet interesting people and got triggered by the 10 minute presentation by Michael Bauer. Michael Bauer is a local internet expert and CEO of Koano. Michael's presentation, though very short but nevertheless good, was about the future of local. Local as in: Search, Mapping, Ontology, International, Social, Network.

Imagine a web app that allows me as a citizen of Amsterdam to find the kind of places I know and like in Amsterdam when I travel abroad. E.g. Vondelpark in Amsterdam, is similar to, Central Park in New York. A recommendation system based on things you know well near your 'home' to find things near your 'locus' (the place you are).

What would be the impact of such a mechanism in an enterprise context? In large organisations where it's beyond your possibilities to know everything, but you do know your thing. So, what if the coordinates are not geographic, but organisational. Your place in the value chain, business process, organogram, stakeholder network, ... In the pit of my gut I feel there is something good about this... (Photo taken by Anne Helmond)

Is Twitter a useful enterprise 2.0 application?

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger published their thoughts on Situated Learning "Legitimate peripheral participation" in 1991. A rather theoretical book on how people evolve from newcomers to key members of communities of practice. I remember an example of Etienne:

think of taxidrivers and their radio network. On the radio they get calls from the station and their colleagues. They do not listen actively to the radio, but they catch messages that might be of their interest. Some colleague mentioning a traffic jam, some other problem that they may circumnavigate, et cetera. They are in peripheral mode. When something occurs that might be of interest to other colleagues, they send a message to all others listening. Hence, they become active and center of the network for a short while.

The same goes for communities of practice. Sometimes you are merely listening, sometimes you jump in the center and participate actively. My perspective on Twitter is that it's the web version (of the radio network) of groups of people with a common interest, or practice. As Twitter states:

"people follow the sources most relevant to them and access information via Twitter as it happens"

If Twitter gets adopted by the business community, meaning adopted as a tool in the context of work and learning in the context of the enterprise, it may well become the means to follow what is going on in the enterprise, without being as disruptive as the "Beep Beep: you've got mail" If you think Twitter is just another gadget keeping employees from working, you're wrong! Twitter is the community radio!

Lipogram

Shakerleg!

Next web salon was great

The Next Web Salon is a small and intimate event for people working on, or interested in, the people, ideas and companies powering the Next Web. Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten from the Next Web hosts these events in his living room. Vibrant athmosphere, slow food, good wine, great people and provoking statements by guest speakers. 3 to 4 speakers get 6 minutes each to make their statement. The remaining time is for discussion, social networking, eating and enjoying wine. A brilliant concept as far as I'm concerned. The evening was like a short version of the FastCompany RealTime events, yup, that's a compliment. Boris and his Next Web mates just do the kind of thing you thought of doing once, but never got to doing it.

Jennings

Just returned back home after four days of work in Cumbria, England. Spent several nights in a unexpectedly nice village called Cockermouth. Named after the mouth of the river Cocker. Home of the lakeland brewery Jennings. Cockermouth's high street, named Crown street counts several good restaurants: The Honest Lawyer, Tarantula and Seven. Not to forget, a pub that feels like home: Bush. Bush offers several beers brewed by Jennings: Cumberland Ale, Sneck Lifter and Cocker Hoop. The latter is my favourite!
Cocker Hoop

An award-winning golden bitter from an all malt brew, with Styrian Golding hops added at various stages, to give a classic hop flavour and aroma. A bitter beer of great character, appealing to those drinkers who really appreciate their beer and are looking for quality. Launched in 1995 as ‘September Ale’, Jennings Cocker Hoop has become hugely popular, particularly with Lake District tourists in summer. The name is derived from ‘Cock-a Hoop’, an old custom of removing the cock (or spigot) from a barrel and resting it on the hoop of the cask before commencing a drinking bout, but was changed to reflect the brewery’s location on the banks of the River Cocker.

Next week:The Trout will be my basecamp

Lovely hotel in a remote area with wireless internet!

A day at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Interviews with the head of the restoring department, a lead restorer for 17th century paintings, a curator/art historian and a physicist. Most of the interviews took place in the atelier (workshop) building. This building was designed by Cruz en Ortiz, who will also be responsible for the new Rijksmuseum. The atelier building is rather white on the inside really. Some rooms have old wooden Cuypers' cabinets giving the clean white rooms character. I'm working on a first draft of an information architecture for the museum's collection: a very difficult job, but an honour to do! I mean, Rembrandt van Rijn's masterpieces will be disclosed by it. I'm enjoying it!

Working in the UK with an international team

Our English project partner arranged for a beautiful working environment: Hartham Park in Corsham.

Gifted photographer

Mirjan

In the meanwhile, taking co-ordination to an extreme level

Lightweight women’s double (LW2x) final race for Olympic Qualification, today, Poznan, Poland.
Six remaining teams wanted the two Olympic spots. Perhaps the Netherlands wanted it the most. Kirsten van der Kolk of the Netherlands finished with bronze at Athens. Van der Kolk then semi-retired from rowing, had a baby, named the baby Nike and came back to join her Athens partner Marit van Eupen late last year. They put gold shoes in their boat and started their comeback. Jumping out at the start, however, wasn’t the Dutch. It was Poland with Renee Hykel and Jennifer Goldsack of the United States following closely. This didn’t last long as the Dutch worked their way into the lead with a steady 35 stroke rate pace. In the last 500m it looked like only Goldsack and Hykel had enough to hold on to the Dutch leading pace. What could Poland do? At the line the Netherlands add another boat to their Olympic team and the United States add boat number 13 to their Olympic team. Congratulations Marit, Kirsten and their coach Josy.