Automatically Geotag your pictures

Wikipedia: “GeoTagging, also known as GeoCoding, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds or images. This data usually consists of latitude longitude coordinates, though it can also include altitude and placenames.” Lots of people have started GeoTagging their images on Flickr and then looking at them on Google Maps and Google Earth. As of this post there are about 58 000 images on Flickr that have been “geotagged.” I thought this was pretty cool so I wanted to figure out how do it automagically. How can I geotag my images without having to do it manually?

Is Web 2.0 enterprise-ready?

Over the years, big companies have dumped a lot of money into computer systems that promise to automate “knowledge management.” Most of that money has been wasted. No matter how technologically elegant their design, knowledge management “platforms” and “repositories” tend to quickly collapse under the weight of their own complexity. Using them turns out to be more trouble than it’s worth - particularly for those employees who have the most valuable knowledge - and the platforms and repositories fall into disuse and are eventually, and quietly, dismantled. People go back to using efficient, direct conversations - through meetings, or phone calls, or emails, or instant messages - to exchange useful knowledge …

Five Things to Tell Others About E-Learning

A CLO colleague of mine recently asked me what he should be discussing with his group in this giant Midwestern firm about e-learning. It’s the standard “What is hype and what is real?” question. He knew I have been an early advocate and full-time researcher on e-learning since 1993. Here are five solid points I told him he could live by:

1. E-learning is for real, and it’s here to stay.
If a training officer does not know this and believe this, he or she is out of the loop and behind the times. One hundred percent of major companies and most mid-size companies use e-learning. Too many CLOs are not aware of the extent of it. Anything new and complex can be intimidating, but it takes investing time to learn about the technology ….

Building Tag Clouds in Perl and PHP

ag clouds are everywhere on the web these days. First popularized by the web sites Flickr, Technorati, and del.icio.us, these amorphous clumps of words now appear on a slew of web sites as visual evidence of their membership in the elite corps of “Web 2.0.” This PDF analyzes what is and isn’t a tag cloud, offers design tips for using them effectively, and then goes on to show how to collect tags and display them in the tag cloud format. Scripts are provided in Perl and PHP.

Net neutrality - The video

Gema setzt Podcastgebühren fest

Die Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte (Gema) will für nicht-kommerzielle Podcast-Sendungen, die Musik als reine Einblendung (Intro und Outro) benutzen, monatlich fünf Euro berechnen, falls sie mindestens wöchentlich bereit gestellt werden. Das erklärte Gema-Sprecher Dr. Urban Pappi heute beim 18. Medienforum.NRW in Köln. Er erläuterte erstmals öffentlich das Gebührenmodell der GEMA für private Podcasts. Wer einen kompletten Song in seiner wöchentlichen Podcast-Sendung spielen will, muss zehn Euro bezahlen, wer täglich einen Song spielt, soll dreißig Euro Gebühr entrichten. Wie lange die Sendungen dann online stehen dürfen, ist noch nicht klar. Der Tarif soll endgültig im Sommer veröffentlicht und angeboten werden, sagte Pappi …”

Google Adds Videos to AdSense

Google has made no secret about its ambitions to become a bigger force in the branded rich-media space and today it launched online video advertising on its AdSense network of publishers. Paramount Classics has already tested Google’s new video ad program for its film ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ The program has been in beta testing for the past six weeks, said Gokul Rajaram, product management director for AdSense, with such advertisers as Paramount Classics for the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” Fox Home Entertainment for DVDs of “The Simple Life” and General Motors Corp. for its Pontiac G6. The ads can be served on any Google publisher that currently displays graphical ads from Google. The video ads are static and boast a play button that activates the video.

Wikipedia + GoogleMaps

Wikimaps, sie mußten kommen! Um die virtuelle Topographie (GoogleMaps, GPS etc.) herum entstehen in Windeseile virtuelle Gemeinschaften und reale Netzwerke. Nur noch eine Frage von Monaten, bis die ersten Spieler das neue Medium für sich entdecken, Abenteuer- und Fantasiespiele entstehen. Da kommt noch einiges auf uns zu …

More People Living in Digital Cocoons

A new lifestyle trend is springing up in South Korea, one of the world’s most advanced digital hotbeds _ more and more folks are retreating to their homes instead of socializing with others. Experts call the phenomenon “digital cocooning” because such a fad is enabled and accelerated by the digital revolution, which is occurring here in a full-fledged manner.

“The advent of Internet and wireless technology is generating two seemingly conflicting tendencies _ some are enjoying a nomadic outdoor life thanks to wireless gadgets while others stay nested up at home with them,” said Park Jung-hyun, a senior consultant at LG Economic Research Institute.

Reflections on the Uprising in France

Reflections on the Uprising in France

Sieh an, unsere Nachbarn: “A new and in some ways unprecedented radical movement has emerged in France. Beginning in February as a protest against the CPE, a law that would have made it easier to fire young workers, it rapidly developed into a widespread and much more general contestation. Over the next two months millions of people took part in demonstrations, universities and high schools were occupied, public buildings were invaded, train stations and freeways were blockaded, and thousands of people were arrested. A compromise offered by President Chirac on March 31 was rejected by just about everyone. On April 10 the government backed down and canceled the CPE.

The American media reacted even more cluelessly than usual, solemnly scolding French youth for “resisting progress” and “modernization” — i.e. for not realizing that a “healthy economy” requires us to return to the dog-eat-dog “free market” conditions of the nineteenth century. Behind the commentators’ grumblings one senses their uneasy awareness that America’s supposedly free-market system is hardly a model of success, and that the United States lags behind France and many other countries when it comes to health care, employment security and other social protections …”