Custom maps

A great resource for creating custom maps - Mapbox

Smart Cities Software

Our new paper: Dmitry Namiot, Manfred Schneps-Schneppe Smart Cities Software from the developer’s point of view, International Conference on Applied Information and Communication Technologies (AICT2013), 25-26. April, 2013, Jelgava, Latvia, pp.238-245.

The paper discusses the current state and development proposals for Smart Cities and Future Internet projects. Definitions of a Smart City can vary but usually tend to suggest the use of innovative Info-Communication technologies such as the Internet of Things and Web 2.0 to deliver more effective and efficient public service s that improve living and working conditions and create more sustainable urban environments. Our goal is to analyze the current proposals from the developer’s point of view, highlight the really new elements, the positions borrowed from the existing tools as well as propose some new extensions. We would like to discuss the possible extensions for the existing proposals and describe add-ons that, by our opinion, let keep the future research inline with the modern approaches in the web development domain.

Network Proximity SDK

Yet another company provides network proximity SDK - NewAer. The NewAer ProxPlatform enables any smartphone to automate aspects of your digital life based on devices that are detected in the physical space around it.

We can mention Gimbal in this context too. And of course our own SpotEx

Location Sharing Without Central Server

This paper describes a new model for sharing location info for mobile users. This approach can operate without the need for disclosing identity info to third party servers. It could be described as a safe location sharing model. The proposed approach creates a special form of distributed database that splits location info and identity information. In this distributed data store identity info is always saved locally. It eliminates one of the main concerns with location-based systems - privacy. This paper describes a model itself as well as its implementation in the form of HTML5 mobile web application. Our new paper has been published. It is about WATN approach

Demo Mobile 2013

We continue to share links for monitoring the interesting events in Twitter. Now it is Demo Mobile, SF 2013



/via Geo Messages

P.S. and the same in Twi-gazeta:   Demo Mobile 2013

TNW 2013

We continue to share links for monitoring the interesting events in Twitter. Now it is TNW, Amsterdam 2013



/via Geo Messages

P.S. and the same in Twi-gazeta:   The Next Web

ML ideas

What would be a great and prospective startup idea relating to Machine Learning, Augmented Reality or Big Data or a combination of all three? - see discussion here

Peer to Peer Location Sharing

This paper describes several new models for sharing location information without disclosing identity data to some third party server. All our services proposed in this research share the common background idea. It could be described as a safe location sharing. It combines server-side (centralized) location information with the locally based distributed identity information. In this distributed data store, identity info is always saved locally. The proposed approach eliminates one of the biggest concerns for location based systems adoption – privacy. This article describes our approach as well as several generic implementations. - our new paper from ICDT-2013. It is about our WATN approach.

Machine Learning Summit

Microsoft Research - Machine Learning Summit 2013. Video Sessions will be posted.

M2M - the view from Russia

Our new paper: M.Schneps-Schneppe and D. Namiot "Machine-to-Machine Communications: the view from Russia", International Journal of Open Information Technologies, vol.1, N 1, 2013, pp. 1-5

The paper describes the current state on M2M communications and targets mostly Smart Metering Communication Mandate and Open API from ETSI. We provide a description for the current state of this API as well as propose some extensions we are working on. Our proposals are oriented to more tight integration of M2M API and modern web development tools and approaches. Also this paper outlines some practical systems being implemented locally (Russia, Latvia) and suggests the prospect directions for the joint projects in M2M area.

Geo Search problems

Google informed that geo search for YouTube videos will be restored in the second half of 2013 only.

In Facebook API searches for places and pages using the graph API no longer work.

Is it some global disaster with geo search?

Web Pair - share info between browsers

Our web pairing for mobile phones has been updated. This basic service lets you connect two smart phones so you will be able to transfer data from one to another. More precisely – it links two browsers. Actually, you cal link mobile to desktop, desktop to desktop, mobile to smart TV, etc. The key idea is that internet connection should be enough for passing data from one browser to another (from any screen to another screen). There is no need to download applications. Everything should work in the browser.

How does it work? Point two browsers (two phones, for example) to the same URL: http://pair.linkstore.ru

You can use the following QR-code:

 

You can see the following:

The picture will be the same in the second browser. Just a code should be different:

This random code will be used for pairing two devices. It is the schema similar to Bluetooth pairing. On the screen (phone) that should display the data (be linked to another phone/screen in slave mode) type the code presented on the second phone. You do not need to type anything on the second (master) phone.

Now our slave screen is ready to accept data:

As soon as the code in entered, the second screen (master) will be updated automatically:

Type any text and press Push button on the master screen. You (your pal) will see data on the slave screen:

It is a basic example that transfers text data. Technically it is possible to pass any data available in the browser. What you can transfer right now:

- just type any text. All connected slaves phones will see that

- type any phone number. It will be presented as a clickable link on the slave screen (screens)

- type any URL. E.g. http://servletsuite.com Slave screen will show a clickable link

- type any email address. Slave screen will show a clickable link

- type the following command t:some_name_from_Twitter. E.g.:  t:t411. Slave screen (screens) will show the link to that account in Twitter (http://twitter.com/t411 in our example). So, your pals will be able to read your feed, follow it, etc.

- type the following command f:some_name_from_Facebook. The same as above but for Facebook. Slave screen (screens) will show the link to that profile in Facebook. So, your pals will be able to read your feed, subscribe, etc.

- type the following command v:some_name_from_Vkontakte. The same as above but for Vkontakte. Slave screen (screens) will show the link to that profile in Vkontakte. So, your pals will be able to read your feed, subscribe, etc.

What are the prototypes? There are two componets in Coldtags suite. Both controls are pre-ajax and use frames but they work. They are Cobrowse and Slide.

Connecting devices

So, you want to build a connected sensor device? Here's what you need to know.

The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of infrastructure, options, and tradeoffs for the parts of the data ecosystem that deal with generating, storing, transmitting, and sharing data. In addition to providing an overview, the goal is to learn what the pain points are, so we can address them. - A collaborative resource

About ontology

This is a dictionary of algorithms, algorithmic techniques, data structures, archetypal problems, and related definitions.

Up London

We continue to share links for monitoring the interesting events in Twitter. Now it is Urban Prototyping Festival, London 2013



/via Geo Messages

P.S. and the same in Twi-gazeta:   UP London

Mining of Massive Datasets

Data Mining book. Free download. It covers: Map-Reduce, Finding Similar Items, Mining Data Streams, Link Analysis, Frequent Itemsets, Clustering, Advertising on the Web, Recommendation Systems, Mining Social-Network Graphs

Nearest-Neighbor Searching Under Uncertainty

"Nearest-neighbor queries, which ask for returning the nearest neighbor of a query point in a set of points, are important and widely studied in many elds because of a wide range of applications. In many of these applications, such as sensor databases, location based services, face recognition, and mobile data, the location of data is imprecise. We therefore study nearest neighbor queries in a probabilistic framework in which the location of each input point and/or query point is speci ed as a probability density function and the goal is to return the point that minimizes the expected distance, which we refer to as the expected nearest neighbor (ENN)." - a couple of interesting articles. Part 1 and Part 2

Geo Forums - discussions on the map

Our mashup Geo Talk has been updated. It lets you create forums (discussions) linked to the selected place on the map. Cloud forums on the map.

Just mark a place, type a question (suggestion, information etc.) – in other words create an initiation for the discussion and get unique link for the map with embedded forum. After that you can share this link with your partners/colleges, print in your blog / twitter etc. – it depends on your own decision only – who you want to see among readers. And after that you can just follow to the discussion.

No registration required. Technically, it is Google Maps + cloud forums from Disqus.

You can discuss some geo points, POI’s (points of interests – shops, bars etc.) or, for example, create a private forum devoted so some meeting in the selected place.

Any discussion could be copied right to your mobile phone as HTML5 mobile web application via QR-codes.

Just for example – forum for Golden Apple bar in Moscow

Initially, mashup ( http://geotalk.linkstore.ru ) is trying to detect your location (as per W3C spec). If you know that forums should be created in some particular area, just set additional parameters for the above-mentioned URL:

lat - a latitude
lng – a longitude
zml – an initial zoom level
hl – a language for map

E.g. create forums in London

P.S. check out also our similar mashups: City forums and Mobile forum