geo-bof-2005-06-30

Geo Microformat BOF meeting notes

Attendees

• Tantek Çelik
• Bud Gibson
• Chris Goad
• Ian Kallen
• Ryan King
• Edward Mac Gillavry (summary post)
• Kevin Marks
• Robert Thau
• Phil Torrone
• ... add your name if you were there, but not mentioned above.

Reference

• BOF announcement
• location formats background research
• GeoMicroformatNotes on O'Reilly Where 2.0 wiki

#microformats IRC log

   [6:23:18 PM:] KevinMarks: Geo microformat BoF
   [6:26:40 PM:] kingryan: tantek, kevin and i are at the geo microformats bof
   [6:32:51 PM:] Tantek: doing intros
   [6:33:00 PM:] * Tantek intro'd
   [6:33:10 PM:] Tantek: Edward Mac Gillavry of webmapper
   [6:33:18 PM:] Tantek: doing ICBM meta tags today
   [6:33:25 PM:] Tantek: did a plugin/extension for Movable Type
   [6:33:36 PM:] Tantek: Chris Goad
   [6:33:44 PM:] Tantek: has been worrying about this thing for a few years
   [6:33:56 PM:] Tantek: geolat and geolon tags
   [6:34:03 PM:] Tantek: RDF fanatic/advocate
   [6:34:22 PM:] Tantek: tend to gravitate to RSS 1.0 + geolat and geolong
   [6:34:32 PM:] Tantek: Ryan King, grad student at USF, intern at Technorati
   [6:35:03 PM:] Tantek: wants improvement on meta icbm
   [6:35:10 PM:] Tantek: Robert Thau
   [6:35:15 PM:] Tantek: long history, but particular thing is
   [6:35:25 PM:] Tantek: got a project that might evolve to aggregate multiple sources of geocoded data
   [6:35:40 PM:] Tantek: trying to figure out if there is something going here that he should lead, follow, or get out of the way
   [6:35:46 PM:] Tantek: Kevin Marks, Technorati
   [6:35:56 PM:] Tantek: 12-13 years ago, did a project called "3D Atlas"
   [6:36:03 PM:] Tantek: home mapping program
   [6:36:07 PM:] kingryan: did map pins
   [6:36:17 PM:] kingryan: map pins = point + zoom level
   [6:36:39 PM:] Tantek: key thing is, wants to add some amount of zoom level
   [6:36:48 PM:] Tantek: Philip Torrone, MAKE magazine
   [6:36:50 PM:] mokolabs: see ya
   [6:36:58 PM:] Tantek: interested in helping people implement this
   [6:37:04 PM:] Tantek: geotagging Flickr photos
   [6:37:12 PM:] Tantek: using mappr site to geotag photos of projects
   [6:37:18 PM:] Tantek: it's all hard
   [6:37:22 PM:] Tantek: there is no collection of the data
   [6:37:25 PM:] kingryan: data is all over the place
   [6:37:33 PM:] Tantek: Bud Gibson
   [6:37:39 PM:] Tantek: started a company called The Community Engine
   [6:37:47 PM:] Tantek: help companies gain web visibility
   [6:37:58 PM:] Tantek: heard Tantek give a talk along with Eric Meyer at SXSW
   [6:38:03 PM:] Tantek: interested in social sharing  of data
   [6:38:13 PM:] Tantek: developed a microformat called xFolk
   [6:38:19 PM:] Tantek: geo thing for him, is a more recent interest
   [6:38:26 PM:] Tantek: adding another dimension to social interaction and archives
   [6:38:27 PM:] kingryan: geo adds another dimension to social interaction
   [6:38:34 PM:] Tantek: Ian Kallen, Technorati
   [6:38:46 PM:] Tantek: interests with dealing with data that has a geometric data
   [6:38:55 PM:] Tantek: dates back to about 10 years ago, when VRML was introduced
   [6:39:33 PM:] Tantek: today, thinking about a lot of ideas that were percolating about visualization of data
   [6:39:38 PM:] Tantek: latent data in blogosphere
   [6:39:43 PM:] Tantek: places that people reference
   [6:39:48 PM:] Tantek: places that people call home
   [6:39:54 PM:] Tantek: jetsetters that post all over the place
   [6:39:58 PM:] Tantek: homebodies that post from home
   [6:40:04 PM:] Tantek: a lot to do to unlock this
   [6:40:16 PM:] Tantek: would like to see latent data in there already, enriched
   [6:40:26 PM:] Tantek: not necessarily build more stuff to depend on RDF or invisible data
   [6:40:38 PM:] Tantek: better if it is part of the data people are already producing
   [6:40:49 PM:] Tantek: would like to define something tools could build into the creation process
   [6:40:59 PM:] Tantek: it should just be part of the natural creation process
   [6:41:00 PM:] kingryan: make it part of the natural process of creation
   [6:43:39 PM:] Tantek: http://microformats.org/wiki/location-formats
   [6:47:10 PM:] Tantek: the author of MultiMap is going to post to CPAN a perl parser for European addresses
   [6:47:39 PM:] kingryan: still reviewing http://microformats.org/wiki/location-formats
   [6:47:57 PM:] kingryan: to add: maporama.com
   [6:49:59 PM:] kingryan: GML is an xml set of schemas for representing geo
   [6:50:04 PM:] kingryan: its and OGC standard
   [6:50:17 PM:] kingryan: GML is not a mapping of a previous standard
   [6:50:36 PM:] kingryan: TODO: add archml to wiki
   [6:51:15 PM:] adamhill: nhv: any clue how good/bad is GML?
   [6:51:37 PM:] kingryan: WCS is a OGC standard
   [6:51:42 PM:] kingryan: WCS= web coverage service
   [6:52:42 PM:] kingryan: w3c has an rfidig
   [6:52:58 PM:] KevinMarks: http://esw.w3.org/topic/GeoInfo
   [6:54:02 PM:] nhv: GML could work
   [6:54:56 PM:] kingryan: mapping service urls could be considered another publishing format
   [6:55:22 PM:] kingryan: nhv: I'm just transcribing what's going on  here at our meeting
   [6:56:00 PM:] kingryan: people publish mapping site urls
   [6:56:06 PM:] kingryan: people publish named places
   [6:56:16 PM:] kingryan: people publish postal codes
   [6:56:28 PM:] kingryan: make mag. has a geo url button
   [6:57:18 PM:] kingryan: geo in rss = place that relates to the post
   [6:57:41 PM:] kingryan: gpx ?
   [6:57:50 PM:] kingryan: gps xml format ?
   [6:58:03 PM:] kingryan: ptorrone say: gps devices all have their own format
   [6:58:09 PM:] kingryan: ...garmin has their own xml format
   [6:58:16 PM:] kingryan: ...includes waypoints
   [6:58:25 PM:] kingryan: ...no one doing anything with it on the web
   [6:58:29 PM:] kingryan: ...similar stuff for aircraft
   [6:58:38 PM:] kingryan: ...convergence on gpx ?
   [6:59:08 PM:] kingryan: for geo in rss, semantics are not defined
   [6:59:27 PM:] kingryan: it just means there some association between the post and this place
   [7:00:14 PM:] kingryan something proposed by ian davis ?
   [7:00:21 PM:] kingryan: a way for creating urls for places ?
   [7:00:24 PM:] kingryan: no adoption
   [7:01:08 PM:] kingryan: tantek say: these things can be broken into two categories...
   [7:01:18 PM:] kingryan: human readable, machine readable
   [7:01:25 PM:] kingryan: kevin say: postcode a 3rd category
   [7:03:00 PM:] kingryan: wgs84 - most widely understood lat/long spec
   [7:03:06 PM:] kingryan: that's what gps uses
   [7:04:01 PM:] kingryan: tantek say: people publish mostly with names and links
   [7:04:07 PM:] kingryan: though they also do geo stuff
   [7:04:52 PM:] kingryan: ian say: could something like plazes become a translation services between named places and machine coords
   [7:05:11 PM:] kingryan: phil say: any greasmonkey translating between human and computer readable?
   [7:05:24 PM:] kingryan: bud say : could tags be useful?
   [7:05:35 PM:] kingryan: ...in hayes valley and lookinig for a gym
   [7:05:52 PM:] kingryan: could you look for the intersection of 'hayes valley' and 'gym' ?
   [7:06:32 PM:] kingryan: tantek say : may need 2 microformats
   [7:06:48 PM:] kingryan: .. vcard has done well to have an international schema
   [7:07:00 PM:] kingryan: .. field names are supposed to be neutral
   [7:07:27 PM:] kingryan: rsthau : japanse addresses have different structure
   [7:07:37 PM:] Tantek: How are Japanese addresses represented in vCard?
   [7:07:42 PM:] kingryan: is vcard in use in japan?
   [7:08:02 PM:] kingryan: ptorrone say : in japan for a year and couldn't figure it out
   [7:08:04 PM:] nhv: http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/nmea.htm
   [7:08:29 PM:] kingryan: tantek say: software supports vcard
   [7:08:35 PM:] kingryan: .. software has been localized
   [7:08:44 PM:] kingryan: .. did they port vcard? how?
   [7:08:56 PM:] rsthau: Structure as I understand it...
   [7:09:06 PM:] rsthau: Cities are carved up into blocks called (I think) chome
   [7:09:24 PM:] rsthau: Address is:  the chome, and the number of the building permit.
   [7:10:14 PM:] rsthau: More info here:  http://www.digi-promotion.com/tokyo-info/info-maps-address.html
   [7:09:41 PM:] kingryan: tantek ask: could we just take the adr property out of vcard and use that for publishing?
   [7:10:40 PM:] kingryan: vcard also has a property called geo
   [7:10:45 PM:] kingryan: geo is outside the adr
   [7:10:49 PM:] nhv: http://www.iseran.com/gps/waypointml.html
   [7:10:49 PM:] kingryan: no projection in vcard geo element
   [7:10:58 PM:] kingryan: rfc2426
   [7:11:44 PM:] kingryan: the spec doesn't specify the datum
   [7:11:54 PM:] kingryan: should wgs84 be assumed?
   [7:11:56 PM:] Tantek: default to WGS84
   [7:12:00 PM:] kingryan: seems to be consenus on that
   [7:12:06 PM:] kingryan: make sure that's in the microformat
   [7:12:09 PM:] Tantek: microformat for geo should specify WGS84
   [7:13:02 PM:] kingryan: who publishes in pure, visible lat/long?
   [7:13:12 PM:] kingryan: über geeks might, geocachers might
   [7:13:51 PM:] kingryan: microformats are constrainted to published stuff, typically exclude web services
   [7:14:06 PM:] kingryan: people are already publishing data. can we just have people mark it up?
   [7:14:39 PM:] kingryan: no, but we all have laptops
   [7:14:59 PM:] adamhill: big player considerizing standardizing geo data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates
   [7:16:40 PM:] kingryan: can we put both geometric and human data?
   [7:16:44 PM:] Tantek: Bud: would be nice if you could combine address and geo so they could be embedded in same microformat
   [7:16:54 PM:] kingryan: bud say : can we use location tags? neighborhoods?
   [7:17:19 PM:] kingryan: could overlay these things with 
   [7:17:41 PM:] kingryan: folkcartography++