Jessica Tsai is still in San Jose, Calif., but she’s moved on from the 3rd International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (her Twitter feed from that conference can be found here (Day 1) and here (Day 2), and her destinationCRM.com news story — “How Online Social Networking Explains Offline Social Behavior” – is here).

She’s now covering the Where 2.0 conference on geolocation, and we’ve collected a lightly edited selection of her live-twittering below.

More info can be found at the conference’s own Twitter channel, @where20. The hashtag for the conference seems open for debate, but tweets from other Where 2.0 attendees can be found at this Summize link w/combined results. (combining both #where20 and #where2.0 hashtags).

 

Wed May 20 09:10            At Where 2.0, first speaker: “Reality Mining for Companies: How Social Networks Network Best,” Alex “Sandy” Pentland

Wed May 20 09:33            Now Speaking: Lieutenant Sean Maday, Intelligence Officer, “Project Intersect” 

Wed May 20 09:49           Lior Ron, Steven Lee (Google) “The Evolving Geoweb”

Wed May 20 11:08           Michael Halbherr (Nokia), Christof Hellmis (Nokia gate5 GmbH), “Mobiles Around the World” 

Wed May 20 11:18            “Junk Mail and the GeoWeb Shine Light on New Orleans Recovery” Denice Ross & James Fee (RSP Architects)

Wed May 20 11:35            “Innovation Through Open Location,” Tyler Bell (Yahoo! Inc.) 

Wed May 20 11:56            “Maps in Four Dimensions,” Brandon Martin-Anderson (Urban Mapping) 

Wed May 20 13:39            “Tricky Issues With Local Search,” Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) 

Wed May 20 13:50            “Beyond Maps – The Hyperlocal Experience,” Mark Law (MapQuest) 

Wed May 20 14:07            “Footstreams: Clickstreams for the Physical World,” Jeff Holden (Pelago, Inc.) 

Wed May 20 14:24             “Wild Style City: Breaking the Clean Reality of the Virtual World,” Anthony Fassero (earthmine, inc) 

Wed May 20 14:34            “Wearable Sensory Substitution Devices for Navigation,” John Zelek (University of Waterloo) 

Wed May 20 14:51            “Decoding the Urban DNA and Harnessing the Power of Social Intelligence,” Greg Skibiski (Sense Networks) 

Wed May 20 14:58            “Realizing Spatial Intelligence on the GeoWeb,” Jack Dangermond (ESRI) 

Wed May 20 15:14            Panel Discussion: “Local Search: Funding Geo” -  
                                               Danny Sullivan (SE Land), Tyler Bell (Yahoo! Inc.), Michael Halbherr (Nokia),
                                               Marc Prioleau (CloudMade), Mark Law (MapQuest)

Wed May 20 16:28            “Red State, Blue State: Election Maps at The New York Times,” Matthew Ericson (New York Times) 

Wed May 20 16:42            “Putting a New Spin on Lidar Imaging,” Bruce Hall (Velodyne Acoustics, Inc.), Rick Yoder (Velodyne Lidar) 

Wed May 20 16:57            “Windows 7 – Location Awareness Made Easy,” Alec Berntson (programmer, Microsoft)

Wed May 20 17:10            Panel Discussion: “Mobile Reality” 
                                                    Raven Zachary (raven.me), Mok Oh (EveryScape Inc.), 
                                                    Will Carter (Nokia Research Center Hollywood)

Wed May 20 17:32            “DIY City: An Operating System for Cities,” John Geraci (DIYcity) 

Wed May 20 18:00            Final Session: “Where, When, Why, and How: Directions in Machine Learning and
                                                 Reasoning about Location,” Eric Horvitz (Microsoft)

 

 [The complete tweetstream, after the jump...]

Wed May 20 09:10            At #Where2.0, keynote: “Reality Mining for Companies: How Social Networks Network Best,” Alex “Sandy” Pentland

Wed May 20 09:12            Reality mining of social structure – can measure with 96% accuracy [of] social structure ID. Find who’s related to whom.
Wed May 20 09:13            Based on the notion of influence in loc. data, you can determine, if A shows up, does B? Find ppl who are friends, coworkers, etc.
Wed May 20 09:18            “We’re all animals at heart” — Social species are all alike 
Wed May 20 09:19            In an organization, access to information by one standard deviation increases productivity by 4% 
Wed May 20 09:21            Face-to-face network cohesion/communication increases productivity by 10% because of social support and learning
Wed May 20 09:26            Location technology can help determine who works with whom and where and measure that against productivity
Wed May 20 09:28            Beyond static demographic data, use DYNAMIC data: where ppl are going, what they’re doing, which is at the heart of CRM         
Wed May 20 09:29            This technology can be used to find “bad guys” – 80% of terrorist cases solved in India in last 2 decades used loc. tech
Wed May 20 09:30            On the issue of privacy, “If you aren’t creeped out, you haven’t been listening.” Pentland advocates *consumers* owning data

 Wed May 20 09:33            Now Speaking: Lieutenant Sean Maday, Intelligence Officer, “Project Intersect”

Wed May 20 09:34            “We, at the US Airforce, have the largest repository of PowerPoint slides.” – Maday
Wed May 20 09:35            Because of the way the Air Force stores data, very difficult to access information. Want to put slides on maps, not maps on slides
Wed May 20 09:39            Project Intersect, a “glorified mash-up” launched 18+ mo. ago, charted 900+ missions/day, tracked personnel, overlaid threat info
Wed May 20 09:40            US Air Force is asking for help from location technology providers.
Wed May 20 09:40            “Legacy processes are holding us back” – Maday 
Wed May 20 09:42            “you all have a unique opportunity to get involved in this project and make a change” – Maday
Wed May 20 09:45            “We need the technology and it’s all toward making America robust and protecting the troops.” – Maday

 

Wed May 20 09:49            Now Up: Lior Ron, Stephen Lee “The Evolving Geoweb” –

Wed May 20 09:50            Google “empowering users to build a collaborative map of the world”
Wed May 20 09:52            Google Maps opened in Pakistan and users mapped the city from scratch within 7 days – Ron
Wed May 20 09:57            Users map based on their interests – tennis courts, police stations – haha, mapping what they care about
Wed May 20 09:57            to make location truly accessible is partnership – Lee
Wed May 20 09:58            reasons for partnerships, no matter how good ur loc platform is, doesn’t help unless it’s distributed to consumers – Lee
Wed May 20 10:00            Fall 2007 – launched My Location feature on GoogleMaps on mobile phones – cell-power-based location
Wed May 20 10:00            2008 – Google Maps on iphone; later that summer, iphone SDK w/ location API, since then, thousands of apps on iphone use location
Wed May 20 10:01            Can’t believe so much happening so quickly. Can’t wait to see what comes out at next year’s #where20
Wed May 20 10:04            Google will be default location provider in Mozilla 3.5
Wed May 20 10:10            “truly magical experience to be able to locate myself” – Lee
Wed May 20 10:11            Last year, 40-50 million users? now at half billion – just over year, the size of Geoweb, doubling every 3 months
Wed May 20 10:12            elephant in the room? MONEY – Ron
Wed May 20 10:15            “we don’t really know how the [Geoweb] ecosystem will make money” – Ron
Wed May 20 10:17            Google launching today: Geo-targeted Google Maps Ad Unit 

Wed May 20 10:28            BREAK TIME!

Wed May 20 10:33            Just spoke w/ CEO of Schmaps - launching Twitter handles that focus on UG restaurant/store reviews. Following @NewYorkPicks, natch

 

Wed May 20 11:08            Up now: Michael Halbherr (Nokia), Christof Hellmis (Nokia gate5 GmbH), “Mobiles Around the World”

Wed May 20 11:13            Hellmis giving demo of mobile maps @ Ovi.com. Doesn’t work with Chrome!
Wed May 20 11:15            o0o0o Ovi Map Player’s 3D feature looks AWESOME
Wed May 20 11:16            InformationWeek story on Ovi Maps Player 
Wed May 20 11:17            Nokia aims to bridge mobile cloud & Internet – “way for us to harvest info on Internet” – Halbherr

 

Wed May 20 11:18            Next Up: “Junk Mail and the GeoWeb Shine Light on New Orleans Recovery” Denice Ross & James Fee

Wed May 20 11:22            goal is to democratize information so communities have access – Ross
Wed May 20 11:26            Needed population data of NoLa. Best to use postal data, but can’t get postal data from USPS, had to purchase it from Valassis
Wed May 20 11:28            Build local credibility w/ maps: Data transparency; Fix errors that matter; improve usability w/ tests under real-world conditions
Wed May 20 11:30            Greater New Orleans Community Data Center 
Wed May 20 11:34            Static is out, Dyanmic is in #where20 #icwsm91
Wed May 20 11:34            RT @where20 #where20 conf attendees, be sure to leave comments at bottom of session detail pages

 

Wed May 20 11:35            Up Now: “Innovation Through Open Location,” Tyler Bell (Yahoo! Inc.)

Wed May 20 11:36            Web 1.0 = static documents, “blue links we all grew up with…still exists, still valuable” – Bell
Wed May 20 11:36            Web now is “richer because there are people in the mix.” – Bell
Wed May 20 11:38            “Everything we do on the Web now is relevant to LOCATION” – Bell
Wed May 20 11:39            Bell claims Yahoo’s “Web of the World” is more open than Geoweb
Wed May 20 11:39            “Yahoo!’s vision is that a vision where everything we do, we don’t traditionally think of as map data, is made geo-relevant” – Bell
Wed May 20 11:42            “Web of the World” – first incarnation of semantic Web – places are not just pts on map but “contextual entities in space” – Bell
Wed May 20 11:43            Location data on Yahoo! compared to “roach motels” — “we *don’t* want data to go in and never come out” – Bell
Wed May 20 11:49            GeoPlanet API – not a mapping API, but geoinformatic API
Wed May 20 11:50            “Placemaker,” XML API for developers, take unit of content (caption, tweet) pass to Placemaker& ID the places contained in document
Wed May 20 11:52            Placemaker is freely available

 

Wed May 20 11:56            Up Now: “Maps in Four Dimensions,” Brandon Martin-Anderson (Urban Mapping)

Wed May 20 11:58            Interactive job loss/gained map from Slate that Martin-Anderson is referring to 
Wed May 20 11:59            Walk Score Transit Map of Seattle Martin-Anderson referring to 
Wed May 20 12:03            More on Martin-Anderson’s Walk Score Transit Time Map in SF Bay Area 

 

Wed May 20 13:39            Back with “Tricky Issues With Local Search,” Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land)

Wed May 20 13:39            Google search has been junky when it comes to local search – Sullivan
Wed May 20 13:42            did Sullivan just drop the f-bomb?
Wed May 20 13:45            Sullivan using Google Street View to tell a story — hilarious!
Wed May 20 13:47            Solutions to invasion of privacy w/ Street View? No photography in public? Can you remove public buildings? Private? – Sullivan
Wed May 20 13:49            Location services — are they tracking us? Where is the data stored? What is the privacy policy on the iPhone? – Sullivan
Wed May 20 13:49            Local may not be easier, can be very personal (someone in the bathroom!) – think through these issues, maybe tone it down – Sullivan

 

Wed May 20 13:50            Next up: “Beyond Maps – The Hyperlocal Experience,” Mark Law (MapQuest)

Wed May 20 13:54            MapQuest – business model (trip planning) shifted when people started taking more “staycations”
Wed May 20 13:57            Challenges of building local presence: high cost to build content; usability/familiarity; monetization; market awareness
Wed May 20 14:06            1/5 people in US use MapQuest. 38% of Moviefone users, 44% of Yelp users, 33% Twitter users are on MapQuest

 

Wed May 20 14:07            Next: “Footstreams: Clickstreams for the Physical World,” Jeff Holden (Pelago, Inc.)

Wed May 20 14:11            “Footstreams” – physical analog of Web clickstreams – Holden
Wed May 20 14:14            Creepy! Holden just brought up image of the Anonymous Hugging Wall?? 
Wed May 20 14:20            Why will footstreaming happen? Pervasive location awareness (every device is location-enabled) & Microsharing (Twitter, FB)

 

Wed May 20 14:24            Up Now: “Wild Style City: Breaking the Clean Reality of the Virtual World,” Anthony Fassero (earthmine, inc)

Wed May 20 14:26            Wild Style City. Use Street View to find the best “canvas” to create ur graffiti masterpiece
Wed May 20 14:27            Unlike graffiti in real life, Wild Style City lets you see layers of graffiti that might have been painted over

 

Wed May 20 14:34            Now: “Wearable Sensory Substitution Devices for Navigation,” John Zelek (University of Waterloo)

Wed May 20 14:35            “SLAM” – simultaneous localization and mapping – triangulating based on static features in the environment (e.g., tree trunks)
Wed May 20 14:38            RT @where20: “Wearable Sensory Substitution Devices for Navigation” esp. tactile belt, described by John Zelek 
Wed May 20 14:39            Commercializing tactile belt via Tactile Sight 

 

Wed May 20 14:51            “Decoding the Urban DNA and Harnessing the Power of Social Intelligence,” Greg Skibiski (Sense Networks)

Wed May 20 14:53            Sense Networks observes known behaviors of users (opt-in) – build prediction models and deploy on large scale -dynamic demographics
Wed May 20 14:54            City Sense – free app for BBerry & iPhone – tells you were the hotspots are, “where’s everybody now?” 

 

Wed May 20 14:58            “Realizing Spatial Intelligence on the GeoWeb,” Jack Dangermond (ESRI)

Wed May 20 15:13            What drives GIS is integration of geo-knowledge into human action – Dangermond
Wed May 20 15:13            Web GIS will significantly ehance e-government, “I’d like to call it g-government,” Dangermond

 

Wed May 20 15:14            Panel Discussion: “Local Search: Funding Geo”
Wed May 20 15:15            Danny Sullivan (SE Land), Tyler Bell (Yahoo! Inc.),
                                                   Michael Halbherr (Nokia), Marc Prioleau (CloudMade), Mark Law (MapQuest)

Wed May 20 15:16            “Every year we say it’s the ‘year of mobile,’ same goes for ‘local’,” – Sullivan
Wed May 20 15:18            Sullivan (Moderator): How are you making money? HA!
Wed May 20 15:19            CloudMade (startup/pre-revenue) taking the question – Content v. hyperlocal/personal to be used by developers for their apps
Wed May 20 15:20            Yahoo! Checking ads against the map; geo-targeting content/adv. – increase engagement with site, more users, stay longer -Bell
Wed May 20 15:21            Yahoo! looking to use geography/local data to inform entire network experience – Bell
Wed May 20 15:29            MapQuest has faced complaints that its ads are disproportionate to its content – have to balance ads with content (relevance!)
Wed May 20 15:30            Who wins between the hardware (platform) or the application providers? Who wins between mobile operator (ATT) and hardware (Apple)? 
Wed May 20 15:32            Lead gen most highly valuable opportunity to monetize – Bell
Wed May 20 15:37            Mistake we make – treat mobile separately from .com customers, instead of finding total value of user on both experiences – Law
Wed May 20 16:23            @finegameofnil yep, David Troy (Roundhouse Technologies, LLC) is a speaker
Wed May 20 16:24            We suspect they’re running a geo-experiment on us with that flashing mechanism in the corner

 

Wed May 20 16:28            Up now: “Red State, Blue State: Election Maps at The New York Times,” Matthew Ericson (New York Times)

Wed May 20 16:34            …and a “laser”? That’s spinning very fast… 
Wed May 20 16:38            NYT uses maps to provide: Spatial clarity (what’s going on); exploring patterns (NYT map); telling stories
Wed May 20 16:40            Blogger using NYT maps to determine how soil types in Deep South determined 2008 election 
Wed May 20 16:40            Mapshaper.com (blog: mapshapper.org) – lets you simplify maps down to operate smoothly

 

Wed May 20 16:42            “Putting a New Spin on Lidar Imaging,” Bruce Hall (Velodyne Acoustics, Inc.), Rick Yoder (Velodyne Lidar)

Wed May 20 16:44            By day, Hall & Yoder sell subwoofers; 2 years ago, wanted to get on TV, so got into Robot Wars – “We incinerated the clown”
Wed May 20 16:45            Next, went into DARPA (autonomous vehicle racing) 
Wed May 20 16:46            RT @mattpriour: Showing off DARPA automated truck entry. Developed lidar laser as a result.
Wed May 20 16:48            Laser – can see out 120 m; refresh 5-15x/sec – class 1 eye-safe. “we’re around this all the time.” Hall ensures
Wed May 20 16:51            MIT, Stanford, CMU all charged full price to buy the sensor [for DARPA vehicles] (“that’s why our name isn’t on the cars”) – Hall
Wed May 20 16:52            3D Road Mapping. Numbers pop up are heights & widths – automatically generated while driving car @ full speed. Impt for DoT to know
Wed May 20 16:54            “None of this matters because we were in the Radiohead video” – Hall 
Wed May 20 16:56            Live shot of conference being recorded for YouTube. FAME!
Wed May 20 16:56            LIDAR Laser image of #where20 

 

Wed May 20 16:57            “Windows 7 – Location Awareness Made Easy,” Alec Berntson (programmer, Microsoft)
Wed May 20 17:01            Everyone doing the wave at #where20 
Wed May 20 17:05            whoa, Windows 7 looks awesome – access to location no matter what type of device is providing it (scripting API)
Wed May 20 17:09            Aha – Privacy features with Windows 7 – *you* have to *enable* the applications to access your data
Wed May 20 17:09            Where Camp – 2 day event, free this Friday-Saturday in Palo Alto 

 

Wed May 20 17:10            Panel Discussion: “Mobile Reality”
Wed May 20 17:10            Raven Zachary (raven.me), Mok Oh (EveryScape Inc.),
                                                   Will Carter (Nokia Research Center Hollywood)

Wed May 20 17:14            Mobile Reality Panel: Ori Inbar (Pookatak Games Inc), Anthony Fassero (earthmine, inc)
Wed May 20 17:18            cloud (Skynet) enables users to “plan, do, remember,” enabled by mobile technology – Oh
Wed May 20 17:21            Wow, EveryScape. Please create a mobile function for every museum so i can avoid the lines.
Wed May 20 17:29            haha how popular is graffiti really? “Graffiti for everyone without the vandalism” – Inbar, Pookatak
Wed May 20 17:30            We need to loosen up on the definition of what this stuff is, stop thinking about it as “research” -Carter
Wed May 20 17:31            Panelists agree that investors aren’t getting it, yet — want to see proof points

 

Wed May 20 17:32            “DIY City: An Operating System for Cities,” John Geraci (DIYcity) 

Wed May 20 17:35            @jimmyrocks no doubt, i agree that it’s an AMAZING art form, but how big is the market demand that all these geo-techs are focusing on them?

Wed May 20 17:37            SickCity.org – real-time disease tracker for your city (Twitter). Worked well until #swineflu hit
Wed May 20 17:41            services like SickCity.org rely on – and perpetuate – the trivial/egotistical nature of social networking that critics gripe about

 

Wed May 20 18:00            Final Session: “Where, When, Why, and How: Directions in Machine Learning and Reasoning about Location,” Eric Horvitz (Microsoft)

Wed May 20 18:20            MSFT virtual receptionist is super cool. And yet! WHY do i still not have speech-to-text software