Another 5 Things on Friday and 5 more tips for you… this week a look at a nifty device from Nokia, a fun map of the USA, a geeky event in D.C, a mobile taxi app and smartphones running Ubuntu
FedGeoDay – Loads of folks and Fed government users and contractors will be in D.C late in February for the Esri Federal User Conference (FEDUC) l taking place Feb 25-27. For those interesting in hanging around the Capital for an extra day or two, the FedGeoDay event, which is heavily focused on opensource tools, is scheduled for Feb 28 at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in D.C. – the event promises to take a close look at modern tools for GIS, Geo Data, and cartography. Speakers will include top geo officers of the FCC, Dept. of Interior, and State Department, technology folks from Code for America, MapBox, Stamen Design, OpenGeo and many others using the latest tools to make great maps and other applications. The full schedule is here http://fedgeoday.com/#schedule. You can see the current attendee list here: http://fedgeoday.eventbrite.com/.
Global Taxi App – Click A Taxi – In the mobile app world the taxi app has become on of THE goto apps for developers chasing the next big thing, however, it’s not easy! Click A Taxi has spent the last 9 months mapping cities in 50 countries. The new app works in beta in more than 5,000 cities and brings a fleet of 300,000 taxis to life for its users. Good luck to them… http://www.clickataxi.com/
Rumors of GITA’s demise are much exaggerated! – A note from the GITA president, Talbot Brooks, as he discusses plans for moving forward as GITA transitions to an entirely volunteer run org – as Talbot says, "Rumors of GITA’s demise are much exaggerated! With the assistance of SharedGeo and dozens of dedicated volunteers, the GITA Board of Directors has mapped out an ambitious plan for the future that will refocus our efforts and energies from that of a conference-centric model to one which better serves the professional educational needs of our individual and corporate members. See the open letter from Brooks right here
JBL designed Nokia wireless charging speaker – Designed in concept to work with the Nokia Lumia smartphones, this NFC enabled, BlueTooth speaker is ideal for wireless streaming and wireless charging of your NFC enabled smartphone. This demo shows how you can use it with an iPad or Android device – it could even make a great portable sound system for your next event! Basically, the device can work with almost any audio device (either via Bluetooth or cable connection) and in a pinch, the speaker could make an excellent portable, mobile speaker for use at any event… See the Unboxing of the JBL designed Nokia wireless charging speaker.
The ubuntu smartphone – here’s one for the ultra geeks and GeoHipsters… the Ubuntu smartphone! Expected to come to market in fall of 2013, smartphones that will run the opensource Ubuntu OS are reported to bring corporate users such functionality as wireless docking to large display devices, and even stream Windows PC apps to them from the corporate server environment. I’m guessing the Ubuntu faithful will see a tough marketplace in trying to chip away at the dominance of Android and iOS, however, the opensource software developers may embrace this one… wait and see I guess!
See more on the WSJ blogs
