Amelie Camille Gallery & Studio
(map ref 9-K) 250 Johnston Street, Abbotsford 3067. (03) 9078-2625. ameliecamille@gmail.com Director: Emily Breninger. Sat-Sun 11.00 to 4.00. Dec 3 to 20 (opening Fri Dec 4, 6.30-9pm) Street Level – three artists look beyond the grid by NANCY LEHET, RANDI WAGNER and JESSICA NICHOL.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
unbuilt freeways of the USA (andrew lynch).
with thanks to the Tattered Fragments book for pointing it out.
with thanks to the Tattered Fragments book for pointing it out.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
thinking about: what's the difference between direct modification of the city, like this: and just labelling/talking about things? obviously it's different, but exactly how? a q. of semantics?
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
reposting to save copy for further ref. from http://www.homepagedaily.com/Pages/article6841-australia-government-limited-googles-bushfire-map.aspx
The refusal of the government in Victoria, Australia, to provide data for Google's bushfire map mashup limited its scope and highlighted glaring problems with Crown copyright provisions, the search giant's top Australian engineer said yesterday.
With over 1 million page views since Sunday, the Google Map overlay showing Victoria's bushfires has been invaluable for tracking the extent of the disaster.
Google Australia engineering director Alan Noble told the Broadband and Beyond conference in Melbourne yesterday that he became involved with the bushfire mapping effort after Google engineers woke in shock Sunday morning to read about the horrific fires unfolding east of Melbourne, which have claimed nearly 200 lives.
Noticing the Commonwealth Fire Authority (CFA) Web site was already struggling to keep up with demand for its online list of bushfire updates, Noble's team had the idea of overlaying the data onto Google Maps to produce a real-time map of the fires' locations, and intensities. The CFA, which manages fires on private lands and has therefore remained at the front line of the devastating fires, consented--and within four hours, the new map was live.
The search giant's search for data to plot fires on public lands--which are managed by the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment--produced an entirely different result. With no public feed of the fires' location and an explicit denial of permission to access its own internal data, the engineers were ultimately unable to plot that data on the map as well.
The culprit, according to Noble: legally established Crown copyright provisions, which assign copyright over all government-produced information to the government and prevent its use without explicit consent. Crown copyright is well established in Commonwealth law, but runs contrary to data protection provisions in countries like the US, where data produced by government agencies is held to be in the public domain.
Noble said the engineers' experience this week was an example of why Commonwealth data protection provisions must be relaxed to promote open access to publicly relevant information. "It's ironic that I can download detailed NASA satellite imagery (of Australia) more readily than I can get satellite imagery from the Australian government," he told the conference.
The bushfire situation wasn't the first time Google has crossed swords with Crown copyright. The company had similar problems recently when it asked the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging for access to the data in the National Public Toilet Map, which it sought to offer as an overlay to Google Maps.
However, Google Loo was not to be: citing protection of the data under Crown copyright, the government refused to provide that information. Google's fight to open up government information sources follows on from earlier advice, in reviews like the Copyright Law Review Committee's 2005 inquiry, that government-produced data be made more freely available.
In a formal submission (PDF) to the Victorian Government last year, Google Australia argued that "there are considerable benefits that would flow to the Victorian Government and the wider Victorian community from the unfettered availability of publicly funded, non-confidential government information...By making public sector information available to all organizations on the same terms, there would be an equal playing field for the creation of innovative products."
Many private enterprises have been similarly reluctant to provide information: the recently launched Google PowerMeter initiative, for example, is all about surfacing relevant usage information to drive smarter energy usage. "We've been very disappointed with the amount of information utilities generally provide to customers," Noble explained. "Where people can efficiently and easily monitor their power consumption, just having visibility into their usage is enough to cut power usage by as much as 15 per cent."
The need for open data has become even more pressing with the rise of geospatial mapping, Noble said. Google Maps has become an immensely popular way of representing geographically-linked data in everything from scientific endeavor to real estate. With the platform's application programming interfaces open to all developers, Noble said the company's goal is to let any developer add mapping capabilities to represent information in new ways.
Fully 60 per cent of the hits to Google Maps, he revealed, come through the APIs--indicating that they were from third-party sites. "When you open up all this information," Noble said, "it fuels innovation in ways we can't predict. APIs allow developers to build new products from existing components very, very quickly." Sites like Google Maps Mania track interesting uses of Google Maps to display specific data sets.
Noble sees the widespread availability of APIs as one of two critical engines for growth in online applications. The other, gadgets, "are doing for applications what RSS is doing for content," he said, by allowing Web sites to integrate fully-featured capabilities from other sites and create "third-party mashups" that combine best-of-breed functionality in new ways.
"We're seeing billions and billions of page views every week," he explained. "No one company could achieve that kind of scale. And the thing that makes this possible is the openness and innovation that open APIs and open data sets enable."
David Braue of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.
The refusal of the government in Victoria, Australia, to provide data for Google's bushfire map mashup limited its scope and highlighted glaring problems with Crown copyright provisions, the search giant's top Australian engineer said yesterday.
With over 1 million page views since Sunday, the Google Map overlay showing Victoria's bushfires has been invaluable for tracking the extent of the disaster.
Google Australia engineering director Alan Noble told the Broadband and Beyond conference in Melbourne yesterday that he became involved with the bushfire mapping effort after Google engineers woke in shock Sunday morning to read about the horrific fires unfolding east of Melbourne, which have claimed nearly 200 lives.
Noticing the Commonwealth Fire Authority (CFA) Web site was already struggling to keep up with demand for its online list of bushfire updates, Noble's team had the idea of overlaying the data onto Google Maps to produce a real-time map of the fires' locations, and intensities. The CFA, which manages fires on private lands and has therefore remained at the front line of the devastating fires, consented--and within four hours, the new map was live.
The search giant's search for data to plot fires on public lands--which are managed by the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment--produced an entirely different result. With no public feed of the fires' location and an explicit denial of permission to access its own internal data, the engineers were ultimately unable to plot that data on the map as well.
The culprit, according to Noble: legally established Crown copyright provisions, which assign copyright over all government-produced information to the government and prevent its use without explicit consent. Crown copyright is well established in Commonwealth law, but runs contrary to data protection provisions in countries like the US, where data produced by government agencies is held to be in the public domain.
Noble said the engineers' experience this week was an example of why Commonwealth data protection provisions must be relaxed to promote open access to publicly relevant information. "It's ironic that I can download detailed NASA satellite imagery (of Australia) more readily than I can get satellite imagery from the Australian government," he told the conference.
The bushfire situation wasn't the first time Google has crossed swords with Crown copyright. The company had similar problems recently when it asked the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging for access to the data in the National Public Toilet Map, which it sought to offer as an overlay to Google Maps.
However, Google Loo was not to be: citing protection of the data under Crown copyright, the government refused to provide that information. Google's fight to open up government information sources follows on from earlier advice, in reviews like the Copyright Law Review Committee's 2005 inquiry, that government-produced data be made more freely available.
In a formal submission (PDF) to the Victorian Government last year, Google Australia argued that "there are considerable benefits that would flow to the Victorian Government and the wider Victorian community from the unfettered availability of publicly funded, non-confidential government information...By making public sector information available to all organizations on the same terms, there would be an equal playing field for the creation of innovative products."
Many private enterprises have been similarly reluctant to provide information: the recently launched Google PowerMeter initiative, for example, is all about surfacing relevant usage information to drive smarter energy usage. "We've been very disappointed with the amount of information utilities generally provide to customers," Noble explained. "Where people can efficiently and easily monitor their power consumption, just having visibility into their usage is enough to cut power usage by as much as 15 per cent."
The need for open data has become even more pressing with the rise of geospatial mapping, Noble said. Google Maps has become an immensely popular way of representing geographically-linked data in everything from scientific endeavor to real estate. With the platform's application programming interfaces open to all developers, Noble said the company's goal is to let any developer add mapping capabilities to represent information in new ways.
Fully 60 per cent of the hits to Google Maps, he revealed, come through the APIs--indicating that they were from third-party sites. "When you open up all this information," Noble said, "it fuels innovation in ways we can't predict. APIs allow developers to build new products from existing components very, very quickly." Sites like Google Maps Mania track interesting uses of Google Maps to display specific data sets.
Noble sees the widespread availability of APIs as one of two critical engines for growth in online applications. The other, gadgets, "are doing for applications what RSS is doing for content," he said, by allowing Web sites to integrate fully-featured capabilities from other sites and create "third-party mashups" that combine best-of-breed functionality in new ways.
"We're seeing billions and billions of page views every week," he explained. "No one company could achieve that kind of scale. And the thing that makes this possible is the openness and innovation that open APIs and open data sets enable."
David Braue of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
melbourne op shopping guide
about 4 months seems to be the point at which people start to ask "so how is the writing going?"
but really there's not an answer to that. not one that doesn't involve dragging them into my study, pointing at the piles of books, ranting about field trips yet to do and possibly bursting into tears. which is probably not what they actually want...
about 4 months seems to be the point at which people start to ask "so how is the writing going?"
but really there's not an answer to that. not one that doesn't involve dragging them into my study, pointing at the piles of books, ranting about field trips yet to do and possibly bursting into tears. which is probably not what they actually want...
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
the absolutely beautifully designed wide open road site. pity you can't podcast or, apparently, buy the program for on-the-road listening...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Much as it's a pleasure to "work" by reading books about Melbourne, I am feeling like I'm disappearing under a pile of books propped open on their pages, all sprouting sticky notes with obscure codes written on them - "M" or "C" or, in big letters: LANEWAYS!
Writing an article on the fiction aspect of representation is useful, in that it gives me a deadline, but I know I'll have to start from scratch for the book itself. Wondering just how abstract and contemplative I can be: straight lists of maps, books, songs and so on are easy and tedious, but unfiltered musings on the nature of the Word and Image might be, um, a tad alienating for any possible readers?
The other nice thing about this project is that I'm not purporting to be exhaustive (for that would be exhausting), so I can concentrate on the works I enjoy. That means that some writers may be ignored even though they Rate, and others get a mention just because their words once gave me a buzz. I feel guilty, as if there is some standard of objectivity I'm supposed to meet, but I know it will be better if I just go with my flow.
Writing an article on the fiction aspect of representation is useful, in that it gives me a deadline, but I know I'll have to start from scratch for the book itself. Wondering just how abstract and contemplative I can be: straight lists of maps, books, songs and so on are easy and tedious, but unfiltered musings on the nature of the Word and Image might be, um, a tad alienating for any possible readers?
The other nice thing about this project is that I'm not purporting to be exhaustive (for that would be exhausting), so I can concentrate on the works I enjoy. That means that some writers may be ignored even though they Rate, and others get a mention just because their words once gave me a buzz. I feel guilty, as if there is some standard of objectivity I'm supposed to meet, but I know it will be better if I just go with my flow.
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