Spatial Data eXchange

Male Mental Health

Angus Scown — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 03:23:57 +0000

Last week I was fortunate to present at the SSSI Qld Northern Surveyors Group conference. The dinner speaker was Andy Froggatt who is not from the Surveying industry but from the Health industry. He gave a fantastic presentation on depression in the workplace. It was really challenging to listen to as there wasn’t a single person in the room who didn’t resonate with one of his many statistics or stories.

My first small step towards change is getting involved for the first time in Movember. Raising money and more importantly awareness of Men’s health issues. For more information...

To delete or not to delete

John Lockton — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:17:41 +0000

Leigh Jasper (Co-founder and CEO of Aconex) has written an interesting article discussing the perils of deleting records from collaboration based systems. Leigh talks about the integrity of the system. If you cannot be sure that a document in a control system will still exist at some point in the future, then that is a risk legally but also for business value.

I believe the same is true from a spatial and communication point of view. For example, if a user can delete a ‘well’ entity from a gas field, and it just vanishes from...

What type of map projection are you?

John Lockton — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:15:08 +0000

Some humour for the middle of the week…

I came across this summary of map projections and what they say about people. What type of map projection are you?

Source: http://xkcd.com/977/

Communicating “Where am I?”

Angus Scown — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:41:04 +0000

I love seeing new ways of displaying location. Yesterday I visited a local menswear shop, Apartment in Brisbane. They had recently moved and had a “we’ve moved” card. Here is the map they provided showing their new address. Great design from Zero Hour & Co

The proliferation of websites using Google Maps on their “contact us” page means we don’t get more innovation on location display like this from Graphic Designers.

Cloud computing – a shot in the arm

John Lockton — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:51:50 +0000

I came across an article which discusses how ‘cloud computing’ may be one facet of how the global economy may be able to kick-start itself.

“Economists and pundits have long feared the emergence of what they called “hollow corporations,” or businesses that don’t actually produce actual goods or services themselves, but instead act as brokers or intermediaries relying on networks of suppliers and partners. But now, thanks to technology, successful businesses surprisingly are often brokers of services, delivered via technology, from providers and on to consumers. Where are these services coming from? Look to the cloud.”

Interestingly, it goes...

What’s the next disruptive idea for collaboration?

John Lockton — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 04:29:40 +0000

Paul Wilkinson wrote an article on his blog recently entitled ‘What’s the next disruptive idea for collaboration’. Paul’s blog is normally focused around collaboration for the construction industry, but it made me think about collaboration more generally. Below is my reply I posted on Paul’s blog.

Paul, your blog post made me think about the convergence of a number of collaboration technologies that I believe is happening – particularly in the SaaS/Cloud space.

SaaS/Cloud solutions are either established or gaining traction for many specific tasks. For example, the delivery of Document Management (there are many), maps (Google Maps)...

Queensland Gas Conference & Exhibition

John Lockton — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:37:44 +0000

QGCE is a premium, authoritative Gas Industry Conference and Exhibition that offers energy, petroleum and gas industry professionals in domestic and international markets:

Unparalleled networking opportunities with leading industry players;
A forum to be informed on industry developments and issues; and
A platform to showcase the latest industry trends, products and technologies.

QGCE enables industry to leverage the huge potential of Queensland -specific Coal Seam Gas (CSG) to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

Introducing in 2012:

Matchmaker/Meet the Buyer Program – Bringing together exhibitors with key industry buyers
Enhanced Technology Showcase
Fully integrated conference and exhibition programme

...

Queensland International Gas Symposium: A World of Opportunities

John Lockton — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 06:58:33 +0000

The Queensland Government invites you to a not-to-be-missed business event – the Queensland International Gas Symposium: A World of Opportunities on 7 – 8 December 2011.

As the site of the world’s first CSG to liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facility and home to over $45 billion in projects under construction, Queensland is the ideal place to showcase what is happening across the sector at both a national and international level.

Join industry leaders and experts at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre for an engaging two-day program to learn more about the latest global market trends, environmental management...

Making your device work harder than their server

Angus Scown — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 02:19:27 +0000

With the release of Version 5 of Google Maps on Android the processing has moved away from web servers and onto mobile devices by becoming a vector application. Up until this release, all versions of Google Maps, on phones or desktops, were based on the client requesting raster tiles from the server whenever you zoomed or panned across the map. This article takes a detailed look at these features from a Digital Cartography perspective. It is also interesting for people who are looking at the benefits of getting devices to do more of the heavy lifting.

Map Tiles are created...

Collaboration in the workplace

John Lockton — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:20:03 +0000

Collaboration in the workplace has changed tremendously and is still evolving at a rapid pace.

Thousands of years ago people communicated face-to-face and by drawing on cave-walls. Over the years there has been a progression to letters, memos, telephone calls, telex, faxes and during the last +/-20 years email and applications on mobile devices (including SMS and MSN Messenger).

A lot of business people are now also using newer technologies to collaborate. For example, public access solutions such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype and LinkedIn allow for communication between people. There are also similar ‘enterprise social network’ solutions for corporate...