BRUSCA

Location, location… location

Posted by Brusca under Location Software, Social Networking, Software

OK the location war is on in earnest and Gowalla and Foursquare seem to be at the top of the heap in terms of popularity and fighting the battle to be at the top. This though is only the beginning of location centric applications, and I’m not going to speculate on who is the best (cough Gowalla!) here.

http://www.foursquare.com

http://www.gowalla.com

My belief is that location centric applications are going to be the next big wave (trust me it’s a small wave right now). The idea of checking into a location through a mobile phone opens up so many doors, too many to describe in one post.

The first awesome opportunity that comes to mind is when a business can tap into the Gowalla and or Foursquare data or API (or both) and push through deals and or specials to the application interfaces, so that when a user checks into the pub, restaurant or whatever the location is, they simply receive a push notification or an SMS of a special deal for checking in their, like a free beer, or half price meal that the user can then claim for checking in. Or perhaps another alternative is within the interface of the chosen location software, the user can browse through nearby specials within a given radius, from 100m to 1km.

I love the countless opportunities this opens itself up for. Oh the above idea is mine, get your own :0) HA HA!

SXSW Interactive Checkin Visualization from SimpleGeo Inc. on Vimeo.

This is the data SimpleGeo collected from the eight geolocated data providers (FourSquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Flickr, Bump, Brightkite, BlockChalk, and Fwix) during the South by SouthWest Interactive Festival. The live datastream was available on http://austin.vicarious.ly, but we thought people might enjoy a conference retrospective in data. If you’d like to have access to this data and more, and/or outsource your entire geolocation infrastructure to the experts in massive geodatasets, check out http://simplegeo.com; we’re in Beta right now, with a full launch at the end of March!

Created with Processing (http://processing.org/ ).

Maps from the OpenStreetMap project (http://www.openstreetmap.org ).

Music: “Pocket Tanks,” Eliran Ben-Ishai (DNA-Groove).

Get your fill on the Desktop

Posted by Brusca under Design, Nikon D90, Photography, flickr

I have converted a few of my favourite photos into desktops. I’ll throw a few more out there when I get the chance. Here a three very different subjects for you to choose from. Camera of choice is the Nikon D90, Enjoy!

Extract the GPS data from your Sony Handycam

Posted by Brusca under Film making, Flash, Location Software, Video

Since I bought the Sony HD XR520 last May, I have always wondered about retrieving the raw GPS data that is recorded when you capture footage. A lot of the new Sony models record GPS points now and I have looked online with not much luck on how to retrieve this raw data. Turns out it is really very simple. The software you receive with your Sony camera, Picture Motion Browser (PMB) has a very nice map feature, which displays your selected videos on the map and gives you the option to export that data to an xml (KML) file to be imported into Google Earth.

So there are many visualisations you could achieve with this xml data. In the coming posts I will import this into flash and create a flash map of my own to display and play the videos taken from the camera.

Extract the GPS data from your Sony Handycam from Bruce Levick on Vimeo.

How to extract the GPS data from your Sony Handycam

365 Days – February

Posted by Brusca under 365 Days of 2010, Apple, Photography, flickr, iPhone

I have decided to take a photo for each day of 2010 with my iPhone. They can be self portraits or anything that takes my fancy or wherever I am at at the time. All photos are edited directly on the iPhone and mostly edited with the Best Camera App, developed by Chase Jarvis. At the end of the year I will hopefully put a book together, perhaps produced in Aperture. Here are my February photos. You can check out January here.

For more details on these photos visit my Flickr Collection, 365 Days of 2010. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brusca/collections/72157623604227238/

My Favourite iPhone photo for February is

Nikkor AF-S VR Zoom 70-300mm (Nikon)

Posted by Brusca under Nikon D90, Photography, Tanzania, flickr

Just prior to traveling to Tanzania in June of 2009 I decided to switch my kit 200mm lens for the AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED . At the time I wasn’t sure if that was the right decision, but looking back and looking at the photos I managed to capture on the 300mm, no regrets whatsoever. I can also say that if you are just getting into DSLR photography, that the Nikon D90 is certainly what I would recommend. Now I’m not a professional photographer, but the opinion of a passionate amateur might just be what you’re looking for. Hope this helps you in making a decision on a lens or camera.

55-200 vs 70-300

Nikon Nikkor 70-300

Giraffe captured on the Nikon Nikkor 70-300mm

Baby Elephant captured on the Nikon Nikkor 70-300mm

Kingfisher captured on the Nikon Nikkor 70-300mm

More Flickr Tanzania Gallery