Nevermind Apple’s maps misfire, the free, volunteer-made OpenStreetMap may end up reigning supreme anyway, as companies increasingly choose it for map data over Google. But as the project grows, it’s becoming harder and harder for its members to agree on what direction to go in next. Part 2 of a 3-part series. Read part 1 here.
“There is literally not a mapping company in the world that doesn’t use OpenStreetMap in some capacity,” Steve Coast, founder of the free, crowdsourced world map, in his keynote address to some 224 passionate geography junkies at the second annual State of the Map USAconference in Portland, Oregon, on October 13.
Already, in the last year alone, some of the biggest names in the tech sector have switched from Google Maps — which began charging for heavy use of its data in January 2012 — to OpenStreetMap (OSM) to power their map apps or websites.
Dr. Jim Spoher (born c. 1956) is a computer scientist leading the development of a new science of service systems, often known as Service Science, Management and Engineering. He has been the Director of IBM Global University Programs since 2009. Between 2003 and 2009, he was the Director of Almaden Services Research with IBM at the IBM Almaden Research Center. He was a driving advocate of the Service Science, Management and Engineering initiative across companies, governments and academics. Jim's research group received IBM awards for modeling customers and mapping global service systems including performance measures, costing and pricing of complex, inter-organizational service projects, analytics and information service innovations, process improvement methods, and innovation foresight methods, amongst others.
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Jim works with service research pioneers from diverse academic disciplines and he advocates for Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED) as an integrative framework for global competency development, economic development, and advancement of science. Spohrer was the Chief Technology Officer for IBM Venture Capital Relations between 2000 and 2002. He was a Distinguished Scientist in Learning Research at Apple Computer between 1989 and 1998, where he was a coinventor receiving 9 patents. Dr. Spohrer received a Ph.D. in Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence from Yale University in 1988. He graduated with a B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1978.
Seeking to reshape a national political debate he finds frustratingly superficial, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York is plunging into the 2012 campaign in its final weeks, creating his own “super PAC” to direct millions of dollars in donations to elect candidates from both parties who he believes will focus on problem solving.
Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire and a registered independent, expects to spend from $10 million to $15 million of his money in highly competitive state, local and Congressional races. The money would be used to pay for a flurry of advertising on behalf of Republican, Democratic and independent candidates who support three of his biggest policy initiatives: legalizing same-sex marriage, enacting tougher gun laws and overhauling schools.
Phi Beta Iota: Bloomberg could have been president in 2012, but his “tribe” may have made clear to him that the cost to him and his family would be very high. His existing three-ring circus (IndependentVoting.org, NO LABELS, and Americans Elect) has consumed vast amounts of money with nothing tangible to show for it EXCEPT (and perhaps the whole point) a severe dilution of small party effectiveness. This fourth ring is absurd–nothing more than a means of cherry-picking a critical mass that can be brought together for a handful of “favors” in the future. There appears to be a real lack of integrity and coherence in this latest move by Bloomberg. Opportunity lost. Again.
t is urgently important to prevent a Republican administration under Romney/Ryan from taking office in January 2013.
The election is now just weeks away, and I want to urge those whose values are generally in line with mine — progressives, especially activists — to make this goal one of your priorities during this period.
Daniel Ellsberg
An activist colleague recently said to me: “I hear you're supporting Obama.”
I was startled, and took offense. “Supporting Obama? Me?!”
“I lose no opportunity publicly,” I told him angrily, to identify Obama as a tool of Wall Street, a man who's decriminalized torture and is still complicit in it, a drone assassin, someone who's launched an unconstitutional war, supports kidnapping and indefinite detention without trial, and has prosecuted more whistleblowers like myself than all previous presidents put together. “Would you call that support?”
My friend said, “But on Democracy Now you urged people in swing states to vote for him! How could you say that? I don't live in a swing state, but I will not and could not vote for Obama under any circumstances.”
My answer was: a Romney/Ryan administration would be no better — no different — on any of the serious offenses I just mentioned or anything else, and it would be much worse, even catastrophically worse, on a number of other important issues: attacking Iran, Supreme Court appointments, the economy, women's reproductive rights, health coverage, safety net, climate change, green energy, the environment.
I told him: “I don't ‘support Obama.' I oppose the current Republican Party. This is not a contest between Barack Obama and a progressive candidate. The voters in a handful or a dozen close-fought swing states are going to determine whether Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are going to wield great political power for four, maybe eight years, or not.”
As Noam Chomsky said recently, “The Republican organization today is extremely dangerous, not just to this country, but to the world. It's worth expending some effort to prevent their rise to power, without sowing illusions about the Democratic alternatives.”
Phi Beta Iota: We disagree. Obama has so thoroughly abandoned all pretense of change that it would take a series of truly extraordinary moves in the next two weeks — including a new Vice President, a Coalition Cabinet, a commitment to ending all taxes in favor of the Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax, and of course the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 — to give him the slightest credibility. Much more likely is that the election will be stolen, Obama will do an Al Gore and retire quietly to Chicago to count his gold certificates, and America will have another four years to contemplate the true cost of individual disengagement.
Jeffrey St Claire, the editor at Counterpunch has given me permission to distribute the attached essay, “The Arab Spring at the Crossroads,” by Esam Al-Amin. It was published in the subscription edition of Counterpunch and is not available at the CP website. Al-Amin, who I do not know, has written a very informative summary of the crosscurrents now shaping the Arab world. This is a subject of very great importance to the welfare of all Americans. I urge you to read it carefully.
In addition to being informative, Al-Amin's essay is a prime example of the quality of the information now available in what the mainstream media likes to call the alternative press. This brings me to my second reason for writing this blaster. Counterpunch is having a rare fundraising drive and I am taking what for me is an unprecedented action of urging you to contribute. I think it is important to support alternative news/opinion outlets like Antiwar.com, Truthout, Alternet, and especially, since I am biased, Counterpunch. (Truth in advertising: I counted the late editor Alex Cockburn and still count his co-editor Jeffrey St Claire as friends.)
So, I urge you read the essay below — you can determine whether or not you think it stands on its own merits. If you feel this is the kind of info worth paying a little for, I encourage you to think about purchasing a subscription or a gift sub for a friend or relative or sending a small tax-deductible donation to CP's secure sever. The Counterpunchers promise they won’t contact you to shake you down for more money or sell your name to any lists–not Karl Rove’s and especially not MoveOn’s. To contribute by phone you can call Becky or Deva toll free at: 1-800-840-3683
CounterPunch Volume 19 Number 17, >October 1-15, 2012, published October 2, 2012
Ever since Napoléon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, the relationship between the West and the Arab-Muslim East has been contentious and convoluted. Although this military leader of the first French Republic conquered Egypt for strategic reasons in his rivalry with the British and the Ottomans, the Muslim Arabs of the region – later dubbed “the Middle East” by an American naval officer – felt vulnerable, exposed, and weak.
by William D. Eggers, John Hagel and Owen Sanderson
Harvard Business Review | 9:00 AM September 21, 2012
A bachelor's degree used to provide enough basic training to last a career. Yet today, the skills college graduates acquire during college have an expected shelf life of only five years according to extensive work we've done in conjunction with Deloitte's Shift Index. The key takeaway? The lessons learned in school can become outdated long before student loans are paid off.
And it's not only white-collar, college-driven careers that will suffer rapid skills obsolescence. Think of how new metering systems and motion sensors suddenly require highly technical skills from contractors, plumbers and electricians. Or how welders working on wind turbines now need specialized degrees and the ability to read CAD blueprints or LEED certification requirements.
t is urgently important to prevent a Republican administration under Romney/Ryan from taking office in January 2013.
