Oreilly.com contributing editor James Turner has been busy conducting a series of interviews with some of the most thought-provoking speakers slated for Where 2.0, coming up May 19-21 in San Jose:

• DARPA’s TIGR Project Helps Platoons Stay Alive
• Building the SENSEable City
• Tyler Bell on Yahoo’s Open Location Project
• Pelago’s Jeff Holden on Creating Stories Out of Your Life
• Eric Gunderson of Development Seed on the Promise of Open Data

Where 2.0 brings together the people, projects, and issues building the new technological foundations and creating value in the location industry. Join with other developers, technologists, CTOs, researchers, geographers, academics, business developers, and entrepreneurs to debate and discuss what’s viable now, and what’s lurking just below the radar.

As people inspired, curious, and concerned about our planet, we’re looking forward to observing Earth Day. We’re offering an unprecedented 39% discount off any Where 2.0 Conference package to celebrate Earth Day’s 39 years of existence. Use discount code: whr09erd when registering, and make sure you sign up between now and 11:59 pm PST April 22.

Many of the projects we explore at Where 2.0 echo the themes and goals of Earth Day, and is a reminder of how our work has an impact on the global community. Just a few of the insightful speakers presenting workshops and plenary sessions at this year’s Where 2.0 include:

• Doug Eberhard (Autodesk) Digital Cities Modeling Workshop
• Denice Ross (Greater New Orleans Community Data Center) “Junk Mail” and the GeoWeb Shine Light on New Orleans Recovery
• Jubal Harpster (CH2M HILL) Geospatial Technology Program for sub-Saharan Africa
• Sam Hiatt (CSU Monterey Bay - NASA) Implementing Web Services for NASA’s Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System
• Will McClintock (University of California Santa Barbara) MarineMap: Crowdsourcing Scientifically Defensible Marine Habitat Protection Areas
• Rebecca Moore (Google) Indigenous Mappers
• Alex Oliver (Igloo Studios) Translating Geo-Web Efficiency into Real-World Sustainability

Check out the complete schedule, where you’ll also find info on after-hours events and networking opportunities like the Where Fair.

Sebastopol, CA, February 3, 2009 - You can’t go anywhere or do anything these days without finding one map or another, but location technology continues to grow far beyond those tools. See all the other directions location tech might take at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, May 19-21, 2009 in San Jose, CA. Program chair Brady Forrest has revealed the program, and registration has opened. An early registration discount remains available until March 31.

Now in its fifth year, the Where 2.0 Conference claims the space where developers building location-aware technology intersect with the businesses and entrepreneurs looking for location apps, platforms, and hardware to give them a competitive edge. Where 2.0 delves into the emerging technologies surrounding the geospatial industry and asks the crucial questions.

Read the full press release.

The schedule for the 2009 edition of Where 2.0 went up late last week. Yes, I’m biased, but for the fifth year in a row it’s shaping up to be another stellar experience.

One of the best things about Where 2.0 is that it’s a mix of the practical (cartography, local search, data management) and inspirational (augmented reality, 3D imagery, crowdsourcing). It’s not easy to meld the skill building with the visionary, particularly in a single-track conference, so props to program chair Brady Forrest and his program committee for making that happen.

Some highlights:

• Workshops are a little shorter this year (75 minutes vs. 3 hours in 2008) and more plentiful, giving attendees more topics to choose from
• Local Search: Funding Geo–Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) will share his thinking on the latest advances across all of the search engines
• Indigenous Mappers–Rebecca Moore (Google) has been working closely with indigenous tribes to put their data online, a difficult but rewarding experience
• Maps in Space–the always entertaining Chris Spurgeon (spurgeonworld.com) gives a fun-filled overview of some of the techniques we use to find our way in space
• Mobiles Around the World–Nokia’s Michael Halbherr shares the latest news on geo-aware web apps
• The Shape of Alpha–Aaron Cope (Flickr) answers the question: If all of Flickr’s 100+ million geotagged photos were plotted on a map would there be enough data to generate a mostly accurate contour of that place?

More is on the way as Brady and company continue their work on the agenda. For those interested in attending, the early registration discount is currently in effect.

Are you a GIS veteran on the verge of becoming a location entrepreneur? An open source developer hacking up a cool mapping tool? A neogeographer with a project that deserves a wider audience? A CIO using location information in an unexpected way? Program chair Brady Forrest wants to hear from you. Submit a proposal to speak at Where 2.0 2009 by December 2.

If you’re thinking about submitting a proposal to speak at Where 2.0 2009, this live webcast, The State of the Geospatial Web with Andrew Turner might help focus your ideas. Andrew, a Where 2.0 Conference program committee member, will discuss the current evolution of Where 2.0 and how it is affecting the entire landscape of Web 2.0 and next generation applications. The webcast happens on Friday, October 24; the deadline for speaking proposals for Where 2.0 is December 2.

Check out last year’s keynote address by John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps and Jack Dangemond of ESRI as they demonstrate the latest in Google geo development. Compare to the geospace technology of today by attending this year’s Where 2.0 in May 2009 or submitting a proposal to speak. The Call for Participation is open until December 2, 2008!

See all Where 2.0 Keynote Videos.

O’Reilly Media has just opened the call for speakers for the 2009 edition of Where 2.0. Program chair Brady Forrest is looking for talks on some of the most interesting and important fronts, including: local search and advertising, reality mining and augmented reality, immersive and 3D imagery, mapping tables, Government 2.0, cartography, and more. Deadline to submit proposals to Where 2.0 2009 is December 2.

Renaud Euvrard reports on the conference and maps Paris with Google Maps.

Glenn Latham reports on his experiences and observations at Where 2.0, including some of his favorite job titles.

TechCrunch picked up on Frank Taylor’s post about the coolest things he saw at Where 2.0, including this demo from Gold sponsor Earthscape:

Writes Leslie Rule:

Where 2.0 happened May 12-14 at the San Francisco Airport Marriot just south of the city. This annual event, now in its 4th year, is a strange mix of grassroots geo-enthusiasts and entrepreneurial geo-hackers. Where 2.0 is primarily a developer’s conference, so the majority of time and certainly the focus was on tools and how they function and less on how these tools are being used. (Or not being used. For the most part, location apps are in beta.) There was definitely the Field of Dream feeling “build it and they will come.” The exceptions were the tools and apps in the social activism thread.

Michael Bauer provides a thoughtful and detailed summary on this year’s conference:

A number of other notable presentations included Sam Altman at Loopt, the provider of a mobile location client for different devices and carriers noted their growth, focus on privacy, and the move towards subscription models for mobile location. Sean Gorman from FortiusOne provided an update on the GeoCommons and how its interacting with FreeBase, OpenLocation, and MapMixer. Mok Oh from Everyscape presented looking at the inside of spaces like malls as well using different anonymous individual tracking techniques.

Don Jewell contributes these posts on his experience at Where 2.0, noting the unique and effective format that this conference follows:

It does not matter whether you are the president of Microsoft, the CEO of ESRI, or the president of a two man start-up, you only get 15 minutes and indeed this year some have only 10 and some as little as five minutes to tell their story. But you know it works, because it cuts out all the fluff. In the Marketing Business, one of the first things you learn is that you have to have your elevator speech or your five-minute spiel down pat and that is what we are hearing at Where 2.0 and it is refreshing. None of the fluff, just the Joe Friday facts, ma’am.

Great coverage from Frank Taylor at Google Earth Blog:

Where 2.0 - Day 1
Google Geo Search API, ESRI and Google Collaborate
Where 2.0 2008 - Day 2 - Tuesday
Where 2.0 2008 - Day 3 - Wednesday

Rafe Needleman contributes a great run-down on “the Webware takeaway on the most interesting of the dozen apps” at Monday night’s Launchpad.

Stephen Lawson posts this on “Nokia’s next generation of mobile-phone navigation technology, Nokia Maps 2.0″ launched Monday, at the Where 2.0 Conference.

Chris Nuttall posts this, detailing Adrian Holovaty’s presentation, “EveryBlock: A News Feed for Your Block,” and John Hanke and Jack Dangermond’s “The State of the Geoweb.”

The first of select video from Where 2.0 has been posted:

We’re looking forward to the Frank Taylor’s coverage at Where this year, he posts this on Seero:

Seero is a new service which offers geo-spatially aware video content in either Google Maps or Google Earth. You can even watch the position of a video broadcast change during the playback of the content, or you can do your own broadcasts.

Up Next, who participated in last years Launch Pad, are at Where again:

This year we going as observers and look forward to hearing from a great roster of speakers and seeing some interesting demos.

James Thornett is excited about attending this year’s conference.

“We’ve covered Whrrl, and several of its competitors, already on Webware,” writes Rafe Needleman, “but with the Where 2.0 conference coming up next week, I thought it’d be interesting to dive into this product just a bit more, since it represents some very interesting trends that are central to the creation of location-aware apps.”

Mashable posts this on Seero’s upcoming debut, “Seero is hoping to stand out from the growing realm of live-streaming widgets by being among the first to launch a GPS-enabled widget stream.”

Where 2.0 program chair Brady Forrest rounds up geo activities: “Where 2.0 starts next week on May 12th, but that’s not evening the beginning of the geo-related activities that some people are calling ‘Where Week.’”

We’ve just extended the early registration discount for one more week, so you now have March 31 to save up to $300 on conference fees for Where 2.0 2008 and take part in thought-provoking sessions like:

• EveryBlock: A News Feed for Your Block by Adrian Holovaty (EveryBlock)
• DIY Drones: An Open Source Hardware and Software Approach to Making “Minimum UAVs” by Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine)
• Google Maps for Mobile with My Location—Behind the Scenes by Adel Youssef (Google Inc.) and John Hanke (Google, Inc.)
• Convergence of Architectural and Engineering Design and Location Technology: Implications for eGovernment by Geoff Zeiss (Autodesk, Inc.)
• Monetizing Maps & Mashups by Greg Sterling (Sterling Market Intelligence)

Program chair Brady Forrest still has a few more intriguing ideas in the hopper for the agenda, so stay tuned.

If you’re thinking of coming to the 2008 edition of Where 2.0 in May, now’s the time to sign up. Early registration–your chance to save up to $300–ends this week. Program chair Brady Forrest has once again put together a stimulating, wide-ranging program, bringing in speakers from all over the world to discuss location issues and applications in gaming, activism, green efforts, search engines, history, crowd behavior, and much more. New this year also is a full day of tutorials.

Program chair Brady Forrest has confirmed the preliminary agenda for this May’s Where 2.0 Conference. Once again, lots of food for thought: GeoDjango, map-based advertising, gaming, OpenLayers, mobile apps, and much more.

New to Where 2.0 this year is a full day of tutorials for folks who want to go more in-depth with location technologies.

The early registration discount will be available until March 23.

If you’re interested in more location information, check out select keynote presentations (video and audio) from the 2007 conference.

News from Dash Express, a follow up from products seen at last year’s Where 2.0 Conference:

Last year at the Where 2.0 conference, I first saw the Dash Express, a location-aware device that connects to the Internet to get information in real-time from your car. I just got e-mail from Dash that the testing phase is nearing an end and they’re about to release a limited number of these handy devices in the first quarter of 2008.

Just a reminder for all those proposals for Where 2.0, the time is now!

Last reminder, proposals for the O’Reilly Where2.0 conference are due December 3. So make sure and get your submissions in!

We got a nice “hit” on GISuser.com for Where 2.0:

http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/13201/

A nice piece in the location based market about the CFP for Where 2.0:

What are the hot new technologies that will change the way we think about mapping information? The data mashups that will change the way we travel? The innovations that drive local search and shopping? The ultra-local killer app that’s about to take off?

Here is the official press release announcing the Call for Participation for Where 2.0:

Where 2.0 2008 Brings New Depth to Location-Based Technology

Conference chair Brady Forrest had this to say about the Where 2.0 2008 CFP:

We have launched the Call For Participation for Where 2.0 2008, our conference for the geo-enabled internet.

Buzz continues on for the 2007 Where conference:

I just discovered this Where 2.0 conference put on by the o’reily network. There’s some really cool presentations about whats going on in mapping technologies and web mashups.

In this blog, marketed to leaders in National Yellow Pages Advertising and Internet Marketing, the issue of mapping:

At a recent Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, California, the subject of 3D Mapping was the hot topic of discussion, specifically the so-called “3D Data arms race” between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others Web companies spending fortunes vying to have developers use their platforms for cityscapes.

This is a good article on the future of location-based technology and how it featured at this past Where 2.0 Conference:

While I’d love to talk about time travel theory and DeLoreans, I can’t stop talking about location, location, location.

Another nice “mark your calendar” style post:

Mark your calendar - Where 2.0 2008 will happen May 12-14, 2008

People are already talking about the next Where 2.0 conference:

Where 2.0 2008 will happen May 12-14, 2008 at the San
Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, California. Where 2.0 is being
extended to three full days to include in depth workshops on the first
day.

Artur writes about some follow up information concerning Garmin:

In Garmin’s first Where 2.0 appearance in June, the GPS company announced that it has opened up their platform for developers to use

We had an editor from this Japanese publication cover the news from the conference. Here is the link (in Japanese!):

MyCom Journal

This is what Google Earth and Maps team said about the conference:

The Where 2.0 conference was a blast.

Peter Krasilovsky had the following to report on his visit to Where 2.0:

Maps are the height of the data pyramid

Google’s own Andrew Bowers had this to say about Where 2.0:

Finally, we released Google Mapplets yesterday at the Where 2.0 conference.

Glenn Latham reports on the “coolest” thing he saw at Where 2.0:

No doubt the coolest…

This story ran on KPIX during the evening News:

Google has taken its online mapping service to the next level with a feature that displays snapshots of actual streets in certain cities.

Although it’s in French, here’s the link that US based reporter Francis Pisani filed from Where 2.0:

“Les informations concernant le monde deviennent visibles” estime Mike Liebhold, chercheur à The Institute For The Future et l’un des spécialistes du géoweb.

British based ITPro sent husband and wife team Mary Branscombe and Simon Bisson to Where 2.0. Here the story they filed:

This week we’re in San Jose for the Where 2.0 conference.

Garmin gets even more press for their announcement:

Garmin International Inc. has published some APIs for connecting to its GPS devices, making it easier for Web developers to write applications that use information about where consumers are located, the company announced Tuesday.

Here is some coverage for exhibitor Skyhook in the form of a nice piece in Wireless Week:

Skyhook Wireless is offering an update to its Loki product that uses Wi-Fi to determine location. The announcement was made at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference this week.

GISuser also had a nice story on small start up FatDoor, a Where 2.0 exhibitor:

Today at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, Fatdoor™ (www.Fatdoor.com), a new community networking Web site dedicated to helping people get to know their neighbors, launched its service in the San Francisco Bay Area

Maria has graciously translated some of the news coming from Where 2.0, specifically the Google announcement:

Google Earth con sonido, ahora sin interrogantes

Another article regarding Google’s news from Where 2.0. This time from Rachel Rosmarin with Forbes:

Window shopping may never be the same. Google, Microsoft and a slew of start-up mapping technology companies launched applications

The New York Times and C/Net reported on what’s happening here at Where:

Google launched a new feature on its mapping service on Tuesday that allows people to see panoramic views of streets and buildings.

It’s always great to see news from one of our events being
featured on Slashdot:

Today at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference Google unveiled two new map features. An O’Reilly blogger describes Street View, which uses 360-degree street-level video from Immersive Media to enable neighborhood walk-throughs in (for now) a few selected areas.

TechCrunch covers news from Where 2.0:

Google has will be announcing a new 360 streetside view for Google maps at Where 2.0 today, says O’Reily Radar. The 360 views are a better version of Amazon’s A9 static panoramas. Google’s views let users virtually stand in the middle of any street, able to look in a full circle around the location, giving a better feel of the place you’ll be going. It will reportedly be available in Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

Brady Forrest is not only hosting Where 2.0, he’s finding time to cover the news as well. Here is what the Program Chair had to say about Microsoft’s offerings:

Microsoft’s Erik Jorgensen gave a really well-recieved talk today at the Where 2.0 conference.

More news about Google, this time from the United Kingdom’s M&C tech writer Steve Ragan:

At the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, yesterday, John Hanke, Director of Google Earth & Maps, announced some new features for Google Maps that offer a whole new perspective on search

Here is some coverage for Skyhook on their latest offering:

Skyhook Wireless, Inc. announced at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference Loki 2.0, the platform for delivering auto-location awareness to the geoweb.

PC World covered the Where 2.0 Conference, and filed the following story:

Google has been making a lot of noise for years, but until yesterday the company’s products were silent

MapQuest garners a nice story in GISuser Magazine:

MapQuest Business Solutions, today announced the beta launch of a new API based on the Adober ActionScriptT language. The latest API option within MapQuest’s AdvantageT API, allows developers to use a robust toolset with the added benefits of ActionScript 3.0.

More news from Where 2.0, this time featuring sponsor/exhibitor Garmin:

Garmin and MapQuest want others to share the geospatial wealth.

Blogger Rusty Brick reports on releases at Where 2.0:

A ton of mapping news came out yesterday. Search Engine Land has a great overview of ma lot of the ones that apply to the search engines.

It’s nice to see Where 2.0 sponsors/exhibitors garnering news. Here’s some press regarding
Leica Geosystems:

Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging announces the Beta release of Leica TITAN and launch of the Leica TITAN Network. Empowered by a 3D virtual globe, this dynamic online solution allows users and communities to share geospatial and location-based content in a single, secure environment.

Frank Taylor reports on the applications announvced at Where 2.0:

Already people are beginning to notice interesting sights and giving tips for the new StreetView imagery found in Google Maps

Google Earth is a popular news story today, the day after John Hanke’s presentation at Where. Here’s is what
InternetNews reported:

Google said it will refresh its Google Earth/Google Maps strategy at the Where 2.0 conference here this afternoon.

The San Jose Mercury News reports on what Google Earth presented at Where:

“Google wants you” to help it win the mapping war, John Hanke, the director of Google Earth and Google Maps, told a crowd of location-obsessed technologists Tuesday at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose.

O’Reilly’s own Nat Torkington reports on new developments coming out of technology announced
at Where 2.0:

In the wake of the APIs announced at Where 2.0, we have a flood of new map hacks.

Glenn is meeting and greeting all sorts of interesting folks at the show and had this to say about another application:

“Wow.. another new launch today from Where.. this time its popular real estate resource Trulia who’ve added truliahindsight”

Show exhibitor and sponsor Mapquest announced the following news today at Where 2.0:

“Advanced Offering Provides Developers Additional Choice and Control within Advantage API”

Program Chair Brady Forrest had this to say about exhibitor Where:

“The importance of attaching a machine readable location to you data is increasing and is getting easier.”

Artur Bergman reports on what Mapquest has going here at Where 2.0:

Mapquest is beta launching a brand new API for Actionscript, it is the first available native API for Flash and Apollo. It enables complex rich applications with quickly rendered, points and applications.

Where 2.0 exhibitor and sponsor Leica Geosystems announced the following today:

“Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging announces the Beta release of Leica TITAN and launch of the Leica TITAN Network.”

Conference exhibitor Fatdoor announced the following news today at the Where 2.0 Conference:

Fatdoor is now available in the San Francisco BayArea

San Jose, CA — May 28, 2007 — Today at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, Fatdoor™ (www.Fatdoor.com), a new community networking Web site dedicated to helping people get to know their neighbors, launched its service in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Gold Sponsor Garmin is the first out of the gate with news at Where 2.0. For complete release details read their release at:

Garmin® Publishes API Library and Opens Communication Between Third Party Websites and Garmin GPS Devices

Brady is excited about this application of Google’s technology, for details, read his blog:

“This morning Google gave their 2D maps an incredible realworld addition.”

A nice piece in Directions Magazine on making applications business ready:

“The thrust of the program for the 2007 conference will answer the question, ‘Where’s the value?’”

We’re always pleased to have Wired News at O’Reilly conferences, here is some news from Michael Calore:

“On Tuesday, May 29, San Jose, California becomes ground zero for geodata geekery as the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference gets underway. “

Glenn blogs in the GIS space and had this to say for his first day at Where:

“Recall virtual GIS from Leica in 1996… delivering 3D content over the web.”

Blogger Katie is here at Where 2.0 this week and had the following to say regarding Loki:

“We’ve been complaining to Skyhook Wireless CEO Ted Morgan about the company’s lack of Mac and mobile compatibility for its Loki location-based browser download for awhile. Well, we’ll stop bitching now.”

Google has lots of news planned for Where, here is one story relating to Stanford:

“Google to license Stanford’s Stanley tech, enhance maps”

Program Chair and Radar Blogger Brady Forrest recently blogged about events at Where:

Trends of Online Mapping Portals

Information Week, expected to attend Where 2.0, reported on news before the conference:

Geocommons Makes…

Blogger Garett Rogers is discussing Google Earth’s presence at Where 2.0:

Google Earth to announce…

Nice story in the San Jose Mercury News, just one of the exciting applications/projects to be seen at Where 2.0:

Goole aims for 3-D world…

It’s always nice to see overseas coverage, this is what the BBC News had to say about Google Earth and the Where 2.0 Conference.

A woman looks at a view of the Italian capital Rome on Google Earth
Google Earth offers satellite images of many parts of the world
As well as homing in on visual feasts around the globe, users of Google Earth may soon be able to listen to the sounds that accompany them.

Brady Forrest recently posted about Poly9 Free Earth which will be presented at Where 2.0….

Poly9 has released a new free 3D globe called Free Earth. It uses Flash, but requires no other download and cross-browser.

Soon to be discussed at Where 2.0, Google Earth is getting tons of media hits, here are just a few:

Google Earth to
add ‘Soundscapes’?
TechSpot - USA

Goole Earth in Stereo?
Appscout - New York, NY, USA

Google Earth to have sound effects?
Pocket-lint.co.uk - UK

“Accepting GeoRSS and making KML a standard are very significant moves for Google and the geoweb,” writes Brady Forrest, Where 2.0 Conference Chair. “These moves are going to bolster the importance of both formats, lead to more web content being geotagged and keep Google feeling love from geohackers for a while.”

Read more about the implications of Google supporting this simple, yet powerful technology on O’Reilly Radar > Geo.

Registration is now open for the 2007 O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, happening May 29-30 at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. Come join us as we explore the future of geospace in high profile keynotes, lightning talks, panel discussions, demos, and lots of audience interaction. It’s the only place where neogeographers will mix with activists, researchers, VCs, entrepreneurs, and a variety of alpha-geeks.

The conference is in its third year and we’re planning the best lineup yet of outstanding visionaries in the field of new mapping. Back by popular demand is the Where Fair — a cool science fair-style event where developers of cutting edge, location-based projects will showcase their creations.

For more information on the Where 2.0 Conference, visit:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/where2007/

We hope to see you in San Jose!

But you do your best work under pressure, right? So you have until midnight Friday to send us your wild, inspired, location-based ideas that you’d like to present at the third edition of Where 2.0.

Where 2.0 happens at the Fairmont in San Jose May 29-30 this year, so mark your calendar, whether you throw your hat into the speaker ring or not. We’ll open registration next month.

P.S. Worldchanging’s Gil Friend mentioned Where 2.0 in a recent post about What’s Next.

Do you have ground breaking ideas about location aware technology–amazing location systems, open source hacks, untapped geodata, the next killer app to roll off the lab bench–and want to share them? Do you run a company developing new mapping products and services, or mashing up old ones? If so, we want you to present at the 2007 Where 2.0 Conference, happening May 29-20 in San Jose, California. Proposals are due January 5, 2007–visit the website to submit a proposal and share your ideas about what would make Where 2.0 a must-attend event.

Master podcaster Daniel Steinberg has just posted another show from Where 2.0:

We’re featuring three sessions from the second day of the Where 2.0 conference. Chris Spurgeon presents the best geo hacks of the last 2000 years, Gary Lang looks at the possibilities that arise from APIs and open source code, and Tim O’Reilly moderates a panel on the future of the data industry.

Glenn Letham poses some excellent questions in this article:

What do Rachel Rosmarin and myself have in common? Well, she writes for industry-leading Forbes Magazine and I write/manage GISuser… big deal eh? [just kiddin around!]

Ok.. but really, something we do have in common is that we were both in attendance at Where 2.0 recently and looks like we both still have a big ? on where the money will be found in the mashup space. There’s no doubt that there’s money to be had, however, companies still haven’t ironed out their business models and the most common model being sought after in the mashup space to date is advertising revenues.

Jeanette Borzo joined us at Where 2.0 last week and had a number of observations about how some conference participants are attracting business from previously web-wary merchants. “The magic of maps and location-based technologies may lure small businesses to advertise online.”

Podcasting maestro Daniel Steinberg has posted Where 2.0 related audio:

You’ll hear an interview with the Platial team about their “people’s atlas” site, we visit the Where Fair the second night of the conference and speak with exhibitors, Greg Trefry and Kevin Slavin talk to Brady Forrest about games, and we play Pixie Hunt with Microsoft’s Jordan Schwartz.

• Playing with Location
• Brady Forrest, Where 2.0 program co-chair

Alan Glennon posted another entry from Where 2.0:

Last Wednesday, Patrick Hogan, Project Manager of NASA World Wind, spoke at Where 2.0 in San Jose. Hogan’s fifteen-minute talk was a straightforward description of the software, including comments on its open-source nature, Earth and planetary visualization functionality, and ongoing data import development. As Hogan spoke, World Wind Designer Randy Kim demonstrated and drove the software. The most newsworthy item was that World Wind has had 20 million downloads; SourceForge numbers for World Wind list over 7.5 million in the past year.

For you readers of French, Francis Pisani has posted a short entry on Where 2.0:

Les deux grandes découvertes, pour moi, ont été la démo de la nouvelle version de Google Earth lancée hier, et celle de MetaCarta, une compagnie du Massachussetts dont les logiciels sont capables de tirer toutes les informations géospatiales contenues dans des textes quelconques, qu’il s’agisse d’un document d’entreprise, des nouvelles de CNN ou de La Guerre et la Paix.

Tim O’Reilly has posted three more of his favorite Where 2.0 presentations: Chris Spurgeon of American Public Media, Claus Dahl of Imity, and Gary Lang of Autodesk.

“A full day at Where 2.0 this time,” writes Frank Taylor, “and lots of interesting things went on.”

Take a listen to some of the discussions Sue Bergeron and Jesse Rouse had with particpants on Where 2.0 opening day.

Having a CNET News.com camera roaming the show floor is always A Good Thing. Rafe Needleman interviewed three of our sponsors during the Where 2.0 Conference:

• These maps have live video
• Pinpoint your location with Loki
• Platial.com adds your story to the common atlas

Like the rest of the audience, we had a diverse group of journalists at Where this year, from university bloggers to spatial podcasters to traditional media to the business press. Over at Forbes, Rachel Rosmarin had this Where 2.0 take-away:

Most Web surfers use online maps to get from point A to point B. But marry an online map with something else–a collection of photos, a set of real estate listings or even some user-generated gossip–and you might be able to start a business. Or at least a cool-looking Web site.

That was the thinking at O’Reilly Media Where 2.0, a conference where hundreds gathered this week to celebrate a concept that barely existed a year ago: the “mash-up,” which merges map data from the likes of Google and Microsoft with…well, pretty much anything.

Alan Glennon had several conference-related posts this week:

• Virtual globes expectations from Where 2.0
• A secret of the Microsoft Live Local Team
• KML in Google Maps: one-on-one with the Google Maps Team
• Skyline, Metacarta, and other news from Where 2.0

Notes Jesse Rouse and Sue Bergeron: “We went around the exhibitor hall on Tuesday to hear about new announcements and existing products from various companies.” Hear all about it in their podcast.

Glenn Letham posted this about Google Geo Developer Day, an event Google organized in concert with Where 2.0:

What a day… I knew it was going to be full of news and cool stuff when Eric Schmidt (CEO), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (co-founders) walked onto the stage at the Googleplex - they note that geospatial is a defining opportunity in search!

Writes Margery Conner:

I spent the past two days at Where 2.0 in San Jose, CA, which is an O’Reilly conference devoted to trends in geospatial data rendering and interaction with this data. The audience/customer for geospatial data and interaction can be roughly described as people saying, “I need to make a map of something.” Their data has more meaning - or only has meaning - when you know its location.

Annalee Newitz of Wired News focuses her report from O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference on the “neogeographers” who are working on location-based technologies we can all use. As she puts it:

“Undoubtedly, the most interesting map geekery was coming out of a growing group of open source programmers who’ve devoted themselves to liberating the tools once used by experts to do geographical analysis.”

In case you missed them, here is a roundup of O’Reilly Radar blogs on this week’s Where 2.0 Conference:

From Nikolaj: Where 2.0: Mikel Maron on GeoRSS and Where 2.0: Location Sensing Lightning Talks

From Tim: More Favorites from Where 2.0, Gutenkarte: Geo annotation of Gutenberg texts, and Google Earth, Sketchup, and Second Life

Another excellent announcement from one of our Where sponsors, Talent (thank you!):

Talent Information Systems, a high-tech start-up company located in Athens, Greece, announces the launch of Cruiser, a new platform for delivering internet services that use geo-spatial data, maps, and location-aware information.

And be sure to visit Talent’s Cruiser web site for more information.

Just want to draw your attention to a paper authored by the Where 2.0 Conference co-chairs, Brady Forrest and Nat Torkington: The State of Where 2.0 (pdf). It’s a succinct take on this space.

Seems Google’s release on Monday of its latest version of Google Earth and Sketchup has people talking, both at this week’s Where 2.0 Conference, and on O’Reilly Network. Here’s a roundup:

From O’Reilly Radar, Tim posts: Google Earth, Sketchup, and Second Life

From LinuxDevCenter.com, Lyz Krumbach posts: Google Earth for Linux

From MacDevCenter.com, Giles Turnbull posts: Google Sketchup for OS X

From ONLamp.com, Jeremy Jones posts: Google Earth R4 Beta is out for Linux

Couldn’t be here this year? Or had such a great time that you want to come back next year? Mark your calendar–we’ll be back at the San Jose Fairmont, June 19-20, 2007.

Over at Alpha, Rafe Needleman wrote yesterday:

I’m at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose. Unfortunately, the Loki location-finding software on my laptop, which I raved about in a previous blog post, thinks I’m in Toronto. Probably the conference team picked up its Wi-Fi access points from an office or event in Toronto and shipped them down here. At any rate, it’s ironic, given the topic of the conference, but more importantly than that, for a few moments, Google thought I was in Canada and sent me to the Canadian version of the site (www.google.ca) when I tried to search. It was no big deal, but it shows you how location data applies to things you don’t always think of as location related. And the potential downsides to poor location data can be serious. Imagine if I had some emergency-response product that thought I was in Toronto instead of San Jose–or if I was on a VoIP phone that was registered to a different location, and then I dialed 911.

Rafe made an excellent point, so we asked our longtime conferences networking provider, GESI, to investigate. Their response? “All six AP’s were reset to factory defaults before I configured them. However, we’ve looked into this some more and found that the Fairmont Hotel IP block is registered in Toronto Canada. All our traffic uses the Fairmont IP.” There it is then.

Another post from Rafe Needleman:

At the Where 2.0 conference, execs from three companies in a row got up and presented their view of the next consumer publishing phenom (or so they hope): geo-focused consumer content. Each of these companies has launched a site that collects stories associated with peoples’ relationships to places.

Gregory Trefry (gamelab) and Kevin Slavin (area/code) just gave back-to-back talks at Where 2.0 on Location Gaming and Big Games. These are exciting new games incorporating location and geospatial technology as core components of gameplay. Gregory is organizing the Come Out & Play Festival in New York that will focus on these games (”turning New York into a giant playground”).

Big Games can be both large and small. The playing field may be an entire city or a park or basketball court. Gregory talked about two games, pacmanhattan and Payphone Warriors. Pacmanhattan used the grids of streets as a pacman grid and Payphone Warriors is a version of capture the flag using city payphones. Currently, these games require lots of set-up and management. Payphone Warriors requires a scorekeeper and most games require several months advance setup. Gregory spoke about the great future potential of these games and working to have the cellphone be a gaming device on the level of a basketball — ready to play without any configuration/setup.

Dennis O’Reilly writes that, “web sites let you personalize maps to share the times and places of your life.”

No Web site knows your favorite haunts as well as you do. But now there are five new online services looking to tap into that information. These new sites invite you to share your knowledge and memories of your most beloved locales with the rest of the world, whether those spots are in your hometown or on the other side of the planet.

The five, Wayfaring.com, Platial.com, 43places.com, Plazes.com, and Flagr.com, all hadcoming-out parties this week during at the Where 2.0 conference here, which is presented by O’Reilly Media.

Stowe Boyd was only here for half a day, but did post this:

Geoloco is going nuts. The small, entreprenuerial companies — Platial, Plazes, and so on — are running side by side with the giants. Google’s announcements yesterday at the Google Geo Day (see here), and Stephen Lawler’s demo today of Microsoft Virtual Earth indiciate the pace of innovation in this space. The Google SketchUp app caused a lot of gasps, but I wonder whether manually rendering a building in a few minutes will really compete with completely automating or the use of photos.

Wow, can’t keep up with Glenn Letham:

• John Hanke, google / Keyhole speaking at Where 2.0 on Google Earth 4, KML and morehttp://my.opera.com/gisuser/blog/show.dml/297044
• Community mapping and social networking panel discussion at Where 2.0
• Gary Lang on why Autodesk took MapGuide to Open Source
• Where 2.0 Yahoo!’s vision for local - enrich people’s lives
• Wi-Fi Cage Match from Skyhook wireless, Tele atlas

I was happy to see a preview of O’Reilly’s upcoming Emerging Telephony conference on the schedule at this week’s Where 2.0 conference, and ETel conference chairs Surj Patel and Brady Forrest did a great job of summarizing the interesting developments we’ll be examining in the communications space at the next ETel conference. It makes a lot of sense to preview ETel here as there’s a good amount of overlap between the location-based services being discussed here at Where 2.0 and the emerging communications technologies that we cover at our ETel conference and on our ETel site.

Patel explained how we’re tracking things like the growth in open source communications tools and VoIP, and will be featuring presentations that demonstrate the innovations that are happening on the edge of the telecom networks, and not just looking at the industry from a telco perspective. The conference will provide a forum for developers who may feel marginalized by the traditional telco models. ETel will also address issues like security and surveillance topics and the regulatory hurdles that are impacting telecom innovation in the U.S.

Glenn Letham shares these notes from Stephen Lawler’s Microsoft presentation at Where 2.0 yesterday:

Microsft has a goal of providing global access to local knowledge via Windows Live Local. The new release brought on real time traffic counts, more International coverage (30 countries) mapping, routing, directions.. all available via the API.

O’Reilly Radar: Tim O’Reilly writes:

Another “wow” from Where 2.0: Schuyler Erle demoed Gutenkarte, a fabulous site that uses Metacarta’s geo text mining engine to link classic works from Project Gutenberg to accompanying maps. How often have you read a book and wondered about where it took place and how long it might have taken to get from here to there? Schuyler’s demo, showing Thucydides’ classic The History of the Peloponnesian Wars, accompanied by a map showing the locations mentioned in the text, suggests how useful MetaCarta’s technology is in automatically adding geo-annotation to texts.

Gutenkarte is build in part with Openlayers.org, Metacarta’s open source toolkit for associating a map with any web page.

YAA (Yet Another Announcment) from one of our Where sponsors–deCarta, the company formerly known as Telcontar (thanks!):

deCarta (formerly Telcontar), the leading supplier of software platforms and services for the location-based services (LBS) industry, and Inrix, the leading supplier of real-time and predictive traffic information services, today announced the integration and immediate availability of Inrix’s traffic information into deCarta’s Drill Down Server(TM) (DDS) and Traffic Manager(TM). At the Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, the two companies will demonstrate their ability to optimize driving directions based on current traffic conditions including detour rerouting. The companies also announced that Inrix is using deCarta’s DDS to align location information from millions of commercial vehicle probes collected each day to the relevant road segments, as part of the Inrix Dust Network.

Cyrus Farivar posted this article from the conference yesterday:

Tuesday I fled from unseasonably foggy San Francisco and headed south to the warmer climes of San Jose, to attend O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference, which covers “the future of mapping and local search.”

On Monday Google released the latest version of Google Earth and SketchUp, and so attendees were anxious to hear from the search giant.

John Hanke of Google was here to show off some of the latest features in Google Earth. At last year’s conference, Google showed off Google Earth and said that Mac users would have to wait. This year, Hanke said that he’d recently switched back to using a Mac, and that Google Earth “screams” on a MacBook.

Patrick Hogan of NASA presented on the impressive open source World Wind project to a very appreciative audience this morning at the Where 2.0 conference. Hogan describes World Wind as an interactive 3d geospatial visualization platform and NASA has clearly embraced the open source model with World Wind.

Part of what makes NASA World Wind so compelling is that it provides access to and seamless integration of multiple data sources. It’s designed to provide the latest data from organizations like NASA, USGS, NRL, and NOAA on a 24/7 basis, and is entirely configurable to service individual specific needs. A partial list of data sources that are included in World Wind are Blue Marble, LandSat 7, SRTM, TerraServer and National Atlas. Hogan points out that by combining multiple data sources we can better understand the ramifications of things like changes in the atmosphere and other complex interactions that can be discovered by overlaying and analyzing disparate data.

David Battino, digital audio editor for O’Reilly’s Digital Media site is giving his right-brained side a jumpstart at this week’s Where 2.0 Conference. He writes:

Visionary architect Buckminster Fuller reportedly liked to jumpstart his creativity by grabbing the magazine at the top right corner of the newsstand rack, no matter what the subject was. I’m trying the same experiment this week by attending O’Reilly’s decidedly non-musical Where 2.0 Conference.

Where 2.0 is all about digital map-making. The stars here are the creators of Google Earth (amazing new version released yesterday), Microsoft Virtual Earth, and dozens of start-up companies that build wild new ways to interact with geographic data. Even though all of the presentations have been silent, they’ve got me thinking about the future of music software.

In fact, the word that came up over and over was a musical one: mash-up. Continue reading…

After a full day of sessions at the Where 2.0 2006 conference, attendees were treated to BOFs, a pair of receptions, and the Where Fair. In this podcast we hear from three of the exhibitors at the Where Fair: Ning, Onomy Labs, and MLB Company. You’ll hear about a new platform for your application, about miniature airplanes that are gathering images, and about a map that projects onto a table top that can be controlled by tilting and rotating the table (5 minutes, 00 seconds)

Writes Frank Taylor:

Today was the opening of the Where 2.0 conference. This conference is well organized, and the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose is a very nice location. The format of this conference is a little different from many technical conferences I’ve attended. They have a technique of greatly limiting the amount of time allowed for presentations. Even their big sponsors like Microsoft and Google only got 15 minute slots for their presentation.

There are two important XML schemas covered today at Where 2.0 — GeoRSS and KML.

GeoRSS is location data within RSS or Atom. Mikel Maron’s presentation covered GeoRSS in detail, examples, uses and aggregations. USGS Earthquake Alerts are available via GeoRSS. GeoRSS has been adopted by Yahoo! and Microsoft. See Mikel’s Where2.0 specific aggregation - mapufacture. GeoRSS leverages the ubiquity of RSS and the GML schema to create the best method for geo-syndication.

KML is the file format for Google Earth. Brian McClendon describes it as “the PDF of GIS”. It is designed to be a package file format — containing or linking to all the resources needed to display a model or graphics within Google Earth. Brian spoke about the new features in KML 2.1 (supported in Google Earth 4). Announced yesterday, KML is now supported in Google Maps in addition to Google Earth.

There is concern about the possible overlap of these two schemas. The question was raised after Mikel’s presentation; however, no answer exists yet.

There’s no doubt that privacy issues loom large on the horizon for most of the companies and developers working in the location space. Conference co-chair Nat Torkington gave low marks to a panel of representative from social mapping application companies this afternoon when no one had a good answer for an audience question about data privacy, and it was a welcome reality check to hear from a lawyer about these issues in between all the gushing demos of radical new location-based applications.

It seemed that many in the room sat a little more attentively during Lauren Gelman’s presentation on Privacy and the Law. Gelman works out of the Center for Internet Society at Stanford and was very knowledgable about the new technologies being discussed here at the Where 2.0 conference, and how they will be pusing the boundaries of existing privacy law.

After a mind-bending day of talks and demos and then a lively and packed exhibitor hall reception, the hands-on Where Fair event still did not dissapoint. For those that were at the first Where 2.0 conference, it’s really striking what a difference a year has made in the progress and uptake of these location technologies. I think John Hanke of Google summed it up well when he told the audience this morning, “I think we all share a sense of collective shock at how much has happened in the past year.”

The Where Fair is a fun event that highlights some of the new and smaller projects in the location space, often led by young and independent developers, and was a great place to sample the energy and excitement that many are feeling at this conference. There was a wide range of varied technologies and applications on display — from spy “Bat” planes, to location-tagging applications, to an awe-inspiring “Tilty, Twisty, Twirly” table for interactive map displays. I can’t cover all the neat projects that were on display in this space, but here’s a few details on some of the ones that caught my eye.

Writes Michael Calore:

For the next two days, San Jose will become the center of the mapping universe as the latest in local search, map mashups and map technologies crowd the agenda. I (Webmonkey Mike) will be at the conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I’ll be posting updates and news about the presentations and demos.

Here are his first posts, good summary “bites” of many of the day’s presentations:

• Zopto Addressing System
• Google Earth and SketchUp
• Platial and Social Mapping
• GeoRSS
• Microsoft Virtual Earth
• OpenStreetMap
• The Geospatial Web

Ben Nolan from Projectx Technology showed off their unique and simple Zopto location addressing scheme to a very favorable response here at the Where 2.0 conference. Projectx is based in New Zealand and started out building community mapping sites for New Zealand and Australia, as the big map players were not yet indexing these countries and this resulted in them building their entire system from the ground up, including the geographic addressing scheme. Based on the same type of addressing that has been commonly used on the web and incorporating aspects of the world’s postal systems, Zopto’s format uses URLs that include the common words for the location information of a physical address being cited. For example, the Zopto URL for the Fairmont Hotel here in San Jose would look like:

/ca/santa+clara/san_jose/market+street/170/

There’s lots of advantages to a format like this including that it supports unique addresses, it’s human readable, self-descriptive, and easily indexable. As conference co-chair Nat Torkington pointed out, there is a lot of power in making use of the fundamental properties of the web as Zopto has done to create a basis for deriving and connecting geographic locations on the web.

From our fine Where 2.0 sponsor, Skyhook, comes this announcement:

Skyhook Wireless Launches Developer’s Network to Help Innovators
Build and Deploy Location Based Services–Announces joint ‘Wi-Fi Cage Match’ competition with Tele Atlas® and Segway® Human Transporter grand prize for most innovative LBS application.

Skyhook Wireless, provider of the industry’s first Wi-Fi based positioning system, today announced at the O’Reilly Media Where 2.0conference the launch of the Skyhook Developer’s Network. Providing location-basedservice and application developers with free access to the Skyhook Wi-Fi Positioning System™ (WPS), APIs, documentation and a support infrastructure, the Developer’s
Network will allow solution providers to build accurate and reliable location-based products running on commonly available platforms and without the need of additional hardware such as a GPS.

As part of the launch, Skyhook also announced ‘Wi-Fi Cage Match,’ a product development contest that will reward the developer of the most innovative and dynamic Wi-Fi based location application with a Segway® Human Transporter.

Projects, products and companies were showcased this morning at Where 2.0 that are the beginnings of the geospatial web (see the inspirational keynote by Mike Liebold challenging us to create the geospatial web). We the users are challenged to create Geospatial Data through these and other applications!

• Open Street Map - a wiki of map data.
• Platial - The people’s Atlas
• 43Places - Sharing stories about location
• wayfaring - Personalized Maps
• Google Earth Communities - create local data for Google Earth.

This is just a small sampling of how to start creating Geospatial Data. You are the local expert and can share your data and your personal, place specific experiences. Let’s get started!

Mike Liebhold is a senior researcher for the Institute for the Future, so it was not surprising that his opening keynote at Where 2.0 took a look at many of the possibilities that improved location information and mapping technology will spur. Nikolaj Nyholm has already posted a few impressions of Liebhold’s keynote over on the O’Reilly Radar.

Liebhold started out by acknowledging what I suspect most in the packed room here in San Jose realize, that the geospatial space is on the cusp of some very major changes. Liebhold likes to imagine walking through a world where you can see all the layers of information available for each place, all the annotations people have made, etc. He used the famous Star Trek tricorder as an example of a technology that may not be too far off and could provide this kind of information immersion. Liebhold believes that in time our environments themselves will have information embedded within them, and our new tools will access fingernail-sized servers to glean more layers of information.

Teams of Where 2.0 attendees hit the streets of San Jose last night on a high-tech scavenger hunt called Pixie Hunt. They carried camera phones and GPS pucks as they raced to complete their tasks quickly and creatively. We follow a team on their trek and talk to game coordinator Jordan Schwartz in this O’Reilly Network podcast.

Marshall Kirkpatrick writes about Platial’s Today Nearby launch at Where 2.0:

The multimedia and user-generated online atlas service Platial will announce a new live offering called Today Nearby at the Where 2.0 conference starting tomorrow. The new service will combine RSS feeds of news, photos, videos, events and places with Google Maps and Google Earth. Content will be mapped from Reuters, Flickr, Eventful, YouTube and other users’ maps. Updates to locations of your choice will also be available for subscription.

Platial is one of a number of services that allow users to easily create their own maps on top of Google’s API, but it’s notable for its rapid adoption and financial backing. The company says that Platial hosted 200,000 place maps in 300 cities in its first 5 months since launch. See, for example, Public Biofuel Stations (surprisingly, all East Coast US) or this guy’s Hopeless Romantic Map, chronicling a world’s worth of personal heartbreak, apparently over one woman.

And now, a word from one of our Where 2.0 sponsors (thanks!):

Skyline Software Systems, Inc., Announces SkylineGlobe.com - an Interactive 3D Web Mapping Service. SkylineGlobe delivers a complete 3D global mapping solution for consumers and businesses

Chantilly, Virginia, Jun. 13, 2006 - Skyline Software Systems, Inc., announced today the SkylineGlobe.com 3D web mapping service. This turn-key 3D earth online combines massive amounts of high resolution satellite imagery, aerial photography and map data with Skyline’s leading 3D visualization technology to deliver a complete 3D web mapping solution for consumers, businesses and developers.

Last night’s Pixie Hunt was way fun, according to the playahs. Check out the Flickr photos.

Eric Griffith writes:

Skyhook Wireless announced its Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) last summer, and has kept pace by updating it (it covers 100 large metro areas in the United States) and creating software to make it useful (Loki, an add-on that makes Web browsers location-aware).

Tomorrow at O’Reilly’s where 2.0 conference, the company will make public the Skyhook Developer’s Network, the means by which it will provide APIs and documentation to third-party software developers that want to insert WPS functions into their own products.

Before Where 2.0 2006 begins tomorrow, take a li’l listen back in time to Where 2.0 2005, courtesy of IT Conversations. Our ITC friends have posted audio presentations by Kevin Slavin, Nathan Eagle, John Hanke, Jack Dangermond, Stephen Lawler, David Rumsey, and many more.

A press release, hot off the Yahoo! Finance page PR Newswire:

President and CEO Dean Stoecker discusses new API roll out of SRC’s JSON based web service at Where 2.0 Conference–SRC, a leading developer of geographic business intelligence software, announced today the release of www.FreeDemographics.com/API, a dashup of data services readily available to add to developer mashups. The FreeDemographics API lets developers embed business intelligence content including market, consumer and corporate data directly into a website with JavaScript. As the industry’s first demographics API, developers will be able to add data to their mashups in less than five minutes delivering business intelligence content at Web speed.

A (sweet!) recent entry from GISuser:

On the road at Where 2.0… have you checked out the agenda lately?? Man, this event is packed with goodies…The week promises to deliver loads of interesting updates, news, and announcements about the future of the web, and more specifically, the future of mapping and local search - major sponsors include the likes of Autodesk, Yahoo!, Google, Mapquest, Telcontar, MetaCarta, GlobeXplorer yadayada..

In his story at the top of today’s Merc News business section, Mike Langberg discusses how cell phones are becoming location tracking devices and mentions Where 2.0:

The legal and ethical issues raised by location tracking will be part of the agenda Tuesday and Wednesday at the Where 2.0 conference, expected to draw a crowd of about 500 to the San Jose Fairmont Hotel.

Lauren Gelman, associate director of the Center for Internet & Society at Stanford University, is speaking about privacy at the conference.

“Where you go has to be among the most private and personal things about you,'’ Gelman told me last week. “You might want to know where your kids are, but do you want the rest of the world to know?’

We’re actually now expecting closer to 700 people to come on down to San Jose.

Where co-chair Brady Forrest interviews Michael Sharon, CTO of Kamida, a New-York-based mobile applications designer and developer. They discuss Socialight’s applications which allow users to leave “sticky shadows”: notes, pictures, and audio messages that are tied to a specific location. At Where 2.0, Sharon will talk about some of the issues Kamida faced when developing Socialight.

Feed alert for all you RSS junkies: Where 2.0 now has its own feed. Subscribe on up.

Pop in the earbuds and take a listen to program co-chair Brady Forrest’s interview with Kevin Slavin, managing director and co-founder of area/code, the New-York-based big games developer, and Gregory Trefry, who works as a game designer at gamelab and is the festival director for the Come Out and Play Festival. They’ll deliver lightning talks about games at Where 2.0.

Writes Rafe Needleman:

Many companies are trying to position themselves as leaders in the geolocation field this week, which makes sense since the sure-to-be-fascinating Where 2.0 conference kicks off next week. My favorite pitch from these companies so far is from Skyhook Wireless, which makes a geolocation system that uses WiFi, not GPS satellites.

I added the emphasis, but what PR Gal worth her salt wouldn’t?

The Seattle Times noticed the Pixie Hunt gamers on a test run in Pioneer Square last Thursday. Must’ve made an impression! We’ll officially have the Pixie Hunt debut just one week from tonight at Where, should be mad fun.

A new feature for our conferences: Podcasts! Our debut offering is an interview Where 2.0 program co-chair Brady Forrest conducted with Robot Co-op’s Josh Petersen.

Josh talks about his “network of networking sites” which includes 43 Things, 43 Places, and 43 People. At Where 2.0, Josh will be presenting on 43 Places, where a user can list up to 43 places they’d like to go during their life. The site allows people to share stories about places they’ve been and read stories about places they’d like to visit.

A scavenger hunt for the new millennium and disaster preparedness are two new additions to Where 2.0, a juxtaposition illustrating just how pervasive location-aware technology is becoming in our lives:

Program co-chair Brady Forrest has all the deets about Pixie Hunt, a game organized for Where 2.0 participants. Teams use cameraphones, Flickr, SMS, and geotagging to add a whole new level of fun to the scavenger hunt we played at summer sleepovers back in the day.

Our new Where 2.0 closing keynote, Cartography Commando Style, FEMA’s Field GIS, will be delivered by Ron Langhelm of the US Department of Homeland Security.

This talk will provide a vision into the emergency management/geospatial support setting, looking at the work area, staffing issues, unique customer base, urgent product requirements, and FEMA’s plans for future geospatial support.

Ought to be a corker. If you haven’t seen the Where 2.0 Conference schedule lately, I encourage you to look it over–it’s a diverse program, well stocked with eye *and* brain candy.

Attending Where 2.0 this year? Be sure to come a day early for an extra helping of geo fun at the (gasp!) Googleplex itself. Our friends at Google have put together a special event for the first 100 Where 2.0 participants, “an afternoon of good food, cool map demos, and a chance to chat up the Google Geo development team.” If you’ve registered for Where and can c’mon down to Google’s Deo Developers Day, be sure to sign up for it right away–seats are going fast.

As mentioned on BoingBoing and in The Guardian, this weekend, OpenStreetMaps is mapping Manchester, a project with the mash-up moniker,”Mapchester”:

Mapchester is a collaborative ‘wikimap’ project, a test case for OpenStreetMap that focuses on one city. It will involve a Mapping Weekender, when Manchester is mapped in a weekend!

Hope we’ll hear more about this project when Steve Coast of OpenStreetMap presents at Where 2.0.

“If you don’t know the way to San Jose, you may want to keep an eye on the Where 2.0 conference in the heart of Silicon Valley next month,” writes Jeanette Borzo in her excellent overview of the conference:

Where 2.0 2005 Exhibit Hall

Taking place in San Jose on June 13 and 14, O’Reilly Media Inc.’s second annual Where 2.0 conference is sure to be - at least for two days - the geographic hub of interesting things happening around location technology and its overlap with the Internet. The rich geographical data and functionalities that are now flourishing online are creating new business opportunities not only for startups but also for existing firms that can see the direction of current location-technology trends - and move quickly to capitalize on them.

Sue and Jesse at VerySpatial have posted a podcast of a phone-in Where 2.0 conference preview with co-chairs Nat Torkington and Brady Forrest and O’Reilly honcho Tim O’Reilly.

Notes fearless co-leader Nat Torkington over on the O’Reilly Radar:

As the number of mapping platforms increases, standards start to be more important. If upcoming wants to offer access to its database for people to include in their own mashups or applications, what data format or web services API standards should they adhere to? Upcoming has chosen to use GeoRSS, a light-weight standard rapidly gaining traction. But there are others …

Where 2.0 program co-chair Nathan Torkington has begun profiling the people, companies and project that will be feature at the conference in June. First up: Skyhook Wireless:

Skyhook’s technology lets any device determine its position by triangulating wifi signals. You might have heard of Skyhook’s technology before, as part of the open source Intel research project Place Lab. Skyhook represents the venture-backed commercial extension of this technology.

If you’ve been wondering who exactly is going to be speaking at Where 2.0 and what about, here’s your answer: the schedule has just been posted. Nat and Brady are still tweaking it a bit, but it’s mostly baked.

FYI, if you’re thinking about coming, you’ll save a few bucks (400 of ‘em, to be exact) if you sign up by May 1.

Where 2.0 co-chair Nat Torkington posted a note about one of the projects we’ll be covering at the conference, CommunityWalk. “This is obviously going to be a hot topic area,” sez Nat.

Another community atlas project we’ll be examining at Where 2.0 is Platial. Platial’s been getting some play in the media lately–NPR, Wired–which is fabulous (I’d like to think our press meeting during ETech helped a bit in that regard). We’re giving Platial a whirl ourselves, using it to help OSCON participants navigate Portland during the convention.

A shout-out to Brady Forrest, Nathan Torkington’s new co-chair for our Where 2.0 Conference.

Brady Forrest used to work on Live Search where he was one of the organizers of the Search Champs program among other things. He came over to MS with the acquisition of MongoMusic (which became MSN Music). Previous to his forays on the Internet he worked in the Supply Chain Management industry. He lives in Seattle and when he’s not building cars for Burning man or filming Angel parodies, he hikes and devilsticks.

A good review by Chris Sherman. Schuyler will be speaking at Where 2.0 this year.

Google Maps Hacks, by Rich Gibson and Schuyler Erle, provides one of the best resources I’ve seen if you’re interested in thoroughly exploring the rich features available with Google maps.

Annalee Newitz attended a luncheon we recently held for press to preview Where 2.0. One of the Where 2.0 speakers, Di-Ann Eisnor, was on hand at the lunch to talk about her company, Platial. Here’s Annalee’s article.

Platial provides a home for people who love quirky geographical information or just want to mark the locations that have meaning to them. Sign up for a free account, and you can start building and sharing personalized maps, complete with place markers, tags and descriptions of each spot. Collaborate on them with your buddies, or keep them to yourself.

The nice folks over at GISuser.com posted our press release announcing that the preliminary program for the Where 2.0 Conference is up.