September 2007 Archives
6 years ago I was involved in a project to port part of the national sites and monument data set onto a gps enabled pda. The project in many ways was 4 years ahead of its time so we had a very hard time trying to convince local govt agencies how this could boost tourism.
The advent of google maps and the kml file format as well as the availability of local data in ESRI shape file formats meant that we could achieve the same goals but via a critical mass interface i.e google maps.
This meant using archaeology.ie new interface and their download esri facility, converting the data to kml. Annotating the resulting kml file to include relevant place names etc.
The final result is a map that displays 130 (approx) entries on an interactive map. A description of each piece of heritage is provided as well as its easting and northing coordinates.
The next phase of the project will be determined by user and local feedback.
Beta Upperchurch Heritage Map
http://www.irishsilicon.com/dcomms/api.html
I will be attending Cosac in Killashee house tomorrow (Tue 25th Sept 2007). My expectations for this event are quiet high as it is costing my employer 909 euros for one days attendance.
I plan to attend the following talks.
0930 - 1015 It's not about the technology Jim Gamble Child Exploitation and On-line Protection Centre
10.15 11.50 Anatomy of an Incident: An Interactive Workshop Lawrence D. Dietz Tal Global
1150 - 1300 A Unique Approach to Attack Trace-back Dr. Peter Stephenson Norwich University
14.00 - 15.10 Information Security Metrics is Coming of Age: Will You Be At The Party Gerry O'Neill Inforisca Services Limited
1530 - 1640 Self-Defeating Networks - Using NAC to Hack Aaron Earle AE&E Corporation
1650 - 1800 Strategic Roadmapping & Planning for Security, Risk & Governance - a Refresh Gerry O'Neill Inforisca Services Limited
1810 - 1900 Issues of the Day Hot Topic Forum John O'Leary Computer Security Institute
While working on a project to display local heritage in a map format I discovered to my cost that google maps are not 100 % accurate. For some unexplained reason they position grid coordinates about 100 meters further north than they should. The OSI data that I used had the original 6 inch map and the coordinates. Yahoo maps concurred with the OSI map.
To compare the difference click on the following two links and compare the difference. The pointer (which is the location of a fulacht fiadh) is placed above the road in google maps and below the road in yahoo maps.
This raises a number of issues for my project as google maps has a wealth of embedding and annotation facilities. If the maps are not accurate then creating the maps is more problematic as it require manual intervention and correction,
On Thursday 4th October, Limerick Institute of Technology will host a half day seminar focused on the theme of Funding for New and Established Start Ups. Speakers are outlined in the attached document.
They are also running a Mid West Entrepreneur Showcase around this event to highlight the strength of the Mid West in the entrepreneurial arena.
Agenda
8.00 Registration - Tea & Coffee
9.00 Welcome by Chair - Dr Maria Hinfelaar, Director of Limerick Institute of Technology
9.10 Ireland – Challenges & Opportunities for Start Ups – Damian Young, Head of Small Business, Bank of Ireland
9.40 Enterprise Ireland supports for High Potential Start-Ups - Martin Corry, Development Advisor, Enterprise Ireland
10.10 Venture Captial Investing - What is it all about?- Drew O’Sullivan, 4th Venture Capital
10.40 Q&A
11.00 Coffee Break
Entrepreneur Showcase
11.30 A Case Study - Dave Boland, Documatics
12.00 Dreams can come true - Creating and selling Stockbyte - Jerry Kennelly
12.30 Q&A
12.50 Closing comments by Chair
1.00 20 Minute Tours of the EAC
Entrepreneur showcase
1.30 Lunch in Aces Bistro
Contact info:
Donncha Hughes
Enterprise Acceleration Centre Manager
Limerick Institute of Technology
Moylish Park
Limerick
Phone 061 208208
www.lit.ie/eac
www.lit.ie/leap
http://www.linkedin.com/in/eac2007
Dr Ann-Wil Harzing of the University of Melbourne has created an application that is free for personal non-profit use, and can be installed from the link below
http://www.harzing.com/resources.htm#/pop.htm
Reading her website has given me some ideas as to how one could provide useful information to the research community.
The app is very small and returns the results promptly.
This is what Boston College did in 2005 when it suffered a data breach. The full story including the details of the forensics and the team they had to put in place is presented in a Network World Article. This team included both legal and PR people as the 100,000 records of Alumni was affected. It turned out that it a rogue server in a utility closet was hacked. Boston College maintains that ethically they were obliged to tell the affected individuals. Even though the actual database wasn't compromised a series of scratch files for bulk mailing had been.
What was interesting with regards to informing them was that they chose the traditional letter in the post signed by management option. They felt that this approach worked and helped to regain trust.
This example should server to highlight that customers needs should be placed first.
The National sites and monuments database has received a Web 2.0 interactive face lift. It is now possible to select a townsland or town in a respective county and view all the records on a map. The individual records can then be viewed by clicking on the printer icon. The maps are based on the 6 inch formats with an accompanying aerial photograph.
The National Monuments Service of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government are to be congratulated on this effort. If they could open it up a bit more and provide embedding options it could prove to be very popular and accessible.
