This page includes some fun things that are either related to technology, games or to geospatial.
Most of it is links to videos and articles that I find important or interesting, but that are not necessarily of interest to me professionally (in a geo-spatial way). Some of these links are just fun stuff, showing the funnier side of some of the IT vendors and where they see the future going. Some are about interesting things I've found that at the time did not seem to be important (did not "click" with me), but stayed nagging in my mind as potentially relevant (for me) in the future. There are also 20 archived links here. |
3D Printing a Human Heart (16th April 2019)
Scientists in Israel have now managed to print a miniature human heart made of real cells and that has working blood vessels. Here is the article on it.
This heart is not alive yet - it does not work as such, the next steps are for the scientists to teach it do so. It is estimated that within a decade hospitals will have organ printers available that can print practically any human organ required and the issues with right blood type required to donate an organ no longer a problem. |
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Apartment Complex of the Future (21st February 2018)
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Great example of Virtual Reality design - as living space in the future will become sparse, so designs like this will become a necessity; and what's there not to like - you have a reasonable amount of living space, can have your own garden and all the necessities are close by or accessible via deliveries straight to your drone landing pads.
Future apartment complexes will be self-sufficient - little hubs within cities with their own groceries and malls, restaurants, daycare and schools. You can move between complexes via sky-bridges or undergrounds, or take a self-flying drone (uber?) from your drone landing pad. |
HANA is Coming to (Spatial) Play (20th July 2016)
I first met HANA a couple of years ago when my team was part of the spatial functionality testing with the Germany-based spatial team. It is a great product (SAP site here) - super-fast and strong in "spatial". It is especially useful for any kind of complex calculations that you might need to do with real time analytics.
SAP has been busy lately with HANA: |
Future Glass Technologies - Days 1 & 2 (6th September 2015)
Leading manufacturer of (gorilla) glass & specialty ceramics - Corning Inc - takes viewers on a tour of future glass technologies. From electrochromic glass to photovoltaic, this is rare insight into an expanding field.
Two long videos give us a glimpse of the future. |
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Social Media Revolution - Infographic (26th February 2015)
An absolutely brilliant info-graphic presentation/video from @equalman; a collection of statistics on social media, audience today and why it affects all of us and our business.
This is why we need to change our organisational ways - the future is more different that we thought, it is weird and it is sing of swim time again for us old fools. It is REVOLUTION time! |
GeoNode: Open Source Cloud Portal (6th September 2014)
Seems like every map vendor provides a cloud offering nowadays; Esri has their ArcGIS Online (ArcGIS Server), Pitney Bowes (Mapinfo) has Stratus (Spectrum Spatial), Google has Maps Engine Pro (Google Maps), Nokia has their HERE Maps suite, Microsoft their BING Maps platform ad I'm pretty sure Hexagon (Intergraph) is also working on something around this space (GeoMedia WebMap).
Now open source has produced a viable commercial strength option too - it is Java-based, called GeoNode and based on GeoServer. It provides all the bells and whistles that other offerings have, is easy to use and actually quite fast. So go forth and try it out, you can find it from here! |
Enterprises Must go Mobile-First or Die (27th August 2014)
There is no doubt that computing professionals are changing their computing device from desktop/laptop to mobile devices - last year the average computing pro spent 55% of their time on mobile device and 45% on laptop/desktop.
More and more people are using tablets, and accessing corporate via native apps and HTML5. Cloud is expected to bypass traditional IS as servers/hardware of choice at end of 2016. This article goes as far as claiming that if your organisation does not build for mobile now, they won't be around soon. Included are also some precepts to get you started. |
You can see 20 archived links here.