I’m at the Polaris Centre in Pula, near Cagliari in the marvellous island of Sardinia, to speak at a research-driven event named Mash-up camp organized by the guys at CRS4. The event is based on the Mash-up and spacial web applications subject and its aim is to animate and shake the local companies on the subject of innovation and research.
I’m going to live blog each event (surprisingly I’m the only guy I see just two guys – yours truly included – with a laptop connected to the open wi-fi lan here).
Stefano Pezzi – Core Soluzioni Informatiche
Stefano comes from Bologna, his company , CORE, is partnering with CRS4 (who’s hosting the seminar) some other companies in Sardinia to work at the SIT project for the Regione Sardegna.
The SIT project aims at the creation a database to host and communicate geographical data of the Sardinia Region giving the chance to use these data in touristic and city planning applications.
Stefano’s presentation is very VERY technical (probably too much, IMHO) he describe the whole layer structure of the SIT app and the usage possibilities. The whole application is based on standards both W3C and ISO while Stefano admints that some of the services aren’t standards yet such as the tools for path retrieval and the tiled map service.
The intersting thing is that they developed a Javascript API set to interface outside applications with the SIT framework: when the project started Google Maps (and its API) weren’t on the market and they wanted to build something that would have been reusable and extendable. Nice move! (but what about porting the APIs to something more compliant with the current de facto standard?).
Stefano Sanna – Beeweeb
Stefano immediately starts with a humorous intro on himself (his a friend, and I can assure his ALWAYS a laughable guy) and then introduce the difference between Mobile Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0.
He says tha if we speak about Web 2.0 is because Web 1.0 existed, so since we speak about Mobile 2.0 it is because mobile 1.0… existed? sure? Who really used WAP? NOBODY! With wap we were entusiasts with the devices not with the applications; we were just trying mobile!
Web 2.0 is about building a platform: develop applications that can be mashed-up together; Mobile web 2.0 is uding Web 2.0 on mobile devices (eg. widsets); Mobile 2.0 means having native apps on the mobile devices that uses web 2.0 services and dedicated sensors.
What is now a barrier for a lot of applications (eg streaming on Mobile) is the cost of traffic; the mobile companies are now fully aware of this and are about to mass release flat mobile connections. So once the costs of connection won’t be a problem any more Mobile web 2.0 can really arise only if user experience and developing costs will be (at least) comparable.
The next step in mobile applications is to transform monodirectional phisical tags (such as Shotcodes) to bi-directional phisical tags users could write and modify (imagine a bi-dir tag at the supermarket were the choice of the product becomes social).
Marco Guiso – Interoperabile
Marco starts talking about openGIS, a system to create HTTP requests for geodata. This is another highly technical speech: I start doubting I’ll be able to properly blog the talk.
Marco’s aim wa to build a software that could “cannibalize” geodata available on the web from different sources. To do this he used AJAX, some OGG web services (SITR, Landsat5, 3D Marine, etc.) and Google maps.
Now it’s my turn to give a talk. See you later!
Matteo Penzo - Mobup