CNN Satellite Video

My wife sent me this link:

CNN Satellite Video

I find it fascinating the turn around time on these images.  I also am happy that the major news outlets are making use of GIS in such a high profile way.  I really think this has become a boon for introducing GIS to the uninitiated.

Twitter References

I have been using Twitter for the last couple of months.  At first I was unsure how to best use Twitter and found it extremely frustrating.  What really changed my mind about Twitter were several articles and blogs I ran across.  One of the posts I read, A Minimalist’s Guide to Using Twitter Simply, Productively, and Funlyby Leo Babauta, contained a description of Twitter which really change how I percieved it.  The description was of Twitter as a river…

Twitter is like a river … you can step into it at any point and feel the water, bathe in it, frolic if you like … and then get out. And go back in at any time, at any point. But, you don’t have to try to consume the entire river — it’s impossible and frankly a waste of time in my eyes.

So that’s how I approach Twitter these days: I’ll just jump into the stream of incoming tweets and see what people are saying. I can ignore them or follow their links or reply if I want. Then I get out of the stream. I don’t try to read everything I missed, and if I miss a lot of stuff, I’m OK with that.

via A Minimalist’s Guide to Using Twitter Simply, Productively, and Funly | Zen Habits.

Here are some links to other posts about Twitter that I found intetresting and Helpful:

• 12 ways to use Twitter to increase your productivity
  
• 6 Tips for Using Your Twitter Profile to Get New Followers – The section on Twitter backgrounds is interesting and led me to the post I used to create a twitter background via a powerpoint template.
• WHY asking Questions are a Powerful Twitter Technique
  
• Do you Converse or Broadcast? How to Build (or Kill) Relationships on Twitter – Particularly for new twitter users, this post was particularly helpful.
• Twitter Guide: How To Do Things With Twitter
  
• TweetStats – In ur Tweets, Graphin’ Your Stats!
• Twitter Tools for Community and Communications Professionals

Creating a Headline section on a Web Page

When I design a website, I typically like to add a headlines section to the index page.  I do not always have time to either edit the index or create new stories.  For this reason, I started using a blog with RSS feeds.  I can then use PHP to parse the feed and display the headlines.  To keep things neat I limit the number of headline and once I reach my limit, I put a link to additional posts.

The PHP RSS Parser I use is MagpieRSS, as per the MagpieRSS website:

MagpieRSS: RSS for PHP

MagpieRSS provides an XML-based expat RSS parser in PHP.

MagpieRSS is compatible with RSS 0.9 through RSS 1.0. Also parses RSS 1.0’s modules, RSS 2.0, and Atom.

via Magpie RSS – PHP RSS Parser.

In order to diplay just the headlines, I insert the following PHP block into my index page:

<?
require_once ‘rss_fetch.inc’;

// ADD YOUR FEED LINK
$url = ‘http://www.example.com/articles/Articles.rss’;
$rss = fetch_rss($url);
$counter=1;
$i=1;
foreach ($rss->items as $item ) {
$title = $item['title'];
$url   = $item['link'];
if ($i<9) {

//OPEN HEADLINE IN NEW WINDOW
echo “<p>&bull;&nbsp;<a href=’$url’ target=’_Blank’>$title</a><br /></p>\n”;
}
$i++;
$counter++;
}
if ($i>8) {

//ADD YOUR FEED LOCATION
echo “<a href=’http://www.example.com/Articles’  target=’_Blank’>More…</a><br>\n”;
}
?>

What is RSS?

An RSS file is basically a list of headlines encoded so that it can be easily used by another program or website. The RSS abbreviation is variously used to refer to the following standards:

- Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
- Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
- RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)

RSS is a form of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which means that each piece of data in the list – a headline, a description of a story – is coded separately so that a program will know exactly what to do with it.

Programs that know what to do with RSS files are called “news aggregators.” They let you read headlines from dozens or hundreds of news sites at one time. You simply plug in the addresses of the RSS files you want.

See Also:
Wikipedia – RSS
What Is RSS?
Introduction to RSS

GeoRSS

GeoRSS is the encoding of location information is RSS feeds.  There are 3 flavors of GeoRSS feeds W3C Basic Geo, Simple, and GML. According to W3C, W3C Basic Geo is for describing points only in WGS84 datum.  Examples at http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/#example

Simple GeoRSS can be used to describe point, lines polygons and bounding boxes. As with W3C Basic Geo,
Simple GeoRSS uses WGS84 datum in Decimal Degrees (Lat Long). Examples at
http://georss.org/simple.

GML GeoRSS is the most complex encoding format. It can be used to represent
point, lines polygons and bounding boxes in feeds. GML GeoRSS can also use a variety of
Coordinate Systems. Examples can be found at http://georss.org/gml.

References:

Wikipedia – RSS

GeoRSS ::  Geographically Encoded Objects for RSS feeds

Fun with GeoRSS - Directions Magazine

Basic Geo (WGS84 lat/long) Vocabulary