Public Lab community newsletter 5.4.13

[Shannon Dosemagen]

This week in the Public Lab newsletter, check out announcements for last minute mapping meet-ups in San Francisco and New York City, read about mapping excursions to aerial image a nuclear power plant in Massachusetts and mangroves in Qatar and learn about how trash and technology can go hand-in-hand. 

New IdeaLab and Atlantic Cities articles. Mathew Lippincott posted a "trashy" blog on 'Detritivore' design-- using trash to create scalable tech solutions. Atlantic Cities featured an article called "DIY mapping goes mainstream," on the integration of Public Lab maps into Google Earth.

New maps in the Archive. Public Lab maps that go into Google Earth come first through MapKnitter and then into the Archive. To get your maps in the Public Lab Archive, they must be open source and exported on MapKnitter. You can get in touch with Ste...@publiclaboratory.org who imports MapKnitter maps into the archive and coordinates with Google. Read more here. New maps in the Archive this week include ones from Virginia, Wisconsin and Leon, Spain. 

Changing staff. Public Lab co-founder and Director of Retail Communication, Adam Griffith, has left Public Lab to focus on work with Western Carolina University where he has worked in the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines as a Research Scientist for five years. We look forward to Adam's continued engagement as a Public Lab organizer and thank him for all the effort he has put into growing Public Lab over the last three years. 

Public Lab welcomes Noah Hochman who will be working on kit fulfillment in Portland. Noah has been involved with Portland Rising Tide and Portland Action Lab over the last few years and holds a B.S. in Environmental policy analysis and planning. 

San Francisco Mapping meet-up today. Last minute announcement if you're in the Bay area! Join other mappers at 10am PST this morning at Fort Mason Green. Contact ste...@publiclaboratory.org if you're interested in attending.

Mappings and meet-ups. New notes went up this week from Cape Cod Baywatch on mapping a nuclear power plant, mapping of the Al Dhakira Mangroves in Qatar, Philly tech week mapping workshop and a meet-up in Middlebury, VT.  

It's a big day in NYC! Swing by one of the many New Museum's Ideas City Festival events (today!) that the NYC Public Lab community is participating in. A list of events can be found on the New York City page. 

Research notes:

Interesting idea for thermal pollution mapping (posted by Sara)

Raman Spectroscopy (posted by dusjagr)

Doing it yourself: kite mapping, an activity for the privileged? (posted by cindy_ExCites)

Redesign of the Mini-Spectro to hold a cuvette (posted by dusjagr)

ircam raspberry pi shield-- first steps (posted by donblair)

Reflectance spectrometry (posted by dmdc)

Look mom... no cords! Well, almost there (posted by gbathree)

Resolving barrel distortion on a GoPro Hero3 (posted by huslage)

Cuvettes leak if they're not held upright (posted by warren)

spectrometer focus (posted by stoft)

Have a great weekend everyone! As always, if anything was missed, please email the list, post a research note or email sha...@publiclaboratory.org for inclusion in the newsletter next week.