In an effort to keep the Public Lab community up-to-date on some of the
things that are happening off-list, we've decided to being compiling a
quick email on Fridays to keep everyone appraised of the top six things the
Public Lab community has accomplished in the last week or events in the
foreseeable future. If you want to contribute topics, please send your
thoughts to me by 5pm on Thursdays. That said, for this week, below are
some of the highlights:
1. Google announcement! Yes, the list has been talking about this for the
last week, but if for some reason you missed it, Public Lab released public
domain maps onto Google Earth and has been blogged about in a few different
publications including Gizmodo and Engadget. For more information, you can
read the formal press
release<http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/google-earth-publishes-community-cre...>or
check out the Google
Lat Long<http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2012/04/balloon-and-kite-imagery-i...>blog
post written by Christiaan Adams from Google Earth Outreach.
2. You might have noticed in the past week that you either couldn't access
pages on the Public Laboratory website, or there were long wait times for
pages to load. This was because over the course of three days, the website
received over 15,000 unique visits from 143 countries. Jeff Warren
wrote a research
note<http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/warren/4-19-2012/high-traffic-stats...>to
give a recap of server issues and some traffic stats on the site.
3. Public Lab nonprofit staff got together in Oakland, CA last week for the
spring 2012 summit. One of the outcomes is that we've developed a number of
different teams to work on longer-term website projects. We're finishing up
quick descriptions of each of the projects and will be emailing the list
about them next week. Please keep an eye out as we'd love for people to get
involved!
4. EcoHack II <http://www.ecohacknyc.org/> starts today! There have been a
number of emails out to the list, but just a reminder, if you're in NYC
this weekend, come to Parsons where Public Lab is co-hosting the event. Liz
Barry and I will be giving an ignite talk tonight about a new
in-development project- the air column monitor- built on the aerial mapping
tool. Tomorrow, there will be teams working on sensor development, data
visualization and creating a nylon casing to shape spherical balloons into
a more aerodynamic shape to which we can also attach more tethers. Sunday
will be testing day! There are also a number of other great projects that
will be worked on by the 120+ participants already signed up.
5. Public Lab will also be at the Philadelphia Science
Festival<http://www.philasciencefestival.org/>this weekend. Sara Wylie
will be speaking on a panel about science and
information around hydraulic fracturing, discussing webtools for community
monitoring of the oil and gas industry and the possibility of using Public
Lab's grassroots mapping tools to document the expansion frontier of
natural gas development in the U.S.
6. The Public Lab nonprofit team is putting in a couple of EPA grants this
week for the NY region. The first is to support the Gowanus Low Altitude
Mappers (GLAM) project in partnership with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy
and the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club. On the second grant, Public Lab is
working with Cypress Hill local development corporation to start air
quality sensing with a local Brooklyn school.
7. A couple randomly selected research notes to highlight that were added
to the Public Lab site this past week:
SLO pre-flight<http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/jl/4-20-2012/slo-pre-flight>(posted
by jl)
Results: Container Testing for Photopaper Test Strips
#1<http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/megan/4-15-2012/results-container-t...>(posted
by Megan)
Visible/IR mapping camera
process<http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/cfastie/4-15-2012/visibleir-mapping...>(posted
by cfastie)
Arthur W. Mears Kite Balloon, archetype for Kingfisher,
Skystar?<http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/mathew/4-13-2012/arthur-w-mears-kit...>(posted
by Mathew)
MapKnitter: Kamnolom<http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/mapknitter/4-19-2012/mapknitter-kam...>(map
via MapKnitter)
For more information on any of the above point, please send an email back
to the list. Happy weekend, Shannon
--
Shannon Dosemagen
Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science
504.239.4642
publiclaboratory.org
