Category: News

TRB will convene a spring, 2005 meeting of a multidisciplinary group to present their applications of environmental geospatial information for transportation, discuss common approaches and issues, and consider methods to facilitate adoption by other organizations. Participants will represent expertise in information technology, geospatial information technologies and environmental applications in transportation. State and Federal natural resource agencies, regulatory and permitting agencies, and non-governmental organizations will be represented.

A planning team including Lankes will organize the meeting, determining the type of applications, the participants and issues to be addressed. Representatives from private sector software and application developers may also be invited to discuss the future direction geospatial information science in environment. The product from this meeting will be a TRB electronic circular that will include application case histories and a summary of the collective discussions

Lankes has joined an advisory board for an IMLS project at Rutgers University. From the project abstract:

Rutgers University School of Communication, Information and Library Studies and OCLC Online Computer Library Center will research and evaluate the sustainability and relevance of virtual reference services (VRS). VRS are human-mediated, Internet-based library information services. The increasing use of VRS by the public has increased the demand on libraries to provide reference services online, and this project aims to improve libraries’ ability to respond to the demand. The project will develop a theoretical model for VRS that incorporates interpersonal and content issues and will make research-based recommendations for library staff to increase user satisfaction and attract nonusers. It will also make recommendations for VRS software development and interface design and produce a research agenda for user-centered VRS.

I’ve put a lot of the news from my former RSS feed on the blog to browse. I’ll put up some more intelligent navigation to the older information soon.

When I moved from my old static home page to my new dynamic site over a year ago, I collapsed my blog into the main site. I reasoned then, that since the whole was basically what I was doing and thinking, there was no need for a separate interface to blogs.

After getting some recent feedback on my site (and attempting to simplify it), and playing around with blogging software, I’ve rethought this. There is a use for a light and quick interface to the blog. Also, blog software has advanced to the point where it is easier to post quick links and thoughts here (in WordPress in case you are wondering) than in my main site.

I’ve kept the same categories, and the same rules apply. You can follow this blog (and RSS feed) and see everything that is happening here or on my “main site.” I’ll just use the larger site as more an archive and general front door, and this blog for more informal thoughts and announcements. I’ve also tried to make this blog a sort of interface light to all my information in the blog and outside of it.

Please let me know what you think. That’s another reason I’m breaking my blog out. TikiWiki, the software for my whole site, has great interactive features, but it was hammered by comment spam. I’m hoping the comment function here can be used for feedback and won’t get too overwhelmed with spam. WordPress seems to have some good spam blocking features, but we’ll see.