Off the Charts

The Geographic Planning Collaborative (GPC) Group empowers government and private institutions to understand the changing society it serves, by combining advanced spatial data solutions and emerging technologies.

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Imagine If Technology Could Read And React To Our Emotions

Computers have always been good at doing fast calculations, but adapting to the emotional state of the person using the computer – now there is a grand challenge! The field is called affective computing, and soon it will be an important factor in the way people and computers communicate with each other.

A new era begins as computers can now read our emotions - 'Affective Computing'!

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Robots are coming | The National

A new report reveals that we are close to a world in which machines do our work for us

According to a new report based on research by the University of Oxford, machines will soon be able to take on 235 of 601 jobs that researchers examined in Japan.

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10 Maps That Will Change How You View The World

Maps are one of those things you can lose yourself in for hours. Since their humble origins as scribbles in the sand thousands of millennia ago, maps have been useful companions during the development of human culture and society. Now, in an age of seemingly endless information, maps are more abundant, advanced and fascinating than ever before.

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IFTTT: Go-to app that keeps you up to speed | The National

The productivity app IFTTT may be ancient in internet years - but if you're not using it, you need to ask yourself why? It links all your apps together and once you've got the hang of it, will save you oodles of time.

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18 Beautiful And Weird Maps That Will Change How You Think About London

How it was, how it is, and how it could have been.

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This “Histomap,” created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931. (The David Rumsey Map Collection hosts a fully zoomable version here.)

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A rare early copy of William Smith’s 1815 Geological Map of England and Wales, previously thought lost, has been uncovered by Geological Society archivists. The new map has been digitised and made available online in time for the start of celebrations of the map’s 200th anniversary,...

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Facebook Introduces Location-based Safety Check for Disasters and Crises

Facebook have come up with a smart way to use location based data for disaster and crisis situation reporting among friends and family.  

Here's what Facebook have to say on the application:

"In times of disaster or crisis, people turn to Facebook to check on loved ones and get updates. It is in these moments that communication is most critical both for people in the affected areas and for their friends and families anxious for news.

We want to provide a helpful tool that people can use when major disasters strike, so we’ve created Safety Check – a simple and easy way to say you’re safe and check on others.

During a major disaster, Safety Check will help you:

Let friends and family know you’re safe

Check on others in the affected area

Mark your friends as safe

Only your friends will see your safety status and the comments you share".

To read more, see http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/10/introducing-safety-check/

Article by Naomi Gleit, VP of Product Management, Sharon Zeng, Product Manager & Peter Cottle, Software Engineer

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What 3 Words - anywhere in 3 words

w3w is a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3 metres x 3 metres. Each square has been given a 3 word address comprised of 3 words from the dictionary. An example of a w3w address is gazed.across.like

To find out more, see http://what3words.com/about

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3 Steps to Boost Event Engagement

Leverage these ideas to maximize stakeholder engagement at your next event. View this email in your browser (http://us8.campaign-archive1.com/?u=4fedd25e2cbb3a239813ab755&id=f45b8ea064&e=f82f4556eb) As Dubai's heat continues to build, we're helping our clients prepare for some exciting, large scale events this winter. It's a critical time for event planning; if you have a vision for something big this season, get in touch with our team for a complimentary consultation! - Keith Parker ** 3 Ways to Open the Floodgates of Corporate Event Engagement (http://parkerevents.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4fedd25e2cbb3a239813ab755&id=f7cf607920&e=f82f4556eb)

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..."Africa is so mind-numbingly immense, that it exceeds the common assumptions by just about anyone I ever met: it contains the entirety of the USA, all of China, India, as well as Japan and pretty much all of Europe as well - all combined !"...

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We are so tiny...

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A search wide and far for maps that can reveal, surprise and inform in ways that the daily headlines might not.

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(via A Sign For the Times: Digital Wayfinding Adapts to Your Needs | Design Decoded)

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Design Principles for News Apps & Graphics (via Design Principles for News Apps & Graphics - ProPublica)

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Cities around the world are covered in spray-painted hieroglyphics and cryptic designations scrawled on public surfaces; unintelligible tags and arcane signs intended to communicate messages to a specialized audience with a trained eye. Such markings are so prevalent that they just blend into the urban patina of dirt and disrepair and go largely unnoticed. I’m not talking about illegal graffiti. Rather, the officially sanctioned infrastructural “tagging” employed by public works departments around the country.

(via Decoding The City: Infrastructural Graffiti | Design Decoded)

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According to our estimates, more than 200 million people throughout the Middle East and North Africa depend on income from operating businesses or occupying property in the informal economy—without the protection of the rule of law. - Hernando de Soto