Archive for remote sensing

Easter weekend at the Googleplex

April 4, 2010 · Filed under GIS, happy eggs, laser chicken, LIDAR, remote sensing, technology

This Easter weekend the laser chicken went camping at the Googleplex for Wherecamp 2010. Geo-spatial geeks seem to like chickens. No surprise, as they spend all day looking at our planet at various scales: images, maps, and point clouds of forests, oceans, mountains & continents. This connects them to the land they are zooming in and out of.

Invading the Googleplex made the laser chicken broody and it laid two eggs. Born like a peeps on Easter were (1) the geo-twitter-google-maps mash-up for citizen empowerment called http://cluck.us and (2) also The Farm Party for local citizen government where the really hip birds hang out. This party is little talk and lots of action: we look for problems that need fixing and we fix them. We have been a bit too bored with the lamenting at tea and coffee parties where lame ducks bicker and pucker for someone to do something. See a problem that needs fixing? Just fix it! Are you loving it? We give you wings! Please don’t pluck us. Cluck us!


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chickens + lasers = the avatar feeling

March 11, 2010 · Filed under avatar, bees, chicken, happy feed, lasers, LIDAR, remote sensing

downtownfarm combines three passions of mine into one operation and uses cutting edge military-grade light-scanning technology (popularized by Radiohead‘s innovative “House of Cards” video—see below) to broadcast our activities to ipods, ipads, iphones, and facebooks around the globe:

  • enable children to make informed decisions by teaching them about factory food production and by exposing them to the joys of urban farming
  • develop & implement cutting-edge remote sensing laser technology (e.g. LIDAR, multi-camera systems, infrared, RADAR, …)
  • familiarize children with today’s multimedia, networking & GIS technologies

Urban farming puts that little “Na-vi” in our live that we are all yearning for since we saw Avatar. downtownfarm shows how a trip to your local farm store and your neighborhood nursery can create a slice of Pandora in your frontyard.

The resulting “happy feed” will motivate brilliant and creative minds across the globe to drive cutting-edge laser technology forward and showcase it at downtownfarm. Geeks (like me @ livermorelasso) will work incredibly hard to enable 3 – 16 year old children to pick up their favorite “Pumpkin” or “Omelet”, hold it towards the LIDAR “laser camera”, and present it to the world in streaming real-time 3D. Constantly pushing for higher-resolution, fuller color, higher frame-rate, we will put in all-nighters to make kids hearts glow (and not just for meeting a deadline or fulfilling some contract). This will drive the technology forward and every field (e.g. intelligence, land planning, surveying, security, education …) will benefit as a nice “side-effect”.

And farmville will look so last century. But hey … I don’t want to alienate the farmville and iphone app developpers. Help me create the downtownfarm app. I need your brilliance and foresight. You & Cafe Fanny & James Cameron & Ocracoke Coffee & Michelle Obama & Weaver Street Market & Michael Pollan & McDonalds & Sundari Kraft & Caffee Driade & Upton Sinclair & Great Harvest Bread & Eric Schlosser & Berkeley Bowl & Michael Moore & Gather & Michael Krasny & Hossana Homes & Greg Mortenson & First Pres & MLK & Bulworth & Alicia Vagts & Cafe Gratitude & Barbara Ehrenreich & Mama Dip’s & the people that I have met and continue to meet … you are my heroes. You paved the way for downtownfarm. These are all your ideas … all I did was to combine them in the most obvious way and to find a good location for them: The only old farm house in the very core of downtown Livermore. And now I really need your help.

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