I didn’t even know that this species exists in Austria and today I found out that there was an Austrian Cheerleader Championship taking place. Unfortunately it was sort of an insider event and not very well announced.
H.KoPP’s Cheerleader set on Flickr.
Since end of January one of the largest projects I’m currently involved in is online and open for public access. We decided as first step to publish it silently before the official announcement and receive more user feedback as well as reserve some extra time for fine tuning.
It’s a national atlas (ÖROK-Atlas online is the official name) containing socio-economic information, mainly focused on the Austrian territory but providing a European perspective as well. The entire application is based on 100% Open Source software like MapServer, PostGIS, GDAL, Proj4 and other usual geo open source suspects.
You won’t find any fancy AJAX driven user interface or high-res imagery to sneak a peek into your neighbor’s garden. Instead you’ll be able to visualize a comprehensive collection of predefined maps as entry point to a large database of socio-economic data and indicators relevant to regional analysis and spatial planning. An important user group, already involved in the development process, were decision makers and other administration departments (ministries, federal states).
Traditionally the atlas was published annually on paper. It was one of the main challenges of the project to transform those rather complex printed maps (most of them containing multiple socio-economic information layers, multidimensional signatures, etc.) into an online application in terms of retaining the same information content.
We’re still working in the background – the English version isn’t 100% completed yet, data and maps are extending continuously and some bugs need to be fixed – so please be patient if something isn’t working as expected.
[youtube PyWw4CpALD4]
Nowadays our supermarkets are full of products from all around the world. We have oranges from Spain, avocados from South Africa, steaks from Argentina, pepper from Egypt, seaweed from Japan, asparagus from Greece, couscous from Tunisia, tomatoes from Italy, you name it…
But for unknown reasons Austrian supermarkets are still banning Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The only place in Vienna to buy those delicious sweets is Bobby’s Foodstore in the 4th district. Good for Bobby, bad for me, because last year on my trip to California I badly felt in love with those tiny little peanut butter cups…
The recently launched Austrian public transport directions search named Scotty (german only) has been slightly updated (via Interaction Blog):
By clicking the buttons Karte right next to the search form fields, a map will open where users are able to pinpoint their start and end addresses. So no need to enter the addresses any longer, keep your hand on the mouse and ask Scotty by clicking on maps.
I prefer that method a lot over entering addresses and then getting options of possible addresses because of misspellings or double street and place names.
There is still some potential for usability improvement left: it would be easier to merge the currently two necessary steps into a single one by showing only one map where users can pinpoint both, start and end point. And of course, a bit more fancy AJAX mapping would be nice in 2007 too…
In times where appearance and self-marketing have become indispensable, well demonstrated by a certain Austrian minister (even though he obviously doesn’t need to read the entire article before quoting it on TV), I would suggest our honorable president a face-lift. Nothing serious, no plastic surgery, just a few modifications on his outfit. Maybe towards a more martial style.
Like the stencil on left for instance. Dark cop sunglasses and stars on the shoulder seem to suit him very well!
Yesterday the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) launched Scotty, a new public transport routing application. It covers Austrian city transport systems, bus lines, inland waterway transport and ferries, European railways and most of swiss bus transport. Until the UEFA EURO 2008 in Austria and Switzerland it’ll include 100% of Swiss and Austrian public transport (Graz and bus lines in Tyrol still need to be added).
The database works pretty impressive: you enter start and end address, Scotty returns the closest public transport stations (including walking distance) and finds the fastest route through all possible public transport systems (including public and private busses, railways, subways, trams, ferries, etc.). I think it’s pretty impressive to combine all that information and data sources from various operators and companies into one single application. That’s probably the most difficult part.
On the output side you get textual information as list where to go and where and when to change the train, bus, etc. Additionally you can open an overview map of your entire route or some detailed maps of station surroundings.
Now here is still some room for improvements on usability and mapping features. In times of AJAX, tiling or vector graphics driven web mapping I would expect a user-friendlier map.
Besides and considering Scotty to support and guide a huge amount of visitors in 2008 some more innovative features would be useful too.
Like reverse geocoding and trigger routing directly in the map for instance: I bet the chance that a visitor can pinpoint his hotel and the places to visit is higher than he is able to spell the german address correctly. Similar to the routing solution on Live Local, which is very well done btw.
Creative, strange and freaky subculture is often considered as product of metropolitan jungles, as a result and mixture of various kinds of urban possibilities and characteristics.
But it’s not, subculture is of course not bound exclusively to urbanity.
An amazing demonstration of that thesis I’ve seen yesterday in Weitersfelden, Upper Austria, deepest Mühlviertel, in the middle of nowhere, at a ball organized by BACKLAB.
Usually in such a rural environment, at this type of event, you’d expect some bands or DJs playing the greatest hits from 60ies to the 90ies. Not in Weitersfelden. I hardly remember when I’ve seen such weird live acts the last time. Bunny Lake, the headliner, I already knew from Vienna, a great white trash live show! The other local acts were just a mess of costumes, noise, performance and music. Overall big entertainment factor!
I’ve never been to Mühlviertel before, but they definitely know how to party!
You know, probably one difference between here and there is that there a politician makes an offensive statement, somebody grabs it, the video finds its way on a platform like YouTube and the politician is in big trouble.
[youtube pL3Q9gUEvtA]
Here, a politician, in fact an elected parliamentarian, explains his admiration and the positive aspects the NAZI regime had for this country (btw, because he was born after 1945 the poor guy didn’t remind that about 6m people had to be robbed and murdered by his heroes to succeed), the interview is brought to every household in Austria over the Austrian public service broadcaster ORF and, basically, nothing happens. The man who still keeps words like “der Führer” (!!) in his vocabulary will happily continue working in the Austrian parliament.
Clearly, a certain percentage of our population is still thinking that way. No problem, a sound democracy can stand it. But it makes a difference if such people own a seat in our parliament and represent with their antiquated way of thinking this country.
The awareness of geographic information has surely increased recently. Easy accessible mapping APIs made embedding maps on any kind of website a common sport these days. Good, geographic information is essential and should easily be available for everybody.
Though on some sites I can’t help but get the impression that a map is just there because some webmaster may thought “Hey, everybody has a Google Map, we need one too!”.
Besides being a good example of how the result may look like when the screen designer is missing, I wonder why they put the search box above the little Google Map. What would you as user expect of a map within the Austria section of an Austrian newspaper’s web portal? An Austria related map, right? Meaning that I can search there for Austrian addresses, places and maybe routing or some other type of geographic information.
I can’t.
Since Google isn’t offering any of this information for Austria, this map search is, from my point of view, completely useless and misleading. Unless you know the trick of putting “, Austria” at the end of every search term you’ll only be able to find “Wien” or “Vienna” in the map (the Austrian capital, btw).
Basically a map is a fairly good method to support and illustrate articles on a news portal. But please dear webmaster, before doing so, define the aim and purpose of the shown geographic information.