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Open Objects
Join in the conversation about Wikimedia @ MW2010 | Wikimedia@MW2010 is a workshop to be held in Denver in April, just before the Museums and the Web 2010 conference. The goal is to develop 'policies that will enable museums to better contribute to and use Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons, and for the Wikimedia community to benefit from the expertise in museums'.
If you've got stuff you want to say, you can dive right into the conversation - there's a whole bunch of conversations at http://conference.archimuse.com/forums/wikimediamw2010, including 'Legal and Business Model Barriers to Collaboration, 'Notability Criteria' and 'Metrics for Museums on Wikipedia'.
I'm going to be at the workshop and will do my best to represent any issues raised at the meeting. I think it's particularly important that we avoid 'Feeling glum after GLAM-WIKI' if we possibly can, so I'd like to go there with a really good understanding of the possible points of resistance, clashes in organisational culture or world view, incompatible requirements or wishlists so that they can be raised and hopefully dealt with during the in-person workshop. I'd love to hear from you if there are messages you want to pass on.
I'm also thinking about an informal meetup in London to help cultural heritage people articulate some of the issues that might help or hinder collaboration so they can be represented at the workshop - if you're a museum, gallery, archive, library or general cultural heritage bod, would that be useful for you? | | 09 Mar 2010 |
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The Map Room
Wired Tests the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger | | Wired's Joe Brown tests the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger the only way he can: by getting lost. After eight hours of doing his best to get lost in Tahoe National Forest, he pressed the SOS button; help arrived in 30 minutes. This was planned in advance with SPOT and... | | 02 Mar 2010 |
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Megalithic Portal
Temple Mount | | Ancient Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is a religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem. According to Jewish tradition, it was from here that the world expanded into its present form and from where God gathered the dust used to create the first man, Adam. It was the place God chose to "dwell", hence the construction of two Jewish Temples at the site. Traditionally, it is believed that a Third and final Temple will also be located here. The Mount is considered the holiest site in Judaism and due to this, many Jews will not set foot on the Mount itself. | | 28 Feb 2010 |
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Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK
Ahoy me hearties, we all be pirates! | |
There’s a fantastic article in today’s Guardian (via Computer World Magazine) about the International Intellectual Property Alliance, who say that countries advocating the use of open source software should be put on a “Specialist 301 list” (ie a trading watch list) because open source “weakens the software industry” and “fails to build respect for intellectual [...] | | 24 Feb 2010 |
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Past Thinking
Polynomial Texture Mapping for Archaeologists | | This month sees the publication of an article written by myself and Dr Graeme Earl from the University of Southampton’s Archaeological Computing Research Group entitled “Polynomial Texture Mapping for Archaeologists” in the March/April edition of British Archaeology magazine.
Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) is a technique that uses ordinary digital photography equipment alongside directional lighting. It produces [...] | | 23 Feb 2010 |
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Archaeology News
Bronze Age ritual stone enclosure unearthed in Italy | | Italian archaeologists claim to have found a stone enclosure which once protected the legendary 'Golden Bough'. In Roman mythology, the bough was a tree branch with golden leaves that enabled... | | 21 Feb 2010 |
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Professional GIS / GPS Developers Google Group
New stable version of gvSIG Desktop available: gvSIG 1.9 |
A new stable version of gvSIG Desktop has been released: gvSIG Desktop
1.9.
It's available on the Downloads section of the gvSIG website:
[link].
This new version has many new features which are listed next.
| | 12 Nov 2009 |
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Online Archaeology Blog
OPEN ARCHIVE - a new web based system for accessing our past | | The wealth of information gathered by local archaeological groups and societies on excavations, surveys and documentary research is one of the important sources of data for the study of archaeology in the UK. Currently, this archive of British archaeology is stored locally, within libraries and local history centres as well as with the originating group [...] | | 16 Sep 2009 |
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Archaetech
A Week in Williamsburg | The Computer Applications in Archaeology conference hopped across the pond again this year and was hosted in sunny Williamsburg, VA. I hadn’t been to Virginia before but was struck by its combination of charming woodland and swampy, well, swamps. Williamsburg is part of the ‘Historic Triangle‘ of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown, which were the first [...] | | 12 Apr 2009 |
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Wessex Archaeology: Events
Jewry Street, Winchester, Update Four | The flint and cob foundations of the late medieval/early post-medieval building have been removed. Now we can see two separate plots on the site, each running from the old Jewry Street, Scowertenestret. On the southern plot are the remains of a building, some 5m wide and running the full length of the site and beyond. No walls survive, but there are successive layers of chalk floors, which suggests that the building was in use for many years. It doesn’t look as if any industrial activity took place in the building, and the finds are domestic rubbish, some of which are of worked bone. 
Recording the chalk floors
The plot to the north is quite different. Here there is a building roughly 8m by 5m, its longer length parallel with the old street. It had two principal rooms, similar in size. In one of them, parts of the chalk and flint floors have survived, together with holes for posts which must once have supported some timber structure. In the other room there was a quantity of slag – waste from iron working. Outside, at the rear of the building, several pits contained more iron-working debris. A small metal-working crucible was discovered in one pit. It is made of fine clay and dates to the early medieval period. Without analysing the residue inside it, we can’t say whether the crucible was used for copper-alloy or silver. Pits at the back of the building contained more iron-smithing waste. This workshop, which was re-floored on several occasions, appears to date from the tenth to twelfth centuries. 
A fine crucible was found in one of the pits. It would have been used in the manufacture of copper or silver objects.
Medieval ‘Scowertenestret’, or Shoemakers street, was not confined to one industry, it would seem, and documentary records back this up. An early twelfth century survey of Winchester records a goldsmith in the street. Fourteenth century records show a wide range of artisans and trades including smiths, cutlers, butchers, skinners, tanners, fullers, weavers and tailors, all occupying properties owned by either the King, the Bishop, or Hyde Abbey; this was a prosperous and industrious part of the town.  | | 12 Feb 2009 |
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Roman Archaeology
Roman "Silver" pig to be sold at auction | 
I wonder if Lindsey Davis is going to bid on this "pig" to commemorate her first best selling Marcus Didius Falco mystery, "The Silver Pigs"?
"A 2000 year old lead ingot mined by the Romans shortly after they conquered Britain is expected to fetch up to £12,000 when it goes under the hammer this month.
The 154lb ingot, known as a 'pig', was mined by Romans in North Yorkshire, and would have been due to be made into piping of waterproof lining for roofs. Silver could also be extracted from it.
The Romans, who ran well organised mining operations in Britain and also produced silver and gold after invading the country in AD43.
Dating from AD81, the 11 stone pig bears a raised inscription on the top reading 'Imperatore Caesare Domitiano Augusto Consule Septimum’ - a reference to the Emperor Domitians seventh consulate.
Measuring 58.5cm by 10.5cm by 13.5cm, it has the word 'Brig' on the side - showing it came from the territory of the British Brigantes tribe, who had fallen under Roman rule.
The pig was discovered accidentally in 1731 in peat on Hawshaw Moor, which was famous in antiquity for its lead mines." | | 15 Apr 2007 |
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Blog - Brian Flood
Arc2Earth Publisher Released | We launched Arc2Earth Publisher today. Head on up to the support site and download the Trial version. We are also running a limited time 30% discount on Publisher or Enterprise, so get it while it’s hot. Arc2Earth is a single program that comes in 4 different versions: Standard, Professional, Publisher and Enterprise. When you buy one of these versions, your serial number will unlock different functionality in Arc2Earth. Each higher version contains all the functionality of the previous version. For instance, if you have Publisher, it also includes everything that’s available in Standard and Professional. Please look at the feature grid here to see the differences between each version. The new support site has an Arc2Earth blog that will serve as tips and tricks central. From now on, I’ll keep the Arc2Earth talk on this blog to a minimum and steer it back to its original mission of general GIS talk. There are lots of bells and whistles in the product and we’ll be writing a bunch about them in the coming days but for now, I figured I’d show off one of the cooler Enterprise features. A2E Scheduler is a standalone program that runs publishing jobs at any time interval you want. Each job is independently executed and can have different schedules (e.g. hourly, daily at 1am, weekly on Mondays etc.). It runs outside of ArcMap and can be setup to start automatically in the background. 
Here’s a sample that pulls live radar data from NOAA’s nowCOAST ArcIMS server. It runs hourly and uses the option automatically set the http expire headers which guarantees the user will always see the latest data. Below is the Microsoft VE viewer, check back over time and you’ll notice the radar images change. Virtual Earth viewer 
cheers Listening To: Rachmaninov - Hough/Dallas SO/Litton - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor  | | 11 Apr 2007 |
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ADS
February 2010: Medieval Britain and Ireland Fieldwork now searchable. | |
The ADS, The Society for Medieval Archaeology and English Heritage are delighted to announce a new query interface for Medieval Britain and Ireland Fieldwork database. The on-line version of Medieval Britain and Ireland is a new venture for the Medieval Archaeology journal, featuring a searchable digital database for these annually submitted excavation summaries. The new database, commencing with reports from the 2007 fieldwork season, will link individual sites, through their OASIS identifiers, to the relevant records in the Library of Unpublished Fieldwork Reports, providing access to a wide range of data and grey literature.
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