Plotting Our Place in the Virtual Universe
Entertainment and information organization are great uses of technology. The past VirtuKnowHow articles covered a variety of these options. But discussing these in this format is a bit deceptive about the power and potential of virtual integration. Increasingly, technology is making its way further and further into the inner workings of our lives. It won’t be long that even the most basic bits (or should I say bytes?) of knowledge will not only help us to understand the vast reaches of the Web Universe, but they may well tag our whereabouts and allow us to be transported from place to place with the touch of a screen.
GEOTAGS: Finding our place in this great virtual universe is already becoming quite a chore, but geotagging is beginning to help. Wikipedia has already recognized this phenomenon, offering this rather precise definition:
“GeoTagging, sometimes referred to as Geocoding is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds or images. This data usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinate, though it can also include altitude and placenames. Geocoding also refers to the process of taking non-coordinate based geographical identifiers, such as a postal address, and converting them into geographical coordinates.”
In a recent review of how advocacy groups are using geotagging it was noted that some are connecting this meta IDing to everything from the pictures of people who attend specific events to the email, blog and other networks that keep like-minded folks communicating.
Once we find our place, however, it is only natural that we (and others) may want to move us around as well to engage a better fit or keep track of our location or purpose or role or activities. That capability is emerging in the form of Phicons.
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