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Deliciousness: Mac OS X 15.6, gallons of chilli sauce, globes and Virgin Media

This week's trawl through my Delicous bookmarks. Actually this is last week's trawl but real life got in the way of posting and I beg your indulgence.

  • Last week, Snow Leopard, AKA Mac OS X 10.6 was released though some places seem to now be selling an even more advanced version, Mac OS X 15.6.
  • I like chilli sauce, I have a fine and wide range of the stuff in the larder at home; but some people must really really like the stuff to buy it a gallon at a time.
  • In my day job I do geo stuff but I wasn't aware that a globe, an inflatable one come to that, has sharp corners and isn't suitable for children.
  • While we're on the subject of geo, Virgin Media found out the hard way that place names aren't unique and sometimes there's more than one place sharing a name; Whitchurch in this particular case. Posted via email from Gary's Posterous

GeoCommunity '09 - Bridging the Gap between the GIS and Neogeo Worlds?

It's probably an oversimplification of a complex issue but geographic conferences or events can be somewhat polarised towards one of two extremes. On the one hand you have the solid, slightly reassuring and established GIS world whilst on the other we have the upstart, slightly shouty, web-centric neogeography community. These two worlds don't always co-exist particularly well and each can be equally distrustful of the other. Where 2.0 in the US tries valiantly to get these two worlds to talk to one another and to share a stage but it doesn't always work well; the GIS community brandish their desktop GIS system while the neogeo hackers point to their PHP based web mashups.

But this year in Stratford-upon-Avon something brave, intriguing and altogether worthwhile is happening; both communities are being represented at the AGI's GeoCommunity '09 conference, which takes place in a little over two and half weeks time. Yes, there's GIS practitioners and yes, there's neogeo developers but there's also speakers covering all points inbetween; just take a look at the PDF of programme for this year. Even the tag line for the conference, Realising the Value of Place, places emphasis on the meeting of the geo-worlds.