e491 — Geospatial Bricks

Games At Work dot Biz

Photo by Thor Alvis on Unsplash

Published 25 November 2024

e491 with Michael, Andy & Michael — #AI training data from authors & #Foursquare #OpenSourcePlaces, #SamStones, #VR experiences from #Lapz, #MSFlightSimulator, #GOG like #Elite & #StarWarsTheOldRepublic and a whole lot more!

Michael, Andy and Michael start off the show with a discussion on Google Lens’ new image recognition and search functionality to comparison shop on price and availability at nearby stores. Next up is a brief article on an opportunity for HarperCollins authors to opt into an agreement to license their books for training an AI language learning model.

Then, staying on the AI training theme, Andy shares his thoughts about the Foursquare Open Source Places data set, replete with the point of interest data from years of Foursquare and Swarm users. This data set according to a Foursquare blog post contains 100mm+ global places of interest and is available for commercial use under the Apache 2.0 license framework. Interestingly enough, the very first episode of Games At Work from January 2012 features Foursquare as an example of the intersection of business and social technologies. Rounding out the geospatial conversation, Michael R shares the example of SamStones, a way to remember Sam Cohn’s love of travel.

Switching gears to VR, the cohosts discuss the beta version of Second Life’s mobile application. In the show notes below, you’ll find an example from Michael R where he ran a mobile Active Worlds experience from his Treo 750 back in May 2008! The team then shares a story about Lapz, a Formula 1 racing experience for the Apple Vision Pro. Then, they take to the skies with the recent launch of the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024.

Wrapping up this episode are stories about GOG (Good Old Games) work to preserve games, Star Wars the Old Republic celebrating 12 years and Mark Moxon’s work to document the Elite source code for Commodore 64. It seems like only yesterday when Mark was on the podcast, even though it was four years ago on e292: Elite British Gaming!

How might you use the Foursquare Open Sources Places dataset? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[e-mail] (our home for now) and let us know!

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot. All rights reserved. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

AI

The Verge article: Google Lens will now help you decide what to buy in-store

Kayak

The Verge article: HarperCollins is asking authors to license their books for AI training

Foursquare are releasing Foursquare Open Source Places as an open data set, to be updated monthly under the Apache 2.0 license. Pretty big news for the geospatial and location data folks. https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/products/foursquare-open-source-places-a-new-foundational-dataset-for-the-geospatial-community/

— Andy Piper (@[e-mail])
2024-11-19T17:40:23.494Z

https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/products/foursquare-open-source-places-a-new-foundational-dataset-for-the-geospatial-community/

— Jay Holler (@[e-mail])
2024-11-20T04:50:54.132Z

Foursquare blog post: Foursquare Open Source Places: A new foundational dataset for the geospatial community

Games at Work e1: Wouldn’t You Like to be a Mayor Too?

SamStones.org

Virtual Reality

Second Life blog post: Second Life Mobile is here!

The Verge article: Vision Pro’s viral Lapz app put on hold after F1 complaint

lapz.io

The Verge article: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 wasn’t prepared for takeoff

Games & Gaming

My project to document the source code for Commodore 64 Elite just reached 50,000 lines of heavily commented 6502 assembler. It's getting there!

I’m *really* enjoying learning about how the Commodore 64 works. I can’t believe you can expose a whole 64K of RAM in one go! What a beast…

Here’s the source so far: https://github.com/markmoxon/elite-source-code-commodore-64/blob/main/1-source-files/main-sources/elite-source.asm

I hope you like it.

#retrocomputing #retrogaming #commodore #8bit #6502 #c64

— Mark Moxon (@[e-mail])
2024-11-21T18:42:19.103Z

GameRant article: GOG’s Game Preservation Program is a Huge Win for Classic Games

Good Old Games About GOG page

PC Gamer article: 12 years on, Star Wars: The Old Republic is still kicking, with revamped graphics and new story content coming soon

Games at Work e52: Swapping your Battery in 90 Seconds

Good Old Games: Knights of the Old Republic search results

Bonus Articles & Stories

@gamesatwork_biz have you seen this ? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brickmyworld/brick-my-world-transform-your-world-into-lego-bricks

— Epredator (@[e-mail])
2024-11-21T10:23:05.190Z

Kickstarter: Brick My World | Convert real-world objects into LEGO® model

The Verge article: This digital D&D watch lets you roll a fireball from your wrist

Dice by pCalc

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine