Nuno Prospero dos Santos

Desta vez fui eu que vi o carro :)

Pausa de almoço, estacionado aqui na Avenida de Berna, Lisboa, em frente à Faculdade de Ciências Sociais.

Alguns detalhes de dentro do carro:

• no banco da frente, está instalado um computador c/ teclado, para monitorização das ruas a “varrer”;
• nos bancos de trás, entre bolachas e batatas fritas, várias rolos de papel higiénico (!) e AJAX.

Com tantas lentes para limpar, não admira a quantidade de rolos :)

Algumas ideias soltas:

• Domínio global do facebook;
• Portugal é o refúgio europeu do hi5;
• Brasil e Índia com Orkut;
• China tem a sua própria rede;
• Rússia e outros países da ex-URSS partilham uma rede;
• Mais de metade de África nem sequer aparece no mapa…

In this article, you’ll discover a variety of infographics and visualizations associated with the internet. You might just learn a thing or two about the web by looking at these awesome artworks!

You can use many different free tools (such as Zonum Solutions or ArcScripts) to convert from Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to ESRI Shapefile (SHP) and vice-versa.

The best advice I can give you is keeping on thing in mind: Google Earth only reads and writes KML/KMZ using the WGS 1984 coordinate system. That means that:

• If you are converting SHP to KML, you should convert your shapefile to WGS1984. Use the “Project” tool in ArcToolbox and select that coordinate system. You must define the projection function in order to work… Then, use the above tools to convert to KML. Simple.
• In case you are converting KML to SHP, do the following: open the ArcMap with a blank document. Add any kind of shapefile in your own coordinate system (Datum, UTM, etc). The mxd will gain that coord system. Convert the KML to SHP using the tools I’ve mentioned before. Add the output shapefile to the mxd and ArcMap will convert it to your coordinate system. If you want it permanently in that format, use the Project tool in ArcToolbox. Remember to fill in the projection function.

Success? Troubles? If you have any doubts related to this matter, contact me.

How to import data from SQL Server 2005 to Microsoft Access throw VBA code? Quite simple. The problem is finding the correct SQL connection string:

DoCmd.TransferDatabase acImport, “ODBC”, _
“ODBC;DRIVER=SQL Server;” & _
“UID=username;” & _
“DATABASE=databasename;” & _
“SERVER=server;” & _
“PWD=password“, acTable, “table1“, “table1_copy“, False, True

I lost so many hours figuring out what the hell did “Could not find installable ISAM” means…

Microsoft has finally brought up to the search engine market a nice product called Bing in order to replace the Live Search. Thought the strange name, this search engine display some nice results.

There is a comparison site called Blind Search where you can submit a query to Google, Bing and Yahoo but you won’t be able to see which results belong to each company. Then, you’ll vote which one was the best engine.

I’ve had a few surprises… :)

Hey, ESRI and Autodesk, what about using a common open source file format instead of your own formats?

That you simplify the  interoperability and make everything more simples…

For instance: how to convert a DWG file to an ESRI SHP shapefile? Well, first idea: google it, download a trial (you won’t find it for free…) and buy it or crack it :P

But, what happens when you have a DWG file with password (encrypreted file)? You won’t have a choice…  Use Autodesk first to remove the password and then import the file using ArcCatalog. If you want to do it automatically (using a batch), you’ll require some more advanced tools, and paid, unfortunately.

Yet another post about visual representation. Nowadays, there is so much data available that is hard to filter which information might be useful in a decision-making process. One of the computer engineering topics that I’m keen on is visual representation of tons of data. I love to see the projects present on this site because they represent nice and clean solutions for real problems. Give it a try, enjoy it!

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

A friend sent me this article about the new Google offices in Canada. At first sight, it seems like another advertising article about Google. However, a second look you’ll show you that there’s something under the hood :)

The office was so damn well planned  that it’s awesome! Everything is thought to be part of an ecosystem – there are no leaks or missing parts.

LaLaClick is a web application to visualize and explore similarity relations of music artists. Warning: if you love music, you’ll get addicted to this site!

It works like this:

• The engine starts with the pre-loaded example: Radiohead. Music starts to play and some nodes appear on the screen.
• When no more nodes are added, you can simply select the option Clear All
• In the search band box, type the name of a band or singer and press the Enter key. Click on Add Aura. You can repeat the process over and over and produce a giant tree of alike artists.
• The nodes added, are bands somehow related to the name you typed! This way you can learn about bands similar to your taste :)

How does this work? Quite simple and interesting – the similarity is based on the principle that people who listen to this artist also listen to that one. The information about these “listening preferences” is powered by last.fm, a music community website which gathers about 20 million users.