It seems that several shopping centers in the UK have installed a surveillance mechanism that works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation – measuring the phone’s distance from three receivers.

A shopping mall could, for example, find out that 10,000 people were still in the store at 6pm, helping to make a case for longer opening hours, or that a majority of customers who visited Gap also went to Next, which could useful for marketing purposes.

While this is all good marketing and user information for shopping centers, there are a lot of people crying foul of privacy violation.  But the creators of the system say that is does not access personal information, but it does log the IMEI code of the handset, which is uniqe and technically, tired to one person so linking to a person could be possible.

I guess I wouldn’t mind “too much”, I can just turn my phone off. 

I saw an interesting job posting today that got my attention: Mobile Mapping Van Operator

The posting has a great writeup about the company.. three paragraphs just about how great working for Tele Atlas North America is.

The Tele Atlas culture reflects our core values: passions for people, fanatical about customer service, operate with integrity and accountability and obsessed with excellence.

Wow! Great!

So, if you are a strong collaborator, possess a passion for excellence and are looking for an employer who will challenge, respect and reward you, we invite you to join Tele Atlas and contribute to our continued success.

Alright then, you have my attention now.

Requirements:
• Must be a college or university graduate; Geography Major or related field preferred.
• Ability to travel without restriction for an extended period of time.
• Ability to work long hours and 5-6 days a week.
• Clean driving record, motor vehicle check will be conducted.

Ok then, a lot of time on the road.. a given considering you are driving a van all day.  Should make a nice paycheck then.

Pay is approximately $11.00 per hour.

WAIT A SECOND!  Slam on the breaks.. $11/hr for at least 40 hours a week?  With a degree?  What happened to “challenge, respect and reward you”?

As someone said: “that’s not even intern pay these days”

At the local Burger King you can be flipping burgers at a starting pay of $13/hr and that is with NO degree.

Why not call the job description what it really is?  “Stupid driving monkey needed for grueling, boring job”, at least the pay will match the job then.

Even KFed can drive a van.

I don’t talk about work on the blog, work has no need to be on the blog.  Yet today I’ll kinda break that rule I have but not name the work though.

I came in the office today and noticed that on my cube my name is gone and someone else’s name is there.  I check other cubes and there are quite a few cubes with the names changed to either someone else, changed to “Empty” or changed to “Pending New Hire”.  Thing is.. there have been no emails or notices going out that people will be relocated or anything like that.

So, talk to my manager and some others, everyone is confused.  One guy I talked to knows some of the “new name people” and he gave a call.. they had no idea they had a name up in the local office.  Some more digging around finds out that the only people with names removed are all the contractors.  So, in a future move to happen, preference is given to the hired in people and that contractors can be shoved out of the way.  Contractors are also not to have any names up on the cubes at all now as well.. contractors are also not listed on the online “people finder”.

So, maybe sometime in the future, I will be kicked out of my cube of 4 years with nowhere to go “but there is plenty of open lab space”.  This is not how you treat people and make them want to stay and work for your company.

I think it is time to seriously look into a new job elsewhere (Michigan is a pricey state to live and work in)  and actually get something closer to GIS and World Wind (It amazes people when I say I do all this WW stuff on the side).  Anyone hiring?

Ok.. gonna go completely off topic now for this…

I want to do some mowing now.. but my Sears’s lawn tractor needs a new right front rim.  OK, so lets go to the garden center and get one.. The have the complete tires there for 28$ .. but they are for every lawn tractor BUT Sears makes.  Hmm, OK, we will go the farm supply store.. they have everything mower and tractor wise there.  but no.. they have nothing for a Sears make mower.

Well, maybe a different wheel will work, they are the same size at least.. lets see what the axle diameter is. All the wheels I am finding.. 5/8″.  A pretty common and standard size.  What is the diameter of the Sears tractor?  25/32″!  Argh!  They can’t even keep one SIMPLE shaft the same common size of EVERY other freakin lawn tractor out there!@!

Ok, so where can I get this rare wheel then… well, from Sears only and for 56$ just for the RIM!  Everywhere else it is 28$ to 32$ for the rim, tube, tire and inflated ready to go!

I have two more places to check… then I will just have to bite the bullet and spend more for less.. thank you Sears.. and for my recommendation.. do NOT buy “Sears brand tools” if you are wanting to keep them a few years.. rare, Sears only parts will kill you.

Reguardless of what Import Cartography thinks (though I did not see that till Datum Shift posted about it, no 3DConnexion did NOT send me a SpaceNavigator just so I could give them a great writeup. They had sent me one so that I could help their developers fine tune a plug-in for World Wind so that the SpaceNavigator would work with in World Wind.

Yes, they could have done it without my assistance. But they wanted a user / developer from the World Wind community to assist them. So they contacted the NASA World Wind project manager and he in turn asked on the World Wind Developers list and I said I would help out and he let the people at 3DConnexion know I would assist them.

I never promised them anything on my blog, they never asked for anything as well. But you have to know by now that if it is World Wind related.. I am gonna talk about it And this makes up for what I promised I wouldn’t talk about.

But really.. I am not a full “GIS Blogger/User” .. Manifold, ESRI, etc.. does not get talked about here (much)… so Manifold (or anyone else) sending me their program/product to blog about is not gonna happen, if it does, I would be more than amazed. And any other software packages I could talk about in relation to World Wind are all free to begin with, so no gain there for anyone, other than how to use it for a task.

Hopefully, this nips any ideas people had in the bud.

James pointed me to this blog post this morning.. since I had been wondering how well WWJava would run on the iPhone (you will note I have not said word one about that “future flop”). Well, this post has a very interesting quote from Jobs..

Markoff: “And what are you thinking about Flash and Java?”

Jobs: “Java’s not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It’s this big heavyweight ball and chain.”

Ok, Java is worthless and no one uses it…
Hey Jobs.. ever hear of a project called World Wind Java? Has a few million dollars for development and can run as a standalone application AND in a web browser.
Java is developed for and IS used by many, many people. Thank you for making me not like Apple anymore (well, the Apple commercials have made me hate Apple just by being so stupidly annoying).