Somewhat more normal

Normality is slowly returning after the rush to get everything done and sorted for yesterday's Metamusic meeting. So here's a bit of a catch up on stuff.

Firstly, here is the concert call for a sonification piece for next year's ICAD. From the call we have
snip
.....Global data are ubiquitous - one finds them in every newspaper, and they cover a range of themes, from global warming to increasing poverty, from individual purchasing power to the ageing of the world's population......Closing the feedback loop by informing society about its current state and its development is a task that both scientists and artists have responded to, and this is the key point of this call......a basic dataset which includes 190 countries with geographical data (capital location, area), population numbers, and are extended by several basic social indicators such as GDP, access to sanitation and drinking water, and life expectancy.Using this reference dataset is mandatory: All submissions must include countries, capital locations, population and area data......
end snip

Here's another good one on prisoners and their ingenuity, will Kyrgyzstan be host to the next regional base for the US? The state of commercial satellite imagery. A cool gadget site, might be a little late for Christmas but still ...

Some interesting articles on Disaster Communication and a good piece on Common Alerting Protocol which is a very citizen centric approach to managing communications in times of emergencies. Visualisations are always a fun topic so here is a couple of examples and a really good one on Ethical Maps.

Other news in brief is that we've gotten a couple of shiny N770's from Nokia to do some evaluation, testing and hacking with, so thanks Sami!