CS Department Open House

The Computer Science Department Open House was on Friday. GroupLens, my research group, had five posters: two on Wikipedia, tagging, Q&A sites, and Cyclopath.

Katie Panciera is a Ph.D. student and the newest member of the Cyclopath team.

Alex Stuart is an undergraduate working on Wikipedia.

Jesse Vig is a Ph.D. student with some very nice tagging work going on.

Morten Warncke-Wang is a Ph.D. student working on Wikipedia.

Foreign Language Cyclopath Tweet Appears

Cyclopath is tweeted a few times a week, but never before in a foreign language. ig_fahrrad writes:

Klar, den Namen hat sich auch schon wer geschnappt: http://www.cyclopath.org/ #bikeculture @cyclopath

According to Babelfish, that's "Clearly, the names already who snatched itself". Hmm. "Someone's already taken the name"?

Summary

In case you missed the last half-dozen blog posts that I didn't write, here's a summary:

1. I attended the CSCW conference in San Diego, where I presented my paper, "Computational Geowikis: What, Why, and How", which was nominated for Best Paper and earned an honorable mention. My talk was very well received and cited as the "best talk of the conference" by at least one stranger.
2. I demoed Cyclopath to a standing-room-only crowd of ~50 city planners and other governmental types. They liked it.
   
3. I attended an HCI symposium in New York and gave a talk.
4. I gave my oral preliminary exam and passed, making me a Ph.D. Candidate. It will be official when all the paperwork that I was supposed to bring to the event is signed. ("Where's the paperwork?" "What paperwork?")
5. I moved reidster.net to a virtual private server, which is way faster and more reliable. E-mail service will follow soon (not that you'd notice any difference).
   
6. I bought a fancy battery charger with all kinds of buttons and modes. It's great.
   
7. My FW made incredible toffee, and I ate it.
   

Cyclopath Writeup in the Minnesota Daily

An article about Cyclopath was published on Tuesday in the Minnesota Daily, the University of Minnesota student newspaper. Brief excerpt:

Loren Terveen, associate professor in the computer science and engineering department, worked with Priedhorsky to get the project off the ground.

Terveen said Cyclopath creates several technical research challenges, including figuring out how to monitor geographic editing in a wiki and what tools are needed to edit a geographic entry.

“The tools you need to edit a map are more complicated than those for a text wiki,” he said.

p.s. It's getting cold, which means that the cat it getting cuddlier. The cat likes to sit on my lap even if I'm trying to type. This makes typing somewhat more difficult.

Reid on KMSP

I was interviewed about Cyclopath by KMSP ("Fox 9"), one of the local TV channels, for their 10:00 news on 10/14. Here's the video:



Some thoughts, carefully numbered but in no particular order:

1. The news people at KMSP, as a whole, know nothing about bicycling -- pedal misspelled as peddle, intro refers to the map as a way to "get off the streets" (the whole point of the cycling movement is to get accepted as traffic).
2. Talking to the press is fun.
3. Being interviewed by local TV news is extremely cursory. Few follow-up questions; basically it was "Tell your story. Go."
4. If you're interviewed for TV or radio, observe whether the interviewer is miked: if not, then remember that the questions will not be included in the final cut, and adjust your answers accordingly.
   
5. Overall, I thought the story was decent. Good publicity.

I also have a piece coming out in the Minnesota Daily on Tuesday. I'll blog about that too when it's out.

Cyclopath Publicity (updated)

A couple of minor publicity items for Cyclopath:

• An article written by Rick Moore for the University's internal news service: U researcher unveils 'geowiki' for cyclists. I'm not sure what the visibility of this is; I was told it would be on the U home page but have not seen it there in the past few days. This was the "Featured Article" in the Education and Outreach section of the (unfortunately Flash-based new) UMN home page; it never appeared on the home page itself, but was two clicks away.
  
• Robin Garwood, staffer for Minneapolis City Council member Cam Gordon, blogged the project on the official Second Ward blog: Cyclopath!

9/19 Radio Interview

Last Friday, I had a brief live interview with WCCO Radio about Cyclopath. Here's the audio (4 minutes): 2008-09-19_wcco.mp3.

More Cyclopath Publicity

Further publicity for Cyclopath: The project is (well, I am) on the front page of the CS Department web site. (Click for image for bigger.) Cool huh?

These news items also display on flat panel monitors the department has wasted thousands of dollars on installed throughout the building.

Mushrooms: In other news, I have another flush of mushrooms going -- 4 mushrooms, perhaps more. Pics on harvest sometime in the coming days.

Cyclopath Writeups in Both Major Twin Cities Newspapers

The Twin Cities are a two-newspaper town. The Pioneer Press also published a nice story about Cyclopath today. Excerpt:

Cyclopath is [...] a geographic wiki, which any user can edit. On a block-by-block basis, you can add, change or correct the roads, paths, bike lanes and even alleys and sidewalks over the seven-county area and rate them for bikeability.

You can add recommendations, warnings, comments and critiques. And you can add important landmarks, such as locations of ice cream vendors, bars, pizza joints, coffee shops, repair stores, drinking fountains and portable toilets, all from a bicyclist's point of view.

I like the Pi Press article slightly better because it describes Cyclopath's features more effectively, and also because it's the lead item, with a photo, on the Pi Press home page.

Other cool things happening this morning:

1. As a result of the publicity, I'm receiving requests to be a tester and/or to be notified when Cyclopath goes live every few minutes.
2. Cyclopath is on the Most E-Mailed list on the Star Tribune front page.
3. Cyclopath is #4 on the Most Viewed list on the Pioneer Press front page.
4. Cyclopath is #1 on the Most E-Mailed list on the Pioneer Press front page:

UPDATE:

Turns out the Pi Press article was on the front page!

Cyclopath Writeup in the Star Tribune

My project, Cyclopath, is featured in a story in tomorrow's Star Tribune. Excerpt:

It's the kind of spokes-to-the-street information that cyclists crave. Riders can rate road conditions block by block, enter text descriptions, pinpoint interesting places and fix faulty map data throughout the seven-county metro area. Then Cyclopath crunches the information and returns personalized routes based on a "bikeability" rating.

"There are lots of bike maps out there, and I think each of them have significant failings," Priedhorsky said. "Who knows where cyclists can go? Well, cyclists do, and they know better than anybody else."