IBM is set to launch IBM Docs as part a collaborative service similar to Google Apps that it is calling the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. As part of the effort, IBM is placing its LotusLive services under the SmartCloud name, which now encompasses IBM’s “smarter commerce,” brand, analytics and industry specific solutions such as its Smarter Cities efforts.

I’ve spent a good part of the last day of Christmas holidays playing around with the computer. Well, not so much playing as learning some new stuff in Lightroom 3, which triggered exploring a whole bunch of other stuff, mainly around GPS, geotagging and the iPhone. You see, Lightroom exposes the GPS metadata of a picture and there is a small little arrow next to the GPS coordinates that launches a Google Map of where that photograph was taken. Similarly, geotagged photos sent to photo sharing sites like Flickr use this GPS info to put your photo on the map.

While iPhone photographs are self-geotagging (GPS coordinates can be automatically associated with the picture when it’s taken) my other cameras, like the Canon 7D, can’t do this on their own. It is possible to geotag photos from DLSRs like the Canon 7D and store that information as part of the image but there are quite a few different approaches and hardware/software options to get the job done.

After a little googling around and reviewing a number of approaches, I settled on gps4cam, an iPhone app, to help me get the job done. Primary criteria were low cost, after all this is the post-Christams period, it had to be easy to use, preferably self contained, not requiring yet another online service and be easy to use in my Lightroom workflow.

The 2D bar code in the picture is my 1st test of gps4cam and it contains GPS locations sampled on a 5 minute interval of my afternoon photo shoot expedition to Whittier Park. At the end of your “photo trip” you export the GPS information from the iPhone and it produces one or more 2D bar codes, which you simple photograph and add to the photos that you’re planning to geotag. The photos are then processed with the gps4cam desktop software. It looks at your photos and finds the 2D barcode info and extracts the GPS data and then inserts the appropriate GPS data into the appropriate photo, it’s simple “magic”!. The nice part is that you don’t need to synchronize the clock on the iPhone with the clock on the camera, which is what a lot of other solutions require when using a GPX file to attach the GPS info to a photo.

So far, I’m quite pleased with the gps4cam software and I’m looking forward to testing it out on a longer photo shooting expedition.

Have not got around to writing much (anything) about our late fall road trip to several national parks in Utah, but here is a photo from Sunset Point In Bryce Canyon National Park.

After the New Year, expect employees at every level to bring iPads, Android tablets, and smartphones into work, looking to get on the corporate network.

When that happens, IBM wants to make sure its customers will be ready, Kevin Cavanaugh, VP of IBM Collaboration Solutions, said in an interview this week. Last year, the joke was that many a CEO came back from the Christmas break with a new iPad that he expected to be able to use for work. When that happened, the CIO and IT team wouldn’t “want to say no, except that they’d just been working on a policy to ban these devices,” he said.

The executive iPad is just the most visible symbol of the unstoppable trend toward the consumerization of IT and the trend toward employees bringing their own devices to work, Cavanaugh said. IBM has responded by delivering enterprise software that runs on these devices, whether they are owned by the enterprise or not. IT may not welcome the chaotic state of the mobile technology market, but mobility looms increasingly large in enterprise technology planning.

Then the city created a dedicates lane on Assiniboine Ave. which caused a lot of controversy and in my opinion was a waste of money. Assiniboine was a low traffic street in the first place and bicycling on it was no problem.

Then one day a few weeks ago a bike lane shows up on St. Mary Ave.! Initially, this seems like a great thing, in fact just the day before I rode up the middle of two lanes of traffic and thought to my self “that was a little crazy”. And then there it was, my own dedicated lane, and for a day or two things were good.

Then things changed. St Mary has parking in the curb lane before 9am and lots of drivers cruise up the curb lane, encounter a parked car, and lane change with no regard to the bike lane or the bicyclist in the lane, that would be me! To top it off they frequently rounded the parked cars and then crossed over the bike lane again with no regard for the cyclist, to make a right hand turn onto a one way street.

I don’t think that bike lanes really help the cyclist all that much and I’d just as soon not have the false sense of security. Cycling on the road with cars, it’s always be ready for the unexpected.

Who is that guy on the head of the pack? Hey, it’s me! Lots of great pics of the event.

Well, more correctly, the eagles have landed. I was surprised this morning on my walk to the end of the road to see two heads in the eagle nest. They say that eagles mate for life and this pair has been returning to this nest for many years. Once endangered, we now see multiple eagles almost every day when we’re at the lake.

Speaking of the lake, we’re out for the first time in 2011 and in spite of all the changes in the forecast, Saturday turned out to be a beautiful sunny and warm (+10) day. The ice is still very thick in the 20″-24″ range, and I’m so glad I bought that ice auger a couple of years ago. Hacking through the ice with a pick axe, the way I used to do it, is a killer workout.. Cars & trucks are still driving on the ice roads, and ice fishing shacks dot the lake.

We enjoyed some time on the side deck in the sun with just tee shirts on. There is almost no wind and it was lovely and warm in the shelter of the cottage.

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