Pre-Conference Palate Cleanser

As we get ready to head out to Colorado for the 2008 NSGIC Conference, here's an interesting new experiment in art, culture and geography from Yahoo and Flickr: the ybike.

Librarian-activist and web-stuff speaker Jessamyn West posted the photo at right recently in a post titled "the internet got you a bicycle?"

It’s basically a purple bicycle with a cell phone and a solar powered battery charger. The cell phone has a camera and a GPS unit and is mounted behind the handlebars. The bike takes a photo a minute when it’s moving.

The photos are posted to flickr, with a "ybike" tag and geospatial information that feeds flickr's photo map application.

A number of these bikes have been passed out. Aside from Jessamyn's, I have found bike photo's from Eddie (who also posted pictures of the bike and its auto-camera components), Josh, dogseat, tarikh, and folks at the flickr offices.

It looks like they have covered Vermont, New York City and San Francisco (at least). If they want a steady stream of photos of beautiful downtown Dover, Delaware, at Lunchtime, maybe they should send me a bike too.

My doctor and my blood-pressure monitor would approve.