The Public Lab community has had a great week of web advances! We're excited to announce some new online initiatives such as annotated mapping, updates to several of the web platforms and a broad selection of website related projects that you can get involved in. Plus, have you seen the research notes from this week? There are some really incredible ones on solar hot air balloons, a prototype that is now running for triggering two cameras with iPhone/CHDK and a new map of Webster Fish Weir in North Carolina.

1) Updates to Spectral Workbench. There is now a Spectral Workbench/PublicLaboratory.org unified login system so that you can simply login to the Workbench using your Public Lab username and password. If you need a quick catch-up on what people have been up to with the spectrometer, check out the spectrometry tool page.

2) Website task list. There is a long-list of great website related projects and fixes that have been compiled, assigned a team and given a basic description. However, there is alot of work to be done that requires diverse expertise including design, programming, "user" experience surveying and offline work such as creating a paper-based logbook. Please take a read through of the list and let the point person know if you are interested in helping out with any of the projects. All point people can be reached by emailing: name@publiclaboratory.org (for instance shannon@publiclaboratory.org)

3) Open Hardware Licensing. Remember awhile back when the switch to the CERN OHL license was announced with great enthusiasm? Well, we've made the transition, but to get 100% support, there are still 11 people left to contact to get full consensus. Maybe your name is on the list? Or maybe you know someone on the list? We'd appreciate the support of the community in reaching out to the last few folks and getting their agreement on licensing their past work on the site under the CERN OHL.

4) Kite Machine project. As we all love kites, we wanted to mention the work of a new Public Lab friend in NYC-- the Kite Collective. Tomorrow (sorry for all the last minute, awesome event notices), June 2nd, they will be meeting at 12:30 at the Rockaway Beach Club for kite demos, kite flying and (my favorite) kite magic! Flyer (click on the "updates" tab) and additional information on the project can be found here.

5) Last week we mentioned that more would be coming from the successful FarmHack in Lee, NH. Check out the 3d models and infrared imagery and ideas for calculating biomass that occurred this week.

6) Annotated maps. We're interested in hearing your thoughts through an ongoing conversation that people are having about annotating maps, for more information check out the notes thus far.

7) Bay area wine mapping. If you're in the Bay area, take a look at the recent call to help map vineyards in Mendocino which comes with the generous offer of vineyard camping, wine and food (I'm sold).

8) And last, but certainly not least, Research notes from the past week: Registering and processing photos acquired from two cameras (posted by nedhorning) Solar hot air balloons (posted by mathew) CHDK: Jpeg vs Raw (posted by Safidy) New map: Webster Fish Weir, Sylvia, North Carolina (posted by GonzoEarth, mapped by WATR team) Prototype running, 2 cameras triggering w/ iPhone/CHDK (posted by patcoyle) Air Column Monitor EcoHack II video (posted by shannon)

Thanks for another great week everyone! As always, please email the list, write a research note or email shannon@publiclaboratory.org if there is additional content that you would like included in the next newsletter.

Happy beginning to June, Shannon