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"You could say that the city is showing common sense in not trying to take a useless step."

Professor Ralph Stein, who tracks Homeland Security issues at Pace University, on New York City's decision not to blur images of the area in Google Maps. He made the comment in yet another Google Maps censorship story this time at WCBS-TV. In addition to this statement, the TV station provided another valuable statement:

"Google uses images from a state database, which is why Westchester was able to censor them. Yahoo! Images come from a private sector company."

Global Wildlife Disease News Map Version 2

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 2:21pm CEST

Tags: google

USGS and partners launched Global Wildlife Disease News Map Version 2 back in March; version 1 was out last December. To be clear this is a news map (Google Map mashup), not a map of disease, but a map of news on disease. So, when you "turn on" avian flu, you get a hit in Ohio. Strange, I thought, didn't hear about that. Of course not! The article in the local paper was about how cows tested negative.

Even though I read the title with "news" in it several times, I kept thinking this was a map of spread. The other disappointment is that all news is tagged with point markers color coded to geographic level. Different colored "tears" mean: Place, County, Administrative Unit, Country, Continent. While I know creating meaningful polygons is a challenge, I found this confusing. I'd prefer they not symbolize for geographic level and let users explore that when they mouse over, more like MetaCarta's GeoSearch News.

Details of how the app works are here. In the works: search by date range, user generated filters (queries I guess), more historic data, extraction of text.

Google Maps Organizes More of Google's (not the world's) Information

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: google

Now there's more to find when searching on Google Maps - including images (Panoramio not Picassa), user generated maps (MyMaps), videos (YouTube). The limitation, reports VentureBeat, is that only documents from Google properties are included.

Microsoft Offer Citizen Services Platform Free to Municipal Govs; Soon VE templates

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: microsoft

The Citizen Services Platform allows local government to create Web-based electronic government services. It's available to local and regional governments without fee, but they need to run"a Microsoft computing environment" for it to work.

For now it comes with:

E-Councilor templateA Windows Live Agent that allows messenger communication with a virtual government worker to ask questions.

Web TV template Allows government and citizen video hosting in Web 2.0 style.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 templates A set of 40 templates to customize scenarios that address site and system administration needs.

Local government communications template Sample portal with intranet and extranet templates.

Role-based My Site template Designed for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the My Site functionality.

Agenda Management template Allows organizations to streamline processes.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM templates for municipal governments Vertical templates, including reference data models, predefined work flows and role-based user experiences.

The interesting part: "a possible template incorporating Virtual Earth to give people localized, neighborhood-oriented services or access to information based on their geographical position."

- GCN

Final Day for Canadian Gov on MDA Sale to Alliant

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 4:15pm CEST

Tags: Geospatial business

Just about a month ago Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice rejected the proposed $1.3 billion sale of MDA's space and information systems divisions (maker of the Radarsat-2 satellite) to Alliant Techsystems Inc. The reason: there was no "net benefit" for the country.

Alliant had 30 days to respond and convince official otherwise. Today's the end of that period and it looks like the decision will stand. Alliant announces year end earnings today. It's expected charges related to the failed purchase will be applied to Q4 earnings.

- CBC

Consumer Reports Gives Garmin 3 of Top Five Satnavs

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 4:00pm CEST

Tags: Satellite Navigation

Rounding out the top five scoring units were the Garmin Nuvi 760 ($600), Garmin Nuvi 660 ($500), TomTom Go 920T, ($650), Garmin Nuvi 350 ($350), and Magellan Maestro 4250 ($400).

- Kansas City InfoZine

The OEMing of LBS

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 3:36pm CEST

Tags: Navigation

Wow, it's getting deep as everyone wants to brand location-based services. This article (in GovTech) on a AAA/Motorola app drove it home to me.

The Motorola MOTORAZR 2 V9m phone equipped with AAA Mobile, gives users turn-by-turn audio navigation and visual route maps. Powered by Networks in Motion, the AAA Mobile application is available on several GPS-enabled cell phones and smartphones via Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Alltel.

So, Motorola wants its name on a cool phone with a cool app. AAA wants its name on the app. NIM wants to be the technology provider. Oh, and NIM white labels deCarta's services. This is going way beyond the days of Intel inside!

Terraserver.com Sues Microsoft over TerraServer-usa.com

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 3:17pm CEST

Tags: microsoft

PCWorld carries the story.

In short:

Microsoft's TerraServer-USA satellite imagery project has been slapped with a trademark lawsuit from a small North Carolina company with a confusingly similar name.

Terraserver.com filed the suit on Friday in North Carolina federal court, seeking monetary damages and asking that Microsoft be stopped from using the TerraServer name.

Like the MapQuest/NavQuest suit (big guy sues little guy), I hope this one (little guy sues big guy) goes nowhere. The sad part, as Robert McMillan, who wrote the story suggested to me while we discussed the matter, Microsoft could just shut down Terraserver-usa.com, which would be a shame.

Ben Bernanke: Geographer

Posted: May 8th, 2008, 2:41pm CEST

Actually, The Economist describes him as a cartographer, but I think geographer is more correct.

SOUNDING more like a cartographer than a central banker, Ben Bernanke this week showed off the Federal Reserves latest gizmo for tracking Americas property bust: maps that colour-code price declines, foreclosures and other gauges of housing distress for every county. His goal was to show that falling prices meant more foreclosures, and to urge lenders to write down the principal on troubled loans where the house is worth less than the value of the mortgage. His mapswhere hotter colours imply more troublealso make a starker point. The pain of Americas housing bust varies enormously by region. Hardest hit have been the bubble statesCalifornia, Nevada and Florida, and parts of the industrial Midwest. The biggest uncertainty hanging over the economy is how red will things get.

CNN Exemplifies Problems with Static Web Services in Election Coverage

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 3:02pm CEST

Tags: Politics and Mapping

Yes, I too saw John King of CNN doing the "stretch and shrink" act on the touch screen last night and Paul Well's comments notwithstanding, I have a different take. What's going simply illustrates the problem that many users of web services, like Google Earth, are and will face when it comes down to wanting more than what it was designed to do.

First, King does a fantastic job and to the extent that CNN has the right statistics at his fingertips is quite good...for what it was intended to do. What is was NOT intended to do was get down into finer demographic detail and display additional political boundaries nor could it query the political districts for certain data that King so desperately wanted at his fingertips.

The CNN political geography map web service that they constructed becomes inadequate when situations like the one that occured last night for Lake County Indiana. Lake County had votes outstanding and was late in reporting results. Everyone is focused on this single county to give them the Clinton/Obama vote given the closeness of the primary election. And here's Mr. King manually drawing in the congressional districts with his finger to try to assess where he "expected" each candidate to have a better chance of pulling votes. It didn't work. The level of voting detail was not there for him to truly predict the results. What he was trying to do was to mark the congressional district boundaries and then overlay the satellite image to those boundaries to look as rural versus urban areas. Obama was pulling better statewide from the urban areas; Clinton from the rural, white communities.

It served as an example of what happens to the expectations of users who believe that a static, web service will do just fine until there is a need to drill into the details. We saw this happen to products like MapPoint 2000 when just simple thematic mapping quickly becomes inadequate when you try to do more advanced analysis and ask questions that it was never designed to accept. The same is true for the CNN Touch Screen. It doesn't have all the boundary data like congressional district maps or precinct maps (which I am sure will be needed eventually). And while the satellite maps are nice it, seemed like Mr. King was a little ill-prepared to describe the geography other than being able to point to rural vs. urban areas and found himself not knowing some of the geography (like the I90 toll road for which he was grasping). He really needed another overlay of the road network and additional POI data.

So, I continue to revel in the CNN coverage just because the maps are now a highlight of the evening..and yet there is so much more that could be done. Linking to live vote counts by precinct? You know it's coming.

Salesforce.com: User Interface as a Service?

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:51pm CEST

Tags: Location Intelligence

That's it's latest offering. Mashable explores it and it's a bit more than that - more like Yahoo! Pipes to me. If you want a map on your app you add a single tag to create it an pop it onto the dashboard.

Most interesting is Adam Ostrow's take on Salesforce.com, an actual company that makes actual money, in contrast to the many, well free toys.

Is it just me, or do the announcements we hear from Salesforce seem to just make a lot more sense than a lot of the tie-ups we hear about on the consumer side of the Web? Last month, the company announced a deal with Google to launch Salesforce for Google Apps, and from what Ive seen in my brief tour of Visualforce, were about to see a lot of really useful applications being cranked out by developers in the Salesforce community. It certainly adds more credence to the theory that Facebook apps are just for fun.

Too much mapping/doodling in CNN election coverage?

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:43pm CEST

Blogger Paul Wells (writing in a blog at Macleans) thinks CNN has overused its touch screen mapping driven by John King, the geospatial person of the year (Brian Timoney gets credit for that determination and he's quite correct).

CNN is giving one-quarter of its screen to the actual primary-night coverage and three-quarters to John King randomly doodling on the touch-screen. For, like, the last half-hour. Anderson Cooper and some talking head are doing the talking-head thing, tucked over on the left side of the screen, and King is randomly doing his Tom-Cruise-in-Minority-Report shtick, scrunching the map down with his thumb and forefinger, shifting county maps back and forth, scribbling with the Glowing Green Finger. On most of the screen. A month after CNN put the touch-screen on the map (and vice versa), they have now fetishized it past irrelevance and into annoyance.

Now theyve taken the actual people whose actual voices are doing the actual analysis offscreen altogether, so we can watch nothing but John King doodling distracetedly on his gigabyte Etch-A-Sketch. He doesnt even seem to realize hes on camera.

"People": TomTom Acquisition a Go; Expect Announcement on May 14

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:38pm CEST

Tags: Geospatial business

Bloomberg actually cited "wo people with direct knowledge of the case" on the matter:

The European Commission will clear the 2.9 billion-euro ($4.5 billion) purchase on May 14, a week before the regulator's May 21 deadline to rule on the transaction, said the people, who requested anonymity because the decision isn't public.

That'd be next Wednesday. TomTom of course said nothing.

The Challenges to LBS Social Networking

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:13pm CEST

Tags: Social Networking

Caroline McCarty at c|net offers up a great primer on the challenges facing location-enabled social networking by looking primarily at newcomer (in private beta) Brightkite, old hat Loopt, and older and Google-owned but rarely heard-from Dodgeball.

Key challenges:

- open the network to all or just some - should the app run on all phones, even ancient ones with no GPS and just texting capabilities? should the app be free? should the app be restricted to certain carriers? should you do a private beta and potential limit networks at startup?

- managing privacy and lists of friends - how do you keep annoying messages out of your "inbox"?

- where do you launch/grow such apps? business-y Web 2.0 (Brightkite was launched there) or social SXSW (South by Southwest, an arts, tech gathering) where Twitter took hold in 2007

Definitely worth a read if you are trying to figure out this space!

Quote of the Week

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 2:06pm CEST

"All the GIS stuff out there is generally designed for GIS projessionals."

- Stamen Designs co-founder Eric Rodenbeck in an article in The Inquirer (UK) on his company called "Map fetishist goes round the world and back" The company's interactive map typically have sliders and other interface tools to make reviewing large and complex datasets easy. See for example, Oakland Crimespotting.

NC Voters Not on Rolls; GIS to Blame?

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

A blogger posted the question: Why were so many voters who thought they were on the rolls in Granville County given provisional ballots because they were not on precinct list in North Carolina? The answer, suggested in a comment points to 911 and geocoding.

From talking with Don Wright, attorney at the State Board of Elections, it appears that Granville County has a problem in some precincts where people's names have not been included on the printout of the poll book. This is because the county's 911 system hasn't correlated hundreds of addresses to a GIS coordinate, and the GIS coordinate is what the state elections database system uses to assign voters to the correct precinct. So active voters, particularly with a Hwy 96 or Hwy 56 addresses, did not getting [sic] a precinct assigned to them in the voter registration database. When the county goes to print the pollbooks, precinct by precinct, these voters names don't get printed on any precinct's books.
I've looked at database now and there are roughly 600 voters in this situation.

Some cry conspiracy. I'm impressed folks figured this out so quickly.

GeoGraffiti - annotate locations with voice messages

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: lbs

Mashable introduces the startup GeoGraffiti which offers a now free tool to post a "voice mail" and associate it with a location (ZIP Code or lat/lon). It's accessible via the Web (Google Map) of phone. Bottom line from the "review": not sure what it's good for, but that's what we thought of Twitter.

If we could get the accuracy for the messages and use a GPS... I could see using it as a tool to create a "treasure hunt" sort of game or even audio instructions for a bike ride or run.

Podcast: Using NAVTEQ & DigitalGlobe Data with Oracle Spatial

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 9:20am CEST

Enclosure: [download]

Tags: Oracle

In podcast we invite you to learn how NAVTEQs vector map data and DigitalGlobes worldwide image data have been specially formatted for the Oracle Database, and how it can be used to enhance customers' business intelligence and enterprise applications. We will hear from Steve Lytle, a Senior Account Manager NAVTEQ and Jim Beckley, Director of Business Development for DigitalGlobe, as well as Jim Steiner, Oracles Senior Director for Server Technology. This podcast also provides an in-depth review of Oracle 11gs advanced geospatial features including support for 3D types and functions as well as Java programming with 3D and OGC web services such as WFST, WMS and the web catalog services.

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

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Was Autodesk the first public company to bring an open source geo product to market?

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 7:15pm CEST

Tags: Autodesk

Autodesk's VP Lisa Campbell makes that statement in an interview at GIS Development.
Continue reading "Was Autodesk the first public company to bring an open source geo product to market?"

Seeking Alpha: Buy GeoEye Now!

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 3:02pm CEST

Tags: Remote Sensing

Chris Fernandez says buy now, before earning are announced Friday. Why now?

- low valuation
- upcoming positive catalysts (earnings, DigitalGlobe IPO, launch later this year)

- Seeking Alpha

Realtor Buys out Mashup Technologists

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 2:29pm CEST

Tags: microsoft

The Realtor is John L. Scott Real Estate, one of the early implementers of Microsoft Virtual Earth for its business. (The company originally used ESRI and Google technology for its mapping.) Scott acquired nine person Real Tech, the consultancy that did the implementation work this week (press release, pdf, including Word markup...). Real Tech will become part of the in-house marketing team.

- Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Loopt and privacy, market and future plans

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 1:52pm CEST

Tags: Social Networking

E-Commerce Times interviews Brian Knapp, VP of Corporate Communications for Loopt, a carrier-based location-enabled social networking offering. Tidbits of note:

- targeting students/young urban professionals (those tuned in to "happy hour")
- no business users to date (save for non-biz use)
- working with many orgs to offer much privacy support
- differentiators: carrier-centric, automatically updates locations
- futures: current Facebook app, BlackBerry version coming, "excited" about iPhone potential

- MacNewsWorld

More on Brightkite

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Social Networking

ArsTechnica talked with founder and CEO, Martin May. Among the tidbits of note:

He used to work at Local Matters.

The business plan appears, down the road, to include anonymous maps of where users go - specifically to which businesses. Sounds like a "Dash" to track personal behavior. I understand how businesses would be interested in such data; how will Brightkite entice users to provide it? And provide it accurately?

For now locations are updated via Web or SMS.

Old Poll, New Poll

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Poll

Fifty readers answered our latest poll asking if you read corporate geoblogs.

Continue reading "Old Poll, New Poll"

Remote Sensing for Slimy Pools in Northern California

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Remote Sensing

Aerial imagery will be used to track neglected pools and ponds in Santa Clara County in the coming weeks. It's part of Vector Control, aka urban mosquito control, to prevent the spread of West Nile Virus. Planes start flying today. No word on if the imagery is reviewed manually or processed, but this is the third year it's been done. If a slimy pool/pond is found, owners are encouraged by the county to clean them up. The public responds well and to date the $1000/day fine has not been imposed.

- NBC 11

Podcast: Why is it so Hard to Sell Geospatial Technology to the Enterprise?

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 8:00am CEST

Enclosure: [download]

Tags: google

Senior executives from leading technology companies, speaking at our Location Intelligence Conference last week shared that the entire value proposition for spatial enablement is a "push" to the market rather than a "pull" or demand for the technology. Our editors ask: Are we doing an adequate job of selling the technology to more of the people that will eventually implement geospatial tools with other IT solutions.?Why is it still so hard? What are we not doing well? Will it take another "Google Earth" to push the technology deeper into corporate computing or a new crop of graduates to be more geospatially enlightened?

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.

No Map Dance for Microsoft, Yahoo

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 2:54pm CEST

Tags: microsoft

It's over for now between Microsoft and Yahoo (Microsoft abandoned their takeover attempt for Yahoo today), and while you won't see either company's mapping technology mentioned in the reports about the takeover attempt, location technology lurked in the background. Why? Well, the bid for Yahoo by Microsoft was all about strengthening the online presence of Mr. Softy. It's all about advertising, and not just online advertising. ALL ADVERTISING.
Continue reading "No Map Dance for Microsoft, Yahoo"

Twisney - another step forward for mashups?

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Social Networking

Some time ago I noted how the next step in mashups (after map mashup 1.0 - putting locations on a map) was sites making their own data. I typically pointed to Zillow as an example. And, you could add any site that included user generated or user corrected data, I suppose. This week I ran into a mashup that is another sort of next step for geospatial mashups: Twisney.com It's built off Twitter, Flickr and Virtual Earth and from that you can probably guess that it's a way to post real time pics/comments to a map of Walt Disney World.

Users send images (via Twitter or e-mail) and put a location/comment in the subject. The site extracts keywords for locations (there's a reference list, but most things you'd think of should work; if they don't real humans figure out the location) and posts the images 'in real time' on the map. By default no contact address/real name is used, but optionally it can be included. There's no registration to use the service, nor a this time, a business model.

A few things make this mashup interesting:

- limited geography
- keywords (not GPS, or any other location technology involved)
- basic e-mail works; more tech savvy folks can use Twitter
- Disney not involved (too bad for them; it'd be a neat addition for its marketing!)
- quick growth with almost no PR (I found one article dated Apr 25 as I write May 3)
- can you imagine this for say the ESRI user conference?

Big shout out to For Immediate Release for noting this app. Frankly, I'm learning more about social networking from that podcast than from just about anything I read. Kudos to Shell and Neville (they are the hosts).

GIS Use in Crime Feels Burden of its own Success

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: MapInfo

Use of GIS in crime analysis has grown to 23 analysts in Toronto since its introduction in the early 1990s. The data is delivered as "electronic bulletin boards" (not something I'm familiar with) to staff in the field and in patrol cars. Apparently, these are static maps; the hope is to make them interactive using MapXtreme and to integrate other data sources.

And were looking to give the frontline officers the ability to [query directly] and drill down further.
...
Analysts also have limited ability to bring in data from different sources. What we are working toward is some type of metadata layer that allows us to...tap into the various different data sources regardless of where they are and be able to display that spatially or in a tabular format, [the services crime analysis training and development coordinator Det. Constable Manny ] San Pedro said.

Sure sounds like users are convinced of GIS use; now it's time to update the technology.

- GCN

Where GIS Gets Lost: Interoperability

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Standards

That's the premise of Patrick Marshall's article in GCN. He sites high GIS use based on an April survey but offers no figures on interoperability problems. He does however cite specific interoperability problems due to how geocoding is done.

In an April GCN survey, two-thirds of respondents said their agencies already use GIS applications, and most said they expected to use more geospatial data in the next five years. Surprisingly, 67 percent of respondents also reported that their organizations were already using location-based services for tracking vehicles or other assets.

Although hundreds of geospatial applications are blossoming at the federal, state and local levels, they have been developed in large part independently, without common standards.

As a result, an application developed by one organization often cant digest and work with data collected by another.

There's an exploration of HSIP and its limited availability to all levels of government due to licensing restrictions and query challenges. More interesting is how Sam Bacharach of OGC explains how its standards work, but are not always used.

However, just because most software supports OGC interfaces doesnt mean that a consultant or vendor will use them. They know [their own interfaces] better, and its to their competitive advantage to keep you tied up with their proprietary interfaces, Bacharach said.
So he said he advises implementers to insist that any application be customized to use standard interfaces.

Is sharing user generated content social networking?

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Satellite Navigation

I ask that question based on a discussion of POIFriend.com, a site that let's anyone share points of interest with others for use in websites and GPS units. There are social aspects - visitors can comment, join groups, create avatars, and send updates to those who originate POI lists. Is that enough to make it a social networking site?

Also noteworthy: the site's business model: paid listings, but no ads.

- Digital Journal

Use your body as a mouse for gaming? How about map navigation?

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Popular Science describes a new camera that uses lasers to bounce waves off bodies and a camera to record the reflections. That allows it to track track body movements and even create an avatar in 3D. it can be used to drive the controls of video games and I'd guess mapping apps. I guess that means you could take that near holodeck-like walk in the Rockies or down the bike path here in Somerville. Tech Review offers more details of the technology.

via Tech Universe

Top Ten Things I learned at LI 2008

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 9:00am CEST

Tags: Location Intelligence 2008

10. Location-based marketing, for trade shows at least, can passively capture information otherwise missed from standard lead management systems. The use of active RFID tags and ultra wideband sensors can capture the who and how long of people that are standing in front of your booth on a trade show floor and you dont even have to talk to them. The Ubisense/Fish Software demonstration of RFID provided a context for better understanding the use of sensor technology where before I could only read about it.

Continue reading "Top Ten Things I learned at LI 2008"

Quote of the Day: "Mashups have done more for this industry..."

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 8:15am CEST

Tags: Location Intelligence 2008

At LI 2008, Dr. Robert Uleman of IBM suggested that "Mashups have done more for this industry than two decades of sending out products into the world."

Quote of the Day: "GIS should be invisible..."

Posted: May 5th, 2008, 8:10am CEST

Tags: Location Intelligence 2008

At LI 2008, Berk Charlton of Pitney Bowes Group 1 suggested that "GIS should be invisible." Going further to illustrate his point about how the success of location technology will be underscored when "people don't know that GIS has been done to them."

Review: Google Earth powerful, though tricky to use, share

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 4:56pm CEST

Tags: google

That's the title of Anick Jesdanun's review from the AP. Not only did he have a challenge getting his photos into Google Earth (that is on the map) but the recipients of his link of a journey in the souther hemisphere didn't fair as well as they might have in reviewing those photos.

As a nice complement to this review consider a poll at LifeHacker about Google Earth use.

I love that Google Earth (and friends) has raised the bar for providers and users. I simply don't use it.

What if Apple adds GPS to iPhone?

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 4:14pm CEST

Tags: lbs

There's no official word from Apple about a GPS chip in the upcoming version, but one of the major location providers for the (jailbroken) phone, Navizon, is not worried if the addition should come to pass.

We think it will be good and bad for us," Navizon CEO Cyril Houri said in an interview Thursday. The bad means that many iPhone users won't think they can benefit from Navizon's cellular triangulation product, VirtualGPS. The good means that more users will understand the widespread benefits offered by positioning systems.

iPhone users hold 350,000 of Navizon's 600,000 users. No word on how many pay for the premium service ($24.95 adds better accuracy, route tracking and more, etc.).

- InformationWeek

GTA4 Google Map

Posted: May 2nd, 2008, 2:44pm CEST

Tags: google

I've been following some of the overlap between the worlds of gaming maps and real world maps. Today the big news in the gaming world is that there's a Google Maps version of the fictional Liberty City, home of the game Grand Theft Auto. That game's fourth edition was just released. The interactive map allows players to map out POIs and note their routes.

The one oddity in coverage of this map, hosted at IGN: many blogs explain that Google and IGN put the app together. There's no evidence of that; it seems IGN just used the API, like any other developer.

- Electric Pig.tv

Audio Stories for SatNav "Tied" to Location

Posted: May 1st, 2008, 3:56pm CEST

Tags: Satellite Navigation

The project is called 230 Miles of Love (that's the length of the UK's M6 highway). You can download, for free, "satcoms" short skits, that play (manually or automatically, depending on your satnav device). Some stories, reports the Guardian blog are more location connected than others. Donations for charity are accepted. I'm not sure how compelling this is, but clearly folks are looking for new ways to link "new media."

WunderMap - Google Maps + Weather Underground

Posted: April 30th, 2008, 6:09pm CEST

Tags: google

I've been an Accuweather person (they are from Penn State, after all) but this WunderMap, a Weather Underground based Google Maps mashups is very nice. Not only did it locate me and provide local weather, but the interface is clear and elegant, with spot temperatures in colored circles. I also like the option to turn on and off five different layers. The site went live yesterday.

- Digital Trends

Geostartup WineMap.org's Business Proposition

Posted: April 30th, 2008, 5:54pm CEST

Tags: Geospatial business

Jordan Thomas started WineMap.org, an Internet business that matches grape growers with buyers. This week he pitched it to potential investors. Here's his status:

Thomas and his partners already have put $400,000 of their own money into the two-year-old business. They're looking for another $700,000 to take it to the next level, Thomas said.

WineMap.org has the potential to revolutionize the $3 billion annual winegrape market, he said. It allows growers to show their vineyard locations online and offer their grapes for sale.

Growers will pay WineMap $1,200 per year, less than half of what it would cost to sell through a broker, Thomas said.

So far, about 1,500 growers are using the Web service, representing 3,000 vineyards in California and Oregon.

- press democrat

Quote of the Week

Posted: April 30th, 2008, 5:23pm CEST

"GIS is really a powerful tool, because unlike a product like Google Maps, which is just a visual image of the overhead, GIS is linking maps with data. And the thing about these maps is they are going to be such an extraordinarily high level of quality compared to any one you can look at on the Web."

Mexico City Manager (Missouri) Todd Thompson during a meeting to vote on sharing the county's GIS system. The implementation will use Pictometry.

- Mexico Ledger

MapWii - Find Local Wii Players

Posted: April 30th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: google

You can play Wii games with others online, but latency means that sometimes there's a bit of delay. The good news is that if you choose players closer by, that latency decreases. So, how to find local players? MapWii. You won't get too local too fast with this Google Maps app. First you pick a country, then a sublevel (state in the U.S.). When I ended up in Massachusetts, many of the folks don't seem to have any Wii games.

The site has been up for some time, but I point it out because it's a situation where geography still matters!

via AppScout

UAE Plans Remote Sensing Satellite

Posted: April 30th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Remote Sensing

The Inquirer reports that the UAE is planning to launch a remote sensing satellite. Details are sketchy, but the paper reports:

[Senior military official from UAE] Brigadier Khalifa Mohammad Al Rumaithi, told Gulf News of plans to launch a satellite in conjunction with other GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE).

Speaking at the Defence Geospatial Intelligence conference, the UAEs Chief of Military Works at the Armed Forces, noted that a lot of progress has already been made on the Satellite, dubbed Dubai sat1, which the UAE says is for peaceful and civilian purposes only.

It will purportedly be able to help the country with urban development planning and infrastructure by providing accurate maps and be useful in management of potential natural disasters. It's not for spying, honest.

KiwImage Contract Signed

Posted: April 30th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Remote Sensing

"The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) signed a contract with Sinclair Knight Merz Pty Ltd (SKM) at Defence House in Wellington today as part of the KiwImage project." The project entails gathering 60 centimeter imagery for the two main islands and others New Zealand controls. Where will the image come from? I think DigitalGlobe, though the article says "Global Image."

- Scoop.nz

Tele Atlas Finalist for Social Responsibility Award

Posted: April 30th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

The data company is among five finalists for the New Hampshire Businesses for Social Responsibility's Cornerstone Award.

- Seacost Online

UK's Yotta Acquires US-based Mobile Video

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Remote Sensing

The deal ran $4 million and opens the door to US growth for Yotta, a technology group Oxford Metrics plc. Yotta is leading the way in highway imaging in the UK. It aims to support highway departments and mapping organizations around the world. Who is Mobile Video?

Mobile Video, which was founded in 1986 and is based in Kansas City, Missouri, captures geospatial images of properties for tax administrators, GIS departments and the emergency services. It employs some 40 staff operating a fleet of 16 field vehicles across the US, and manages several contracts with local government agencies.

- M and A Deals

Candidates Tackle GIS in Race for Lake County (IN) Surveyor

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Open Source

The incumbent is pro GIS having invested in it quite a bit. The Gary Post-Tribune describes it as "a computer mapping system similar to Google Earth that can put large amounts of information into an interactive map."

Two others want to cut back on the GIS budget. One candidate wants "to "slash" spending on the GIS, and build it with free software, rather than the proprietary software used by the county's consultants."

Another wants the focus to be on flooding thus he said, "I don't think (GIS) should be a priority."

It says quite a lot about the state of geospatial that such issues should be raised to the public during a local election.

Where to search queries come from?

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Yahoo

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land details a paper from Cornell and Yahoo titled Spatial Variation in Search Engine Queries. The idea is to map the "centroid" of search queries. What's the center of the search for the Red Sox? Other teams? Pretty much what you'd expect. Other queries, such as about hurricanes change at the storm moves. Interesting, but how's it useful? I guess it could be used as another "context" valuable to determine the type of query of its not clear.

Free (somewhat dated) ZIP Code Data

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

The ZIP code database contained in zipcode.csv [zip file] contains 43204 ZIP
codes for the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico,
and American Samoa. The database is in comma separated value format,
with columns for ZIP code, city, state, latitude, longitude, timezone
(offset from GMT), and daylight savings time flag (1 if DST is observed
in this ZIP code and 0 if not).

...
The database and this README are copyright 2004 CivicSpace Labs, Inc.,
and are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
license, which requires that all updates must be released under the same
license.

It's about four years old, but free is free!

- Mapping Hacks

Galileo Giove-B Safely in Orbit

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: GNSS

The satellite is the second experimental satellite in the constellation. The EU is going forward with the GPS competitor and B will take over for "A" launched in 2005, as it hits and of life.

- UPI

Maps in the Media Update

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Backpacker (at one time my favorite magazine - from which I stole "The View from Here") offers a new website with some geo-goodies:

Featured prominently on the homepage and the destinations page is a new interactive Flash map directing users to more than 1,200 edited and approved GPS-supported hikes, from the Appalachian Trail to the Pacific Crest Trail. Another 10,000 trips are accessible to site users. The hikes, which are submitted by volunteer Backpacker readers and staff contributors, can be searched by city, state, park, and long trail.

...

Tech-savvy participants can also upload GPS tracks, geotagged photos, and Google Earth screenshots.

- press release

The National Geographic Channel also launched a new website.

Of the changes to the site that are most readily apparent, the new Nat Geo schedule application presents viewers with a more intuitive calendar of show descriptions, allowing users to navigate through programming descriptions via a drag-and-drop fashion thats similar to how visitors engage with Google Earth.

I don't understand how this interactive calendar (while sexy!) is similar to Google Earth.
- MediaWeek

Podcast: Do You Think Spatially?

Posted: April 29th, 2008, 8:00am CEST

Enclosure: [download]

Tags: gis Jobs

An interactive session at a recent regional GIS event (see article) prompts our editors to explore how we are trained in GIS and how and if we use spatial thinking in our day to day work. Are we just pushing buttons and following recipes or are we truly using the underlying ideas of how people, places and things behave in space? Does it matter if one is trained in geography vs. GIS vs. another discipline? What's the future look like for those skilled (or not) in spatial thinking?

Reminder: Early Registration for NYS Geospatial Summit Ends Wednesday

Posted: April 28th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Conferences

The one day (with an optional evening reception the night before) is a must-attend for those who can get to Skaneateles Falls (pronounced "skinny atlas") on May 20 and 21. I'm honored to be invited back to speak this year.

The agenda and registration info are online. If you want to attend, act fast; it's a small intimate venue with limited seats. And, as I've noted in years past - this is not your average geospatial event. It's all plenary (we all see all the sessions together) with topics a bit outside the norm. It's a refreshing way to knock the cobwebs out of your head.

USDA Hardiness Zone Map - Coming Soon

Posted: April 28th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Living on Earth (NPR radio show) asked the question of why it's been 18 since the last one.

GELLERMAN: So why hasn't the United States Department of Agriculture released a new hardiness zone map in almost 20 years? I put the question to the USDA's Kim Kaplan.

KAPLAN: Well there's actually been no set interval between any two editions of the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. One of the things that drove this one, frankly, is that the government printing office called and told us they were out of the old one, and should they print the same one again or were we going to do a new one. Because the old one was done in 1990 and predates the internet, it was not digital, and we knew we wanted to go to something that was state-of-the-art something GPS, GIS compatible, much more detailed and much more sophisticated and most importantly web-friendly.

It's expected in months not years.

Nike Patent Indicates Future of Nike+ iPod Options for Fitness

Posted: April 28th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Tags: Patents

iPodNN reports on a new Nike patent suggesting the company will be enhancing the Nike+ Ipod fitness options. Now the shoepod simply tracks pace and distance (based on your stride and time). New versions may include other sensors for heart rate, EKG, hydration (how do they measure that?) and perhaps GPS. There may be options for the device to interact with an iPhone or computer and show motivational video.

I lost my Garmin ForeRunner (GPS watch) last fall and have yet to replace it. My iPod shuffle is however my constant companion when I travel on public transportation or do long runs on my own. Anything small enough to clip to my hat for 3 hours of entertainment, and not be impacted by heat, cold, sweat and the odd drop on the floor, is ok by me.

Arbor Day and the Geography of Urban Trees

Posted: April 28th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

Los Angeles, like many other cities, has a goal for planting trees. But it's tough to be an urban tree - no soil, sidewalks crowding you, people stapling things to you... The Washington Post, in honor of Arbor Day, the last Friday in April, discusses many of the initiatives and challenges.

And, then there's the geography of urban trees:

Driving around Los Angeles in his Prius is Andy Lipkis, the founder of TreePeople, one of the nation's most experienced organizations of "citizen foresters," who is helping Mayor Villaraigosa reach his million mark. Lipkis points to shady boulevards lined with ficus trees and then to entire neighborhoods devoid of any shrubbery at all, and he confirms what satellite imagery tells us: Poor people don't have plants. The thinnest tree cover is, no surprise, over the city's most impoverished neighborhoods. Where ritzy Bel Air has 53 percent canopy coverage, gritty South Central has only 7 percent.

And, then there's the challenge of finding spots for new trees:

When Los Angeles launched its "Million Trees LA" project, it was assumed there would be plenty of room, but as it turns out, "the space is actually quite tight," says McPherson, the scientist with the Forest Service who surveyed the city's bio-inventory with the help of aerial reconnaissance and computer algorithms. McPherson found just 1.3 million spots to "realistically" plant in Los Angeles, most in the yards of private homes.

Presdo - simple meeting setup - with Maps

Posted: April 28th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

TechCrunch offers a review of Presdo, a simple meeting scheduler. You start with plain English: "Meet Ray for a run on Sat am in Arlington." It populates fields, offers up suggested times and locations. Then you can send off an e-mail with an invitation and sync the data with a calendar app. The guy behind it, Eric Ly, was a co-founder of LinkedIn.

While I love the idea - I feel overwhelmed by how many of these "life management" widgets one might need to keep life in order. I'm still using my head for most of it.

Public Transportation Site HopStop Gets Investors

Posted: April 28th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

The money (unknown amount) is from Quigo Technologies co-founder Yaron Galai. Why invest in yet another "directions" service? In short, Google doesn't do a great job. HopStop is now available on the Web, mobile and with some voice instructions for Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and its hometown of New York. I still have trouble with the name...

- Venture Beat

A quick round of geo comments on Twitter

Posted: April 28th, 2008, 1:00pm CEST

I'm keeping an eye, at a distance, on twitter. I follow one person (Leo Laporte) and to be honest, it's not that valuable to me, though I love his podcasts. (TWiT every week!)

Still, with the Tweet Scan tool to search tweets (the 140 character messages sent on the network) you can get a feel of what's going on geo-wise on Twitter. Here are some quotes:

macmark9 : Learning the GIS program suite is worse than a newbie learning Photoshop!

JasonCIBERrec : Recruiting for a GIS Programmer in Memphis, TN

mbigmistake : Taking an all-day GIS class. I remember more than I thought and it will be more useful to get the software than I imagined.

bingkafei : OMG. I have just discovered GRASS [grass.itc.it).] How did I never hear about this during the zillions of GIS-based classhours I had?!

rexboto : trying to explain to someone how to add my data to GIS Explorer....dadadumb!!!

twoodwar : the Arc GIS user experience is like being assaulted by a frozen penguin- maybe it's just me

Podcast: Oracle Spatial and Utility Applications

Posted: April 28th, 2008, 9:59am CEST

Enclosure: [download]

Tags: Oracle

Oracle is rapidly location-enabling many of its business applications so that users can access, visualize, query and analyze spatial information together with non-spatial information in the same enterprise database, from the same familiar application environment.

In this podcast, learn firsthand how Oracle Utilities is taking advantage of Oracle Application Server MapViewer, Oracle Locator and Oracle Spatial in utility industry applications. In addition, you'll hear how many of the Oracle applications that were acquired from Siebel, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft will use Oracle Spatial Technology. We will be speaking to Peter Turi, Director, Product Management, Oracle Utilities Work and Asset Management, and Jim Steiner, Senior Director, Oracle Server Technology.

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Other resources mentioned in the podcast:

Oracle Spatial

Oracle MapViewer

Oracle Spatial 11g Book

The podcast lasts 12 minutes.

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.

Despite Slowing Economy Trimble Hits Home Run in Q1

Posted: April 25th, 2008, 8:21pm CEST

Tags: gps

When word first started trickling in that the U.S. and global economies were slowing, Trimble (TRMB) saw its stock begin to slide and shed almost 46% of its value since its high of $43/share in the fall of 2007. But on news of its Q1 numbers, the company hit a home run showing a 24% gain over Q1 last year. Diving into the press release shows that indeed its engineering and construction business has shown some weakness but still grew 11%. Its mobile and field divisions saw the most impressive gains with 47% and 73%, respectively, two of the sweet spots for geospatial technology. The best news was that it is not forecasting any change to its original 2008 outlook.

Two new location-enabled mobile/social apps get funding/buzz

Posted: April 25th, 2008, 3:05pm CEST

Tags: Social Networking

Buzzd just got funding from Greycroft Partners and Monitor Ventures. It's a location-based city guide and social network service for mobile devices. The investment amount was not disclosed.

- RCRNews

BrightKite, though not being shown at Web 2.0 Expo, is getting lots of buzz. From WebWare: "It's a microblogging tool the likes of Twitter, Pownce, et al with some handy location-based features. What's the point you ask? It's got a whole lot more social networking built-in from the start. It also shares one of the things that made Meetro and Twinkle so cool, by letting you see what people around you are doing."

Another Look at Fed Use of Google/Microsoft Tools for Mapping

Posted: April 25th, 2008, 2:57pm CEST

Tags: google

Federal Times takes a look at agencies tapping into Google and Microsoft tools for mapping applications. Both companies, it reports, are tightlipped about who is using their tools. Also noteworthy: the article chides all the agencies as being behind Alabama, which uses Google Earth as the backbone of Virtual Alabama.

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