Kickstarter: Zombie Based Geography Education

Update: fully funded as of 5/11/12. Next goal is being considered.

--- original post 5/10/12 ---

Aimed at 5-8th graders, David Hunter of Seattle's project involves a curriculum based on a Zombie Apocalypse. He's NOT a geographer but seems to have done his homework. He's looking for $5000 by June 1 with about $2000 funded by 72 backers as I post this. 

The intro video is below; a more detailed, longer one for teachers in on the website.

- Kickstarter page

- BoingBoing via reader Larry

U.S. House of Representatives Votes to Kill American Community Survey

Last night the U.S. House passed an amendment to the 2013 Dept of Commerce funding bill that would eliminate the Census' American Community Survey, ACS. We know of ACS as the replacement for the long form; it's  survey sent to a limited number of households not every ten years, but annually, to get a picture of U.S. communities for government funding and other purposes.

Those backing the bill suggest the ACS is unconstitutional. A previous amendment argued ACS should be made voluntary, which the Census believes would simply make collecting the data more expensive. In any case, the American Planning Association, and others, are mounting a campaign to ensure the Senate kills this part of the legislation and leaves the ACS be.

- APA blog via @urisa

- see also: The Hill blog

Google Maps for Android Gets Indoor Walking Directions, Deals

The indoor directions are quite limited; they are available in select airports, malls, and other businesses in the U.S. and Japan. These are the complexes Google announced maps for last November.

As for the deals, they include both "now" and "later" deals - but only in the U.S..

Now, while you're viewing a map, you can pull up a list of offers nearby or see them plotted directly on your map. What's nice is that the integration includes both instant-use offers (digital coupons, basically) and advanced purchase offers (similar to Groupons).

One final addition? Those photo of businesses that Google's been collecting as part of its Google Business Photos program are not available via the app.

- C|net

- Google Lat Long Blog

Pachube Gets Acquired, Gets New Name, Gets Real

Pachube, a vision for integrating sensors to build the Internet of things (my understanding, its definition is below), was acquired by LogMein back last July. I missed that but did note the service back in 2008 (APB coverage). Today, the company now only announces a new spellable, pronounceable name, Cosm (like the end of "microcosm" or the beginning of "Cosmos") but also some new features to make using the service easier. There's even a map of 1000 public sensors out in the world pumping data through the API.

Cosm, a realtime data brokerage platform for the Internet of Things, provides most of its functionality via its Application Programming Interface (API), rather than via the website itself. The API makes it quick and easy to create products that connect to the Internet of Things by offering sophisticated realtime data, history and user management tools for sensors, devices and environments around the world.

- Cosm Blog via @micheal_d_gould

Invasive Species Mapping and other Crowdsourcing GIS News

Locals in and around Saugerties, NY will add to  iMapInvasives,  New York’s online invasive species database, via a mapping party on May 8.

The event starts at the Town of Saugerties Library for an orientation and brief training. Next the volunteers will carpool to the Esopus Creek Conservancy’s Esopus Bend Preserve (EBP) to walk the woodland trails and map invasive species and will return to the library to view their real-time contributions to the database. Invasive plant ID guides and trail maps will be provided.

I think that last bit, about seeing their contributions added to the state database is vital.

- Suagerties Times

In Altadena, CA (always like the name of that city) the local Patch is asking readers to help build a map of dog attacks, after one earlier this week. The map is Google-based (still waiting for a MapQuest-based one!) and there are guidelines: don't use exact addresses and only post actual attacks. Patch is doing a lot of this work. I wonder if they are studying how well it works across its many papers?

- Altadena Patch

The Miwaukee paper asked readers to map their sentiment yesterday during the recall primary. I want to encourage Google or developers to build a decent legend solution for such maps.

- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel