Irony in Galileo Launch

I just want to point out that this headline from several UK publications, regarding Galileo “UK helps to bring sat-nav to the masses” sort of contradicts this one from a blog on GPS: “GPS Enters the Mainstream.”

GIS Replaces Cheez-Its

To quote Dave Barry - “I’m not making this up!” So says, the New Jersey Times regarding GIS used to manage snow removal in Hamilton Township:

In winters past, the township’s public works employees used Cheez-It crackers on a paper map to track the progress of salt and plow trucks as they wended their way through town during a storm.

To be fair, there is a business side:

By sitting down with a map and determining the routes the plows will take, the township has been able to shave nearly 12 hours off the time it takes to plow every road in the township at least once - from 36 to 24 hours. And at least three hours has been saved on the time it takes to salt all 225 miles of primary roads throughout the township - knocking it down to an hour and a half.

NovaLIS in Receivership

The Chronicle Herald of Halifax, Nova Scotia reports that NovaLIS, a well-known ESRI third party developer of parcel applications has gone into receivership. According to the article it had more than $3.2 million in government funding and is owned jointly by ESRI Canada and Leica Geosystems. Gary Waters, once of ESRI Charlotte took over as president in late 2000 and left for a VP position at GeoFields just recently.

Earth Contest Goes Virtual in 2006

The folks at Earth Contest already have a game based on Google Earth. Recently, they announced a Big Game based on a virtual world with prizes that launches in January. Apparently, in both games, players find clues and solve them and try to defeat the GameMaster.

This is all well and good. However, after poking around the website and even looking at something called “tour” I’ve yet to see what the game looks like, what sort of clues are given - basically, anything that would entice me to play it. Sorry folks!

Geocoding City Perceptions

A survey team exploring how 400 citizens of Casper, Wyoming feel about the city will include the location of those interviewed. From the Casper Star Tribune:

Since the ETC Institute conducted the city’s last telephone survey, the company has, for an additional $1,000 atop a $4,750 fee, begun offering geocoding, also known as GIS mapping. It’s a way to determine if different Casper neighborhoods think differently about a specific topic.

It’s unfortunate there’s confusion between geocoding (finding lat/lon cooridates for a location (street address, ZIP Code) and GIS (a technology system for analysing location). It’s also interesting to note that doing the geocoding ups the cost by $1000.