How walkable is your address?

The Washington Post tipped me off to walkscore.com, a site that measures, on a scale of 0-100 the “walkability” of a location. It measures how many destinations are walkable from a give address. Below 25 is considered non-walkable, but the creators note that they are not considering factors such as safety, just “as the crow flies” distance.

I like to think I live in a very walkable area - and my score was 83. And, I learned that there’s a library across the street from me, at the city hospital.

GPS is everywhere; does everything

First GPS in China will somehow enable safe food for the upcoming Olympics. From the AP:

China said Monday it will use global positioning satellites to ensure food safety at the Beijing Olympics as it steps up efforts to blacklist manufacturers who violate safety regulations.

Wang Wei, an executive vice president of the Beijing Olympic Committee, said the high-tech system will monitor food production, processing factories and food hygiene during the games to make sure healthy food is delivered to the 10,500 athletes residing in the Olympic Village.

Those sounds like huge claims for the system, as I understand it. The claims of GPS in medicine, however, seem to be correct. From the Chicago Tribune:
The technology that enables this exceptionally accurate surgery uses three tiny “satellites,” [Dr. Kevin] Luke explained.

The devices, which transmit wireless signals to a computer, are inserted into the surgical incision and triangulate the exact position of surgical instruments and the anatomy of the patient.

Non-profit Provides City GIS

Palos Verdes on the Net is a non-profit that provides not only access to a classroom for community groups to learn computer skills, it also serves as a contractor to Rancho Palos Verdes (California) for things like creating and managing the city’s website, supporting city computers and doing its GIS work. A new addition will serve the growing GIS team which includes college and high school students as workers. ESRI donated $1.4 million in software licenses

What may be a unique arrangement in the nation - a city contracting with a nonprofit group for municipal services - has enabled Rancho Palos Verdes to become the only Palos Verdes Peninsula community to have a dedicated GIS department.

- The Daily Breeze

Podcast: The State of GIS Salaries and Employment

Last week URISA published the latest version of its salary survey. The document reveals not just that salaries are up, but that GIS departments are growing, and which technologies are in demand. This week our editors look at the some of the trends, which suggest a bright employment future for those in geospatial and related fields. The podcast is 15 minutes long and was recorded on August 6, 2007.

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