Did you ever wonder if a white paper or your resume was opened and from where? Now you can embed a "tracker" in it and learn not just from where it was opened, but also for how long. DocChaser.com offers the "for now free" tool which while plot openings on a map and optionally e-mail you each time the document is opened. The example given in the press release is for a resume and the website asks "Are your customers — or competitors — reading your sales .DOCs?" I guess this is a sort of focussed, easy to use Web analytics tool for those who don't want to dig through other stats for such information.

The University of Victoria (Canada) began enforcing a "no smoking within 10 meters of buildings/structures" rule on Sept. 1. All buildings and vehicles are already no smoking. While second hand smoke is one issue, a second is building vents pulling the smoke into buildings.

How to communicate the distance away? There are no painted buffers but there is a map noting the boundaries on the campus online map. Further, this statement was meant to help the measurement challenged:

"It's 10 long steps, five spins of the wheelchair wheel or five lengths of your bicycle," said [associate vice-president, human resources Peter] Sanderson. "It wouldn't have made any sense to paint lines all over campus. They would have overlapped."

The article in the local print paper is fine. I'd like to have seen the online version offer a link to the map (pdf).

- Victoria Times Colonist

Haringey in the UK is trying to save energy and using thermal imaging to head that way. It hired a firm (two?) to fly over the city and map heat loss. Then the map was overlain with an Ordnance Survey street map and posted online. Voila, every can see in a thematic map who's home/building is losing heat!

From The Times:

They [Haringey Council] said that they hoped to use the maps to pinpoint the homes where grants should be offered and to identify empty properties that could be used to lessen the housing shortage.

See IT did the mapping, but Horton Levi and Hotmapping.co.uk did the imaging.

I have to say, this looks like a good business to be in just now!

via TechDirt but originally sourced to The Times, May 4, 2007

"Also, the post of chief mapper was changed to geographic information systems supervisor and the salary was raised from $17.43 an hour to $20 an hour."

The change was made in Butler County, PA.

- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Suchitra Jogalekar, a student of the Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey (SNDT) University, recently completed her MSc in Communication Media for Children. Her final project was a 40 minute film about map reading. The story follows scouts interviewing those who use maps. The Express India article doesn't mention if it includes GIS, but GPS and Google Earth make appearances. The latter is in the film in part because high speed Internet is not available across the country.

While I applaud the film, this comment was interesting:

"Scout training usually involves all aspects of map reading, and these are taught using very innovative techniques that help children to understand easily. I wanted these to be known by other children too," she [Jogalekar] says.

I wonder if the film can used to update teaching methods in the schools. If the scouts do such a good job, why not "borrow" their ideas?