Ralph Grabowski outlines the difference between the "old guard" in CAD and the "new guard" in his upFront.eZine. (Subscriptions are free, but if you or your company find it useful, make a donation.) Yes, I see lots of parallels in GIS. Worth a read.

ESRI's "U.S. Community Atlas" is a project where teachers and students across the country define their communities and one school in western Massaschusetts but its area on the map.

Douglas C. Finn, a video production and filmmaking teacher at Turners Falls High lead
16 honors earth science and Microsoft Office students (interesting!) and their teachers in the work using ESRI software along with other technologies. Says Finn, "Students who learn how to use GIS systems to gather, organize and read data will have an advantage in the workforce, an advantage that is measurable and real."

The project took just five weeks.

Trivia tidbit: The Town of Montague, MA was key in the development of what important ESRI product? ArcView.


- MassLive.com

This week is the Consumer Electronics Show - the extravaganza for available and soon to be available gadgets for end users ears, eyes, cars and more. I plan to offer one per day on the event as I watch for geo-related tibdits via the Web from home.

First off, The New York Times highlights that the show is so big that perhaps its no longer the best place for an announcement. Recall that several big shows imploded in recent years included AEC SYSTEMS in our world (note the passing of one of its founders) and COMDEX, which I attended representing ESRI and its 50 x 50 booth.

Now on to the goodies announced:

The author of the Geography of Bliss, NPR correspondent Eric Weiner, spoke with Scott Simon about the atlas and what he learned putting it together. Interesting from a geographic and a personal outlook perspective.

The article by Brad Schleicher says nothing our community does not already know. But it does have some interesting errors.

"Using Google Earth, the free global mapping software distributed by Google Corp. and these devices, hundreds of thousands of individuals have created and shared an extraordinary array of useful maps."

It's Google, Inc.

"According to Douglas Richardson, executive director for the American Association of Geographers, the big recent change in the industry has been the development of means to give average people the ability to utilize real-time geographical information systems (GIS) and geographical positioning systems (GPS) that took decades to develop."

I suspect Mr. Richardson said global positioning system; he knows about it as he once ran a company dedicated to its use with GIS.

"The power of such maps was evident during the spate of California wildfires last October. San Diego's KBPS television station and the Los Angeles Times newspaper used Google's My Maps application to plot the fire perimeters, evacuation areas and shelters, road closures, smoke advisories and local assistance centers."

It was KPBS and it's a radio station. BTW, Google had to step in and help out with bandwidth challenges.

"Among the many other interesting map blog sites (you can find them by typing their names into Google search):"

This is online article! (I can understand this being in the print version, but they are not the same thing!). Oh, and some of the listed resources are apps (Cheap Gas, HousingMaps), not blogs.

- Baltimore Sun

"GIS is changing everything, [Glenn] Kasprzyk [Lifeline Ambulance, CEO] continued. Most counties and cities have it, but ambulance companies have been slower to embrace it."

- Daily Courier (Arizona)