Zillow Offers Free Boundary Data

The Zillow Blog tells the story. Basically, the company is giving away its neighborhood boundaries in ESRI Shapefile format - and asking for help updating them.

via Spatially Adjusted (James Fee)

Loopt Dev Program Launches

To apply visit the developer site. But be warned - they are being picky - “Selected partners will receive beta access to live location feeds.”

Says TechCrunch:

Loopt is launching a beta program for developers on a new mobile social networking platform. The platform will free user’s data from the network and let developers incorporate it into new SMS, WAP, or mobile location based applications using Loopt’s APIs. Loopt’s API’s will feed geographical data from users who opt into the applications to a developers program.

via TechCrunch

Quote of the Week

“It’s probably the biggest publicity event any company can have.”

- Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook Wireless, on Steve Jobs mention of the company’s technology at MacWorld. Skyhook’s tech powers location determination in several Apple products including the iPhone (along with cell tower triangulation). In Xconomy.

Non-profit Uses Free Tech/Grants to Enable Communications During Disaster

The project, called Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster (InSTEDD), is a nonprofit organization funding by Google.org, The Rockerfeller Foundation and others. It launches today and ties together free software like Twitter and Facebook and Google Earth to enable communications during disaster. The geo example:

One such application will be the so-called Twitter bot framework, which bridges the Web service and phones with a location-detection feature that can link to a layer in Google Earth, [Eric] Rasmussen [CEO] said. That way, for example, Rasmussen could send a message about a patient with untreated symptoms in Laos via SMS on his phone, which might only have one signal bar of service. That message could then be broadcast to anyone subscribed to his messages, including aid workers at UNICEF or InSTEDD’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., which could show his location and note on a Google Earth map.

“We can send an SMS message onto Google Earth in an emergency center, and it sees a dot with a color-coded response, with my name and date. Right underneath that, there’s a button that says reply, and (aid workers can send a note that says) we have the resources you need 2 miles north…Suddenly there’s a two-way conversation using nothing but a cell phone with one bar,” he said, adding: “We’ve done this.”

- c|net

Geography Field Trips May be Killing the Subject in Secondary School

That’s the suggestion of an article in the Daily Mail (UK).

An Ofsted report found that many staff opt not to take pupils on excursions in case they fall foul of health and safety rules.

That in turn leads teens to opt out of a “dull” geography class that stays indoors. Participation is down 30% over 20 years in the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) - the certifcation tests for secondary school.