Monday, June 30. 2008

How the States Got Their Shapes

I'm catching up on some podcasts and ran into a discussion of this topic and book of the same name by Mark Stein on On Point (our locally produced NPR interview show). Good stuff - but do keep a map handy while you listen.

My favorite tidbit: How Case Western Reserve got that name. Did you the Western Reserve was part of Connecticut? The University is in Ohio!

Radar used to keep runways clean and safe

C|net describes the use of radar to find "junk" on runways. The idea is to keep runways clean and reduce damage and loss of life. The technology is from QinetiQ

... Heathrow International Airport, the world's busiest, has now installed a permanent dual radar system called the Tarsier, which scans 3,658 meters of runway in search of junk 24 hours a day.

The Tarsier uses networked high-frequency, high-resolution radar and integrated digital signal processing to pinpoint anything from a pigeon to a cellophane sandwich wrapper (PDF).

Foreign object damage, or "FOD," is responsible for $60 million worth of damage a year, an average of $15,000 per aircraft for each major airline in the U.S. alone, according to the FAA (PDF).

...
The smallest item detected to date is a 10-millimeter metal fitting in an area the size of 30 football fields, the company says. Once an object is found, Tarsier reports its latitude and longitude to within 3 meters via GPS.

TA Chief: There Will be iPhone Turn by Turn Directions

This tidbit was in Reuters coverage of today's Google/Tele Atlas deal:

De Taeye said he expected real-time, turn-by-turn navigation applications to be available for Apple's iPhone despite reports that Apple's rules for developing iPhone software appeared not to allow it.

"We are making sure that navigation is an application that is allowed," De Taeye said. "If there is any restriction on the platform, that indeed has to do with the restrictions that we have in our contracts. Navigation is allowed, provided that the right fees are paid."

Get out your checkbooks!

Revenge of "The biggest drawing in the world"

This isn't a hoax, but it is connected to a cable comedy show:

"The Marc Horowitz Signature Series" chronicles prankster Horowitz as he drives the shape of his signature on a map of the U.S., stopping in 20 towns along the way to stage one-off "community building" (read totally off-the-wall) experiments. In one town he goes door-to-door to personally serve residents a fancy breakfast in bed, and in another, invites residents to gather for a ceremony to "bury their problems"--photos of ex-girlfriends and video game consoles welcome.

- MediaPost's Online Media Daily

Tele Atlas/Google Deal: TA Gets User Generated Markups

Update 2:It's not exclusive: "TeleAtlas already has an agreement with Google for which details aren't available. The new agreement is non-exclusive, Titiular said." (CNN)

Update: This from Ed Parsons at Google: "This does not include Map Maker contributions." Thanks for the quick reply Ed!

---

Per C|net:

Under the new agreement--financial terms were not disclosed--Tele Atlas will provide maps and "dynamic content" for Google Maps in over 200 countries as well as other Google geographic divisions like Google Earth and Google Maps for Mobile, and future Google projects that could require mapping data. Tele Atlas, in turn, will have access to annotations that Google Maps users have added to the system.

Exactly what annotations? The PR says:

The agreement also gives Tele Atlas access to edits for its maps from Google's community of users, whose suggested changes can help thecompany further increase the quality and richness of Tele Atlas maps.

It's not clear if this means the Map Maker contributions and or the "moved addresses." Hopefully, someone in the know can clarify. If Map Maker turns out to be something effective, that is, something that creates "good" data in timely fashion, this could be a boon to TA's (TomTom's) data stores. It would mean that others who license TA data would benefit from Google's mapmaking fanbase, along TomTom's map updating MapShare fanbase. Those are two potentially large, worldwide free data collecting groups. If TomTom is smart, it already thinking about how to engage the OpenStreetMap crew as well.

One other question: Is the sharing of the markup exclusive to TA? Or will Google do a similar deal with NAVTEQ/Nokia? I'm thinking not.

What's the next ESRI Summit?

The ESRI Surveying and Engineering GIS Summit is in its fifth year this August. The ESRI Remote Sensing and GIS Summit debuts at the same time, just before the formal Monday opening of the ESRI International User Conference. Also occurring before the main event are the Executive Summit (invitation only) and the Education User Conference, EdUC.

Of these, I've only managed to attend EdUC (I have a standing commitment to ride in or volunteer at the Pan Mass Challenge bike event, which often occurs the Friday/Sat preceding UC). It's just great and I hope I can attend again somehow, now that I'm teaching again. The Executive Summit, which my colleague Joe Francica has attended (his 2005 review), is all about helping executives "get" or "get more" out of GIS.

But these "new" summits are different. They are, from what I gather, opportunities to build bridges with related disciplines. I use that term with care. A discipline has its own rules, its own tools and technologies, in these cases, tools and technologies allied with GIS. I want to contrast disciplines with "industries" or "business areas." While ESRI does have a "surveying industry manager," Brent Jones, who hails from the Northeast, somehow it doesn't fall into the same space as other ESRI "industries." It's more like the "industry" I used to manage at ESRI, the one called "CAD." Surveying, like CAD and remote sensing, is horizontal and serves many industries. Other ESRI industries, oil and gas, pipeline, water, insurance, forestry, agriculture and others tap into GIS to better serve their customers and their bottom line. Surveying, photogrammetry, remote sensing and even CAD are more about data creation and preparation. They are sometimes thought of more as "inputs" to spatial databases and analyses.

So, what will be the next summit ESRI will announce? Will it be LiDAR? CAD? GPS? Location determination? User generated data? With what other technologies does ESRI and by extension the rest of the GIS establishment need to build bridges?