Wednesday, July 23. 2008

How do drive time maps save fuel?

An Internet-based map store put out a press release offering custom drive time maps. The selling point: they save gas. There's no real explanation of how they'd be used for that purpose and I can't think of any.

Update 3:26 pm: Based on the comments below I realize I didn't define drive time maps. That was an error. Here's the definition, a fine one, from the vendor of the maps in question: "Highlights drive time range limits." Such maps define the boundary of how far a driver can go from a specified point in a specified time. The vendor suggests 5, 15, 30, 45 and hour ranges, but will accept any value you choose.

Going Local (2 mile limit) with CLIF

Yeah, yeah, CLIF BARS, SHOTS, etc., endurance athletes seem to either love or hate them. (I confess liking the Shot Blocks, though I'm now favoring the woman friendly Luna Moons just because they are smaller.) This is the second year of the company's Two Mile Challenge, which urges people to use a bike for trips of 2 miles or less. These trips make up 40% of all car trips. Further, 90% of two mile trips are made by car! (Yikes, I say after just returning from 25 miles on my bike.)

To support the challenge, Clif offers tools to configure a bike and of course, a Google Maps mashup to find your 2 mile radius, along with key destinations in and out side of it. It's quite elegant and even includes user suggested POIs.

Per the press release, "since launching the first 2 Mile Challenge in September 2007, nearly 20,000 people have used the mapping service." This is the first I'd heard of it.

Rear View Mirror GPS Comes to US August 1

DSUS Technology of China will offer a GPS-integrated rear-view mirror featuring Navigon Mobile Navigator 6.5, "Reality View and 12 map updates from FreshMaps."

The DSUS SmartMirror has a four-inch screen for GPS maps, built-in Bluetooth capability and a back-up camera. Price: $799.

- US News/Jalopnick

Podcast: Autodesk Series #1 - Asset Intelligence and Visualization

In the first of a series of podcasts from Autodesk, three of the company's leading technologists provide a foundation for understanding how government agencies can better utilize geospatial information. Geoff Zeiss, director of technology, David Kingsbury, Sr. Industry Manager for State and Local Government, and Pete Southwood, Geospatial Technical Evangelist conduct a roundtable discussion of Autodesk's Feature Data Object, or FDO, an open source solution that is embedded in many of the company's industry solutions. Autodesk's ability to integrate CAD, GIS, spatial databases, Excel spreadsheets, and imagery is truly unique and crosses into engineering design, which forms the foundation of integrated asset intelligence.

For more information on FDO see:

The Autodesk website or the Open Source Geospatial Foundation website.


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