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In the "there’s something you don’t see everyday" department comes this ad which accompanied my daily e-mail from the New York Times. While in the geospatial arena we speak of location intelligence (we even host a conference by that name) I’m hard pressed to imagine New York Times readers as savvy as they are, know what it is. Perhaps that’s the point?
The office of the CIO for the State of California is coordinating a newly-formed GIS Cooridination committee. Two press announcements (1, 2)have been made so far within the recent months. The CIO has released a video (see more below)that explains some of the initiatives and we will also be reporting with a more in depth interview with some of the committee members in a forthcoming article.
The basics, from Bloomberg:
Profit, excluding a gain from a sale of Tele Atlas NV shares, was 94 cents a share, compared with the $1.01 average analyst estimate in a Bloomberg survey. Sales rose 23 percent to $911.7 million, Garmin said in a statement today, falling short of the $959.1 million analysts had projected.
Sales expectations were cut in half to 23% based on consumers holding back. Further, with so many PNDs already in the market, competition from TomTom, prices have dropped to encourage those without a device to buy.
Shares fell $5.91, or 13 percent, to $39.15 this morning, the largest drop in five years.
The Nuvifone will be delayed for at least 6 months until the first half of 2009; it was originally to be out this fall and account for 10% of sales. There’s also speculation the proposed sale price of the Nuvifone, about $300, will drop to match the new iPhone.
Network World has the story (press release) of “Eye on Earth” a site that show water quality scores of 21,000 swimming sites across Europe in five languages: Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, German and English.
The San Francisco Chronicle tells the story of the latest Zone Hardiness Map, the map the USDA puts out to guide the nation in what plants will grow where. The latest updated map was based on a 15 year set of data and looked quite different from the one before. in particular, zones were shifted north. So, why did the USDA reject the draft map in 2003? An official statement from USDA: “It wasn’t GIS/GPS compatible. The scientists said it couldn’t be incorporated into existing models. The ‘yes or no’ decision was made at that point, even though other issues were being raised.”
In reality it sounds like politics and perhaps a fear of global warming. The latest plan: a new group from the Oregon St will build a new map based on 30 years of data. It’s expected…soon. Says the same spokesperson as the above quote: ” “Doing this at the GIS level, we can work at a much finer scale than ever before,” she explains. “The zone borders will be much more refined.”
You can see the maps here.
