Thursday, August 21. 2008

Junk Mail Mashup Reveals Rebuilding in New Orleans

AdAge explains how Greater New Orleans Community Data Center (GNOCDC) is using "junk mail" to help map where the current residents of New Orleans reside. The nonprofit GNOCDC has been working with Valassis Communications' owner of the RedPlum direct-mail operation. Red Plum sends out basically nationwide mailings each month. By luck the company had a 2005 data with which to compare the current state of mailing addresses today. The data is being used to use funds for rebuilding and has saved quite a lot in manual surveys of "who is where."

GNOCDC has linked the data to a Google Map (James Fee and Co worked on this, per a tweet yesterday; I didn't follow up then because he noted a publication called "Adage," of which I'd not heard!). Also of note: Valassis provided much of the data at cost and the historic data and consulting gratis.

Bottom line:

Overall, the Valassis data indicates New Orleans had 146,174 households receiving mail in June 2008, still down 28% from the 203,457 receiving mail in June 2005, two months before the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane and resulting flood.

via Wired blog

Want Turn by Turn Directions on iPhone?

C|net asks. Thus far: "yes." Mostly, I think they are looking for conspiracy stories about why we don't yet have that feature. The license forbids it, though no one knows quite why.

Geography and Politics Matter

Alaska Senator Ted Steven's bid to move his trial on 7 counts of making false statements regarding financial disclosure forms will not be held in his state to make things easier for witnesses. Instead, they'll be traveling to Washington DC for the trial. Stevens hoped to limit their inconvenience and make it easier for himself as he campaigns for yet another term as US Senator. Geography mattered in the sense that jury tainting was possible if the trial was held in Alaska. Stevens lawyers pointed out the 4,200 mile driving distance to DC , but federal judges didn't budge.

- LA Times

Baltimore County Save $4M Annually with GIS

That's what Gov Tech reports based on "a strategic business plan focusing on determining the return on investment and use of Baltimore County's GIS" done by Dewberry.

Web Mapping Ok, but Help?

After the discussion of the Morris County GIS site that many found slow and complex to use, I was pleased to see the announcement of one for Thomson-McDuffie (that's a city and county in Georgia). I needed no help in using it; it was very GIS geek friendly and I hope regular person friendly. My one concern: there's no help I could find (in Safari).

- McDuffie Mirror

RFID in Hospitals: Not Just for Equipment Tracking

"Trends in RFID 2008" a study by Spyglass Consulting Group, is based on 100 telephone interviews with IT professionals and medical staff at hospitals with 300 or more beds. It shows much increased use of RFID within hospitals since a previous report done in 2005. The takeaway from a PC World article on the study to me is this:

The payback no longer is simply being able to find medical equipment including wheelchairs. Increasingly, wireless identification and location data is being used to streamline and repair a range of healthcare workflows and business processes.