Free Multimap API from Microsoft

Via the VE Evangelist blog (Note to MS: Such blog posts never show up on my news searches so it’s good that LiveSide pretty much repeats the posts. LiveSide always shows up in my news search. I wonder if its because I don’t use MSN Search?)

Bottom line:

-  for small businesses, personal websites and hobbyists (The service is limited to 50,000 transactions per year (which we track) and cannot be used for internal apps (eg BI, CRM))

- free embed map via single line of HTML

- map options: TeleAtlas, Ordnance Survey and Barts “look” or aerial for anywhere in the world (US included, using VE maps and aerial) and four options:

See this location on Multimap (for a bigger map, POI, business listings, etc)
See this location in Birds Eye
Get directions to this location
Get directions from this location

It works well. I’ve embedded a map below.

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Irish Spatial Data Exchange Up and Running

The Irish Spatial Data Exchange is the country’s step toward a spatial data infrastructure. Per Silicon Republic:

The ISDE is a multi-agency initiative by the Marine Institute; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Geological Survey of Ireland; Exploration and Mining Division and Petroleum Affairs Division of the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources; the National Parks and Wildlife Division of the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government; and the Coastal Marine Research Centre of University College Cork.

A interesting notes on the implementation:

- The exchange architecture is distributed with a light central mediation service. The exchange is based around OGC and ISO standards, which allows it to be independent of any catalogue implementation technologies.

So it uses standards, not a specific implementation for a catalog.

Two browser versions exist, namely that developed by ESRI-Ireland and an open-source browser developed by CMRC at UCC.

I wonder why two were needed. I’m not sure if I used either or if they are even available at this point. The help made no reference to them. Here’s the architecture pic.
Metadata searching is available via text search or accompanied by spatial extent and date. So far as I can tell there is no “map viewer” to examine found live data at this time.

Have GPS, Will Ignore Detour

That seems to be the problem in Upper Township in New Jersey. Dept of Transportation Signs send vehicles away from Route 49 bridge construction, but those with sat nav devices are ignoring them, according to local officials.

There a bit of a “locals” vs. “outsiders” aspect to the ignored signs:

Local residents might intuitively know the easiest way to navigate the residential neighborhood without taking the longer prescribed truck route through Woodbine. But even out-of-towners are ignoring the giant “Local Traffic Only” signs on Route 49 to cut down Cedar Avenue to Mill Road, [Township Engineer Paul] Dietrich said.

- Press of Atlantic City

Earth Science Week and GIS

We are so tuned in to Geography Awareness Week and Geography Action and GIS Day that perhaps Earth Science Week, this week, gets overlooked. And perhaps its time to remove “Awareness” from the week’s name? I like “just” “Geography Week.”

I did find one reference to a demo day at Eastern Illinois University covered in the Daily Eastern News. Students saw various volcano demos (vinegar + baking soda and mentos + coke) as well as a GIS presentation.

iPhone’s 300 Location-based Apps

O’Reilly covered this data provided by Skyhook last week and now Ars Technica takes it on. Recall that Skyhook provides the wi-fi location feature for “old” and “new” iPhones.

Some highlights as of 10/3/08:

- 45% Wi-fi, 25% GPS and 30 Hybrid for location source (good news for Skyhook)

- top categories for the apps: 18% local search, 17% navigation (without turn by turn) and 17% social networking

- both posts include “confidential” in the graphics, though Skyhook gave the permission to use them