The University in question is King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) which will open in Saudi Arabia in September 2009.

To get the word and nature of the campus out, the KAUST has launched, per an e-mail to me from a PR rep "an immersive and cutting edge digital map, highlighting everything from residential flats, lab and research facilities, sustainability features, community services, recreational facilities, flyover video and more."

According to the e-mail, the map "is among the very first Web mashup applications to combine Adobe Flash, Google Maps, custom overlays and English and Arabic text." The other big draw for both the university and the map is a focus on "a sustainable campus and community" via "the six sustainability focus areas (site planning, water conversation, etc.) and segments features by category: University, Residential Districts and Community Services."

The underlying technology includes, per my PR source, his comments included:

- Flash CS3/Actionscript 3 and the AFComponents Umap API (which ties into Google Maps for phase I, and Microsoft Virtual Earth for phase II) – to code, animate, and create the maps functionality
- The Arabic text feature was a custom class built to extend Flash to handle the RTL text
- MapInfo – to create and place the custom tiles
- XML data parsed from a SQL Server database
- Admin tool created in .NET 2.0 (very nice feature!)
- All of the images and renderings were created by HOK and In Kingdom (HOK used 3D Studio Max to create the building renderings and fly overs)

It's quite slick. My only disappointment: when you change from map to satellite view, the scale of the map changes, so you can easily "swap" between the map and imagery view of the same extents.

GIS Day provides a chance for geospatial practitioners to tell the world about what they and why it matters. Our editors share the key themes they'd want to get across to the public on this special day.

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While one goal of GIS Day is to educate those can attend events on or around that day, another is to simply to get the term and some sense of its meaning/role into day to day parlance. How are we doing based on online content?

The Plainfield Sun (suburban Chicago) offers an event notification, but with the headline "Event to spotlight new technology." There's no real discussion of what GIS is, in fact the acronym is not written out. Still, the nature of the topics suggests something about what it's role; the event covers "how the village uses the technology to improve services by demonstrating some of the applications including collecting field data utilizing GPS, the village's addressing process, crime mapping and Web GIS." I am surprised by "new" in the headline. It suggests to me that either GIS is "new" (we know it's pretty old...) or new to the area (if it is, that's not clear and based on the above discussion, it's pretty entrenched there).

The Sherwood Voice (Arkansas) notes its event and the keynote speaker from the National Weather Service who will speak on GIS and its use in tracking tornadoes that hit the area in February. Cool speaker! Again, GIS is not written out or defined. The article does note local and national sponsors, which is nice and may help those new to GIS figure something about it.

The University of New Hampshire already held its event, its 10th and the student newspaper not only wrote out what GIS stands for but profiled the types of people (700) who attended. Alas, it too stayed away from defining GIS is. I've attended the UNH event in past years; it's terrific!

Camp Pendleton is only to "it's [sic] 2nd annual" Geographic Information Systems day according the the Pendleton Scout and also doesn't describe GIS in detail. I do appreciate the goal, which does not include younger students: "The program was designed to encourage Marines, sailors and civilians to learn about the importance of geography and GIS technology."

What should we take away from these examples?

A few tech observers have noted that Linden Labs Second Life has not been making news lately. It did this weekend as Linden raised prices for the less expensive "land" in the virtual world by 50%. "The setup fee for the virtual space will increase by 50 percent from $250 to $375, and the monthly maintenance fees will increase by 66 percent from $75 to $125" as PaidContent reports. The reason for the price increase: the lower priced land is meant to be used as open space, not for condos or shops. And, alas, folks are using it for condos and shops...putting more pressure on servers and making it more expensive for Linden to operate. More expensive properties get "better servers" but open spaces are meant to share servers.

In other Second Life news, Pace University received a Verizon grant to establish a presence (that is its own island) in the virtual world. It's learning opportunity, notes the university.