Monday, December 22. 2008

NY Times Geo App Offers Location-based Political News for New Yorkers

It's called Represent and it uses a New York address as the starting point for a search for news about your region and what its elected officials (local up to federal) are doing. The interactive feature hails from The New York Times’s Interactive News Technology group and went beta last week.

The search involves a "point in many polygons" search to determine into what districts the address falls, then assigns the representatives. The next step is to build a news stream on those individuals.

Among the technologies and data used: Django, GeoDjango, maps from New York City’s Department of City Planning showing district boundaries for City Council, State Assembly, State Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL), PostgreSQL, PostGIS, GEOS, Geo-Coder-US.

Hat tip to Amy Gahran for the lead.

- New York Times

GeoEye Hits 52 Week Low

Per 24/7 Wall Street:

GeoEye, Inc. (NASDAQ: GEOY) fell another 5%. Satellite imagery contracts may still be lucrative, but supporting the business is not a cheap endeavor.

That refers to a low of 14.75 on Friday. The 52 week high was 37.37.

Obama Science Advisor Appointee John Holdren Likes Geotechnologies

Earth2Tech offers this quote (about the food/fuel conflict) from a speech he gave earlier in the week. Perhaps we can hook him up with the DOI folks?

We need more effective use of the capabilities provided by satellite imagery and other remote sensing, and by GIS, both for conducting such studies [of projected land requirements for food, animal feed, fiber, biofuels, and infrastructure] and for conveying the results to publics and decision-makers in forms they will understand and use. And, not least, we need technologies for extracting food, fiber, and fuel from agricultural and forest ecosystems in ways less disruptive of the other services those systems provide than the technologies typically used today.

Garmin Phones, Past nuvifome, Will be Android

Many sites are reporting that news after Garmin Asia Pacific marketing director Tony An let the news slip. The nuvifone, which apparently will not be based on Android, is expected in Taiwan in Q2 of next year. Android phones, developed by Garmin, but manufactured by others are due later in the year.

- Elctronista

Fire Eagle among ReadWriteWeb Top 10 Web Platforms of the Year

No others were explicitly geospatial (well, the iPhone API was #1, and it has location awareness, so that counts, I guess). I still maintain that Fire Eagle is among the most important location platforms we have today.

Fire Eagle (and sharing its imagery with OpenStreetMap) shows that Yahoo knows a bit about geo.

- ReadWriteWeb

Indian NSDI News

Mr. Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, India explained during a tech fair organised by the Department of Science & Technology, National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and FICCI, that a National Geospatial Data Regulatory Authority Bill, to be introduced in the next session of Parliament, is expected to be cleared by the Union Cabinet before February 2009. The bill would create"an independent regulatory authority which will determine and regulate the basis on which data should be used and shared seamlessly amongst the various departments of the government and other stakeholders," he said.

He also highlighted how 3D data of the hotels attacked last month would have benefit response. Compiling such data, he argued is complex because so many groups need to give approval of fly overs and that international experts needed to lead the work are met with suspicion.

The "India Geoportal," a "repository of national infrastructure for the availability of and access to organised spatial data" was "launched," but it does not seem to have a public website at this time; it's unclear if it ever will.

- WebNewsWire

Other coverage: The Indian