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One of the things on the minds of traveler’s entering the capital on inauguration day is "traffic." Visitors will find the TrafficLand.com website that displays a map of the closed circuit video cameras helpful. (source: Google Earth Blog). The camera feeds are courtesy of the District DOT. (Traffic.com has the same information but TrafficLand has much better user interface.)
This podcast features Chris Butler, Independent LBS Evangelist. Butler discusses "Location, Awareness" and the context in which it applies to mapping and social networks. It is a high level, compelling, but inherently intuitive lecture on how context – who, when, where, why, what, and how – is valuable to your application, product or service. We usually try to answer one, maybe two of this variables when designing our next hot widget; Butler challenges us to include not one or two but all variables. However he gives us a few rules to conceptualize and effectively implement the process. For all persons interested in taking their application to the next level, this is an excellent presentation.
[Produced by: Clay Burton Productions and Endpoint Environmental LLC, Producers of the Web 2.0 Mapping and Social Networks Meetup Group in conjunction with Directions Media. The presentation was recorded at Google headquarters on November 18, 2008, and lasts for approximately 18 minutes.]
Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")
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“The problem with the devices [for tracking children/Alzheimer’s patients] out there now is they rely on GPS tracking, which is not good. If the missing person can’t see the sun, you can’t track them.’
- Lindy Privett, Plano, TX police detective promoting cell phone based devices from EmFinders. Quoted in the Examiner.
I guess I didn’t connect the dots on Patton Boggs’ mapping app for the inauguration. Apparently the company is a lobbying organization that traditionally hosts a party. Per BusinessWeek:
One lobbying powerhouse, Patton Boggs, is foregoing sponsoring a party this year in favor of providing its clients with GPS-assisted mapping software that allows them to track real-time locations of events and available tables at restaurants, parking spots, schedules, and other information that is particularly useful to avid inauguration-goers. The application also distributes real-time reports from users on useful tips, sentiments, and, no doubt, Obama sightings.
The U.S. Department of Labor awarded nearly $123 million to 68 community colleges and community-based institutions under the President’s Community-Based Job Training Grants Initiative. Winners were selected form 274 applicants.
For geospatial the big winner was Atlantic Cape Community College of Mays Landing, N.J. which received $1,250,909.
I’m still waiting to see the results of the one Dept of Labor funded geospatial initiative on which I worked (several years ago). The website for the project is now held by squatters. The organization behind the project, Kidz Online, seems to have disappeared.
