Thursday, January 29. 2009

Geotagging Your Way to a Better Life

U.S. News and World Report's cover story of their special year-end report promoted the "50 Ways to Improve Your Life in 2009 (12/18/2008 issue)." Curiously, one of those ways was "geotagging your photos." I took this to heart and immediately ran out and bought a Blackberry Storm. Perhaps you've followed my trials and tribulations on Twitter as it hasn't improved my life in ways I was hoping. But, if part of my job was to cover this industry, why not jump into the fray and invest my time on something that was supposed to be fun too. Might as well, since all of the social media in which we have invested at Directions surely tests the balance of worthwhile reporting, marketing and time-frittering anyway. You should know that Twittering and getting a LinkedIn account were advised as well. Having checked those boxes, it was on to geotagging in a more productive way.

I've used Flickr in the past so it wasn't just about geotagging. This was more about cutting out a step in the process and seeing if it really worked. Again, nothing new to those who already have an iPhone or use the Eye-fi SD card. It was as much about testing the Storm as it was about improving a process that would support my ability to cover the news. And what I found was that nothing is as easy as it sounds and productivity comes at a price...

Continue reading "Geotagging Your Way to a Better Life"

What's Up with GeoEye-1 NGA Certification Delay?

Chris Hernandez at ForexHound.com has 10 questions about GeoEye and every one revolves around the delay of certification of GeoEye-1 imagery by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), the folks who funded it.

He's frustrated, noting:

One thing is certain, if these images aren’t approved, and approved soon, this year’s investment thesis for shares of GeoEye goes down the toilet in a hurry.

HopStop API: Put Public Transportation Routing in Your App

HopStop is a site that offers routing in some cities using public transportation. Now the company has opened up its API free (with some limitations - notably 1000 transactions/day). They are the first, per Mashable, to offer such an API, though many sites now offer public transit routing.

- via Mashable, which has links to mashups with Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and MapQuest.

A Cognitive Psychological Look at Map Interpretation

Dave Munger over at Cognitive Daily (a cognitive psychology blog) offers Reading graphs: How we do it, and what it tells us about making better ones. It's actually about a study of how people "read" maps and explores what people look at in attempting to answer different questions. No surprise, they look at different things based on the question! Still, there are some interesting insights and suggestion about making better graphics from a cognitive standpoint, not necessarily a cartographic one.

Companies Moving HQ to the City Core to Attract Young Workers

Workforce.com explains this trend, which is backed by census data illustrating that per one analysis "in 2000, 25- to 34-year-olds were 34 percent more likely than the general population to live in close-in neighborhoods in the nation’s metro areas, up sharply from the 12 percent who were more likely to reside there in 1990."

The article cites several companies making the move from the suburbs or non-urban areas including CareerBuilder.com (Rosemont, IL to Chicago) and NAVTEQ (Silicon Valley to Chicago).

Podcast: Exclusive Interview with Mike Hickey, President, Pitney Bowes Business Insight

For this exclusive interview, Directions Media Editor in Chief Joe Francica spoke with Mike Hickey, president of Pitney Bowes Business Insight, about the recently announced business unit composed of Pitney Bowes MapInfo and Group 1 Software. After the acquisition of MapInfo in 2007, Hickey took charge of this unit. He was tasked with overseeing the synergy that existed between these two companies focused on business geographics and location intelligence. He would also need to determine where this unit fit within the parent company's primary business, mailstream technology.

Hickey provides details on the renaming of the business unit, the retention of the MapInfo brand, and today's economic climate. "Your competition now isn’t just people that are in the same business as you; your competition is anybody that is competing for IT dollars, said Hickey. "You have to have a pretty strong value proposition and return on investment with your clients." [The interview lasts 14:30]

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

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