Thursday, January 29. 2009

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]

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Wednesday, January 28. 2009

Update 1: A Third Proposal Regarding Geo and the Stimulus: Investing in NSDI

Update 1/28: NSGIC has endorsed this proposal, along with the earlier GIS for the Nation proposal.

Continue reading "Update 1: A Third Proposal Regarding Geo and the Stimulus: Investing in NSDI"

National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law Releases 2008 Supplement to Journal of Space Law

This from the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law at the University of Mississippi. "[We are] pleased to make available, without charge, Selected Space Law Documents: 2008. It is a compilation of space law documents from the year 2008 that were gathered primarily from postings placed on Res Communis from 1 January through 31 December 2008. The postings are supplemented with materials from other sources that were published in 2008 but which were published too late to be posted as a blog entry in a timely manner. The compilation is a special supplement to the Journal of Space Law, the world's oldest law review dedicated to space law. The Journal of Space Law, beginning with the first volume, is available on line through HeinOnLine.

Selected Space Law Documents: 2008 demonstrates that the overall body of space law is continuing to grow. A major characteristic of this growth is the number of new laws promulgated at the national level. India, Iran, Japan, France, the Russian Federation (C.I.S), South Africa, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States all had new space laws in 2008. Internationally, space law growth can be seen in the materials produced by various U.N. bodies and a number of multilateral and bilateral agreements and statements, also contained in the compilation."

For more details contact:

Prof. Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, Director
National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Space Law
Res Communis Aerospace Law Blog
The University of Mississippi School of Law
jgabryno(at)olemiss.edu