Wednesday, February 18. 2009

Quote of the Week

"Google makes maps the same way the supermarket makes eggs."

Dr. David Coleman of the Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering department at the University of New Brunswick made that comment in a presentation about trends in mapping on the Web. The talk was part of a workshop on SDI in Fredericton, NB hosted by the Land Information Secretariat of Service New Brunswick back on December 9th, 2008.

Reader Bernie Connors, P.Eng, Manager - Spatial Data Infrastructure, Land Information Secretariat Service, New Brunswick, who sent this in followed up: "Several people in the audience made note of the comment. I later asked him about the quote and Dr. Coleman said it was an original."

Red Cross Gets Geo...

Years ago I was a "regular" with the Red Cross. The pheresis donation center was not far from ESRI and I managed to donate quite regularly. Pheresis takes out just some of the blood components and puts everything else "back." That makes it really efficient for the Red Cross and not as challenging to the person donating. (I never got woozy afterward, unlike whole blood donation experiences.) The only downside? It take about 2 hours. The upside? They show you movies! I was most pleased when I got a call one afternoon - an emergency. They needed someone with B+ blood who had had chicken pox. I fit the bill and was able to be there in 20 minutes to meet the need. It felt really good to have what someone needed and to be able to share it.

In the recent past, I couldn't donate due to a trip to South Africa. But, now I'm good to go. So, the day after Thanksgiving, when everyone else was shopping, I saw a sign for a drive in Porter Square. My donation put me back on the Red Cross radar and just two weeks after I was eligible to donate again (regular blood) I received a card about another drive in Cambridge and then a call about one in Somerville. They were both on the same day, but within walking distance of my house. Well done Red Cross! You make it easy to donate!

GIS Already in Use in Stimulus Allocation in Pacific Northwest

Oregon Public Radio reports on a transportation planner, Jeff Selle, who has worked with Spokane and Coeur d’Alene to find economically depressed areas where stimulus money might be spent.

I’ve got our G-I-S people looking at the census tracts to determine what areas are considered economically depressed in Spokane County and we’ll weed our projects down using those criteria.

Federal Stimulus Estimated Jobs Map/Probable Projects Map

Recovery.gov promises to map money spent from the just signed "stimulus bill," officially the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. For now, there's a map of estimates how many jobs will be saved/created in each state over the next two years. The technology? Flash.

Kiplinger sent out reports in the two weeks prior to passage of the bill to get a sense of the projects each state is likely to pitch to the US DOT for funding, which has final say. There's a map of that data at the Kiplinger site.