Olympic Torch Relay Now Only “In Country” - Geography Edu Impact?

We did a podcast last year about how the Olympics are a teachable moment for geography. This week came news (NY Times) the IOC has decided to limit the torch relay will be run only in the hosting country from 2014 forward, though both Vancouver and London, the next Winter (2010) and Summer (2012) Game hosts, will arrange in country relays.

While that’s a bit disappointing from a “how the world is put together” standpoint, I’m hoping the media will focus more on the host country’s geography.

Why Doesn’t Every Paper Have “Map of the Week?”

I’m sure many readers know of the Toronto Star’s regular feature “Map of the Week.” It’s put together by Web editor Patrick Cain and covers all kinds of topics for the Greater Toronto Area that are not necessarily related to stories in the paper. He even includes a “Nerd Box” to share some of the tech and presentation issues he faces.
A few thoughts:

- Why doesn’t every paper do this? Yes it takes some work, but the maps are immediate draws for the local community - no matter if they show car or bike accidents caused by cars or architecture parking tickets given. Can you help your local paper start such a feature and “do good for geography?”

- Wouldn’t Patrick (or his peers at other papers) be great speakers at your conference or on GIS Day or in your class?

- With the new administrations talk about more transparency, the time is right for even more maps in the media here in the U.S. but also worldwide.

- This has got to be a lot of work and the commitment to one a week is impressive. Great job!

- In a related effort, I can’t say enough about FortiusOne’s dataset of the day on its blog. Now, there’s no doubt the goal is to introduce its Finder and Maker tools to the world, but this is another regular effort (no daily, but regularly) to inform, engage the world through maps related to timely news topics. And, yes, I mention this because Finder! could be a great resource for data for Maps of Week.

Geography (and geographic thinking) in BusinessWeek

Where should you start your startup? San Fran? Boston? Or maybe a small town? GIS Planning (gee, they’ve been in the news, in mainstream media quite a bit lately!) ran the numbers and the small town may be just as favorable. See also: a slide show of a top small city for startups in each state. Here in Massachusetts, they picked Cambridge. Yeh, ok… Redlands certainly played out for one startup, eh?

Money quote from BizWeek article:

In fact, places like Boulder, Colo., (population 91,000) and Fairfax, Va., (23,000) are just as favorable for startups as San Francisco (733,000) and New York (8.2 million), according to research conducted for BusinessWeek by GIS Planning, a San Francisco-based geographic data firm that helps companies select optimal sites via its online tool ZoomProspector.

Plan Ahead: Autodesk to Triple Upgrade Fees

Ralph Grabowski at World CAD Access reports that Autodesk has made public its planned pricing for upgrades for those not on subscription after March 16 2010. In short, upgrades and cross grades (moving to another Autodesk product) will cost 1/2 the cost of a new license.

Grabowksi notes that as Autodesk hits customers when they are “down” (in the recression), it provides another opportunity for competitors.

Update: California Announces GIO Appointment

Update: GovTech reports that one of Byrne’s first goals is to consolidate best available public domain data of the state (6 inches in the urban footprint and a minimum of 1 meter for the rest of California, roads and landmarks) and make it available via thin and thick client. The current Cal-ATLAS provides for upload/download but not viewing. A federal Homeland Security grant has funded the project.

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