The Census’ PDA: “Ugliest Cellphone” with “inaccurate maps”

From Ethan Zuckerman’s blog (via the Boston.com) comes a scary description of the device Harris put out for the first phase of the 2010 Census: the Harris HTC. Remember, the real door to door part will use pen and paper after the hardware was not satisfactory.

The device she had strapped to her hand was a Harris HTC, which looks either like the ugliest cellphone you’ve ever seen, or a Palm Pilot designed by the US government. We scrolled through bad, inaccurate maps of the area, which looked like they had been dumped from an early version of MapQuest, wondering how the ridge line behind my house magically had been transformed into a navigable road, and talked about the device.

My enumerator was reasonably fond of her HTC - there were serious ergonomic problems, like a power button that tended to get inadvertently pressed when gripping the device, powering it off.

“Wrapping” Military Vehicles; Pattern Courtesy Remote Sensing

Here in Boston we are fond of watching MBTA busses outfitted like boxes of Dunkin Donuts roll down the street. A company called Military Wraps offers Photo-Veil not for advertising but to help camouflage military vehicles. The mesh material differs from the wrap used for advertising in that:

- graphics are designed based on aerial imagery from drones and satellites so they match the geography
- they shield thermal and infrared output
- soldiers can be trained to install the mesh

- Sat News Publishers

Navigon/Mio Changing PND Plans in US

GPS Business News reports that Navigon will stop its PND sales in the U.S. but will keep an office in Chicago and pursue business with automotive clients and cell phone carriers. Back in April Mio cut back its presence in the the U.S. market.

CBS News References Google Map Mashup of H1N1 Map

“Authoritative source” is one term being thrown around quite a bit in media circles. CBSNews references a mashup from “Laurel” of confirmed and unconfirmed cases.

What we know about “Laurel”: “I’m a computer scientist interested in helping provide tools for real-time disease tracking.
If you have any questions, please email me at: swineflu09 [at] gmail [dot] com .”

What we know about the map: “This is a map depicting confirmed and suspected cases of the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, with contributors from all over the world, from a variety of backgrounds including health, journalism, technology.”

What we know about the “points”: They all seem to source news outlets.

I’m curious how/if CBSNews vetted mashup maps and selected this one over other user generated ones.

Education Tidbits

John Kostelnick, assistant professor of geography and geology at Illinois State University, is developing standard mapping symbols for the clearing of minefields that exist in over 80 countries worldwide. Until his efforts there was not a standard for use by the UN, local demining companies and others involved with mines. “We developed a new set we tried to standardize so everybody could sort of use the same map symbols, and hopefully, improve the general communication of these things,” he said.

- Daily Vidette

The University of Delaware, along with Rochester Institute of Technology are partnering with the state of California to explore reducing carbon emissions from the movement of freight. The team will model techniques to reduce the environmental footprint of the transport. Among their tools: the UD and RIT developed Geospatial Intermodal Freight Transportation model or GIFT, a GIS-based modeling program that evaluates the environmental impacts of goods movement.

- UDaily

University of Central Arkansas Geography professor JoAnn Sullivan arranged a service learning exercise for several geography students. The students spent one Saturday collecting samples on the farm of Stone County farmer Ronald Clark. They surveyed 20 acres and plotted result using GIS. The goal was to enable “precision farming” and more efficient use of nutrients, resulting in better yields and money savings.

- TheCabin.net