Online Mapping Slowing Canada/US Traffic

Why is the Lewiston-Queenston bridge so busy and slow and nearby ones have no waiting and no lines? NITTEC Executive Director Tom George thinks it has to do with online mapping.

We call that the ‘Google Phenomenon’ because they will take that map from Mapquest or Google and follow it it doesn’t matter how long they have to sit when directly adjacent to them is another facility where they can drive directly across the border. People go ahead and follow that right into that bridge even though there’s other bridges with 0 or 30 minutes or less.

- WGRZ Buffalo

Education Tidbits

A UK-based Pakistani student won top honors at the GIS Research UK conference held in April. Muhammad Adnan who works as a computer research officer in the Spatial Literacy in Teaching & Learning (SPLINT) at the Department of Geography, University College London, and is also pursuing a PhD there, was awarded “Best Young Researcher of the Year.” His work focuses on
the integration of real time feeds of a variety of public domain data from multiple and often disparate sources.

- The Pakistan Daily

- Santa Ynez Valley Union High School science teacher Chip Fenenga was surprised last weekend to receive the California Geographical Society’s Distinguished Teaching Award for his work teaching GIS in the school’s Environmental and Spatial Technologies Program. The school played host to the society’s annual event. A bonus: ESRI “upgraded the school’s Environmental and Spatial Technologies lab with their latest-version software for this conference, which was a donation of more than $75,000.”

- Santa Ynez Valley News

The Digital Durham Web site includes U.S. Census data, photographs, personal and public records dating back to post-Civil War Durham and recently added more than 30 newly digitized maps from the city Department of Public Works and university libraries. The Duke-Durham collaboration merges Google Earth technology with historic city maps for use by educators, historians and the Durham community.

- Duke University Website

SAR Group Formed after Fossett Search has First Find

The Missing Aircraft Search Team (MAST) announced its first recovery in April. An overlooked fire report reviewed by a volunteer in California, prompted a call to the hikers who filed it. They returned to the scene and found wreckage later determined to be a Cessna 182 that was lost near Sedona, Ariz., in September 2006. Two people died in the crash. MAST is working to form as a non-profit. Another group formed after the Fossett search InternetSAR does similar work.

- AVWeb
- MAST statement on the find (pdf)