Integral GIS Maps Lebanon Elections

The Seattle Times profiles the work of Integral GIS under contract to Arabia GIS on behalf of Civil Campaign for Electoral Reform, a coalition of Lebanese groups committed to open and democratic elections. Three staffers visited the country in March to pull together data and a GIS to track the elections and report on outcomes. At least one Lebanese broadcasters used a Microsoft Surface display to review the results.

Bing Maps Geocodes Searched Images

I didn’t find this feature, Gary Price noted it on his Resource Shelf blog.

Basically, you do an image search on Bing for a city. I used Boston and found these. If you click on the “Show Map” link you’ll see the images posted on Bing Maps.

So, how does Microsoft geocode the images? A Microsoft spokesperson responded to my question:

We used an algorithm to associate top points of interest and then used our Image Search index and Bing Maps technology to associate images with those points of interest in selected cities.