Tuesday, July 7. 2009

A Yahoo Maps Sighting

Yahoo Maps doesn't get much press of late (and a recent Search Engine Land article suggests it won't get much more...unless it takes action). Still, it does pop up in odd places like a notification for parents to determine if their children (in Newburyport, MA) are eligible to take the bus to school for free.

Students entering sixth grade and younger and living outside a 2-mile distance as measured by Yahoo maps, are eligible for mandated free transportation.

I'm sure there's a good reason that Yahoo Maps was selected for this task; I'm curious what it was.
- Newburyport News

Mass Law: New Company Phone Systems Must Locate Floor/Bldg of Phone User

Massachusetts has a new law this month that details what E-911 capabilities companies that add new or upgrade phone systems must have. In particular:

For businesses, in particular, multi-line telephone systems must transmit to public safety answering points, or “PSAPs,” the street address and an emergency response location that provides at least the building and floor location of the caller.

This means opportunities for some businesses and I'm sure other states are watching the legislation as well.

- TCM

Local GIS Tidbits

The British Columbia city of Nanaimo has built nearly 20 SketchUp models of buildings in its downtown to send to Google for approval and integration into Google Earth. City employees and members of the community are doing the modeling using "Sketchup Pro and Google Pro, along with a photo of a particular building’s facade."

- Nanaimo Bulletin

Washington DC has updated its sex offender registry and mapping app to include the ability for residents to search the database based on addresses. Until now, that is, since 2001, users could only search by the cryptic Police Service Area (PSA). There are 45 of those in the district and citizens don't generally know in which one they live. Now visitors can find offenders who live or work within a 1/4 or 1/2 mile radius of an address. Many comments on the site on the matter pushed the Police Dept to update the app (built on Google Maps) with the new functionality.

- Washington Post

The Alcohol and Substance Abuse Council of Jefferson County Inc. (New York) aims "to gather community agencies and organizations to get them on board with using geographic information system mapping to examine the density of alcohol outlets in the north country and compare that data with various social, criminal and health-related trends." I guess there's no licensing of these outlets or perhaps they are looking for illegal ones. For now there's no GIS and the group is just looking for local support to follow the lead of a graduate project of Robert S. Pezzolesi which shows that focused interventions on the alcohol environment can help other social ills.

- Watertown Daily Times

Quote of the Week

"If you have a GPS device, you're using Navteq [sic] maps."

- David L. Jannetta, one of the founders of Traffic.com, acquired by NAVTEQ, before that company was acquired by Nokia in the Altoona Mirror.

TomTom Shares More Details on iPhone App

Most of the details relate not to the software but the hardware package, known as the Car Kit. They come from Tom Murray, Vice President of Market Development for TomTom. To enhance the experience and remove some of the hardware barriers of the iPhone, it will include:

- a GPS chip(!) which will be in use when the device is docked
- speaker
- mount
- microphone to make the phone into a speakerphone
- cable for power/charging
- cable to link to car stereo

A few of the more important features are still up in the air. Map Share (TomTom's user update mechanism for data) may or may not be included. My sense is that eventually it will be part of the app; it may just not make the first release. Pricing is also up in the air, though Murray suggests the company is leaning toward a single price and not a monthly subscription. Map updates would then be pay as you need them. The delivery mechanism for what might be an app with very large datasets perhaps of 1Gb (wi-fi only?) is also undecided at this point.

- MacWorld (the page says copyright 2007 in one spot - oops!)

Podcast: Dissecting the ESRI UC 2009 Q & A

Our editors read over the very long and detailed ESRI User Conference Q & A and teased out what struck them as well as some points you may want to know before you head to San Diego. Among the topics: ESRI's plan for the cloud and LBS, ArcGIS 9.4, surveying and certification.


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