Monday, August 31. 2009

MapSherpa; Maps (not GIS) for Outdoor People

Back in 2005 DM Solutions' name was on many lips as one of the most prominent developers and implementors of open source GIS. The Ottawa-based firm was tied in to the early efforts to create what is now the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, OSGEO. More recently DM Solutions has been quiet. It was time for a rethink of the business and the way ahead. And, that brings us to MapSherpa.com, the company's new consumer focused site. (press release) That's right - the one time B2B provider is now in the B2C space. The backend is still the open source code for which the company is known.

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iPhone, API and More Come to Burning Man

Brady over at O'Reilly details the new tech coming to the weeklong party on the playa gearing up this week in Nevada. (I've never attended, but have friends who have. I did spend a week on the playa flying kites.)

There are two really interesting socialogical, rather than tech insights from the post. First off, there's the concept that Blackrock City (that's the name of the temporary city) is a great place to test out new ideas. There's an iPhone app, a Foursquare implementation and efforts to use machine tagging in Flickr. It is a literal "blank slate" (this year with wireless, fingers crossed) with lots of geeks and artists.

Second, there's this year's theme of "evolution" and the response of some noting how tech may well intrude. The places where there's no connectivity are becoming fewer and fewer.

LA Times "My Map" Map of Latest Fires

It's here.

There's lot of great detail and time stamps for all additions. I'm still looking a way for creators of such map to source the data points. Are they from LA Times reporters? Officials? People on scene? How can one contribute?

There will be more, not fewer of these sorts of maps from the media and other interested parties. We need tools to give the maps (and orgs behind them) appropriate "authority." One solution I ran into when looking at the H1N1 maps was from Rhiza Labs app which sits on top of Google Maps.

via @ManoMarks

How Regular People Make Maps

This blog post by Megan Taylor explains how she managed to create the map needed for her local paper (where she volunteers). It helps explain why even someone pretty techie (she builds websites) can't "just" make a map.

Virginia's New Wind Farm in W. Virginia?

That's the assertion of Pocahontas County Commission (WV) President Martin Saffer. He says the state boundary shown on Highland New Wind Development's maps doesn't match U.S. Geological Survey maps. That would put one or two of proposed turbines in West Virginia.

The company says it used GPS to determine the bounary. Work on the wind farm started in August of this year.

- AP

Forbes: Most Stressful US City is Chicago, for second year in a row

To find the country's most stressful cities, we examined quality of life factors in the country's 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or metros — geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics. We looked at June 2009 unemployment figures provided by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and cost of living figures from the Council for Community and Economic Research. We examined median home-price drops from first quarter of 2008 to first-quarter of 2009 that were provided by the National Association of Realtors. Population density based on 2008 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and ESRI also factored. Last, we examined the number of sunny and partly sunny days per year, based on 2007 data from the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, as well as air-quality figures, based on 2007 data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

- Forbes