Pols Giving out State Highway Maps: Not so Ok in WI

Wisconsin prints the maps, at taxpayer expense mostly from gas taxes. Pols are given some, but can request as many as they like. Most put stickers or print their name/pics/contact information on the maps and hand they out to organizations and individuals. “In all, lawmakers have given away nearly 1.4 million maps worth about $190,000 since 2005, state records show.”

Is that a good idea in these challenging economic times? The state used to print the maps every year; now its every other year. Another concern: the state competing with the private sector. The pols say, basically, they are delivering wanted material that would otherwise be sitting in a warehouse.

- Journal Sentinel

TomTom Shares OpenLR Standard: What is it?

The press release says:

OpenLR has been designed for traffic information systems and dynamic route
guidance, and is available as an open-source technology a
http://www.tomtom.com/page/openLR. It can easily be adapted to the requirements
of system integrators, and the technical community can contribute with their
ideas to improve it.

Location data can range from static road sign information to highly dynamic
traffic and weather situation information as well as safety-critical information
- anything that needs to be accurately linked to a specific piece of or position
on the road network. The OpenLR technology allows location content providers to
reference any location on any navigable map, completely royalty-free.

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China GIS Growth: Homegrown

China Economic Net has a not very well sourced article about the growth of the geospatial market in the country. Among the interesting tidbits:

Made-in-China geographic information system softwares represented by SuperMap and MapGIS have been emerging in succession and formed early scale.

Up to now, made-in-China 3D GIS softwares have taken up half of native market shares. A great deal of softwares in the industries like remote sensing and navigation have also realized independent innovation and occupied over 90 percent of native market shares.

There’s a nod the past stats of 20 percent growth per year, but there’s no numbers associated with the recent situation.

Education Tidbits

In India, schools are finally getting on online maps. The Central Board of Secondary Education has plans for an online public mapping of all the affiliated schools of its board in Delhi.

- India Server

Gujarat University has introduced a two semester “Advanced P.G. Diploma in Geoinformatics and Satellite Communication” course.The course will be conducted at the Dept. of Physics, Electronics and Space Science in collaboration with Space Applications Centre (ISRO) & Physical Research Laboratory.The course has been designed to cater to the needs of research, technology development and applications in fields of Geoinformatics and Tele-communication.

DNA India

Can an hour and 15 minutes turn students in potential GIS technologists? That’s the hope of those involved in a GIS Week program in Johannesburg, South Africa. Over 1000 students filed through a two-day event with a 15 minute intro and an hour of hands on with the technology. Said one attendee: “It was good; it was nice. It was way better than school and they catered for us very well.”

- City of Johannesburg

TechCrunch Explores Online Maps Response to Bay Bridge Closure

TechCrunch give Google the win - it rerouted and said why. Yahoo rerouted by didn’t say why. Bing didn’t by default know of the closure.

I live in Boston and the closure - and its extension - has been the on the national news all weekend. It also got lots of play on San Fran based Buzz Out Loud on Friday.