Beyond Norad Santa Tracking

If you are ready to take on some real science in making sense of the Santa tradition, The Truth About Santa: Wormholes, Robots and What Really Happens on Christmas Eve might help. The book tackles the magic and real science that could power all that Santa does. Santa uses advanced versions of tech we now have: GPS, augmented reality, sensors and the like.

I found the discussion on Morning Edition with author Gregory Mone both fun and educational. And, there’s an excerpt from the book dealing with distribution challenges (a bit of an economics lesson).

Waze has a “good” layoff

CEO Noam Bardin explained that 15 temporary US workers, mostly students, were laid off because the company’s user base is now big enough to do their job: mapping US roads.

- Globes(Israel) via @gletham

Provide input on Data.gov

A website has been set up to allow anyone to share what they’d like to see on Data.gov by July 2010. You can vote suggestions up or down. I even saw some from the geospatial community!

via @geopdx

Local GIS Tidbits

Leavenworth County, Kansas just launched an online GIS and published a Q & A with the Jeff Culbertson, GIS director. That’s a nice way to introduce the site and highlight that the county has a GIS director and not something I’ve seen done.

- The Mirror

Sam Gett at the Northfield News wrote a recent column about inaccuracies in data in his GPS. I responded to it with a few suggestions. (GPS is still mis-expanded in the article; oh well…). But there is good news from Gett this week in his column:

Brian Welch, the city’s GIS technician, told me he received a call from NavTeq’s Midwest representative after the company found my recent column on mapping services online. NavTeq had previously targeted Rice County, along with about 500 others, for data updates. Welch connected the rep to county GIS coordinator Michelle Trager to obtain accurate street centerlines and address information. With any luck, he hoped, my GPS device will locate my house within a few months. Thanks, Brian!

It’s great to see that NAVTEQ is tracking such articles and responding. Well done!

Laflin (that’s in Upper Wyoming County, PA) is taking a GIS company up on a discounted monthly fee to test out its GIS tools.

Although not included in the budget as presented at the meeting, council agreed to spend $50 monthly on a municipal mapping plan outlined by In Sequence, Inc, a GIS mapping company. The company believes the mapping it will offer will be worth $350 to $500 a month, but is offering the program to the borough at the low monthly fee so that it can be shown as a pilot project. Once running, the system will show in a unified form all utility routes, power, water and sewer lines, as well as any other information that the borough feels important.

InSequence is actually one word. The company offers "GlobalView" a GIS service, though it does not list any municipalities as current clients.