Local GIS Tidbits

Brentwood, TN is facing a challenge many municipalities are: cell phones replacing landlines. The challenge for public safety staff is how to contact those without landlines when a neighborhood situation (utility outage, crime, lost child, etc) pops up. Brentwood is asking residents to register their cell phone numbers, along with their addresses, to insure they are called via the reverse 911 system on those devices.

The one comment to the article is concerned about that sort of registration meaning the city knows where you are all the time.

- The Tenneseean

David Mark, GIS Manager at the City of Vancouver is not about to step on the toes of hackers who built a garbage day calendar and reminder message service. An app built during a “hacker event” has 150 subscribers and many using a calendar feed. For now, says Mark, “By and large we do our share by making the data available,” and won’t link his site to the app or build one like it.

- Vancouver Currier

Johnston, IA has new sign markers on its trails equipped with numbers that represent a GPS coordinate. The idea is that in case of an emergency, a caller could give the numbers to 911 operators. Eagle Scout candidate Lucas Dunshee put up the markers.

- Des Moines Register

Dueling Edu Web Apps

I’m not sure what’s gotten into the geocommunity of late, but education maps are popping up all over. While all of them didn’t start out as demos, some are indeed demos of new technology.

First off, there was Google’s College Finder demo for its new spatial search API in the Google Map Data API. (via Google Geo Dev blog)

Then, there is GeoTech’s ESRI ArcGIS Server Community College Geospatial Program app built on the Sample Flex viewer (c 2008). (via @gletham, via ESRI Edu Blog)

Finally, the LA TImes updated its California Schools Guide to include spatial search using GeoDjango. The app finds public, private and parochial schools within 2 or 4 miles of an address. (via @latimes)

Ottawa County Michigan Offers ESRI Silverlight Public Crime Map

The app includes a legend (with legend in the title) which not only reveals what the symbols on the map mean, but also the two letter codes for each type of crime searchable in the query box.

I’m not sure at all what *Incidents are relative to the point on the Map* means. That statement is above the legend. Perhaps it means the location data are “fuzzed up” a bit?

I was unable to produce a query that put dots on the map. The error message told me that either there were no results OR there was an error in the input data. I was unable to determine what was causing my problem.

The app has the typical toolbar of giant icons - each of perform an operation or open a dialog box. I do like that only one dialog box can be open at a time, but I found it hard to shut any single one down - without opening one to replace it. Said another way, there’s no “x” or “close” on the dialog boxes. One other interface concern in the query dialog (aka Incident Search - with a police map icon on the toolbar): the Map Incidents button, which means, “go do the query” is not distinguished in any way from the Clear Search or Clear Map buttons.

A “block of text” discussion of how to use the app pops up at start up - but I could not find a way to get back to this “help” once in the app.

I hope this feedback will help those behind the app to improve it. My setup: Mac OSX, Safari, Silverlight already installed.

- Holland Sentinel (I reported to the paper that it had a bad link to the app in its coverage.)