ESRI “Transitioning” Pronunciation of its Name

I contacted ESRI and received this statement:

As part of our efforts to grow ESRI’s name recognition globally, we are transitioning the pronunciation of our company name from “E-S-R-I” to “ezree.” This transition will occur incrementally, beginning with our external recordings. Our goal is that, over time, ESRI staff will adopt the new pronunciation; however, there is no current requirement to do so.

I’m sure it’ll take some time for longtime employees and users.

FGDC Seek Comment on U.S. Thoroughfare, Landmark, and Postal Address Data Standard

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) is seeking comment on the U.S. Thoroughfare, Landmark, and Postal Address Data Standard. This important draft document will impact how addressing standards are developed for a national spatial data infrastructure (SDI). From the FGDC:

"In sponsoring the creation of the United States Thoroughfare, Landmark, and Postal Address Data Standard, the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) has sought to convene, under the auspices of its Subcommittee on Cultural and Demographic Data, interested parties from among the local, state, Federal, and non-government sectors to resolve address data modeling and geoprocessing and to create a comprehensive address data standard, thereby helping to make our national spatial data infrastructure truly national…[it will] Provide one standard that meets the diverse address data management requirements for local address administration, postal and package delivery, emergency response (and navigation generally), administrative recordkeeping, and address data aggregation."

The complete draft may be downloaded (Word doc) from the FGDC website and comments on the draft should be directed to Julie Maitra.

- press release

Why Paper Maps are Better for Foot Nav than GPS

John McKinney explains in Miller-McCune.

New Crowdsourced Wireless Coverage Collection App

It’s from Root Wireless and is called Root Mobile. The app runs in the background on the Google Nexus One, Motorola Cliq, Motorola Droid Eris and T-Mobile G1, as well as the Blackberrys Bold, Tour, Curve and 8830. It reports where calls or data connections are dropped. When there’s enough data, the company will provide maps. Windows mobile is coming.

Ok, fine, that’s a great idea. Here’s my challenge to ZDnet: you didn’t mention anything about the privacy issues behind the app. That info was in the PR: “User privacy is strictly protected and the data their phones contribute is anonymously added to the aggregated pool of data that Root Wireless makes available to the pubic.” Why did you not include it?

- ZDnet
- press release

[Note to Root Wireless: your product homepage still has data about signing up for the beta in Nov 2009!!!!]

Education Tidbits

52°North’s Ann Hitchcock reports that the company has announced the winners of the 52°North Student Innovation Prize for Geoinformatics 2010 - two first prizes.
The winners are:

Alexander McKeown and James McHugh from the Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) ICT Centre in Tasmania, Australia with their proposal “Developing an SOS Client for Use by the General Public”. The jury was impressed by their concept for mainstreaming Sensor Web Enablement technology. The proposed project will be a valuable addition to the currently available spectrum of SOS clients. The client described will allow the general public to consume sensor data provided by SOS instances, thus advancing Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) technology into the world of mainstream IT applications.

Daniel Nüst from the Institute for Geoinformatics in Muenster, Germany with his proposal “ SOS4R – Accessing a Sensor Observation Service from R”. He impressed the jury with his innovative approach of extending R, an open source software environment for statistical computing, to integrate data provided by an SOS. The proposed R extension will allow the integration of real-time, as well as, historic sensor data sets into geostatistical analysis applications via a standardized interface. This will enable R users access to the broad range of sensor data sources that support the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards. Not only will this create a completely new user community for SWE services, it will also enable users with no knowledge of the underlying IT architecture to access SOS instances.

Winners receive 2.000 EUR and the opportunity to work together with 52°North students and academic personnel to develop their concepts and realize prototypical implementations.

- 52°North

The Pacific Education Institute offers a field investigation model for students to “explore different types of questions to understand their environment.” Basically, they do hands on research. Now PEI is integrating tech - including PASCO’s SPARK for field collection and its My World GIS for visualization and further exploration. That educational-focused GIS got high marks from one of my students in its ease of use.

- press release

Idaho State University is celebrating its open source MapWindow GIS developed by faculty and graduate students in its geosciences department and from Utah State University. It has been downloaded more than 260,000 times from users throughout the world and has 9,000 registered users. The geoscience department will host the 1st International MapWindow GIS Users and Developers Conference March 31-April 2 at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. Orgnaizers are expecting at least 60 users and developers from around the world including staff from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and several private companies and universities.

Oh, and, per the Idaho State Journal, a Mac version is coming: “While MapWindow is only available to PC users, ISU is in the process of developing a version that will function on Macintosh computers.”

- ISU News  [I’ve informed the webmaster of errors in the article.]

Dr. David J. Russomanno, the R. Eugene Smith Professor and Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Memphis, has been selected as dean of the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, pending approval by the IU Board of Trustees. Yeah, so… well Dr. Sussonmanno not only worked at Intergraph in the utilities division, but also “from 2000 to 2005, he was president, founder, and chief, of AI-GIS Technologies, an artificial intelligence and geographical information systems company.”

- press release