Milwaukee County Supervisor: Arizona Not a Border State

Arizona Senator Jon Kyl helped Milwaukee County Supervisor Peggy West clear up her misunderstanding about U.S. geography via a letter and map. He was responding to this statement West made during a debate this week on whether the county should boycott Arizona over its immigration law.

She said: “If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this saying that they had a major issue with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would have to look twice at this.  But this is a state that is a ways removed from the border.”

Later she noted it was the length of the borders she meant to address.

- 11 Alive

Education Tidbits

Seminars for students in grades 11 and 12 on GIS will be organised by the City of Johannesburg in conjunction with the department of information and knowledge management at the University of Johannesburg, ESRI-South Africa and the Geo-Information Society of South Africa (GISSA). They are free and run Aug 31-Sept 1 in Braamfontein. The goal is to introduce them to the technology and possible jobs.

- Press-Enterprise

There’s a new version of of the W.M. Keck Earth Sciences and Mining Research Center, “The Nevada Geospatial Data Gateway,” a digital map data depository for Nevada. The map created at University of Nevada, Reno was unveiled to to the Nevada State Mapping Advisory Committee at the 20th Annual NGIS Conference in Las Vegas at the annual June meeting. The site

combines ArcGIS Server and Google maps, providing visitors with an intuitive way to access the data. Best of all, it is fast, returning results typically five to six times faster than comparable searches performed on http://www.data.gov.
“Essentially, the new site will allow a visitor to click on a location using Google maps and pull up all the data we have for that area,” Newell said. “It simplifies the process of discovering and using the information. It’s groundbreaking work that needs to be done, which no one else is doing.”

- UNR News

Google Patent Reveals New UI for Mapping

The patent is titled “Embedded Navigation Interface.” The app was filed in March and made public last week.

Abstract:

A navigation interface is embedded in imagery and includes various controls for manipulating the imagery. The controls provide various navigation operations, including but not limited to: rotation, tilt, zoom and 360 degree. In some implementations, one or more controls can be operated to restore the imagery to a predetermined state. Some implementations include a control for providing 360 degree movement of imagery. One or more controls can provide incremental and continuous motion of imagery.

The pictures (reproduced here) seem to tell the story of a click and hold/drag sort of interface, in contrast to multiple clicks. The images look like Google Earth, but most analysis says the UI is for Google Maps and StreetView; I’m not sure why.

- Go Rumors

Why do people check-in with Location-based Apps?

ReadWriteWeb asks and answers. In short: “It’s emotional, and it’s different for different people.” One reason I recently noted at a conference - you get “status.” You are “cool.”

I guess I’m not cool as I do not yet check-in.

Podcast: Google Earth Pro Now with Location Intelligence Data

Google announced new datasets including demographics, parcels, traffic counts in its for fee Google Earth Pro this month. Why? What market is the company looking capture? Are those data enough? And, do they belong in Google Earth Pro? Our editors explore the new additions.


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