LBS Tidbits

Urban Ministries of Durham (UMD, North Carolina) worked with an agency (pro bono) to develop a Foursquare enhancement that offers locations homeless people might know along with regular check in spots. When someone (a Duke student) checks into one of them, information in the tips section about preventing and dealing with homelessness are shared. Since checkins are also shared with that person’s followers this is a way to get the word out. I have mixed feelings about this effort.

- ClickZ

Gowalla is bragging not about how may users it has, but how many POIs. “Over 2,000,000 Spots have now been created on Gowalla,” the firm revealed in a tweet. “Thanks to all of you for adding your favourites in 171 countries.”

- Pocket Gamer

Coming in January is another report your local issues app: YouTown. Some of the suite of goodies is free, but to include the “report feedback” part governments have to pay. Beta is just wrapping up. The founder seems to be focusing on small cities, population under 250,000 - and expects a few hundred of them within 6 months of launch.

- GovTech

It seems Twitter is looking at having businesses claim their own Twitter places pages. Twitter says it’s still experimenting.

- Mashable

Update: Quote of the Week

After I posted this quote, the article from which it was taken was updated. But exactly what was updated was not clear. One thing is: this quote is no longer part of the article.

—- original post 11/9/10——

The National Parks Foundation hooked up with The North Face and Facebook Places to offer a deal where those who checked in at a North Face Store or a National Park would cause a dollar to be donated by The North Face to the Foundation. No problem there. But:

Foundation officials weren’t aware of the possible risks those who participate in the program might be exposing themselves to until the Traveler contacted them for this story, but some of their followers on Facebook were. Not long after the promotion was announced, one person said they were leery of the program because of the tracking.

- Kurt Repanshek writing in National Parks Traveler

Education Tidbits

High schoolers in Thompson School District in Colorado took on the task of balancing students across three different schools. They tapped into many skills in the assignment in their world geography course. Per one student:

“We had to remember our knowledge of math, and we learned Excel to form the boundaries and tweak them a little bit,” she said. “We had to pull from real life and what we can do to actually help. For me, it was hands-on and helped me learn better than just trying to do a test.”

I’m curious how they used Excel to form the boundaries.
- The Coloradoan

The University of Wisconsin Madison offers up a new online map of its Arboretum. It includes many tools including those to develop and measure a running or biking route through the park. There’s an interesting introduction - with options for novice and advanced users. I wanted to provide some feedback but found no way to do so. Also, I have no idea the technology behind it, save Flash.

- UW press release

Two students’ work at Central Michigan University may help police find meth labs. Graduate assistants Kenneth Robertson and Alexander Beregulko won first place in the national SAS M2010 Data Mining Conference for their project which uses data mining techniques to predict Methamphetamine Production In The Midwest.

- Central Michigan Life

Achievement Gap: Midwest Regional Conference in Chicago—Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest at Learning Point Associates has launched the Midwest Education Atlas (www.learningpt.org/REL/atlas), an online repository of geographic data displays that map out the most recent data on high school dropout rates and give educators a new view toward prevention.

- press release

Need a map, perhaps for a humanities class, to look at Mark Twain’s haunts in San Francisco? Here’s one.

- The Bay Citizen

Free Webinar and Free k-12 GIS Modules! Eileen Goff, Adjunct Faculty in the San Diego Mesa College GIS Department, will offer a webinar describing geospatial modules developed by Mesa College GIS instructors. Friday Nov 12, 2-3 Central.

- details via @geotechcenter

Old Poll, New Poll

Six weeks ago we asked: When was the last time you read a corporate whitepaper? Eighty seven people responded:

9% Past week
1% Past month
17% Past year
25% More than a year ago
40% Never

Next up: Will you be commenting on the FGDC’s Geospatial Platform Initiative?

International Tidbits

Romania will have to return EUR41.7 million to the European Commission due to errors in area calculations in its Land Parcel Indetification System. The country failed to use funds correctly under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

- Focus News

Bulgaria must pay back 20.2 million euro “for poor LPIS-GIS and deficiencies in on-the spot controls in respect of claim year 2006 for area-aids expenditure, including area-based rural development measures,” the EC said.

- Sophia Echo

Nigeria’s Science and Technology Minister, Mohammed Kaoje, explained this week,at the first regional meeting of the Science Journalism Cooperation Programme (SjCoop) of the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ), in Abuja that it’s NigeriaSat-2 is at the launch site and prepping for launch later this year. He also shared that Nigerian experts have developed NigeriaSat-X that would also be launched into the disaster-monitoring constellation next year. UK Surrey Satellite Technology built NigeriaSat-2 which will carry 2.5, 3.2 and 5metres resolution sensors.  NigeriaSat-2 is expected to replace NigeriaSat-1, which was launched into space in 2003.

- The Daily Independent

Remember all those articles about the pairs of folks in the Tele Atlas car or the NAVTEQ car collecting data? Now it’s time for the Whereis car story as it travels through Australia. The twist? The crew is a couple married 28 years.

- Stuff.co.nz