Study: Brains Like North Best Because Maps Do

A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, recasts how we make geographic sense of our "home town."

In [the study], 26 residents of Tübingen (who had lived in Tübingen for at least two years) were put into a virtual-reality headset and seated in a chair that didn’t allow them to swivel. Participants found themselves in the virtual three-dimensional photorealistic model of their hometown, at locations familiar to them, surrounded by fog masking all but the near distance. Then they had to point to an invisible location—say, the main gate of the university or the fire station. The scenes changed, and so did the participant’s spatial orientation. After 60 three-location trials, participants were asked to draw a map of the town including all the locations they’d pointed to.

The results: Although participants drew differently oriented maps, everyone performed most accurately when facing north and got worse the further they deviated from north. The only explanation the researchers could figure was that they’d all seen, and internalized, a map of Tübingen at some point, and Western maps are all oriented the same way—north on top.

- Medical Xpress

WalkScore Funding and other LBS News

WalkScore Raises $2M To Rate The "Walkability" Of Potential Housing

- TechCrunch

As part of the organization's 100th birthday celebration, scouts created a free "Girl Scout Cookie Locator" app for the iPhone and Android.

But some folks are nervous - not understanding that the app only lists Cookie booths, not scout home addresses. Booths always have adults present.

- Newsnet5

- KFDA 10

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Esri Staffer Among Code for America Philly 2012 Team

Alex Yule comes to CfA from the Mapping Center team at Esri, an industry leader in Geographic Information System (GIS) software, where he built interactive web mapping experiences with ArcGIS and HTML/CSS/JS/Flex. 

He's on the West Coast for boot camp now, but will be in Philly with his two Philly team members in February to scout their projects.

- Technically Philly

And, if you missed it, Jack Dangermond spoke at Cfa laast week. Tim O'Reilly wrote about  it.  Did you miss this? Follow the Directions Worth a Click (WAC) via the WAC RSS Feed, @directionswac on Twittter or the WAC webpage. WAC is where we note significant geo stories from other publications.

New Geo APIs

Inside Idaho API: The service delivers geospatial data to support mapping of resources within the state of Idaho. Compliant with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards, the platform uses ArcGIS and other resources to promote sharing of data, effective communication, and activity coordination among state agencies and other government units. Applications can use the service to map biological and environmental features, climatology, structures, and other featurs of the state.

API methods support mapping of animal and plant species, elevation and other geological features, and climatic conditions. Applications can also map jurisdictional boundaries, transportation resources, structures, and other prominent infrastructure within Idaho

ParkingInMotion API: ParkingInMotion is an application that provides parking data and information in real-time. ParkingInMotion covers parking information in around 500 cities in the US, Canada, and Europe. Parking information includes locations, rates, hours of operation, and entrance points of parking locations.

The ParkingInMotion API allows developers to access and integrate the data and functionality of ParkingInMotion with other applications. Public documentation is not available; interested developers should email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for API information and access.

United Nations SWERA API: The SWERA service, from the United Nations, provides data about renewable energy resources worldwide. It provides geographic information system (GIS) and time-series data compiled by international experts and in-country partners. The service helps to promote applications of solar and wind energy technologies and support decision-making about available resources and likely energy production for a location.

API methods allow specification of a location by latitude and longitude along with desired data, including solar irradiance and angle, wind speeds, and related information as recorded by a number of national repositories. Methods are also available to retrieve climate data such as temperature, heating and cooling degree days, humidity, and barometric pressure.

HAMweather Aeris API: HAMweather is a site that provides traditional weather content such as local weather and weather maps. HAMweather's core product is Aeris an API that provides the necessary weather data to power services such as hosted weather sites and weather application development. The API gives developers access to data such as weather advisories, forecasts, geographic locations, storm reports and more. It uses RESTful calls and responses are formatted in JSON and JSONP.

RouteSavvy API: The service accepts a list of locations and generates a map of the most efficient sequence and route for reaching all of them, either in a roundtrip returning to the starting place or one way with first and last stops designated. It helps delivery, transit, or other routing functions to reach required stops as efficiently as possible, avoiding unnecessary backtracking.

API methods accept the route type (roundtrip or one way) and the starting and ending locations, specified as latitude and longitude, along with each of the stops that must be included. The service returns the locations specified listed in the optimal sequence.

- Programmable Web