New Geo APIs - 2/22/12

Bing Traffic API: The Bing Traffic API provides information about traffic incidents and issues, such as construction sites and traffic congestion. Traffic incident information is currently available for the United States and Canada. Users can also get information about traffic issues that met the criteria specified in the URL request, such as map area, incident type and severity. The API uses RESTful calls and responses are formatted in XML and JSON.

deCarta MapSearch Engine API: deCarta is a location based services provider. The Map Search Engine API gives developers the ability to implement local search on their web sites and applications. The API can search address and point of interest data sourced from content partners. Developers can also overlay their own searchable content onto the map. MapSearch Engine is “white label”, allowing customers to unitize their own UI, branding and content. The API uses RESTful calls and responses are formatted in XML, JSON, JSONP and XHTML.

- Programmable Web

Bonus: 40 real estate APIs

- +skipcody

NYTimes: Google Augmented Reality Glasses Coming by Year’s End

The promise, as reported by the New York Times citing employees familiar with the project is a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time. They are expected to go on sale by year end at about the cost of a smartphone ($250-$600). 

Other details: 3g/4g, sensors, gps, navigation by head movement, built in camera, no biz plans yet - an "experiment"

- New York Times

Mountaintop Mining and Health and other Health GIS News

An interactive map launched Feb. 14 by the nonprofit iLoveMountains.org plots county-level data on indicators of health and quality of life in relation to mountaintop mining sites.

"The Human Cost of Coal" is a map centered on the mountaintop mining region of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

- State Journal

And in other mining news comes a Yale study suggesting mining may not be the culprit for all the disease in Appalachia.

A new study out of Yale University offers evidence that coal mining isn’t directly to blame for Appalachia’s health problems—but it could play a part.

For years, researchers have tried to figure out why people in Appalachia contract diabetes, heart disease and various cancers at higher rates than most of the country. Several studies out of West Virginia University found links between some of those maladies and coal mining. The new study, from researchers at Yale’s School of Public Health, suggests the causes are more complicated.

- WFPL

A century ago it was the pioneering 'poverty' map which charted starvation and deprivation across London and the squalor of Victorian Britain.

EAST Students Map Hospital and other Education GIS News

By request from the local SWAT team, students in the EAST Lab Program at Paragould High School [AR] are working on a huge project. They are constructing digitized maps, floor-by-floor, of a local hospital to better assist officers in handling an emergency situation.

- KAIT

Complaints from parents about schools manipulating the distance from home to school to give preference to some students in some schools has led a few schools to use Google Maps as a measurement tool.

“It’s the most transparent way to ascertain the distance between the school and the residence of a child. We have also adopted other methods including taking a declaration from the parents over their claims of the distance,” [Ashok] Pandey [principal of Ahlcon International School in Mayur Vihar] told PTI.

The tool used for the measurement and if the measurement is crow flies or along roads is not clear.

- FirstPost

Darren and Sandy Van Soye will spend the next 14 months travelling the world and teaching geography per a press release from Pricess Cruises.

The couple, who are chronicling their journey at www.TrekkingthePlanet.net, were inspired to plan their trek after they saw first-hand what a positive impact a previous family trip around the globe had on their two daughters' lives. Their full travel itinerary incorporates five different Princess Cruises voyages, totaling 96 days at sea. Both the first and last legs of their journey, plus three legs in between, will be aboard a Princess cruise ship.  ...

In total, the Van Soyes' journey will cover 50 countries on six continents over the course of the 424-day world tour. Throughout their travels, the couple will share 60 different geography education modules they have created as well as pictures and videos of their travels for anyone in the world to use. So far more than 700 classrooms around the world will be following their travels, representing 50,000 students.

Would you use such a resource in your teaching?

- press release

The Geographical Sciences Committee of the Royal Irish Academy aims to support the development of geographical studies throughout the island of Ireland. Following on from this we are pleased to provide an introductory resource [pdf] on the geography of climate justice prepared by the Committee (with support from the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency) for dissemination to geography students across Ireland. The resource is intended for use with transition year students in the Republic and for students from GCSE level upwards in Northern Ireland. 

Royal Irish Academy via @theaag

Nader, Onassis, and Jones: Privacy in Public and Limits on the Private Sector - Communia: Woodrow Wilson Center for Science and Technology Innovation Program

Here is a follow-up post from Communia on the U.S. vs. Jones privacy case:

The GPS case – the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Jones – raises a whole host of issues about privacy in public. The case was about the Fourth Amendment and the government’s ability to follow individuals on public roads. Of the three opinions in the case, that of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s was the most interesting and, potentially, the furthest reaching.

Sotomayor asked “whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the Government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on.” Sotomayor and all the other justices found limits in the Fourth Amendment. I want to look more broadly.

The Fourth Amendment establishes the boundary for government action, but it does not constrain the private sector. What happens if the government cannot follow people because of Fourth Amendment restrictions but the private sector can? After all, what good is the Fourth Amendment if a private company can follow you down every street and sell the information to marketers, profilers, and government agencies too?

- Read more