Arthur R. Berrill, Vice President of Advanced Concepts and Technology at Pitney Bowes let us know about the new FireLocator app, currently in beta, thinking it may be of use to readers and those dealing with the current California fires. The app was created by Pitney Bowes Advanced Concepts and Technologies (AC&T) in collaboration with Pitney Bowes MapInfo. It provides geocoding to find fires (current and historical) around specific addresses. Data comes from the usual "fire" places including:

- NASA Modis Data
- Incident Information System (InciWeb)
- GeoMac Multi Agency Coordination (GeoMac)
- California Wild-Fire Zones

And there's other fire-related content including:
- pictures from Flikr
- news from San Bernardino Sun

Underneath you'll find Virtual Earth, Silverlight, BP MapInfo's Envinsa and BP MapInfo's geocoding. This is the first I've heard of AC&T.

You can access a video (movie reel icon) about the app and the "about" information ("i" icon) on the right of the tool/search bar. I didn't see them on my first visit. The main interactive feature (at this point) seems to be the ability to save specific locations which can be visited in the future.

PC World has a listing of all the tech gadgets it thinks are outrageously expensive, including a some geo-ones.

GPS Devices with 5-inch (or Larger) Screens
Price: $600 and up
GPS Analyst Craig Ellison says: In general, I found that GPS devices with a screen size of 5 inches or larger seemed disproportionately higher priced with less features compared to the traditional 4.3-inch ones. Such products are the Magellan Maestro 5310 ($800) and the Garmin nüvi 5000 ($600). Sure, Garmin can get away with high prices since its models have a unique feature—voice recognition—that none of the other products have, but they're still priced way too high.

MSNBC asked mayors of more than 200 cities in 48 states and Puerto Rico to share their advice and requests with president elect Obama. The result? A Virtual Earth map and the detailed responses.

Al Tompkins (of Al's Morning Meeting) at Poynter.org notes:

The work is remarkable not just for its content but for the interactive display msnbc.com used to tell the story. You will see a legend on the right side of the map that lists the advice by topic. You will also see the responses plotted by city. I have never seen a survey like this one.
...
This is not only worth your time -- it is worth sharing in your editorial meeting as a smart and useful way to tell stories online.

From a Directions Media perspective, I'm pleased to see both Huntsville, AL and Cambridge, MA are represented. This is an interesting way to get a snapshot of what your local officials think are important.

Richard Weait of Cloudmate is coming to visit the Boston Linux and Unix User Group to speak on OpenStreetMap on Wednesday, November 19, 2008 from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm at MIT Building E51, Room 376. I'm going to try to attend.

Reed Business Geo, Inc, which owns GIS Monitor [I founded and edited it for five years], has decided to remove its archives from the Web. "Because the GIS Monitor delivered timely news and updates on the state of the industry, the archives of the newsletter have not been migrated to the Professional Surveyor Magazine website."

Earth Observation Magazine, EOM, [which I edited for a year, perhaps less] was also removed, for the same reason.

Here's what the publication says in brief article highlighting some potential picks for members of president-elect Obama's intelligence team:

Finally, a dark horse candidate for CIA has surfaced. Christopher Tucker, senior vice president for national programs at erdas (formerly known as Leica Geosytems) was the founding chief strategic officer at In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital fund. Tucker serves as a board member of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.