All Points Blog

"Opensource GIS saves companies thousands"

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

This article didn't convince me of that. - The Australian Journal of Mining...Read more

Slightly Off Topic: Link Bait Hitting Geo: Why?

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

Earlier this week I got an odd e-mail (via Joe Francica): Hi, We would love to share with you an article that we just posted on our own blog! Google Earth for Educators: 50 Exciting Ideas for the Classroom (http://www.associatesdegree.com/2010/...Read more

Illinois Grant Tracker Uses ESRI for Data Management and Google Maps for Visualization

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:42:09 -0500

It's Sunshine Week and the State of Illinois has rolled out it Grant Tracker, an app that shows where grant money goes. The Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) app Grant Tracker "uses innovative mapping technology developed by ...Read more

Poizner Setting the Stage for his run for CA Governor

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:25:26 -0500

Steve Poizner (who we in geospatial know from his work at SnapTrack and Strategic Mapping Inc.,) is up against former eBay CEO Meg Whitman for the Republican nomination. On Thursday he laid out his credentials at a speech in Lafayette: "Poizner is 1)...Read more

GPS Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0500

The GPS devices required in New York City cabs since 2007 have done their job. Investigators from the Taxi and Limousine Commission found that 3000 drivers routinely charge patrons the out of borough rate, one twice as high as rides in the five borou...Read more

Apple's Social Network Patent: iGroups

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:57:33 -0500

The patent application, 20100070758, Group Formation Using Anonymous Broadcast Information, describes "iGroups, which will allow iPhone users to create social groups during a conference, gathering or any other social event" and will include informati...Read more

Local GIS Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:47:00 -0500

There are concerns about finances and record-keeping in the cemeteries in and around Frontenac, Ontario, Canada. But it sounds like, from this documented conversation, local leaders have a good sense of how to proceed. MacMunn said it would cost $5,...Read more

Charming Census Ads on Public Transit

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

I'm not sure where else these great census ads are running, but I wanted to acknowledge whoever came up with them! On the busses here in Boston I've seen these two: "If we don't know how many students there are, how will we know how many schools w...Read more

Kundra: Geospatial One-Stop One of Four Projects of Interest to OMB

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:46:17 -0500

Kundra says that while the E-Government fund is focused on four specific areas, OMB is trying to improve all the on-going projects. But there are four projects that OMB and agencies are specifically paying close attention to, including Grants.gov,...Read more

Education Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

North Carolina State University now has a smartphone app that guides users around campus and provides nuggets like photos of buildings from the past and other information. What's interesting? It was developed by the library, well known for its focus ...Read more

Want to Name a New Geo Product and Get $200?

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:40:15 -0500

Crowdsourcing is in use for naming! You sign up (18+) and if the client selects the name you suggest you take home the reward. There's a new geo app up for naming here. (If you win and you are regular reader, let us know and we'll tout your gre...Read more

New Worldwide River Map Coming to Nat Geo (and there's data for geogeeks)

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

Bernhard Lehner, a professor who studies global hydrology in the Geography Department at McGill, has put together the latest worldwide river map, one with "unprecedented resolution and detail." The map is a pull-out in the April 2010 Fresh Water Is...Read more

Quote of the Week

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:11:45 -0500

"There is no interface constraining what you can do with the raw, unfiltered data. You can plug it into a free mapping service, like Google Earth, that outperforms the bloated proprietary systems many cities and states use." - Dan Knauss of Milwau...Read more

uLocate Changes Name to Where

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:51:12 -0500

Back when I visited uLocate some years ago outside Boston, the Where platform was yet to come. Now the company will drop the uLocate and now use Where. uLocate seems old not just because of the mixed caps in the title, but because it's not cool to ha...Read more

Census Tracts (aka Tidbits)

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

DeSoto County, MS [corrected per comment] is gearing up for the Census but there are concerns looking ahead: Some supervisors questioned whether the county's GIS department could handle all the Census data, once it returns next year. Officials de...Read more

Microsoft Announced Spatial Support in Azure; WW Telescope in Bing Maps

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:53:04 -0500

Per Ed Katibah: "Microsoft announced support for spatial in SQL Azure today at MIX in Las Vegas." There's nothing yet on the Web about the announcement that I found. (This article about whether spatial support is necessary for Azure is pretty inte...Read more

Education Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:32:00 -0500

India's Union Human Resource Development Ministry will develop a syllabus for geospatial information studies in conjunction with Rolta. In time, a national accreditation authority will be set up to regulate foreign educational institutions in India. ...Read more

Podcast: A Hallway Conversation with the Team from DDTI on Everything Addressing

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:00:00 -0500

Did you ever wonder about the differences between addresses determined by geocoding using liner referencing and point addresses? How are acquired and when is one or the other the right tool for the job? Do you know what next generation 911 is and how...Read more

Garmin to Pay Dividend, to Move to Switzerland

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

Quick - where is the company based now? HQ is in Kansas City, but it's incorporated in the Cayman Islands. (That's the stuff you pick up in my line of work...) Wednesday the company said it will shift the location of its incorporation to Switzerla...Read more

Podcast: Interview with Kass Green, Remote Sensing Rock Star

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

If anyone can provide a perspective on the "consumerization" of satellite imaging and its impact on the profession of remote sensing science it's Kass Green. Editor in Chief Joe Francica recently to sit down with this true remote sensing ro...Read more
Continue reading "Podcast: Interview with Kass Green, Remote Sensing Rock Star"

Boston Wins Two Tech (Geo) Awards

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

Mayor Tom Menino announced Tuesday that the Public Technology Institute (PTI) selected Boston to win two technology awards: The citys Citizens Connect iPhone application won the web and e-government category. The iPhone-based reporting app has be...Read more

Cities Vying for Google Fiber

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:13:41 -0500

The race is on for a few select cities vying for Google Fiber, the company's initiative to place high speed broadband access to a few cities in the U.S. According to Google:"We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more tr...Read more

Warning: Time Wasting March Madness Geo Game

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:16:49 -0500

ESPN has a free locate the schools in the bracket game. You were warned. [Link updated per comment.]...Read more

Local GIS Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:42:00 -0500

It's been nine years since the West Virginia Addressing and Mapping Board was created to convert addresses from rural to city-style addressing to aid in public safety, among other things. To date, 13 of 55 counties have been converted. - Clarksbur...Read more

Helping the UN Help Haiti Via GISCorps

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:16:02 -0600

Christopher G. Markuson, GISP, the GIS Manager of Pueblo County, Colorado took on another full time GIS job last month. He and Graham Smith, the Geomatics Coordinator from the Grand River Conservation Authority in Cambridge, Ontario are both working ...Read more

Twitter Geocoding Data by Maponics

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:54:31 -0500

MediaPost helps explain why some Twitter posts are not being geotagged with the correct locations (nothing new here) and in doing so notes that Maponics has provided the dataset against which lat/longs are geocoded. Among the company's other customer...Read more

Update: Quote of the Week

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:38:00 -0500

Update: It seems Michael Jones of Google found the Wayne Independant story and updated the one way street on Google Maps. Per the paper, he looks for such stories everyday. Apparently MapQuest has also been notified. By the way, the original stor...Read more

State Department Launches Opinion Space

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:15:11 -0500

And, trying hard to be Web 2.0, Opinion Space involves both user generated content and mapping. Visitors are asked to use a slider to indicate if they agree or not and how strongly to five statements. Their "position" on each is mapping against respo...Read more

Too Many Geo Announcements from SXSW

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:37:00 -0500

Feeds by Location SuperFeedr will pass a geotag through its feeds (such as those tagged in Twitter) or if one is not present, it'll add one. So, in time, you could ideally, subscribe to RSS feeds by location. - ReadWriteWeb Brightkite GroupT...Read more

Podcast: GIS Interpreters: Helping GIS Software Developers and Domain Experts Speak the Same Language

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:00:00 -0500

How much does a domain expert, such as a forester, need to know about GIS software and programming to communicate with a software develop who will build a useable app? How do those experts who use GIS in planning, medical care, and agriculture learn ...Read more

Developers: Dances with Elephants

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:44:48 -0500

Jim Quanci, director of the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) penned an article called Dances with Elephants for UpFront.eZine that I thought GIS developers might find valuable. It lays out the three different "levels" of developers that work with Aut...Read more

Coverage of MAPPS Visit to the Hill: Maps and Cartoons

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

The Hill blog covers MAPPS' visit to the capitol last week. Besides making fun of its name, here's the money quote: Steve Phipps, director of federal programs for Woolpert, a geospatial company in Ohio, told me that there's a misconception that Goog...Read more

Local GIS Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

Harwich, MA is on Cape Code and NSTAR, the utility company has electric lines there. NSTAR wants to use herbicide to keep vegetation away from its assets and make them accessible. The town has concerns, but legally, not leg to stand on. Still, State ...Read more

DMTV #9: The GeoTech Center-The Link Between Academia and the Workforce

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:00:00 -0500

The National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence, the GeoTech Center, is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Advanced Technology Education (ATE) center that was started in 2008. Directions Media's Editor in Chief, Joe Francica, interv...Read more

SimpleGeo Powers Vicarious.ly: Maps "all" the LBS Social Media Checkins

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:27:08 -0600

Vicarious.ly, built on SimpleGeo's development platform, collects "check ins" from BlockChalk, Brightkite, Bump Technologies, Flickr, Fwix, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Twitter and puts them on a Google Map. The dots are symbolized by the app they are f...Read more

#NSGICMidyear: Virtual USA Session

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:15:05 -0600

Marc Caplan from Homeland Security (a new hire, just four months with the department) offered an overview of the vision for and progress toward Virtual USA (pdf). Caplan suggested that Virtual USA is a response to todays challenges: the need for ...Read more

Canada's Cell-Loc Hits the Skids

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

The company, officially, Cell-Loc Location Technologies Inc. of Calgary, was founded in 1995 to break into the E-911 business. It's now in the wireless fleet tracking business. But, with 2008 funds of just $900,000 from private placements that still ...Read more

Embed Bing Twitter Map on Your Website

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0500

The Bing Maps team has announced that you can now embed its Twitter Maps app into your site to show selected tweets and/or selected geographies. Select: Choose either a fixed location (centered on a specific point) or open the experience more broadl...Read more

Update: Another Social Site Mapped: Chatroullette

(Adena Schutzberg) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:47:00 -0600

The developer of Chatroullette is working to restrict sharing of location information. "There is a certain level of anonymity on the Chatroulette that Chatroulette Map takes away, but I plan to add something to my site to allow them to still hide the...Read more

LBS Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:58:00 -0600

WHERE, the LBS platform for ULocate now has an advertising component, WHERE Ads. - VentureBeat Junaio 2.0 is launching at SXSW this week. The big news for augmented reality platform? It works indoors using GPS and compass-based geo-information....Read more

Where is ESRI's Dangermond on Forbes Billionaire List this Year?

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:42:14 -0600

488 - Forbes - Map ...Read more

FWHA ARRA Map

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:38:33 -0600

The White House Blog touts the Federal Highway Administration's ARRA Map which locates and details 12,000 road projects funded by that program. I could not look at the map; it's Silverlight based and crashed Safari. - Whitehouse Blog via Gary Pric...Read more

A Woman in GIS on PBS Kids Science Show

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0600

Mallory Peper is GIS specialist at Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Westwood Professional Services. Peper works with Westwood's energy team to provide mapping and analysis for wind, solar and transmission projects. She'll be on the PBS series "SciGirls" ...Read more

Wanted: Keynote Speaker for Regional GIS Conference

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:34:14 -0600

I get calls all the time asking for suggestions for "someone" to talk about "something" geo as the keynote speaker at a conference. I want to crowdsource the latest one to get some new faces and ideas out there! Here's the basic outline of what's...Read more

MapQuest Links to FaceBook

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0600

There's a new feature on MapQuest to make it simple to share maps, directions and places to your Facebook friends; MapQuest Share to Facebook. - MapQuest Blog For developers: the new platform V6 will be shown off at SXSW. Quick hit of the "wid...Read more

Keep Up With #georev

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:38:21 -0600

That's the hashtag for the Geospatial Revolution Project. Follow the project on Twitter @geospatialrev. Not sure what I'm talking about? See: Geospatial Revolution. ...Read more

Update: Crossing the Border Safely, With LBS

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:27:00 -0600

Update: A California Congressman, five months after the app popped up, is questioning if this is appropriate use of technology and of tax funds, as the developers hail from public universities in California and Michigan. I dont think its an appro...Read more
Continue reading "Update: Crossing the Border Safely, With LBS"

Earthcomber Takes on Zagat on Patent Infringement

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:08:40 -0600

River Forest, Illiinois-based "Earthcomber LLC claims Zagat Survey LLC is violating its patent for System and method for providing location-based information to mobile customers with its ZAGAT TO GO 09 mobile application, which determines the lo...Read more

Twitter Enables Location-based Tweeting/Viewing from Twitter.com

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:56:05 -0600

- VentureBeat...Read more

NGA NextView/EnhancedView News

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:43:07 -0600

GeoEye has made a deal to sell 15.4% of its stock to Cerberus Capital Management LP to have collateral for a letter of credit required to bid on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) EnhancedView project. - WSJ In other NGA news, th...Read more