All Points Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#NSGICMidyear: USDA, DOI, EPA GIO Panel

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:46:29 -0600

Stephen Lowe is the GIO for USDA. He addressed the move and exploration of the agency toward an enterprise GIS solution that offers services. USDA has 100,000 employees with 10 agencies using GIS in their day to day workings, while others take advant...Read more

What We Search for When Using Local Searches

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:33:57 -0600

Per TeleNav's study of searches in Dec 2009: An analysis of searches conducted by TeleNav users in December 2009 indicated that Wal-Mart topped the list as the number one U.S. business TeleNav customers sought out while using their GPS service. Star...Read more

Update 2: California "Cool Car" Regs May Mean no GPS, Radio, Cell phone Signals in the Vehicles

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:20:00 -0600

The latest input on the proposed law is from law enforcement. "A letter from the Peace Officers Association said, "The crippling of important GPS monitoring and the utility of cell phones to seek emergency assistance is not helpful."" The final tw...Read more
Continue reading "Update 2: California "Cool Car" Regs May Mean no GPS, Radio, Cell phone Signals in the Vehicles"

Motorola to Put Bing Search and Maps on its Android Phones

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:13:22 -0600

"Motorola said the partnership with Microsoft means that a Bing bookmark and search widget will be loaded on cell phones, starting in the coming weeks with phones in China." The move appears to be defensive: If Google and China don't hammer out th...Read more

Rand McNally Acquires Tripology Along Path to Being Online Trip Info Provider

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:07:28 -0600

Tripology is a lead generation service for travel agents, a sort of matchmaker to link travelers and agents. Rand McNally acquired it for an undisclosed sum last Friday. - Tnooz...Read more

Maps for a Thursday

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 06:34:44 -0600

I can't describe Christoph Niemann's map art, but I'm almost positive it will make you smile. - New York Times...Read more

Google Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:02:21 -0600

Google has hinted about adding bike directions to Google Maps and now it's here. The beta app was announced at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C. Google sent a note to journalists about the desktop only, USA only tool. A mobile version is i...Read more

Navigation Sense May be Linked to Genes

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0600

A new study, conducted by Laura Lakusta, an assistant professor of psychology at Montclair State University, Barbara Landau, Professor of Cognitive Science at the Johns Hopkins University, and Banchiamlack Dessalegn, a postdoctoral fellow at the Univ...Read more

Interactive Census Map Challenges Us to Do Better in 2010

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:04:28 -0600

A new map from the Census lets you look at your local area or state's response rate in the 2000 census. This is meant to spur all American's to respond to the upcoming mailings to do better in 2010. It's also a great tool for local papers to highl...Read more

Microsoft, The Cloud and Local Government

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:11:08 -0600

In November of 2009, Microsoft launched a contest for developers to build on a beta of Microsofts cloud platform, Azure. Last month the winners were announced and they were heavy on Web maps. Miamis 311 System, a citizen info and reporting tool, w...Read more

Local GIS Tidbits

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:53:00 -0600

"Four months in the making, and at least four years behind neighboring Staunton and Augusta County, the Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping technology will likely be used by developers, engineers, utilities companies and prospective home buye...Read more

#NSGICMidyear : DHS, NGA, FEMA Panel

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 09:20:44 -0600

Jeff Booth gave an update on the Geospatial Management Office of DHS. The office geoenables the DHS mission. The department spends about 3/4 of its (IT?) budget on enterprise scale software. While a goal is to serve the 1% that use geospatial, the ...Read more

Slightly Off Topic: Going Social? Don't Forget the Press Release

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 06:00:00 -0600

If a company is mounting a social media presence it should announce that presence via social media. I also think it's important to offer a traditional press release. Why? A personal story: I took it upon myself to join Twitter a year or more ago s...Read more

#NSGICMidyear: NOAA, Census, USACE, DOT Panel

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:21:24 -0600

David Kennedy is the Assistant Administrator at National Ocean Service (NOS), part of NOAA. NOS covers coasts, climate and economy. He sees all kinds of opportunities due to many drivers - lots of acts (laws) and task forces and a looming strategic p...Read more

Podcast: An Interview with Brady Forrest, O'Reilly Media on Where 2.0

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:20:00 -0600

Foursquare vs. Gowalla? How about Bing Maps vs. Google Maps? Brady Forrest of O'Reilly Media and chairperson of the Where 2.0 Conference shares his views on some of the more popular web-based mapping platforms and social networks that are "loc...Read more
Continue reading "Podcast: An Interview with Brady Forrest, O'Reilly Media on Where 2.0"

#NSGICMidyear: Corporate Leadership Council Session

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:04:50 -0600

The Corporate Leadership Council Session (aka sponsor talks) allows major sponsors to talk about their latest can greatest tech or projects. They each had eight minutes. AECOM: There are public and private clouds and many providers. Clouds have ma...Read more

Podcast: Platial Shuts Down while Microsoft Opts in to User Generated Location Data from Navizon

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:00:00 -0600

This week we look at two news items connected at least superficially by reliance on crowdsourced geospatial data. Platial, one of the early players to offer a simple way to customize Google Maps, announced it was ceasing operations. Microsoft announc...Read more

#NSGICMidyear: Congressional Research Service Briefing

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:08:13 -0600

Paul Schirle and Jan Johansson of Congressional Research Service (arm of the Library of Congress) spoke to us about that organization. It was founded in 1914 and has about 700 people who offer nonpartisan info in timely fashion. (Sometimes read live ...Read more