All Points Blog

Where 2.0 on Twitter

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:04:56 -0500

To my amazement there are very few folks following the where2008 thread on Twitter. Just 70. Perhaps folks are all all on the backchannel IRC? (IRC channel #where2008 on irc.freenode.net)

I guess this is reinforcing my sense of Twitter use in our community which is confirmed, thus far, by the current poll.

UK Starts to Map Every Plant & Flower in the National Trust

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:14:18 -0500

The BBC reports that the National Trust is mapping every plant in its gardens using a handheld device supplied by Magellan. Magellan tells us that gardeners of the National Trust are using their MobileMapper CX with DigiTerra Explorer software. Watch the video of how they will do it.

Dash Opens API

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:16:20 -0500

It'll be announced this morning at Where, but there's a blog post about first set of apps. Only a few are particularly spatial - WeatherBug weater, Caldwell Banker home search and speed traps from Trapster. As TechCrunch notes, it's odd that to get info on the API you must send e-mail rather than say read all the details then apply for a code or something. I guess Dash hasn't been watching how the rest of the tech community is doing APIs.

TomTom Acquisition of Tele Atlas a Go

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:57:29 -0500

The word came today from the EU. Basically the Commission said there was no reason fear unfair strategies:

"The Commission found that the merged company would be unlikely to pursue these strategies because its ability to restrict access to digital maps ... would be limited by the presence of an upstream competitor, Navteq," it said.

The new company "would have no incentive to restrict access to digital maps because the sales of digital maps lost by Tele Atlas would not be compensated by additional sales of personal navigation devices," it said.

- Bloomberg
- BusinessWeek

As we celebrate new options for finding geodata...Greenwich Stirs

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:51:00 -0500

Everyone remembers Greenwich, the town in Connecticut that went through a FOIA and several lawsuits only to lose its bid refuse sharing GIS data with a consultant. Now, even as we all ponder the goings on Google and ESRI and their vision to make geospatial data more findable and potentially useable over the Web, the court cases continue.

Fairfield County Weekly

Google/ESRI Announcement in Plain English

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:49:51 -0500

The announcements out of Where 2.0 from John Hanke of Google and Jack Dangermond regarding integrating neogeography with professional GIS (perhaps not the best terms, but I'm confident readers understand) are quite a lot to digest. (Video available here.) But that's ok, both companies are resetting their visions with regard to the other, to data and to services and it's certainly time for that.

Here's the substance of the relevant announcements teased out of coverage from Where 2.0, where the two geotechnologists shared the stage yesterday.

- ArcGIS Server 9.3 (available in about 4 weeks, per Dangermond) will make its metadata service "scrapable" into KML and thus findable via Google's geographic search (once known as KML search). Further, ArcGIS Server will be able to publish not only that data as streaming KML (and GeoRSS) but also related services. Dangermond showed finding data from a Portland, Oregon service, visualizing it and then performing analysis, all from Google Earth. Said another way, all data and services served by ArcGIS Server could potentially be findable and usable in any Google mashup. Further, the resultant KML can be used in app that supports the OGC standard.

Continue reading "Google/ESRI Announcement in Plain English"

Backpacker Goes to Where

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:00:00 -0500

So, if you are a bit bored of geo folks and tech folks covering Where 2.0, check out coverage from Backpacker Magazine. (I have to confess at one time it was my favorite publication; even borrowed the name of the editorial: The View from Here.)

Cell Tower Locating Coming to India Sparking LBS

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 05:59:34 -0500

Apparently the use of cell towers to locate cell phones is still very new in India. LiveMint (part of the Wall Street Journal) reports on Yalup, one of the first players to use the technology and its database of some businesses 150,000 in Bangalore alone to offer local search on cell phones. While the company is anticipating competition from Google, Microsoft and Nokia, the CEO claims its local data will help distinguish it.

Interestingly, the searches offered will use a static radius of 800 meters. "The listings you find would be (of those establishments) within a 800m (radius) of where you are located," says Gundaiah Sridhar, the 25-year-old chief executive officer of Yulop Websense Solutions Pvt. Ltd."

Where 2.0 Monday

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:57:00 -0500

Many product and company announcements have been made in just one day. I don't have all of them; it's surprisingly hard to track everything, even with many bloggers and journalists there. I've ranked them 1-5 for impact on geospatial professionals. 1 means little or no impact, 5 means quite a lot of impact.

Nokia will add Ovi support to its mobile mapping offerings. Ovi is Nokia's portal for Internet service and content sharing content. Later this years users can download maps (from the Internet I believe), mark them up and sync them to their phones. They'll also be able to capture routes while driving/walking and upload those to Ovi. In time users can share those maps with others and further enhance them with mashups of content from user generated content sites such as TripAdvisor. The app is expected, close to complete, in September. (Infoworld, Wired [with graphics])
Impact: 2 This is likely to be in the short term more of a social networking type of sharing.

Continue reading "Where 2.0 Monday"

Update: Google Maps Organizes More of Google's (not the world's) Information

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:53:00 -0500

Update 5/13/08: It seems The VentureBeat folks were ahead of the game. This new option is now seemingly more widely available. If you are not finding the option, try searching on Boston.

------- original story 5/9/08 -------

Now there's more to find when searching on Google Maps - including images (Panoramio not Picassa), user generated maps (MyMaps), videos (YouTube). The limitation, reports VentureBeat, is that only documents from Google properties are included.

Yahoo's New Internet Location Platform

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:41:37 -0500

I read a few news article about this new platform, the Yahoo Internet Location Platform, including Dan Katt's blog post but I didn't get it. Those articles, I think, are written for programmers, the folks who'll use the platform. Still, this is it's very cool and I think the rest of us should know what it does! And, frankly, I think too many people are too wrapped up in other platforms to see what's going on at Yahoo. I think Fire Eagle is killer, but I keep talking to people who don't know what it is. I don't want that to happen with YILP, so here's what this new platform is, as I (a non-programmer) understand it.

Yahoo has and uses a big database of location information. It's got points (places of interest), towns and cities, states, and countries in it. Each has an ID, called a WOEID (Where on Earth ID, Yahoo acquired WhereOnEarth a London company in 2005). Yahoo has opened up that database to the world complete with an API (application programming interface). That means programs can ask questions of and receives answers from this big database via a Web service.

Like what? Like:

Give me the WOEID of Boston, MA. (Why? Because maybe you to find pictures of Boston from Flickr. You'd use that value to ask Flickr for the pics.)
Give me the location of 2507854 (Where would you get that? you could get it from Fire Eagle!)
Give me the "next level up" (parent) geography for my point of interest, or in other words, in what city is the Eiffel Tower?
Give me the neighboring ZIP Codes to 12795711 (the WOEID of a ZIP Code).
Another cool one - the ability to ask for the name of a place in a specific language!

Many have already asked for a comparison to Geonames (a free online database with services built on it used by many location-based services to do some of these things). My sense is that Yahoo will tap into the wisdom of the masses to grow this database, just as Geonames does. And, since Yahoo's already aligned with OpenStreetMap, perhaps it can play well with Geonames? Could this database end up as the worlds single place coding database?

SPOT Beacon Used Successfully; Interesting Message Sent

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:57:34 -0500

The Herald (UK) tells the story of a senior walking in Scotland. He got sick and used his SPOT beacon, a satellite communications device that sends the location and asks for help. The plea was heard in Houston, TX and help was sent. The walker is in the hospital and doing well. Great story and use of technology.

The interesting part for me is the text of the message sent: "Help message. I'm immobilised but okay and cannot reach you by phone. Find GEOS on Google map and send help."

I did what it said - tried to find GEOS on Google maps - but found nothing relevant. Hmmm.

A bit of research shows that GEOS, actually the GEOS Alliance, is the name of the response company that receives the alert messages from SPOT. It's in Houston. Without searching on GEOS 911 or GEOS Alliance, I'd never have found it. The help messages sent from SPOT, like the one above, are sent to GEOS who in turn contact those people you've asked to be contacted with the message. In this case, the idea would be to confirm there is an emergency (that the person is indeed in the wild and subject to using the device, I guess). So, I guess the "find GEOS on Google maps" is redundant. BTW, if there's no answer from the contacts "at home" the service will contact emergency response personnel.

Save Gas...3D Data Drives Cruise Control

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:47:14 -0500

In reviewing the 2007 annual report from Intermap Technologies (IMP), I came across a tidbit of information about how the company is supporting research at Auburn Univeristy to study fuel efficiency by using 3D vector data derived from their NEXTMap core data. The objective was to develop simulations for predictive cruise control and automatic gear shifting to calculate optimal vehicle speed and gear selection. The results of the simulation showed an increase of fuel performance of 3% and a potential reduction in diesel fuel consumption of 1 billion gallons annually in the U.S. if every truck used this technology.

Podcast: Four Technologies That May Soon Impact Geospatial...Are You Ready?

(Adena Schutzberg) — Tue, 13 May 2008 01:00:00 -0500

The editors look outward to find technologies that will impact how geospatial products and practices will change in the next 12 to 24 months. Some of the suggested technologies are already appearing in cutting edge products, others are not yet implemented in geospatial solutions, but we expect to see them soon.

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.

Update: Geospatial Coalition Meeting Held "Recently"

(Adena Schutzberg) — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:51:00 -0500

Update: 5/12/08 3:00 pm: I received answers to some of my questions and concerns. Here's what I learned from someone involved in the meetings:

- There have not yet been any formal announcements since the early meetings are designed to create the organization. Said another way: there's really no news yet!

- There will be lots of opportunity for input and discussion.

- There's no intent to be secretive.

- A formal announcement is expected soon.

----original article 7 am 5/12/08 --------

I must apologize; I was unaware of this meeting. I learned of it reading the latest issue (May) of Professional Surveyor. (It's not online yet.)

Per Laurence Socci's review of the government affairs meeting at the Spring ACSM (American Congress on Surveying and Mapping) meeting in Spokane, a meeting of executive directors for geospatial associations was held "recently" to begin forming a "geospatial coalition." He cites the minutes which state the purpose of the coalition: to improve communications among the organizations and to act on pressing issues. Apparently the group will decide whether they want to use the USGS Coalition Model or the COFPAES (Council on Federal Procurement of Architectural and Engineering Services) Model. After looking over the two sites, I'm not exactly sure of the difference in the models.

The issues raised at the meeting (the kinds this group would act on, perhaps) included: workforce development, k-12 education, accreditation, professional regulation, DGPS and a possible joint conference along the lines of GIS/LIS.

I wonder who was there (no attendee list was provided). Perhaps those who responded to the MAPPS vs. US case last winter? Did that prompt the meeting? Will this be a lobbying/activist coalition? I do hope the executive directors involved are reporting back to their leadership groups and members about this and future meetings. Transparency will be important is developing a strong coalition.

I'm not a member of any of the organizations that think may have attended, so I'd perhaps not receive such communications. Have any readers heard about this meeting?