All the major map apps like Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapquest have walking directions as a standard feature, but the folks at Lumatic don’t think they are good enough. It is creating mobile maps designed for pedestrians, cyclists, and people who use public transit. Originally a TechStars company called Omniar, serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog, Lookery, Mashery) joined as CEO a year ago.
He recently raised a seed round of $800,000 from Joi Ito’s Neoteny Labs, 500 Startups, Chamath Palihapitiya, Allen Morgan, Ted Rheingold, and other angels.
Currently, the Android app covers San Fran and uses images and landmarks to route pedestrians/bikes.
- TechCrunch
Eric Fischer, digital cartographer extraordinaire, is at it again with a new series of maps that track the paths that smartphone-toting people take to travel through cities. Using geotagged tweets, the Oakland-based data visualization specialist has plotted the arteries of Twitter traffic for a host of cities around the world including Toronto.
His basemap? OSM.
- BlogTo
Someone really clever (ok me) suggests that one could build an introductory GIS course built around OpenStreetMap. It would put more hands on developing the basemap even as it taught a variety of students the basics of GIS and data collection.
- Ignite Education Blog
Geocaching.com is the latest to move from Google Map to OpenStreetMap and Leaflet.
- Lat 47 (Geocaching blog)
by Adena Schutzberg on 02/15 at 03:00 AM |
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At Cleveland State Community Colleage you can take a real class in geocaching. The first weeks are in the classroom - learning about the website and software. Then you go find (and I guess plant) caches. IF there's enought content I guess it could also be a geospatial course. I could not find the course in the catalog but there's lots of Phys Ed.
- Chatanoogan
Twenty-eight members of the Astronomy Club at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland [FL] worked for several months to prepare a giant latex weather balloon bearing a box of cameras and data-collecting equipment. They sent the probe aloft last weekend, with the aim of reaching 100,000 feet — high enough to peer across the threshold of the universe.
"We wanted to see the curvature of the earth," astronomy teacher Kyle Jeter said. "We wanted to see where the sky turns black, where you really feel like you're at the edge of space."
Sadly, there were technical difficulties.
- Sun Sentinel
University of Georgia geography professor Marshall Shepherd will begin a 1-year term as president elect of the has been voted president-elect of the American Meteorological Society on Jan. 22. Shepherd, directs the school's Atmospheric Sciences Program, and will assume the presidency of the society in 2013.
- WTOC
Educational non-profit EAST Initiative would like to welcome Dr. Angela Kremers as their new Senior Director of Corporate Strategy. Through Dr. Kremers’ previous work with the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation as their Senior Associate for Education, she gained national attention in educational philanthropy by increasing support and collaboration for improvement in higher education college completion work and K-12 system reform. Dr. Kremers was nominated by Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe in 2011 to serve on the prestigious National Assessment Governing Board.
- EAST PR
by Adena Schutzberg on 01/17 at 03:00 AM |
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"We don't have any numbers yet or statistics of the economic impact, I haven't calculated that yet but from what I can estimate, it's been at least a $500,000 economic impact since June of 2010," [Jenna] Dill [Athens County Convention and Visitors Bureau Marketing and Sales Manager] said.
Geocachers who complete the Athens trail receive an official Athens geocoin. That seems to be one draw, though only 200 people have completed the trail. There are some 80 caches in the area.
- WOUB
by Adena Schutzberg on 01/12 at 07:06 AM |
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Here's the pitch:
Do you love geocaching? Do you love meeting fellow geocachers? Do you love talking about geocaching and your favorite geocaching devices? Then we want to help you spread the love. We're looking for enthusiastic members of the OpenCaching.com community to become official OpenCaching.com Ambassadors. Ambassadors will help spread the word about OpenCaching.com and share feedback from active geocachers around the world.
As an Ambassador your main responsibility will be to work with geocaching event organizers and geocaching associations in your area. You will attend events and association meetings to give away OpenCaching.com swag, answer questions about OpenCaching.com, gather feedback that will help shape the future of the site, and just share your Opie enthusiasm with other cachers.
- Garmin Blog
by Adena Schutzberg on 07/22 at 03:01 AM |
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Computer and satellite technology that helps farmers use the precise amount fertilizer or seeds would be exempt from sales taxes under a proposal approved today by the Iowa House.
Some technologies are already tax free, but this would add GPS.
- Des Moines Register
Dr Van Sickle left CDC and founded a company, Asthmapolis, which is based in Madison, Wisconsin. The result is Spiroscout, an inhaler with a built-in Global Positioning System locator and (in advanced models) a wireless link to the internet.
It's not the first such inhaler, but it's far smaller than past versions and it has at least two benefits: indications for individuals about their own use and crowdsourced data (stripped of identifying details) for a broader look at usage patterns.
- The Economist
I spoke to the Apisphere folks when the Geomate.jr launched in 2009. The device is a pre-loaded GPS unit for beginning geocachers. I was skeptical the $70 device (that required an add-on, extra fee cable to get updated cache listings) could compete with real GPS devices that were only $10 or $20 more. I noted that the iPhone is becoming a good stand-in in blog post last year. and now find the product is on clearance for $34.98 at Target. The product does have a following - Mac support and a fix for Firefox 4 issues are among the topics on the product's Twitter feed.
by Adena Schutzberg on 04/18 at 03:00 AM |
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