EAST Students Map Hospital and other Education GIS News

By request from the local SWAT team, students in the EAST Lab Program at Paragould High School [AR] are working on a huge project. They are constructing digitized maps, floor-by-floor, of a local hospital to better assist officers in handling an emergency situation.

- KAIT

Complaints from parents about schools manipulating the distance from home to school to give preference to some students in some schools has led a few schools to use Google Maps as a measurement tool.

“It’s the most transparent way to ascertain the distance between the school and the residence of a child. We have also adopted other methods including taking a declaration from the parents over their claims of the distance,” [Ashok] Pandey [principal of Ahlcon International School in Mayur Vihar] told PTI.

The tool used for the measurement and if the measurement is crow flies or along roads is not clear.

- FirstPost

Darren and Sandy Van Soye will spend the next 14 months travelling the world and teaching geography per a press release from Pricess Cruises.

The couple, who are chronicling their journey at www.TrekkingthePlanet.net, were inspired to plan their trek after they saw first-hand what a positive impact a previous family trip around the globe had on their two daughters' lives. Their full travel itinerary incorporates five different Princess Cruises voyages, totaling 96 days at sea. Both the first and last legs of their journey, plus three legs in between, will be aboard a Princess cruise ship.  ...

In total, the Van Soyes' journey will cover 50 countries on six continents over the course of the 424-day world tour. Throughout their travels, the couple will share 60 different geography education modules they have created as well as pictures and videos of their travels for anyone in the world to use. So far more than 700 classrooms around the world will be following their travels, representing 50,000 students.

Would you use such a resource in your teaching?

- press release

The Geographical Sciences Committee of the Royal Irish Academy aims to support the development of geographical studies throughout the island of Ireland. Following on from this we are pleased to provide an introductory resource [pdf] on the geography of climate justice prepared by the Committee (with support from the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency) for dissemination to geography students across Ireland. The resource is intended for use with transition year students in the Republic and for students from GCSE level upwards in Northern Ireland. 

Royal Irish Academy via @theaag

Finding Naturist Areas and other LBS News

MapMuse today announced the 2012 release of its Nude Beach and Naturist Maps, a series of web maps and an accompanying iPhone app that plot the locations of nude beaches, nude resorts, nudist clubs, nudist colonies, and nude runs around the world.

- press release

Glassmap, an app (Android/iOS, Facebook log-in) to passively share your location with friends, has lauched. It started at Standord, where 10% of students use it and has launched at 10 other schools. The big improvement ovr other apps like this (Google Latitiude, Loopt)? It uses an order of magnitude less battery.

- ReadWriteWeb

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday proposed voluntary guidelines for [auto] manufacturers, including a recommendation that they design dashboards so that distracting devices are automatically disabled unless the vehicle is stopped and the transmission is in park.

Thankfully, backers understand that sometimes a passenger keys in an address to the in-car GPS or of course driver could use a phone not integrated into the dashboard for navigation. Maybe that's why this is voluntary.

- AP

Groupon has acquired Hyperpublic, a small company that develops location-based technology that can be integrated into other applications.

- PC World

Google has added "leaderboards" to Google Latititude, something many suggest means its going after Foursquare in a big way. You earn points for checking in and data is shared on Google +. So far the feature is only on the latest Google Maps for Android.

- PC Mag

OSM User Lumatic Raises $800,000 and other OpenStreetMap News

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)

Pretty Imagery in Google Earth and other Google Maps/Earth News

Google Earth 6.2 had a "prettier" version of its imagery. No, it's not new data just a new smoothing algorithm.

Today, we’re introducing a new way of rendering imagery that smooths out this quilt of images. The end result is a beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves the unique textures of the world’s most defining geographic landscapes—without the quilt effect. This change is being made on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Earth. While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data.

- i Programmer

- Google Blog

The update of Google Maps on the Web now offers better bike route information via detailed rendering.

Since no bike path is the same, many users have requested an easier way to differentiate the different types of bike routes that are available. Starting today, a new legend feature can help you understand what the different colors on the bike maps symbolize.

- Google Lat Long Blog

The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Research Centre of Feng Chia University in Taiwan, has successfully completed Taiwan’s first municipal works cloud-based map platform, which will allow city government officials and policy makers to have a clear picture of the city’s major construction projects.

It's built on Google Earth Enterprise and is expected to be made public (no date yet).

- FutureGov Asia

Quote of the Week - 1/10/12

“Thanks for pointing it out, I will let the team know so they can be aware of the issues, and I’ve flagged it to be corrected.”

That's the response of a Google Australia spokesman quoted in the Armidale Express, when asked about the error indicating closure of Pacific Highway which some say has been online for three months. I'm heartened to learn some folks are skeptical and called the local transit authority to confirm it was an error.