AP and Google Team to Cover Super Tuesday other Election GIS News

The Associated Press and Google are rewriting the book this year on how to provide fast, accurate election results, and the theme of the latest chapter is cooperation.

Tuesday night, news outlets that pay AP for election results for particular states will be able to embed Google Maps of the results on their sites.

- Poynter

Time Magazine is offering some special content to Foursquare users who check in at the Republican National Convention in Tampa in August or the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

Users who unlock the Time-Foursquare badge get “access to a curated list of must-attend venues and events,” plus convention tips from Time reporters—like historical facts from past conventions and 2012 campaign tips about the nominees and delegates.

- Paid Content

Two fascinating and useful studies of California’s political landscape have been published in recent days, one mapping the geographic variations of attitudes and the other creating and applying a scientific measure of communities’ ideologies.

“California’s Political Geography” by Eric McGhee and Daniel Krimm of the Public Policy Institute of California, matches California counties by residents’ party identification, 2008 presidential vote and by responses to two social and two fiscal survey questions with what McGhee calls “clear liberal or conservative dimensions.” ...

“The California Political Precinct Index” by David Latterman at the University of San Francisco, is a powerful tool for assessing counties and electoral districts according to actual precinct votes on nine ballot measures that are “easily interpretable” as liberal or conservative.

- CalBuzz

GIS Algorithm Cup and other GIS Competition News

With the goal of encouraging innovation in a fun way, ACM SIGSPATIAL is hosting an algorithm contest with winners to be announced at the ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS conference in November 2012. Contest participants will submit original computer programs to be evaluated by the contest organizers on a common dataset. The first place team will receive US$ 500 plus one NVIDIA Quadro 6000 (or similar) graphics card. Second place will receive US$ 400 plus one NVIDIA TEGRA tablet device. Third place will receive US$ 300 and one NVIDIA TEGRA tablet.

The 2012 contest will be about map matching, which is the problem of correctly matching a sequence of location measurements to roads. 

- contest page via @michael_d_gould

How about a game based learning contest? Ideas for teaching spatial literacy and/or geography would be valid!

In an effort to circulate innovative ideas about integrating electronic gaming in the classroom, the NEA Foundation, in a partnership with Microsoft U.S. Partners in Learning, is hosting a competition for the best ideas on "how interactive technology and game-based learning can improve teaching and learning," according to the Foundation's website. Game-based learning can mean anything from understanding physics through the popular Angry Birds app to delving into the structure of society in the computer game Minecraft.

The Challenge to Innovate (C2i) competition is open to educators, students, parents, or anyone who has an idea and has registered for free as a member of the U.S. Department of Education's Open Innovation Portal, which acts as a public forum for improving education. Participants post their gaming idea to the portal, and other registered members—most of whom are educators and parents—award points to the ideas they think are most innovative and helpful.

- US News

Aim: The main aim of the OneGeology Best Application competition is to demonstrate the wide range of potential applied uses and applications that the OneGeology Portal, and geological data/services that it provides, can offer for easy discoverability, access and use.

...

The registration of the applications developed for this competition will be accepted until the end of May 2012.

...

The winner of the competition will receive a free registration for the 34th International Geological Congress, Brisbane, Australia (August 2012) and will also have the opportunity to present the new innovative application during the Geoinformation Symposium/ OneGeology Session at the conference.

You must be under 35 to enter.

- website via @jeffharrison

Through their Google+ page, Google Maps announced the inaugural Map Your University competition for all students in the U.S. and Canada. Through the use of Google’s Map Maker, Google is asking current students to create detailed maps of their campuses that will be viewable on Google Maps and Google Earth. Winners of the competition will be award fun Google-y prizes such as Android tablets, phones, GPS devices, and more.

- Web Pro News

New York City kicked off voting today in its third annual BigApps competition, which rewards apps that use some of the city’s open data sets to build apps. But one of the most popular resources appears to be Foursquare, which is in use in more than half of the top apps in early voting.

- GigaOm

What Colleges are Using and other Education GIS News

Among the geo tools you can learn about (for use in reserach/classes in any discipline) at Duke:

GeoCommons

Google Earth Pro

ArcGIS

and Tableau Public but that's not noted as a GIS tool.

- Duke GIS and Data Blog

Dr. Seidu Mohammed, Director General, National Space Research and Development Agency [Nigeria] said deployment of satellite technology remained Nigeria's antidote to tackle the various environmental challenges facing the country.

Nigerian scientists are working with the University of Missouri to use imagery to do  environmental assessment of oil spill damages in the Niger Delta as well as an assessment of the Lake Chad.

- All Africa

A review of educational standards in the UK have led to the recommnedation, among others,. that geography be studied between ages 14-16.

It recommended that all pupils in England should study geography, history and a foreign language between the ages of 14 and 16, in some form, even if their courses did not lead to full GCSEs.

New standards are expected in 2014.

- Telegraph

The Casper Mountain Science School, Wyoming (CMSS) teaches K-12 students at Eadsville, a mining camp on Casper Moutain. The log schoolhouse and the town around the camp shut down a century ago and current students explore the history and geography of the area. And, local college students help enhance the K-12 program.

A group from Casper College’s advanced GIS (geographic information system) class created a layer of digital, interactive maps complete with pictures and historical information about Eadsville for those students.

- Casper Journal

Local (City/County/State) GIS Tidbits - 5/10/11

Memphis and Shelby County are using GIS to help manage flood response. Breathless copy includes:

Equipped with tailored, computer-speeded GIS views of any location in the county showing elevations, infrastructure and placement of individual businesses and residences, responders can plan realistically, wade into calls faster and with the best resources for the job.

- Commercial Appeal

The budget crunch has hit Danville, VA:

Geographic information system information, maps and other data available from the city’s Information Technology will rise, some items for minor amounts (a black-and-white map will go from $1 to $2) while other services will see significant increases, such as a GIS-provided ortho-mosaic of the entire city that was free will now cost $2,500.

- WSLS

The city unveiled an online interactive map on Monday that lets Calgarians find out when their streets will be cleaned.

It augments the existing signage reminded car owners about when to move their cars. The most popular solution in my city - the e-mail that goes out the day before to remind you. This is one of those cases where a map is nice, but may not be the best way to answer the citizen's question. Also, the map itself if quite complex! In contrast consider this (pdf) map from Holliston, MA of when pipes would be flushed.

- CBC

- Holiston Patch