Spatial Genie and other Education GIS News

The Education Services Australia (ESA) has launched Spatial Genie, an education system to promote GIS in Australian schools. This capability marks the first time the education system in Australia has invested in the development and promotion of GIS in schools.

- Asian Surveying and Mapping

The first day of September marked the first official day that Dr. Grady Price Blount took the helm of the College of Sciences, Engineering and Agriculture (CSEA) at A&M-Commerce as the new dean.

And, no he's not a geographer, but he's thinking like one:

Blount's background is specifically in astronomy. He has worked with the Distributed Active Archive Center, which is a data-gathering gateway for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise.  His expertise in this area could help start what he hopes will be the CSEA's newest project: Geospatial Intelligence Science.

- The East Texan

For those of you in education, but focused on your classes and issues at your institution, I HIGHLY recommend documentaries from American Public Media on education. The current series of three hour long programs is titled Tomorrow's College. They focus on the changing state of college teaching and learning, increased interest in certificates, how college is not for everyone and how we can get those who fail to finish to do so later.  I've never been disappointed by any of the edu documentaries by this group and I've listened to virtually all of them.

- American Radio Works

Tim Mullet, a University of Alaska Fairbanks doctoral student, is mapping sound - natural and manmade - in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. His recorders capture sound for 20 seconds every 15 minutes and he has tools to identify the manmade sounds.

Mullet can then pull that data into a GIS system and create a map of exactly where the sounds are occurring in the refuge. Areas marked in red contain high levels of unnatural or mechanical sounds and often coordinate with proximity to development or road systems.

That resulting data— the majority of which was compiled from December to April — will be one of several models that he’ll create to get the best interpretation of the refuge’s soundscape and anthrophony, including the snow machines.

- Penninsula Clarion

Podcast: A Changing LBS Ecosystem, An Executive One-on-One Interview with Kanwar Chadha, CSR plc

Directions Magazine’s editor in chief, Joe Francica, speaks to Kanwar Chadha, a pioneer in location-based services as one who founded SiRF Technologies, a GPS chipset manufacturer which merged with CSR plc in February 2009. Mr. Chadha, now the chief marketing officer of CSR, has appeared as a keynoter at Directions Media’s Location Intelligence conference. Francica spoke with him to get his take on how the LBS landscape has changed for social networking as well as anticipated new developments in new electronics going into smaller and smaller form factors. They also discuss the Location and Beyond Executive Summit upcoming October 6th at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco, as well as a new endeavor that Directions will be supporting called PointThinkTank, a place for discussing new ideas and concepts in the LBS ecosystem.

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Podcast: Interview with Ricky Brundritt, The King of Bing Maps

In this interview, I spoke with Ricky Brundritt, a GIS consultant with Infusion in London UK, and the King of Bing Maps. Ricky’s Taxicab Calculator won 1^st prize in the King of Bing Maps contest sponsored by Microsoft and in this conversation we discuss the ease of use in working with the Bing Maps API, how long it took him to develop the app and how Bing’s API compares to Google. Ricky also won 3rd place for his data viewer application that integrates shapefiles and imports a GeoRSS feed.

Ricky also mentioned that he is currently in the process of creating a company called “inKnowledge” that will be offering a REST web service that can calculate taxi fares. "This will make it easy for mobile applications to add this functionality to their apps. I’m currently setting everything on Azure and am using Bing maps in the backend. I’m also looking into updating the Taxi fare calculator to add in functionality to show local taxi companies after a user searches. I’m also looking into adding the ability to book taxi’s directly from the app (this will be done by partnering with existing companies that have this functionality). We plan to have this functionality available in London, UK by mid-September. In addition I’ve been collecting data for a lot more cities from around the world. I’ve also had several people from Microsoft reach out to me with rates for cities that I didn’t have data for. By the end of September I plan to have data for over 100 cities from around the world available on the Bing Maps Taxi fare calculator app," said Ricky.

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Podcast: Remote Sensing for Detecting Urban Growth and Open Space Loss: A Case Study from New Jersey

In this interview, Editor in chief Joe Francica speaks with Dr. Richard Lathrop, Director for the Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis at Rutgers University. Dr. Lathrop recently published a study on land use and land cover classification of the entire State of New Jersey entitled "Changing Landscapes in the Garden State: Urban Growth and Open Space Loss in NJ 1986 thru 2007."(pdf) Francica discusses some of the GIS and remote sensing technology applications used to produce this study. The podcast highlights the specifics about the GIS technology and techniques he used and the implications for New Jersey’s communities and legislature to act upon his findings for smart growth initiatives within the state.

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Podcast: Interview with Gary Gale, Dir. of Engineering, Yahoo! Geo Technologies

In this interview with Gary Gale, director of engineering for Yahoo!‘s Geo Technologies, editor in chief Joe Francica discusses the future of Yahoo! Fire Eagle, the company’s location broker that allows users to update their location as well as how and when to share their location information. In addition, Gale discusses how much support he receives from his upper management and what we can expect from the Geo Technologies’ team in terms of future advancements for Yahoo!‘s mapping platform.
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