Podcast: Mapping Broadband

The economic recession is on everyone’s mind, but last week’s passage of the stimulus bill, aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was a bit vague on spending for specific projects involving geospatial technology… except one: Mapping Broadband. What exactly will that entail and what possible impact will it have on the expansion of communications in rural areas, LBS and wider dissemination of geospatial information?

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Vice President of India Offers Sobering Insights of Geospatial Technology

The comments of the Vice President of India, Shri M Hamid Ansari, were sobering. While recognizing the true benefits of geospatial technology, he offered as many cautions as kudos. The full text of his speech to the Map World Forum delegates is recommended reading because it not only points to the advantages but the dangers of more open access to geospatial information.

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Podcast: What We’d Tell the World on GIS Day

GIS Day provides a chance for geospatial practitioners to tell the world about what they and why it matters. Our editors share the key themes they’d want to get across to the public on this special day.

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Track US Election Results with Google Maps

You can track the election results in real-time for the presidential, senate or house elections…or if you are reading this after the fact…see the results.

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In this Election Cycle…It’s All About the Map

In my ‘geocentric’ world, if Google Earth didn’t excite your feelings about maps and mapping technology, then this year’s U.S. presidential election should have told you it was ‘all about the map.’ Since the summer, I’ve been blogging at our other publication, Map Hawk, about how the media uses mapping technology. Many of the maps in use by online media outlets were using Flash technology, some were on Google, and some still just static maps. Because of the nature of our red vs. blue leanings, it has been somewhat easy to identify the country’s persuasion best by putting them on a map. More so than at any time in the past, maps are the platform to more easily convey results. They technology has been there, and as CNN has so marvelously shown, the display technology has been there as well. I suspect this has changed the way the mainstream media will forever report news. It already has because of the use of Google Earth was prevalent before this, but the specificity with which the campaigns where pinpointing candidate rallies and thus the emphasis on certain states and districts, maps became both the reporting mechanism…and sometimes the news themselves.  And that’s where the use of the technology must eventually lead…much greater detail must be paid to reporting the results at the precinct level (not just county), real-time information I suspect will be more readily available as results could be reported electronically, and there will be an ever greater use of web services to support news flow. We’ve seen maps, GIS, and other forms of location technology in this cycle come to the forefront plus websites like TwitterVoteReport and other social networking platforms display geospatial information. I guess maps really are…"cool."