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)

Comparing Maps of Obesity and Car Travel and other Health GIS News

Here, we examine visually, through a series of maps, the association between obesity, diabetes, and sedentary transportation.

The maps are striking, but Anne Price and Ariel Godwin conclude:

... the relationship between sedentary travel and health outcomes can be misleading when additional contributing factors are not taken into account. While it is not our intent to claim a direct causal link between transportation modes and obesity rates, it is hard to deny the existence of some geographic patterns.

- Planetizen

Health Canada is drafting national guidelines for electricity-generating wind turbines that will establish a recommended minimum safe distance between the structures and homes. ...The Health Canada guidelines will deal with noise and shadow flicker, and will account for the power of the turbine, the size of the blade and local geography, [Dr. Moira] McKinnon [Saskatchewan's chief medical health office] said.

No doubt they'll need ot use GIS, once they figure out the details to manage noise and other impacts.

- The Phoenix Star

The [second edition of the online] British Columbia Atlas of Wellness shows that northerners are more likely to smoke, eat unhealthy food and die sooner than their counterparts in Vancouver and Victoria.

- Times Colonist

Earlier this week, the Missouri Hospital Association launched www.MissouriHealthMatters.com. I recommend checking it out. The site contains quality of care and patient satisfaction data filtered through GIS technology with hospital specific information in a dashboard format. My thanks to David Dillon, MHA's VP of media relations, for giving me the heads-up on the website. I can attest to David's observation that the reports contain the same data as reported to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, "however the interface is much more user-friendly and locally-focused."

It uses ArcGIS Explorer Onilne, which took a while to load on my machine.

- Columbia Tribune

A RESEARCH OBSERVATORY based at NUI Maynooth [Kildare, Ireland] have unveiled a new online mapping tool that aims to show exactly how some parts of Ireland are covered by hospitals or schools.

The accessibility map, produced by the All-Island Research Observatory, highlights areas based on their proximity to facilities like hospitals, primary schools and secondary schools.

The map helps show diparities in services.

- The Journal.IE

Autodesk and Pitney Bowes Software Elaborate on New Relationship

Tuesday’s press release from Autodesk regarding its new relationship with Pitney Bowes Software (PBS, the new name as of January 1, 2012 for Pitney Bowes Business Insights) raised many questions. Joe Francica and I spoke with James Buckley, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Customer Data & Location Intelligence, Pitney Bowes Software and Rich Humphrey, Director of Civil Infrastructure in the AEC Division at Autodesk on Tuesday night to try to tease out some answers.

Continue reading...

TripAdvisor Taps OSM and other OpenStreetMap News

TripAdvisor have launched a set of free android apps providing city guides for 20 popular world cities, and for the maps they've used 
OpenStreetMap!

Each of the following cities has a dedicated app on the android marketplace: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Beijing, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Florence, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Las Vegas, London, 
Los Angeles, New York City, Orlando, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, and Washington D.C., 

This means the apps are free and can be downloaded and hosted on the phone.

- OpenGeoData Blog

The arresting OSM-based road casualties map we tweeted recently now covers the USA too map.itoworld.com/road-casualtie…

Illinois Law Aimed at Better Truck Use of GPS

Illinois Gov Pat Quinn signed legislation to enhance truck safety when using GPS. It makes truck routes more accessible by requiring local jurisdictions to provide truck route data to the Dept of Transportation, which then will post that information online. It also includes a provision to better educate drivers about the diffrences between truck and consumer GPS devices.

House Bill 1377 goes into effect January 1, 2012. John McAvoy, director of engineering for Rand McNally, was one of nine members of the task force appointed to make recommendations to the Illinois State Assembly. 

- Bulk Transporter (no doubt the first time I cited that website!)