O'reilly Emerging Telephony conference Notes

Didn't make it to ETEL last week in San Fran? The O'reilly emerging telephony conference has come and gone, luckily the website has a ton of cool resources including photos, articles, and information from the event. there's a conference WiKi and lots of great articles touching on topics like VoIP, LBS, Skype, and much more... See http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etel2006/coverage/

Mississippi Coast Recovery Expo Saturday, January 28th, Biloxi, MS

I just received a heads-up about this event taking place on the Gulf Coast this week-end. The Coast Recovery Expo will be held this Saturday, January 28th from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. at Edgewater Mall in Biloxi, MS.  The Enterprise for Innovative Geospatial Solutions is participating as a supporting sponsor as well as an exhibitor.  There will be a number of notable guests including mayors from coastal cities, Attorney General Jim Hood, MDOT Commissioner Wayne Brown, FEMA Director Eric Gentry, and representatives from the Governor’s Commission on Recovery. There will also be over 70 booths including:  SBA, FEMA, Gulf Coast Chamber, Hancock Chamber of Commerce, MS Contract Procurement Center, Coast Transit Authority, the sheriff departments from Hancock, Harrison and Jackson Counties as well as numerous private businesses, contractors, and service organizations. For more information, visit:  http://www.1640wtni.com/.

Canadian Cartographic Association responds to challenge and maps the results of the 2006 Federal Election

Congrats to a "CCAer" for coming up to the plate in my challenge for someone to develop a map of the 2006 Canada federal election results. The maps provided show the results of each riding (color themed), shows the % of the winning vote and also includes a map of the results from the 2004 election... nice stuff! See http://ccablog.blogspot.com/

2006 Canada Election Results... Where Are the Maps???

I found a 2 year-old dataset useful as a base, however, there's no maps to be found anywhere. Are you searching for maps that show the results of the recent Federal election in Canada? We all know these maps and data were easily found when the US held their last election (See http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/3769/). Amazing as it seems, this is no simple task in Canada. Tabular results are available from many sources including SFU - http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/results.html, elections Canada http://enr.elections.ca/National_e.aspx, the CBC http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/ - see also this CBC results tool at http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/electionnight/ for some cool results... however, I have to ask.. where are the maps??? I have to admit, I'm a bit blown away that there's no decent mapping... I want to see the results based on geography.. what ridings are held by who?? Not a tabular list, I need to see a map so I can get an idea of the whole picture.  Even the Globe & Mail (Canada's National Newspaper) has fallen short. A search on Google yields a hit to their site for an election results map (See Globe & Mail election map), however, it's merely a map of the Provinces and when you mouse-over a tabular list of the results are provided... nice but hardly useful to me. Perhaps ESRI Canada could market the Mapstudio for Media or ArcWeb services to some of the major publishers. What's really interesting is that back in 2004 when the last election was held, the same thing happened. I found this interesting blog (HERE) where there's actually a map that was developed by a person sharing the same sentiments as me... his solution... "I created my own damned map"... I love it! So you media folks... listen up.. what people want is the familiar Red & Blue map (o.k. throw in some Green and Orange too) so people can see which party was elected in which riding. After all, there are less than 300 electoral ridings, surely it can't be that difficult to get a base map to map the results.. can it? Actually, now that I think of it, in Canada obtaining "sensitive" data like electoral boundaries can be as difficult as pulling teeth - although I did track down these 2004 data from Geoconnections - available via FTP (http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/download/electoral/2004/). Commercial providers like DMTI Spatial can also provide data. Have you seen a map of the results? Care to make one? Let me know...

Canada Federal Election Map of Results Available

For those of you interested in seeing a map of the Canadian election results, see the Globe & Mail interactive map at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/elections/fed2005/fragments/results/fedMap.html. The app reveals vote breakdown by province, clicking a province provides more options and shows results by riding - along with a more detailed map. FYI, want to know how much power the province of Quebec has... the Bloc Quebec party (you know, the dudes that have visions of separating and starting up their own country...  elected 51 representatives to Parliament (51/287) with only 10.5% of the popular vote. Contrast this with the NDP who elected only 29 members with 17.5% of the popular vote... amazing! The Conservatives won the election (no surprise there) and will form a minority government... once again several more years where the opposition yields more power than the government so don't expect much to get done.

More Imagery added to Google Earth

From the official Google weblog (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/new-year-new-imagery.html) word of improvements to the imagery in Google Earth and Google Local. New additions include the addition of  extensive 6-inch imagery for many parts of the U.K. and they've also updated the Google Local database to match the coverage they have in Google Earth (nice addition!) Finally, the addition of two more zoom levels in Google Local's Satellite mode... meaning you can see much more detail in areas where the imagery is high enough in resolution. They cite as an example, people standing at the gates of Buckingham Palace are now visible! See http://local.google.com/local?q=buckingham+palace&ll=51.5015,-0.141387&spn=0.001386,0.002916&t=k

Canadian Election 2006 Mashup Map

It's election day here in Canada so we need to find some cool maps, right? Historical maps are easy to find but real-time election maps etc.. are more difficult. Some useful resources:  The Potent Pew offers up a pretty decent projection which is highly likely... http://potentpew.blogspot.com/2006/01/canada-election-2006-jan-21-seat.html. Also, preliminary results on election night will be displayed from 10:00 p.m. (Eastern Time), as soon as the last polling stations close on the West Coast and in Yukon at 7:00 p.m. (Pacific Time).  Official tallies can be found at http://www.elections.ca/ and see also this useful prediction from Angus Reid - http://www.angus-reid.com/elections%5Fcanada/index.cfm. Leave it up to a clever masher from Ontario to come up with the Canadian Election 2006 Mashup - see http://election2006.kekova.ca/.  This is a great site that provides a bubble for each riding along with a prediction and links to more information (like where to go vote) as well as election results.. kudos to the developer (Chris Nolan of Toronto, Canada) of this one! Be sure to click the link for real time election riding map! A weblog to help stay informed of developments is also available at http://kekova.ca/articles/category/election2006

Common Census maps sports fans by geography - see maps of Sea Hawk and Steeler fans to gear up for the super bowl

The CommonCensus Sports Map Project is an offshoot of the common census project that tracks sports fans across the US. Static maps for a number of sports are color coded to show fan areas. Of interest to me this week-end was the Clickable NFL fan map. Click on a map to draw a 200 mile fan area circle. Then a table is presented showing the breakdown of fans (from a sample) that turn up in that region. Of interest - the map I tested for the Seattle area shows SeaHawks were the #1 team (292 fans), followed by Denver Broncos, then Green Bay Packers. Interesting that Carolina Panthers were dead last with 1 fan in the sample! Note, common census sports fan project shows stats collected from some 16587+ fan votes and includes maps for NFL, NHL, MLB. See www.commoncensus.org/sports.php - static maps are updated every few days and online, clickable fan maps are always available.  This innovative project enables sports fans to view sports fan areas and view maps from a variety of sports inlcudin NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, and NCAA... very slick and fun!

Create and modifycustomized Google Maps and Uploading to website blogs via a free service

An interesting news item this week-end in the Locapoint DIY Map Service, a free online service to modify Google maps and easily place them on a blog or website. The free DIY service enables users to easily generate a customized google map with icons (bubbles) descriptions, and a pre-determined map scale and location. The service generates output an HTML code. Uploading the DIY Map on a blog just requires copying and pasting an HTML code. Check it out at  http://www.locapoint.com/en/diymapHome.html