An update about life on the front Range

An update about life on the front Range... just s weeks into my new Colorado lifestyle and I'm already being affected by immigration dealings! Just yesterday I went to trade in my BC drivers license for  a Colorado license. Low and behold, due to the Swift meat packing immigration bust this past week in Greeley, CO it seems that the laws are now unclear as to how you can obtain a license here if you come from out of state. At the heart of the legal battle is whether people are required to produce one or two supporting pieces of ID.. personally, since ID theft is such a huge issue this is a no-brainer.. maybe 3 pieces would be in order! Anyway, I was turned away because the entire State decided that no State ID or drivers licenses would be issued on Friday. Now I guess I'm looking forward to standing in line for hours next week (if this gets resolved) with a boatload of out of State folks like me who got turned away. Otherwise, things in NOCO are awesome!

10 useful things that you should always consider for online news (PR) distribution

I've mentioned this before, however, I'd like to offer up a couple of useful tips for those of you that issue PR on behalf of your company - particularly if you send your press to editors for online publication. 10 useful things that you should always do for online PR distribution:

1. provide a short, clear title - NOT IN ALL CAPS - you may like it for style points, however, using all caps is a guaranteed way to make an editor cringe - myself I've refused to publish items in the past simply because of this. Sure the editor can re-type the title, however, that increases the chance for a typo or mistake. If your title is lengthy, consider creating a short tile followed by a longer secondary title or info sentence.

2. specify a release date and be clear to point out if the news is under an embargo date

3. provide a contact section at the end that contains name, phone, email (all optional) but a referring website address is a must

4. distribute as ASCII text. If you send via email include the press release as text within the body of the email. If you like, attach an MS Word document that contains images and additional information.

5. PDFs are a no no. This may be a pet peeve of mine but getting PR as a simple PDF attachment send me loopy! Distilling a PDF into a useful text or html format for use on the web is a royal pain and too much work (unless you're paying for this service). Once again, I've hit the DEL key on more than one occasion in the past when I've received a PDF

6. if you send to a list of publication or editors us the BCC (blind copy) option. CC'ing a bunch of emails is a nice way to share your valuable contact list (thanks to all of you that have shared yours with me in the past) however, you can also turn off some people if they see that you are sharing their email address.

7. if you include an image(s) provide GIF or JPG that are relatively low-resolution (a maximum with of 500-600 pixels is typically max for an online publication

8. send me a ZIP file and I'll freak out! Plain and simple, getting a bunch of documents all zipped up may seem convenient, however, its lots to ask of an editor and you'll be lucky if that ZIP file ever gets decompressed... definitely a nono.

9. If sending via email using the word press or PR followed by the press title is a very friendly way to get the editor's attention.

10. Make sure you have news! I see lots of "weekly news" or regular updates that you can set your watch by. Don't simply send news because its Thursday... make sure you're news is actually newsworthy!

NOTE: all editors likely have their preferences, however, these are the main things I look for in receiving press for online publication. I've been receiving and publishing online PR since 1998 and these rules have been in place for me pretty much the entire time. Finally, consider a follow up... if you have cool news about a new app or service you might consider following up with the editor after he/she has published your press. This is a great time to ask if he'd like a demo, web briefing, or evaluation copy. Got Geospatial press to share? Feel free to send details to press-at-gisuser-dot-com

 

MSc student opportunity in Spatial Analysis

Hey you grad students, an opportunity has come up for an MSc student in Spatial Analysis at my alma mater, The University of Victoria (British Columbia). Thesis work will focus on spatial-temporal analysis. Students will be involved in the development of the thesis topic and potential research areas include mountain pine beetle epidemics in Western Canada and caribou populations on Baffin Island. The position offers $14K per year - details posted at http://www.gisuser.com/component/option,com_jobline/Itemid,132/task,view/id,1481/

More on ArcGIS Server and a web demo today

A reminder about this free webcast titled what's new in aRcGIS Server at 9.2
Date: Thursday, December 14, 2006
Time: 9 AM, 11 AM, or 3 PM Pacific (Los Angeles); 12 PM, 2 PM, or 6 PM Eastern(New York)
Go to http://www.esri.com/training and in the Free Live Training Seminar area, click "What's New in ArcGIS Server at 9.2."

Year end TOP lists a plenty - LBS topping smartphone predictions?

I love this time of year... the year is ending and everyone and their dogs are coming out with their year in review best of and TOP picks and predictions for 2007. Once such list got my attention this morning. It was from mobile application sales channel Handango. They have their Top 7 picks for smartphone apps for 2007 and once again LBS (and GPS) are topping the picks. I don't want to be a prude but man, haven't we been hearing this for about 5 years now... LBS... the killer app! Now don't get me wrong, ofcourse I think LBS is a killer app but it may not be THE killer app. Indeed the penetration into the commercial application spce has been signifigant, for obviousl reasons... if you aren't location-enabling your commercial applications and solutions then you aren't in the game. But... to imply that "GPS-Enabled Location Based Services (LBS) Will Be Killer Applications" as Handango has is a bit of a stretch in my mind. HAndango is a consumer channel thus, their predictions are for the consumer space. Plain and simple... the consumer will not adopt GPS enabled apps in droves... not yet anyway. The obstacle is the sales channel, a problem that has plagued the mobile space for years. The consumer relies upon the sales clerk to sell him a sleek, cool device and the supporting services and these clerks simply aren't equipped to sell GPS, Geospatial, or LBS solutions (disclaimer: although the savvy user will ask for them). Here's just a small example... I recently signed up to activate 3 phones on the T-Mobile service. The clerk (a very helpful young guy) was eager to sell me the latest music and picture phone.. yadayada, until he realized I may know a think or 2 about the space... I pulled 3 smartphones out of my pocket that he'd never seen and blew him away with them (my Nokia N80, 7610, and 6680 - European edition). He proceeded to sell me a "my faves" plan and I left quite satisfied. The problem... unlocked devices are not able to take part in the plan.. the reaon being that only T-mobile provided phones come equipped with the required application software and settings... ooops... too bad the clerk wasn't aware of that! LOL - you can check out the Handango Smartphone Market's Top Seven in '07 HERE

Quote of the day on Autodesk TrustedDWG law suit

Quote of the day... "tell me, do you find Autodesk's TrustedDWG ploy and resulting lawsuit as appalling and anti-customer as I do?" (Ralph Gabrowski)... OUCH!! This reference made in Ralph's most recent newsletter regarding the lawsuit against the ODA. The newsletter contained an interview that Ralph had with Alibre CEO Greg Milliken (See also http://www.gregmilliken.com/) Interesting stuff although the verbage in this article seems pretty tough... I'd like to hear more about this suit. Any thoughts?

VanMap Mapguide site gets serious update with 2006 Orthophotos , webcams, and 2010 Olympic Venues

Jonathan and crew, developers of the popular VanMap (you know, the amazing MApguide application from the City of Vancouver, BC, Canada) has just announced some updates. Most notably, access to 2006 ortho photography for Vancouver or how about more updates on 2010 Olympic venues... NICE!

- 2006 Orthophotos - The area covered in 2006 includes the City, the University Endowment Lands, Sea Island (YVR), and parts of Richmond and North Vancouver
- Olympic venues where double-clicking on a venue site will take you to a web site with further information.
Some other cool things I like... a Graffiti layer showing areas that have had a Graffiti By-law infraction.
- School Catchment Areas.
- Traffic Web Cams.

- Child Care Facilities

There's also an updated, comprehensive did-u-know area (aka FAQ)

You can check these out at VanMap at http://vancouver.ca/vanmap/

Joining the YouTube craze - how to use YouTube with your blog

I have to admit, I'm anxious to start publishing more video online, nothing personal but in my opinion Video is it! Why "everyone" is podcasting and streaming audio files all over the web is a mystery to me (although taking podcasts on the road with your iPod is indeed likely useful to many when they travel - personally I prefer music on mine!) when a short video is WAY more useful, compelling, and fun! Given that pretty much every smartphone has video capabilities, PCs come with mixing software out of the box, and publishing video files online via Google Video, YouTube, mySpace and other social communities is a breeze. So, if this is your bag and you want to start adding video to your blog, check out this decent primer offered up by blogger Alan Williamson - its very basic but a good place to start - see http://alan.blog-city.com/youtube.htm - So what's your preference, audio or video?? See also http://video.google.com/ - How powerful is publishing via Google Video? As an example, my son and his friends (aka. Team Ollie) published a skateboard video titled "Sk8 for Life" a few months back whish has been seen more than 36,000 times... not bad for some young kids armed with skateboards, a video camera and use of a PC. You can check it out at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3294904769172862449&q=sk8... be sure to crank up your sound ;0)

Holiday cards, PCI celebrates, and my intro to GIS

Well those electronic Christmas (errrr Holiday cards) are coming in at a brisk pace... have you done yours yet? Just received one from the crew at PCI Geomatics who mention that 2007 will be their 25th year serving the GIS community... nice! My roots actually go back to PCI geomatics in that I got my start in the industry in the late 1980's from friend and mentor Vern Klassen in Victoria BC. Vern owned a consulting firm (LANDIS) and was once involved with PAMAP GIS, a product that was developed by PCI (correct me if I'm wrong). Vern gave me a great opportunity through an internship and introduced me to the business of GIS and helped me get up and running with all the great software back then including PAMAP GIS, Terrasoft, and AutoCAD (r. 10 I think). Tragically, the industry lost Vern way too soon but he left his mark with many of us and he provided loads of people with some fantastic opportunities as well as the pleasure of knowing a great human... I also met my wife thanks to my job with Vern! Anyway, kudos to PCI and thanks for the great technology.

Publication for GeoKids at GeoJunior

Not sure why I've never stumbled onto this one before... enter GeoJunior, a publication for youngsters interested in geography and Earth Sciences. There's games, news, activities, teacher resources and much more... its tough to tell exactly how often they update but nonetheless, it's a cool idea! See http://www.gjunior.com

Georgia cleans rural places from official maps - in Texas 50 or more and your place secure

A bit of house cleaning in Georgia as a number of "minor" places have been taken off the map! Apparently a total of 488 communities have been erased from the latest version of Georgia's official map. Georgia's Department of Transportation, which drew the new map, said that the goal was to make it clearer and less cluttered and that many of the dropped communities were mere "placeholders," generally with fewer than 2,500 people. Of interest, the article notes that contrasting this is the State of Texas where small places are rarely ever removed from official maps - if you have 50 or more people or have a post office your place on the map is secure in the Lone Star State. This comes from the Houston Chronicle (see http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4389342.html)