Info Week looks at Maps, Mashups, APIs and Web 2.0

An interesting read about Google mashups from Information week... nice to see this topic getting such prominent placement in the mainstream media. The article discussed the proliferation of mashups (more than 35,000 so far), the latest offering from Yahoo! (Pipes), and a look at some other APIs available, like that from ForiusOne - See Maps Meet Mashups at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198001255 - related to this article - see FortiusOne http://www.fortiusone.com/ and Yahoo! Pipes http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

Image Compressor offers a pay once model for compression of JPEG 2000 and ECW formats

ER Mapper today has introduced a new application - ER Mapper Image Compressor. the app boasts a no per-MB charge but rather a pay once model (eg. a 100 gigabyte input file license will let people compress as many 100 gigabyte image files as they like) and also  provides color balancing, mosaicking, cropping, reprojection and many other features. For those interested a Trial versions of ER Mapper Image Compressor can be downloaded from www.ermapper.com

The Colonel (KFC) enlists Leica and IKONOS imagery to help with innovative marketing

Picture this... an 87,000 suare foot logo visible from space! That's what KFC constructed recently for a promotion thanks to the help from Leica Geospatial. A Colonel Sanders logo was built in the Area 51 desert near Rachel, Nevada and its huge! The company also used the image to bait consumers into a contest where they were asked to search the image for a hidden message from the Colonel - see http://www.kfc.com/facefromspace/default.asp - here's some backroung info from Leica about the construction effort. Over three months, a project team including designers, architects, engineers, and even astrophysicists spent 3,000 hours creating the face. During the six days of onsite construction, the tiles were covered from prying eyes, human and otherwise. The grid is made of 65,000 1’x1’ interlocking tiles that were painted red (6,000), white (14,000), eggshell (12,000), beige (5,000) and black (28,000). Once the grid was unveiled, the IKONOS commercial satellite, circling 423 miles above earth, was used to capture the image for processing. Leica Geosystems in Switzerland used its Leica Virtual Explorer 3D visualization product to incorporate the captured IKONOS imagery into a virtual earth, a clear and spatially accurate digital reality. Terabytes of spatial information are seamlessly merged into a highly informative digital earth and distributed to thousands of users worldwide without preprocessing. For the KFC project, the virtual earth was used to create a sequence of images to let viewers at Internet sites “zoom” from space to the KFC face.

Youth Summer Jobs in GIS and web development

Once again Hopeworks 'N Camden is running their Hopeworks Fun In The Sun drive in an effort to encourage youth employment in the GIS field. The organization is running a subscription drive in an effort to raise funds to support their job creation program. According to the website, Your subscription will help create summer jobs for 25 Camden youth. Hopeworks 'N Camden trains youth in state-of-the art computer applications: website design, geographic information services (GIS), computer networking and repair, and video. - See http://www.hopeworks.org/jobs/

Nokia Sports Tracker for S60 - track your activity journal and even export to Google Earth (KML)

Another new, cool app from Nokia Research in the Nokia Sports Tracker is now available for free download for use on Symbian S60 devices. Keep tabs on your training diary and even export to Google Earth KML for viewing on a map in Google Earth. More details from the developer - Nokia Sports Tracker is a GPS based activity tracker that runs on S60 smartphones. Information such as speed, distance and time are automatically stored to your training diary. To be able to use application for real, you need Nokia S60 3.0 phone with Bluetooth GPS device or Nokia S60 3.0 phone with integrated GPS. See more and download at http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/SportsTracker/

GeoConnections survey of user geospatial information needs

Some research data from Canada... GeoConnections has posted on its web site the results of its research into the needs of decision-makers vis à vis the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) – a backbone for sharing location-based (“geospatial”) information over the web. The cross-Canada survey, conducted on behalf of GeoConnections by a leading public opinion research company, assessed the barriers to using geospatial information, as well as the types of data, services, and service delivery vehicles that would make the CGDI the "portal of choice" for users. For details see http://www.geoconnections.org/publications/reports/CGDI_UNA/Environics_ExecSummary_E.pdf

Goodchild tours Nova Scotia - Visions for a Geospatial Future

Mike Goodchild, recent recipient of the GITA Lifetime achievement award will be "on tour" in Nova Scotia soon... some details -- Mike and Fiona Goodchild will be giving guest lectures at Dalhousie University (http://www.dal.ca ) on March 27th, 2007. Mike will be talking on "The Spatial Web: Visions for a Geospatial Future" and Fiona will be speaking on "GIS in the K-12 Sciences". The lectures take place in the Rowe Management Building with Fiona
speaking from 11:30 to 1:00 and Mike from 6:30 to 8:00. Any CAG, ACMLA, and CCA members are welcome to attend as the doors are open to all. The Goodchilds will also be at the College of Geographic Sciences (COGS) in Lawrencetown to speak and visit that campus.

more on WHERE and the WHERE developer program

I forgot to mention that in conjunction with the where app (see previous post) there's also a developer program as well. According to the company (uLocate) the same technology that underpins Helio Buddy Beacon and MapQuest Find Me is available for free to developers with the WHERE Developer Program. The WHERE Developer Program makes the industry's first GPS-enabled widget platform available to third party content owners, providing the ability to create and publish WHERE Widgets. Content companies taking early advantage of the WHERE platform include the real estate data and information site Zillow and Eventful, the world's largest collection of events. Apparently the WHERE platform incorporate Zillow's API. Thus, users can tour open houses and instantly getting Zestimates and historical trends from their GPS-enabled device. Using the API developers can create apps to run on J2ME and BREW handsets (what, no Symbian OS support.. darn!) All the tools, documentation, technologies and services needed to get started can be found at www.where.com/create

where announces GPS widgets for your mobile

LBS solution provider, uLocate has just today announced the launch of WHERE... the application is available for a monthly fee and supports only certian devices.

The following widgets are available:
# local — search locally for points of interest around you
# directions — get directions and maps from where you are to where you want to go… or from anywhere
# saved places — save your favorite places to easily access them in the future and share them with friends
# location notes — write notes about the places you’ve been for others to find, or keep them private if you don’t share well
# weather — get the local weather for your location
# ski report — local ski reports
# earthquake! — find the most recent earthquakes by proximity
# world largest — a fairly comprehensive list of America’s huge roadside attractions
# fore! — golf course finder
# roadside help — towing service and repair shops
# state parks – enjoy your local state parks
# winery finder — take a wine tour at your local wineries
# rent a car – you know you want to
# brewery finder — get to know your local breweries
# nexrad radar — see your local nexrad radar
see where.com for details and to sign up for the service or see also http://www.ulocate.com/

ArcPad 7.1 Beta program now open for mobile developers

From down-under, the ArcPad development crew has announced via their team blog that the ArcPad 7.1 Beta program is now underway - software and docs to be made available for download soon. Some new features according to the team:
The major feature introduced at ArcPad 7.1 is an out-of-the-box solution for supporting ‘related tables’.
In ArcPad 7.1 feature classes including relationships defined in the Geodatabase are extracted to a single ArcPad AXF File.
The ArcPad tools have also seen significant improvement in the area of data transfer and data sharing between ArcPad and ArcGIS in addition to support of related tables.
ArcPad Application Builder 7.1 has been improved to support ArcPad AXF files.
To find out more you will need to sign up for the beta program - we'll look forward to seeing some cool things real soon... how about support for Symbian OS? Source of inspiration http://arcpadteam.blogspot.com/ - register for the beta at http://beta.esri.com/Betaweb/index.cfm

gCensus maps Census data in Google Earth

A student at Stanford has come up with a cool app for Google Earth called gCensus. Currently, only the US Census 2000's Summary File 1 (displaying population characteristics such as race and age) is available for mapping but there's no doubt the developer and others will mashup more Census data in the near future. See details at http://gecensus.stanford.edu/gcensus/index.html The student (A phd candidate) is in search of others to help with his efforts so if you have skills or bandwidth to share please contact him

Geospatial Developer Programs wanted!

A reminder... if you hit GISUser yesterday you'll notice we've turned our spotlight onto a developer program from Metacarta (Metacarta alliance program). The theme for the next couple of weeks will be devzones, developer programs and other special alliance programs focused on the developer. If you belong to a developer program or perhaps you're charged with reaching developers via an online program or DevZone please feel free to share some details with me and we can feature your program in the next spotlight.

Some survey fun.. and maybe next time!

Some survey fun... I received a message from a hardware vendor enticing me to take part in their survey.. the bait was a $25 voucher from Starbucks.. since my wife spends that at Starbucks in about 3 days I figured why not, besides, the survey just arrived in my mailbox - one catch though, only the first 20 respondents get the prize... ok I see where this one's going. So, against my better judgment I take the survey and get this response at the end... Thank you for participating in our survey! Unfortunately your submission was not within the first 20 responses, so you do not qualify to receive a complimentary Starbucks Card. Thank you for your time! Maybe next time eh! You think I would know better ;0)

mobile technology tip - fring free, mVoIP for Symbian OS smartphones.. no more roaming charges!

A mobile technology tip for you... fring today officially launched its free, mVoIP (mobile VoIP) service for S60 devices. fring is a light downloadable mobile phone application enabling anyone with a compatible handset to make free calls and text messages or “chat” to other fring users in addition to Skype, Google Talk and MSN contacts.  fring uses 3G mobile networks to transmit VoIP data; fringsters simply use the data within their existing subscription agreement. The service can also connect over Wi-Fi at home, in the office or at the many “hot spot” cafes; these calls consume neither voice nor data air time. Think about this... no more roaming and getting stroked by the carriers for roaming! See www.fring.com - for more on symbian smartphones see symbianone.com