Batty joins Enspiria as Chief technical advisor

Congrats to Peter Batty on his most recent appointment as Chief technical advisor at Enspiria Solutions. According to the official announcement, Batty will work closely with the Enspiria Research and Development Team, as well as the Enterprise GIS Consulting and Delivery Project Teams, defining and guiding the technical direction of Enspiria. No worries though if you happen to be following Peter's progress with his start-up, Spatial Networking... he continues to be President of Spatial Networking, his startup company focused on combining location and social networking. For more on Enspiria see www.enspiria.com.

Get LinkedIn on your mobile thanks to a new mobile LinkedIn client

Cool news for those of you that are LinkedIn... now the popular networking resource for professionals has a mobile client... nice! All you need to do to access the service from your device is to jump to m.linkedIn.com (kudos for using the "m." naming convention... I'm a big fan of this rather than .mobi etc...) Simply hit the mobile site, login, then access your profile, search for others by keyword or name, even update your settings. The service looks great on my N95 (see below) and you can even pull up the bio of a contact if needed. As a test I searched for the name "Fee" (James is one of my contacts). Sure enough James comes up as the top hit! Imagine being on the road and you meet someone at an event. You can immediately get connected right on the spot! FYI, if your LinkedIn and want to get connected with yours truly you can see my profile here.
For more on LinkedIn mobile see the LinkedIn blog.

Google wants your city in 3D via the Cities in 3D program

Imagine this... Google wants your city's buildings, landmarks and terrain (in 3D) on Google Earth. Just received this update from Megan at Google... Today Google is introducing the Cities in 3D Program, an effort to help local governments share their 3D data with the public by adding a model of their city to Google Earth. Available at www.google.com/3dwarehouse/citiesin3d, the Cities in 3D program provides local governments with information about the benefits of sharing 3D data and tools for uploading their data to Google Earth. See more on this from the announcemcnt on the Lat/Long Blog
If you have textured 3D models in Google SketchUp (skp) or Google Earth (kmz) format, you can upload them through the Google 3D Warehouse. Be sure you check out the growing list of available cities. There's dozens of them, mostly in the US and Canada. You can view models for many buildings done in Sketchup either online or via Google Earth. You can even download the models and read some history of the buildings... way cool! Hey Jason... no Nanaimo up there yet??

A reminder about BIAM and my silence on the blog

This one's a bit off topic, however, its a topic that is very close and dear to me due to a recent incident in my life (this will explain my recent lack of activity and blog posting). Did you know that every 23 seconds a traumatic brain injury occurs, and in the next year, an average of 1.4 million Americans will sustain a traumatic brain injury? Hard to believe, however, believe me, all it takes is a second and you can experience a devastating injury that could change your life... I know.. that's exactly what happened to me in January! Luckily I'm recovering very well and am confident that I will experience a 100% recovery - this I should know by the end of the month. Without going into too many details, a seemingly harmless fall on some ice, a couple of weeks of headaches, and before I knew it, I was in ICU and undergoing surgery. I was lucky in that the problem was detected and repaired promptly, however, many people ignore the symptoms (like I did) and wait too long. Make sure you're aware of bumping your head and any follow-up symptoms that may result - simply put, I was blown away that this could have happened to me.

FYI, March has been designated as Brain Injury Awareness Month, a critical time when the Brain Injury Association of America and its partners strive to build public awareness and education by producing and distributing important education and prevention tools. Only by raising public awareness of the "silent epidemic" of brain injury will we begin to see a decrease in the alarming number of injuries sustained every year, an increase in the number of individuals practicing preventive behaviors while at work or play, and a change in the public's attitude toward individuals with brain injury. For more info see http://www.biausa.org/biam.htm

SkillsUSA Geospatial Technology Competition

The Third Annual SkillsUSA Geospatial Competition will be held in Kansas City, Missouri, June 23-June 27, 2008. College/postsecondary students studying GIS, RS and GPS from across the United States can now register. Now in its third year, the gold medalist will receive a complete ArcGIS ArcView and four Extensions student software package worth $10,000 from ESRI - see also HERE


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