Census data update - USA Counties data files

Downloadable data files have been created to accompany the web-based USA Counties. Now users can download directly more than 5,900 data items from the Web site for the United States, the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and all 3,141 counties and county equivalents. Information in USA Counties covers topics such as: age, agriculture, ancestry, banking, building permits, business patterns, crime, earnings, education, elections, employment, government, health, households, housing, income, labor force, manufactures, population, poverty, retail trade, social programs, veterans, vital statistics, water use, and wholesale trade. See http://www.census.gov/support/USACdata.html

Yahoo? dev net's Mcalister jumps ship to join The Guardian

Interesting to see that The Guardian, you know, that cool UK newspaper, has stolen Matt Mcalister away from Yahoo!'s developer network. Matt will be joining the Guardian crew in London to help develop a new developer program. Definitely a testament as to how serious the new/online media is and how some cool, new opportunities are waiting the developer. See also http://www.guardian.co.uk

Event of interest - FEMA Risk Map Industry Day

The purpose of the event is for interested contractors to hear from the Federal government on how current business is handled within the Risk Analysis Division and plans for the future of Risk MAP. The Industry day will be held on:

Wednesday, 2 April 2008, Beginning at 1:00 Pm and ending at 4:00 PM.

Location: Crystal City Marriott at Reagan National Airport
1999 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 22202

Proposed Agenda:
1:00 Welcome
1:05 Introductions
1:10 Overview of Map Modernization
1:25 Branch Overviews - How we currently do business
MIP/MSCs
RMCs/IDIQs
HAZUS/CTPs
Governance
2:10 Bucket Overviews - How we plan to do business
Program Management
Customer and Data Services
Production and Technical Services
2:40 Break
3:30 Answer Session
4:00 Close

Info - Pre-Registration is not required. Please limit the participation of your firm and all business units of your firm to 5 personnel or less. See also here

ArcDigita Aggegates GIS updates from the web

This comes my way via GISuser reader Ken, he's developed a news aggregation tool for neogegraphers and everything GIS at ArcDigita.com... this from Ken - "I've developed ArcDigita out of a passion for geography and everything GIS and geospatial technology. I am especially encouraged by the new movement of 'neogeography' that has been made possible by great tools such as the Google Maps API and programming languages like AJAX, to name 2 of many, many examples.

There are a lot of great stories out there, and it's my hope that ArcDigita can aggregate the most interesting ones in a meaningful manner. The editors of the site are it's users, and they'll decide what gets posted, and what stays posted through an advanced voting system. Users can even comment on the news and have productive discussions on it's merits." Users register and can contribute their news updates (somewhat reminicent of BlinkGeo when it first started)
He's running a small contest through April where a user can win a $20 gift certificate to Amazon.com - ArcDigita.com

6th Vespucci summer institute in geographic information science

Michael Gould just passed along some information about the 6th Vespucci summer institute.
The 6th Vespucci summer institute in geographic information science is just after the OGC TC meeting in Germany. Taking place 9-20 June (2 sessions) 2008 in the Tuscan hills overlooking Florence, Italy.
Details
Week 1: Geo-sensor web, leaders include Mike Botts, Antonio Camara
Week 2: GI Science supporting Virtual Globes, leaders include Gilberto Camara, Mike Goodchild, Ed Parsons

Vespucci sessions are intense,highly-interactive events bringing together senior+junior minds, in a relaxing, productive atmosphere. More info on registration and/or sponsorship: summer08(at)vespucci(dot)org - see http://www.vespucci.org

London Profiler themes maps with freeware GMap (Google map) Creator

This interesting story comes out of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London courtesy of the BBC. Using a freeware app know as the Google Map Creator, a team of clever geographers has developed the the London Profiler website. According to the team, here you can visualise your neighbourhood's profile using different area classifications through the Google Map interface. All the themes have been created with GMap Creator. Think amazing, thematic mapping served up via google maps. About the application...
The Google Map Creator is a freeware application designed to make thematic mapping using Google Maps simpler. The application takes a shapefile containing geographic areas linked with attributes and automatically generates a working Google Maps website from the data. It does this by pre-creating all the necessary files and saving them into a directory. Publishing the map on the web is then just a matter of copying files onto a web server, allowing Google Maps to be used with the majority of ISPs. See http://www.londonprofiler.org/

Live Traffic camera feeds made simple via TrafficLand

I received an update this morning from TrafficLand describing their latest offerings in the Portland, OR area. Curiosity got the best of me and I had to check out the resource. Turns out to be one of the coolest traffic information aggregators that I've come accross to date. A simple, free registration enables me to browse all the camera feeds and start adding favorites to my bookmarks and even embed the camera feeds into my website or blog (see below). The extensive list of camera feeds enables access to cameras from most major cities in the US as well as a few cities in other countries. To my suprise Fort Collins was listed as well as the areas along I-70, west of Denver, infamously known for heavy traffic and some wild weather. Selecting a city brings up thumbnails of popular cameras, a google map showing locations of the cams, and weather updates from Weatherbug. With the latest updates from Oregon, users can also view the ODOT traffic cameras by Web-enabled cell phones and PDAs via the company’s fee-based AirVideo service... This service is definitley a must use for me the next time I plan a trip through the mountains to the West Coast... great stuff! See www.TrafficLand.com

6th annual Visualization Challenge deadline near

HEads up as The 2008 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge draws to a close. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the journal Science, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the 6th annual Visualization Challenge will accept entries only until May 31st. The Challenge recognizes the increasing importance and power of visualizations. They illuminate and explain to the public the crucial work of science and engineering. Increasingly, they have also become an essential analytical tool for those researchers themselves, revealing the patterns, structures, and truth beneath the data.

For rules, entry forms, and more information, see: www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis

Geosearch the ultimate news aggregator? You better watch out for EveryBlock

So, Metacarta has rolled out their fine, new GeoSearch (isn't that a GIS Career resource??) news aggregator, ideal for News, Real Estate, and Travel Applications - see the official PR here. But will it be the "ultimate" news aggregator that some people are speculating about? One has to ask, have you seen EveryBlock? EveryBlock is an amazing mashup for everyone that pulls news, photos, crime reports, property sales, restaurant inspections, and much more for several geographic locations. The app currently provides info for 3 major cities (New York, Chicago, and) oh, and get this, it doesn't use Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft's map data, but rather, have created their own developed the app. on OpenLayers and Mapnik - other data sources are pulled from TIGER/Line files,PostGIS, and OGR (see the full skinny from Adrian's Blog) The developer, you may know the name, is Adrian Holovati of Chicago Crime data fame. I could go on but you have to browse EveryBlock for yourself - see http://www.everyblock.com/. Oh, and for those of you attending Where2.0 or contemplating on attending it, you can hear all about EveryBlock from Holovati himself. See also the blog for more http://blog.everyblock.com/

Local Search + maps GenieKnows Local - a decent start!

I just received a heads-up from the developers of a new local search resource - one heavily focused on mapping - GenieKnows Local. At first glance it offers up a similar functionality to Google Maps Business search, however, it wraps up some different services and offers some interesting add-ons. I'm not sure if I'm big on the name, but the results seem to be pretty good and thats what's important. Searching for coffee in my local area (which was identified based on my IP address) yields some good results and the add-on suggestions like Bakeries is quite clever. According to the company, the service has bee four years in the making. From the developer, GenieKnows Local (http://local.genieknows.com) – is the ultimate combination of map technology and local directories. There's no embeded ads (yet), however, this would be a good application to maybe take advantage of the Lat49 service which provides constantly changing ads within the map, rather than static banners surrounding the maps. The maps really aren't that visually appealing and if I could make a suggestion, I'd consider maybe creating a more professional looking logo.

GenieKnows Local includes:
- Full map of Canada and the United States
- Business listings for all of Canada and the US
- Directory-based navigation
- Free form search for locations, addresses, businesses, and business categories
- Unique and innovative zone-based map navigation, different map views and the ability to search maps
- Weather information for your target city

Google joins together with Yahoo! and MySpace to create non-profit OpenSocial Foundation

Announced today over at the Google Code Blog, Google has joined together with Yahoo! and MySpace to create OpenSocial Foundation. According to the news... This foundation, modeled after the community-led and industry-supported OpenID Foundation, will seek to ensure that the technology behind OpenSocial remains implementable by all, freely and without restriction, in perpetuity. The official home is opensocial.org and users are invited to join and get involved! See http://www.opensocial.org/

propertymaps Maps foreclosures with Google Maps APIs

The topic of foreclosures is on the minds of many. A number of online real estate resources are available, however, a new service (mashup) from PropertyMaps.com allows consumers to quickly search and view millions of listings nationwide using mapping tools such as Google Maps, Google Earth, and Microsoft Virtual Earth. Now users can also access a real-time foreclosure search. Adding to that, PropertyMaps.com even offers a tool to find sexual offenders living in a neighborhood. Full foreclosure information can be obtained via registration, however, a 7-day free trial membership with RealtyTrac is also available. See PropertyMaps.com asnd click on the Foreclosures link. Those on the road should take note that PropertyMaps also delivers the content wirelessly to Internet-enabled phones, PDAs, GPS-enabled and other mobile devices. The site lists some 170,000+ foreclosures in California, 20,000 in Nevada, 87,000 in Florida etc...

WikiNear, the location-sensitive WiKiNear - using Yahoo's fire eagle + Google maps API

WikiNear, the location-sensitive WiKi... this cool app. uses Yahoo's fire eagle - you'll need an invitation from Yahoo! to use this - the skinny of it is that the app. uses your location to locate Wiki pages that are closest to your current location and displays them on a Google map (not sure if this is tied to your Yahoo! account setup or ?) I'm still dabbling with it and plan to run off now to test it on my mobile as the documentation says that the app. is optimized for use on a mobile - I would assume that it will hopefully determine my location from the mobile and grab WiKi content based on that location. See more at Simon Wilson's blog or jump to http://wikinear.com/ - see also http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/ - note, Fire Eagle is in Beta and thus, only a limited number of users are given access so you may have to wait a bit to try this one. See also Mashable for more http://mashable.com/2008/03/22/wikinear/