Tracking Hurricanes and Historical Hurricane Data

Posted on July 30, 2014 by glenn

Hurricane season is well under way as the traditional North Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1. As soon as the weather alerts start coming in about tropical storms its natural that interest in previous tropical storms will heighten and for good reason. Many of us flock to the site to check out historical paths of storms and hurricanes to see if they match up with current activity. This can be accomplished by using one of my favorite resources from NOAA, the Historical Hurricanes Tracks web.

Historical Hurricane Tracks

Historical Hurricane Tracks (Source)

Using the site you can easily search by geographic location to view all the past storms conveniently color coded by strength.  Note, you can also easily save and share storm paths of interest, for example, this link which takes you to the path of Andrew in 1992 – handy!

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Posted in environment, hurricane |

Online Mapping for Beginners – The Map Academy from CartoDB

Posted on July 29, 2014 by glenn

Something innovative from the CartoDB crew (timely given their recent announcement of CartoDB Enterprise) … The Map Academy, a series of online mapping courses – Learn to create maps on the web and visualize geospatial data.

The first course is ‘Online Mapping for Beginners’, which gives a walk through of many CartoDB capabilities. It’s available as 5 ‘chapters’ of 10 minutes or so each that you can follow along with at your own pace. You can get the data for the tutorials at the Map Academy page – see http://academy.cartodb.com/courses/01-beginners-course.html

map academy

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Posted in education, events |

Video – The Known Universe

Posted on July 29, 2014 by glenn

An amazing video essentially of Everything! Developed by The American Museum of Natural History along with The Rubin Museum of Art, located via the Graffiti Kings facebook page – impressive indeed! Continue reading →

Posted in video, wow |

EDU Resource – ESRIUC Papers and Tech Workshop Presentations now Online

Posted on July 29, 2014 by glenn

Here’s a great resource from Esri that has come out of the 2014 ESRIUC. the company has now generously made available the technical workshop presentations and papers from the 2014 conference. Browse the vast collections of papers and presentations, more than 1,000 in total, all now available to view as PPT and PDF documents – great stuff!

2014 Esri User Conference Technical Workshops

See the Paper sessions HERE and the Technical Workshops HERE

Posted in education, esri uc |

Yes indeed, you can now download Mars Geology data in SHP files

Posted on July 28, 2014 by glenn

Yes indeed, you can now start mapping Mars as the USGS and NASA have made available (in SHP format) Mars geology, structures, landing sites and more – Twitter user Larry Buchanan @larrybuch has taken the data and dropped em into QGIS and created/shared a visualization – nice!

 

Posted in dataviz |

First Look Video – Cedar Tree CMP1, mini Android smartphone from @cedar_tech

Posted on July 25, 2014 by glenn

I’m pleased to share this one with you, shot on location at the 2014 ESRIUC in San Diego… likely your first chance to have a look at the really awesome, Cedar Tree CMP1, mini Android smartphone – My first look at the AWESOME @cedar_tech mini Android smartphone – oh, and FYI, this video was shot with a trial Nokia Lumia 1520 – pretty sweet video quality I’d say! Keep on reading to see the video…

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Posted in android, video | Tagged |

New from Google – Maps Coordinate + Maps Engine Pro

Posted on July 25, 2014 by glenn

Google has this week announced that Google Coordinate will now be included with every Maps Engine Pro subscription ($5/user/month). Recall, Google Maps Coordinate, is the mobile and web app that lets teams assign jobs and share their locations with each other in real-time. Now Maps Coordinate will be much more accessible to businesses and individuals through better pricing, easier sign up and support for any Google account (you no longer have to be just an Google Apps customer).

Last fall Google  introduced Maps Engine Pro as a new tool to give businesses and individual users an easy-to-use tool for collaborative map creation. With the combination of Maps Engine Pro and Coordinate, we’re excited to upgrade our customers’ ability to communicate, organize and make decisions with location-based insights.



Read more about this HERE

Posted in google, google maps, video | Tagged |

Cool Geo Technology – 10 Awesome Things seen at 2014 ESRIUC

Posted on July 23, 2014 by glenn

Indeed there’s no shortage of cool and amazing technology to touch, see, and hear about at ESRIUC, actually, its almost overwhelming so creating a list of just 10 awesome things I saw is no simple task. Hopefully I won’t crush any feelings for those not mentioned here and just let it be known that this list could likely easily be rehashed into a “100 Cool things” list if I had the time!

IMG_20140717_104734
Seen above: Cedar Tree mini Android smartphone

And so, enjoy these 10 Cool things seen at ESRIUC 2014

Did you see any tech at esriuc that blew your sox off? If so please tell me about it in a comment or tweet me @gletham

Posted in 10 Awesome Things, esri uc, events |

2014 #ESRIUC Message from Jack – become Geo Designers

Posted on July 21, 2014 by glenn

Once again another International Esri user conference has come and gone. Myself, like about 15,000 others who made the trip to San Diego are now coming down from a big “Geo High” and are organizing our notes and contact information from all the great things we saw and fabulous people we met. The week began much like most other conference week’s did, with loads of excitement and Esri President Jack Dangermond addressing the huge crowd in attendance at the opening plenary. I felt that Dangermond really set the tone for the week with his opening remark that may have come over as rather surprising to many – he expressed how “something is changing, and we’re about to see GIS reach its full potential… there’s something afoot and I encourage you to notice it.” An exciting and bold statement I felt but after the week was done it did indeed seem rather appropriate and most of us at the conference did indeed go out there to notice it.

Esri user conference (Image credit: Esri)

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Posted in ESRI, esri uc, events | Tagged , |

Poor Blackberry… Blackphone goes for Blackberry’s throat

Posted on July 21, 2014 by glenn

Poor Blackberry, they just can’t catch a break it seems! Even with recent reports revealing about 0% US marketshare (Ouch!) they keep on persisting to try and stand up and then they just get knocked down again. In the latest blow to the company  SILENT CIRCLE has hit back regarding the privacy of the Blackphone. It has taken Blackberry’s recent criticism, balled it up and thrown in back in Blackberry’s face. In a note directed at “privacy enthusiasts” but undoubtedly aimed at Blackberry, Silent Circle said that the negative attention is unwarranted.

Screen Shot 2014-07-16 at 10.04.58 AM

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Posted in blackberry |

Google Maps for Business imagery

Posted on July 18, 2014 by glenn

Indeed there’s been loads of Esri related news to share this week, however, Google has also been making some noise. This week, via the Google earth blog, the company has shared how they are launching Google Maps for Business imagery. This service is offering businesses the chance to purchase and use Google Earth imagery for the first time. From Google… “This gives organizations access to high-resolution aerial imagery covering the continental U.S. And this will help customers like government agencies get the imagery they need without collecting their own aerial photography.” – Read more on this here.

Posted in google |

Connecting with Developers at GeoDevMeetup and the Startup Zone at #esriuc

Posted on July 17, 2014 by glenn

It goes without saying that there’s loads of great opportunities for developers at the ESRIUC. Sure they have the dev Summit in the spring, however, the UC is really a great opportunity for the developers to connect with each other and even launch their latest app or startup business. Yesterday at the conference I spent a fair bit of time speaking to a number of developers in the very cool Startup Zone – a dedicated area for Devs to wow us all. Note, for companies meeting the requirements, getting accepted into the Zone is an affordable and very visible option to help kickstart your business. Continue reading →

Posted in gis |