Anything Geospatial

GIS, Maps, Geo and Location Technology by @gletham

Archives for February 2013

Home and Remote Office Workers… A Good Idea or Just Yahoo!-ing Around?

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It seems that Marissa Mayer and Yahoo! have stirred the pot a little here with this topic, although honestly, given Yahoo!’s track record I don’t really take much to heart that is coming out of the fledgling Internet company (when was the last time you used yahoo! email or did a Yahoo! search??) It seems Yahoo1 is dead set against home-based workers and has taken a firm stance that all employees will work from the campus. Remote office workers provide many options to companies, particularly small or growing firms. Workers from home can be flexible in their hours, can provide economic savings, reduce needless commutes, and offer a variety of potential benefits. However, there are drawbacks, like lack of face-to-face engagement, declining productivity, and more. So, what are your thoughts on this for the tech professional? Have you or do you work remotely? What’s your company’s take on this? Drop a comment in the form to share… See also this feature on the Yahoo! position and the Marissa Mayer memo to Yahoo! employees

I can’t help but think that this is really a step backwards for the web, for the start-up economy, for the Internet, for women, for young tech workers, and for Yahoo! No huge surprise though given Yahoo!’s track record and as I’ve long suspected, Mayer will likely be sitting on a beach and sucking back a sweet severance package within a year or so and folks that have 401Ks that are heavily depending on Yahoo! may be sifting over their portfolios and looking for more sound investments, like maybe Nokia! ;0)


Sequester and Spending Cuts are Days Away – Some Poll Findings

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Indeed the budget cuts may run deep as time passes and for many in business, the topic of sequestration is on the mind – no doubt this will also be discussed by many this week at the Esri FEDUC. Harris has recent;y polled Americans on their thoughts regarding budget spending and budget cuts and to no surprise, the poll finds that only rather small minorities of the public want to cut most of the biggest federal government programs. Perhaps the biggest surprise that I see in this is the huge number of those surveyed who favor cuts in spending and funding for business!

Some highlights of the findings… Only 12% of the public want to see a cut in Social Security payments

[Read more…] about Sequester and Spending Cuts are Days Away – Some Poll Findings

Esri Federal User Conference Kicks Off #FedGIS

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The end of Feb is here and that means the Esri conference season is kicking off… this week the Redlands crew rolls out the annual lovefest for Federal GIS users via the Esri federal User Conference. Those interested can follow updates from the conference on Twitter via via @EsriFederalGovt and #FedGIS. Esri is once again also hyping the “Who is GIS?” fun with their popular trading cards and also has a web service where you can go and see just who is GIS – see http://www.esri.com/special/whoisgis/index.html

Some interesting updates on Twitter from the event:

@gisjourno – Arlington National Cemetery wins Making a Difference Award at #FedGIS in Washington, DC. Read why: http://esriurl.com/5771

@ajturner – over-arching theme of #FedGIS so far is “Collaboration” with GIS for solving important problems. Reminds me of http://heorb.it/collaborativeanalysis …

@GISpathway – See patterns real time + illuminate where tweets are happening than normal (Sandy-power outage) #FedGIS pic.twitter.com/zx29ZHQ8NS

@jsteffenson – Jack engaging Jerry Johnston, Dan Cotter and Kshemendra Paul at morning Senior Executive breakfast. #fedgis #esri pic.twitter.com/W0wyn2p3nK

@martenhogeweg – Interested in joining the SDI SIG at #FedGIS? be there or join remotely: http://esriurl.com/sdisig

 

Province of B.C, Canada forges ahead with OpenData initiatives

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This week a special Open Data Summit took place in Vancouver, B.C where about 120 government folk and stakeholders took part in the discussion around the topic of OpenGov and Open Data. In a report from the event, it was good to see that the topic of standards was quite important and discussed from the get go, also citing the success of the Google open transit feed data spec in helping to open and share data with the public – a nice summary of the event can be found on this blog. To follow up, a number of local communities are hosting open data events and hackathons this week-end – these as part of the International Open data Day http://opendataday.org/. Of note, the city of Victoria have just released new OpenData Catalog and the Province of BC has redesigned their OpenData resource at http://www.data.gov.bc.ca/.

See Also: So You Want to Hack – OpenHackDay #odhd Recap and Tips for developers and new hacks

5 Things On Friday #8 – Maps, Apps, opendata, Online GIS and Tracing water

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It’s Friday and that means time for a little Friday fun in the form of 5 Things on Friday – actually, it’s not all fun, rather, there’s also some really cool, useful stuff to be found here as well!  This week I look at a free book about online GIS, a cool water tracing WMS, more opendata for BC, Canada, an update of the Flickr mobile app, and 30+ maps you thought you would never need!

See 5 Things on Friday 8 HERE

MOO Adds NFC Business Cards

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I’m a huge fan of MOO and their awesome business card solutions… I’ve been toting around high quality, fun MOO cards for a few years now. This week MOO has rolled out a new offering in NFC enabled MOO cards. NFC is cool, mobile technology, however, to date it really hasn’t taken off fast in North America. The idea is relatively simple – a card is chip enabled and the data chip contains some kind of information. When the chip comes into close contact with an NFC enabled device (like a smartphone), an action takes place, like telling the device to open a map, a specified document, or simply passes along some important contact information. Definitely cool indeed, however, I have to wonder how much luck I would have in asking people to touch their device to my card and I’m also guessing that many folks will have to wonder if their smartphone is even NFC enabled… I’m not sure if mine is!  See details at moo.com/nfc


NFC Business Cards from MOO from MOO.COM on Vimeo.

Story Map – Cool things to do near the Washington D.C Convention Center

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Are you planning a visit to the Capital and in need of a list of cool places to see, places to eat, amazing architecture, must see museums and monuments? If so bookmark this story map from Esri, the Washington D.C shortlist of places near the Washington Convention Center.  Checkout awesome places to visit in the central area, Chinatown, Penn Quarter, and near the Convention Center – see the map HERE

10 Must Have Gadgets and Technologys for the Remote Worker

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Chances are good that if you happen to work in technology or you’re a consultant, that you may be working remotely or from a home-based office at some time soon – or perhaps you already do. If so, there’s loads of cool technology around these days that will make your life much simpler and make you more productive. The following are 10 gadgets and pieces of technology that I suggest for any remote worker. Here you’ll find tips about cables, wireless devices, cool hardware, useful cables, memory solutions and much more. See the feature HERE

office gadgets

 

2 Million Hidden Geocaches and counting…

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How cool is it to see that the sport of Geocaching is now boasting almost 2 million hidden geocaches… wow! The crew at Geocaching.com has a real time (almost) count tracking the number of registered geocaches and it’s rapidly approaching 2 million. Most of us Geogeeks have at least tried to geocache and uncovered one or two, and if you haven’t and in particular, if you have kids, you need to get outside and try it! There’s no doubt that the smartphone revolution and the supporting mobile apps and really given the sport a kick in the butt so get online, register at geocaching.com, get a hint about a cache that’s hidden nearby (I guarantee that there is one) get out there and find it – it really is a blast!  Read more about the 2 million count HERE on the official blog

Safe Software Offers LiDAR Data Webinar

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Dale Lutz and his team of data gurus at Safe Software are offering a webinar entitled, “Gain Total Control of Your LiDAR and Point Cloud Data.”  The event takes place on Thursday February 28 at 8AM PST which means it will be available at a workable 4PM GMT for those in the UK. Dale has spent a lot of time working with LiDAR data, including the ASTM E57 format over the past year and I for one can’t wait to see what they can do. I am sure this will be an hour well spent.

Event details… Learn how to quickly transform LiDAR data to meet your requirements with FME. You’ll discover how to easily clip, tile, split and otherwise manipulate point clouds using automated processes capable of transforming millions of points in seconds. Plus with FME’s support for 300+ formats – including LAS, Oracle Point Cloud, and RIEGL – you’ll see how to integrate LiDAR with GIS, CAD, and raster data. New for FME 2013, we’ll share how you can perform point-by-point calculations and subsequently filter those points based on color, intensity, and other criteria.

Register HERE

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