Archives for November 15, 2007
Local Pizza Search – loads of hype but a little Cheezy!
Is there really a business model in searching for Pizza?? Thanks Adena for picking up on this “news” about a local search designed to connect people to pizza joints near them.. too bad the results are, well… crappy, to say the least! The company even went as far and issued a press release that even promoted this … Pizza.net is leading the way in search technology! Sorry, but I have at least 5 mobile local search applications that give me way better results that this application so how they manage to lead the space is of interest to me! If I want to locate pizza, chances are I want to do it from my phone… I can easily use Google mobile search, Google 411 (free calling service) and excellent local search tools and widgets from the likes of boopsie, earthcomber, gmaps mobile, nokia maps WHERE search widgets and many others. Like Adena, the results I got were, well, od to say the least.. the top results are not close to me and the distance provided was not accurate, many results all being 3.6 miles away when I know some of them are less than 2 miles, others more than 7 miles away! The idea of just searching for a particular style is cool.. ie. New York but until there’s more community feedback I really don’t see this as being very useful – try for yourself at http://www.pizza.net
New Social Networking, Data Sharing Capabilities For Recreational GPS Users
LocationNation… for hikers, bikers, travelers and adventurers of all kinds, LocationNation today announced the release of the GeoSpatial Media Organizer (GSMO), a free online service for managing and sharing personal Global Positioning System (GPS) data. GSMO is available at no charge through http://locationnation.com and includes unlimited Internet Map Server (IMS) usage, providing street level data and aerial photo maps. Users get complete access to user communities, where they can create communities, invite guests and display features on a map, as well as 50Mb of free server space and a free download of GPS Connector for hassle-free GPS data transfer. GSMO works with any Garmin or Magellan handheld GPS device.
2008 Geomatics Engineering Conference – Jan 24-26, 2008
Event of interest – The Geomatics Engineering Conference at Fresno State is facilitated fully by the students in the degree program seeking a B.S. in Surveying and Photogrametry. This conference raises scholarship money for the students in the program. It is also one of the biggest conference in California with a focus of surveying. See http://www.csufresno.edu/geomatics/conference/
Terabytes of Ready-to-Use Data for ArcGIS Server – Data Appliance
This out of Redlands today… ArcGIS Data Appliance combines data and hardware that easily connects to an organization’s existing IT infrastructure. Multiple divisions, departments, and client applications are now able to efficiently share a common information architecture and set of mapping and visualization services and combine those with a user’s own data. Users can also add their own tasks and fuse them with content from ArcGIS Data Appliance to conduct visibility modeling, proximity search, or demographic analysis.
The data collections include
World Collection—Includes satellite imagery for the world down to 15-meter resolution and a seamless world street map with highway-level data plus shaded relief imagery, physical and topographic maps, and a political atlas map for the world.
USA Prime Imagery Collection—Comprises more than eight terabytes of data and includes a seamless mosaic of 1-meter resolution or better aerial imagery as well as detailed topographic maps down to 1:24,000 scale for the contiguous United States along with satellite imagery for the world at 500-meter and 15-meter resolutions for display at smaller scales. The high-resolution imagery is a color mosaic of commercial and government imagery sources including recent submeter commercial imagery for many metropolitan areas and the best available government imagery for other areas.
USA Imagery Collection—Includes an offering similar to the USA Prime Imagery Collection in a dataset that is more than six terabytes, with 1-meter resolution imagery from the best available government sources and detailed topographic maps but without the recent submeter commercial imagery for metropolitan areas.
USA Street Map Collection—Provides a seamless, multiscale street map for the United States and parts of Canada, including transportation data designed for viewing over detailed imagery, and a complete world street map with highway-level data and other reference data.
For more information about ArcGIS Data Appliance, visit www.esri.com/dataappliance.
Instantaneous Streamflow Data with the New USGS Online Database
Access Historical Instantaneous Streamflow Data with the New USGS Online Database
The IDA web site currently has about 1.5 billion instantaneous data values from 5,500 streamgages in 26 states. Populating this web site takes effort and resources that are being provided “as available,” and not all states and streamgages are available at this time. The number of states and streamgages with data will continue to increase. It is possible that the IDA database will expand to include other variables such as temperature and pH in the future.
Visit the Instantaneous Data Archive (IDA) website at http://ida.water.usgs.gov/ida/.