Anything Geospatial

GIS, Maps, Geo and Location Technology by @gletham

Archives for December 2010

Geo Tweets of interest – 10 recent Twitter Faves

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We follow the Geo Twitter-sphere very closely… the following are just a few of the tweets we’ve “faved” in the past couple of days… enjoy!

  • @guykawasaki Learn how to easily customize your news
  • @stefanw Selling Your Company” #Exit tips by @FredWilson
  • @jeffharrison Apple sued over apps giving information to advertisers
  • @developerWorks IBM helps corpus christi build a Smarter city
  • @unmarketing Social media shouldn’t replace being social in person. It should enhance it.
  • @mashable HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Facebook Insights for Small Business
  • @marismith New social media dashboard to analyze metrics and understand your SM ROI
  • @druidSmith Nice – an @ushahidi based portal for digging out of the snow in NYC
  • @ottawaGuide OttawaGuide, an augmented reality tour guide for Ottawa, Ontario just released for android phones
  • @crisisMappers Maps: DARTr (Deep-ocean Assessment & Reporting of #Tsunamis) real-time monitoring systems

10 Popular GIS, GeoTech @GISuser Articles from 2010

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This time of year I like to dig around GISuser.com and scope out some of the stats from various news categories and articles that we’ve authored. The following are some of the most popular items (according to our readers) that I’d like to share with you:

The NORAD Santa Tradition Continues – Some historical facts about The “Santa Colonel”

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Over the years one of our favorite topics of discussion in December here at GISuser has been NORAD Santa… the fine efforts of the NORAD team implemented each year to track and secure Santa Claus during his long journey. We’ve covered off all the technology and fun features provided by the team, helping to clarify to the population how and where to access the tools made available to us every Christmas Eve. And so, I was particularly interested in an article that appeared last year in  “Colorado Country Life”, a publication of the Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association. The article shared some historical facts about tracking Santa and how NORAD Santa has become a Global phenomenon and tradition for many families. The following are a few of the interesting facts that I picked up on in the article:

  • It was back in 1955 out of the Continental Air Defence Command (CONAD) when Colonel Harry Shoup (The “Santa Colonel”) began communicating with Santa and radar sites in order to track Santa.
  • A special phone line started receiving calls from children all over the country when Sears Roebuck accidentally made a mis-print in an ad about how to call Santa, routing the calls to Col. Shoup… the rest is history!
  • Rather than ignoring the barrage of calls on Christmas eve, Colonel Shoup answered all the calls that came to his line and pretended he was Santa in order to not dissapoint any of the callers… a tradition was then born.
  • During November and December 2006, the NORAD Santa website logged more than a billion hits and generated over a half a million phone calls and over 212,500 emails.

Sadly, Colonel Shoup passed away on March 14, 2009 in Colorado Springs, however, there’s no doubt that NORAD and the Shoup family is expecting and will greatly appreciate the emails, phone calls, and Internet traffic to continue to increase every year as the NORAD team continues with the tradition.On a personal note, I’d like to thank Col. Shoup, his family, and NORAD for starting such a wonderful service and for creating an annual tradition in our household… I can’t wait until Christmas eve!  Be sure to Bookmark http://www.noradsanta.org

Additional Social Media Santa Resources:

NORAD Santa Articles on GISuser

santa map

Using  the North Warning Radar System and “Santa Cams”, NORAD and their partners follow Santa’s every move on his journey.

Social Media and Geo Social Location 101 – 2 Dozen of My Favorite Articles and How To’s from 2010

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With our sites and blog being updated every day and throughout the day it can be tough to stay up with all the latest additions and articles that we post. Over the year I’ve penned a number of useful articles and features focused on Social Media and Geo Social Location –  a hot topic this year! Those familiar with me know that I’m a huge fan and user of Social Media. Often a favorite topic of discussion of mine, I’ve also written dozens of articles, feature spotlights and shared many social media related tips and tricks with our readers. The following is a list of some of my favorite, and most useful, social media articles and tricks that I’ve hand-picked and shared in this convenient Social Media 101 archive for your enjoyment… I hope you find something useful!

The following archive of articles provide you with a number of tips and tricks including pointers to some fabulous social media resources, detailed descriptions of how to take advantage of social media for business, where to list your business, foursquare and other geo-social tips, and much more.

Check out my hand-picked selection of Social Media articles in this feature providing you with one stop to access all the handy resources…

my twitter

SimpleGeo Rolls Out Holiday Gifts & SDKs for the Developer / Hacker

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Recall a couple of weeks ago SimpleGeo announced details of the public Beta offering of their Context and Places services.  Recall SimpleGeo Context provides relevant contextual information such as geographic boundaries, weather, and demographics for a specific location – obtain meaningful, real-time information for a place based on lat/long. SimpleGeo Places is a free database of business listings and points of interest (POIs) that enables real-time community collaboration – Places leverages a mixture of crowdsourcing and automation technologies.

Not to be outdone, the company has made some interesting announcements today via their blog, giving the developer/hacker some more ammunition and tools to use over the holiday season!  Today the company announced a slew of tools for the developer including:

See details of all the new features and additional developer Tools HERE

WHERE Rules Geofencing and location-based advertising Thanks to Patent

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Developing a mobile application or service that uses Geofencing and location-based advertising?? You’d better send some $$ to WHERE as they now own the patent on this technology.

About Patent No. 7,848,765 – This patent gives WHERE wide legal protection in the burgeoning space of location based services. The technology will improve the relevancy of WHERE’s Recommendation Engine, ensuring that consumers receive content and coupons that are meaningful, and are delivered where and when they want them. It will also help advertisers on the rapidly growing WHERE Ads network best deliver ads and coupons to nearby consumers who have expressed interest in their products.

The company has been chasing this patent for 5 years now and according to CEO Walt Doyle, this helps the company in achieving a goal of owning the “pre check-in” space. See the official PR here

Trulia Expands With Acquisition of @Movity

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Congrats to Tulia (Trulia.com) , a cool company that has been on my radar screen for a long time now. The company, focused on the real estate industry is also very into mapping, Geo visualization and geospatial technology, something that any real estate centric firm should embrace in my mind, after all, real estate is all about location and geography, plain and simple! Trulia has a fantastic web service accompanied by a terrific mobile app, and brings it all together with terrific web2.0 services.

Today the company announced it has acquired a company called Movity (see movity.com) – honestly, I wasn’t familiar with Movity prior to today and I’m unsure how I’ve missed out on them. When I read this quick “bio” descibing Movity I was moved to quickly check them out and dig up more info… check this out… The team includes Eric Wu, co-founder of RentWiki.com, Sha Hwang, design technologist from Stamen Design, Vaughn Koch, engineering manager from Expedia/Bing, and Zain Memon, a contributor to the open-source framework Django. Are you as impresed as I was?? You should be…

Details of the deal can be found on the Trulia blog (See HERE) as well as snippets on Twitter @Trulia and @Movity. To get an idea of where Trulia might be going with the technology enabled by Movity, check out WeePlaces.com and incredible service that enables foursquare users to quickly create a time-lapse animation of their check-ins and then share via facebook and Twitter… I’m sure this is just a sampling of what’s to come. Please note, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that I could also create a similar time-lapse animation using the GeoCommons.com Maker! service. My history as provided by WeePlaces is shown below


Glenn Letham’s Checkins by WeePlaces.com – Check out where I’ve been: http://www.weeplaces.com/glenn-letham/.

The 2011 National Map and GIS Users Conference, Lakewood CO

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This comes our way via the USGS as preparations are underway for the NAtional Map Users’ Conference, scheduled to take place May 10-13, 2011 in Lakewood, Colorado. Some details… This Users Conference and Workshop collaboration will bring together scientists, managers, and data users who, through presentations, posters, seminars, workshops, and informal gatherings, will share accomplishments and progress a wide variety of geospatial topics. The goal is to enhance communication among the Department of the Interior (DOI) bureaus as well as to tap into geospatial communities from other Federal agencies, State and local governments, researchers, industry, academia and other organizations. See complete details HERE or jump to the event website at http://nationalmap.gov/uc/

See details including the call for abstracts HERE

In Traditional year-end fashion, I share my Top 12 Mobile iPhone Apps

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Yaya, I know, we all get bombarded with the “Top 10” lists this time of year… but what better way to share some good cheer and spread the word about some of the great tools we’ve  acquired over the year. So, in traditional fashion, I’ve once again shared a list of my Top 12 (10 wasn’t enough) favorite Free mobile apps that I use on my iPhone (3G S). In no particular order I’ve listed off a dozen mobile apps that help me be more productive and help make my mobile experience loads of fun… perhaps most important, these apps enable  me to connect with the industry and you, the reader. Enjoy… i suggest you check them all out, and if iPhone isn’t your thing no worries, most of these apps support multiple mobile OS environments.

See  my Top 12 Must-Have, Free Apps Mobile for That New iPhone HERE

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