Had enough with the Royal Wedding already?? Perhaps, but while I have your attention check out this awesome 3D imagery of London around Buckingham Palace and take a tour of the Royal Wedding route courtesy of Ovi Maps – Source: The Nseries blog. Recall just recently the Ovi Maps for 3D plugin was just released by the Ovi team.
Archives for April 2011
USGS National Map Users Conference #tnmuc and Workshops A Sell Out
While one publication recently elected to announce that GIS conferences are dead (rather tough to generalize that I’d like to think) , the USGS and their National Map Conference is reporting a sell out. Mark Newell, PR specialist at the USGS has shared details with me that as of Tuesday of this week, they had to close the registration for both the GIS Workshop and The National Map Users Conference – capacity maxed out! The inaugural Users Conference for The National Map, held in tandem with the USGS GIS Workshop will take place May 10-13, 2011 in Denver, Colorado at the Marriott West in Golden, CO.
From the USGS… The goal of the interactive workshop and conference is to serve and enhance communications among the communities of users of The National Map, Federal GIS specialists and scientists, and data providers. Topics will include existing applications and visions for future scientific and modeling applications using The National Map, opportunities for partnerships, and advances in geospatial technologies. The event will focus on user and partner interaction using various formats: interactive panels, lightening sessions, poster presentations, workshops, as well as presentations and demonstrations. This gathering is designed to provide a relaxed, collaborative, and informative venue to explore the direction of The National Map, mapping trends, and GIS applications.
Congrats to the USGS on getting the word out.
See http://nationalmap.gov/uc/
Follow updates about the event on Twitter @USGSTNM and see the official event hashtag #tnmuc
Live Maps from Esri show weather related disaster incidents with Social Media reports
Esri has today announced another webmapping resource to track social media feedback and news for areas affected by sever weather. The US Flood Disaster interactive map enables anyone to quickly and easily view U.S flood related data (flooding and precipitation data) from NOAA and the NWS on a basemap (optional view on a topo or satellite imagery). Additionally, the map also provides viewing of geotagged social media content from twitter, Flickr, and Youtube providing recently reported crowd-sourced data from the local population. See the Esri Flood Disaster Map HERE
Note, when using the social map users can quickly share the resource with followers using the facebook or Twitter share option (see buttons beside the “locate” diaslog box which is used to search and quickly move to a geographic area of interest. What many users may not realize is that the service can be easily used to search and view social media content about any other topic of interest. For example, social media posts about the recent devastation in the US South can be seen by changing the social search parameter to “tornado”. To do so, simply mouse-over the YouTube, Flickr, or Tweets area of the “Shared Content” dialog box on the left side of the display.
Note, further North the St. Louis County and City tornado map has been created, powered by Ushahidi, showing news and reports from tornado damaged regions in the county. See St Louis Ushahidi http://stlouistornado.crowdmap.com/
Safe Software Working With LiDAR Webinar – Today
Webinar today from Safe Software Today – Maximize Your LiDAR Investment. The event takes place online at 8am PDT, 11am ES. This is a free 1-hour webinar for Geo professionals who want to learn how to easily perform coordinate system re-projection, format translation, and integration with GIS, CAD and raster data on millions of points in seconds.
Reasons to Attend:
- Learn how to quickly prepare LiDAR data to meet your requirements
- Discover how to transform your LiDAR data into the coordinate system and format you require
- See how you can create integrated datasets from LiDAR data to power decision making
- Get help from interoperability experts for your unique LiDAR data challenges
Details and Registration http://www.safe.com/LiDARWebinar.
Apple Q&A About gathering Location Data – OS update Coming Soon
For those of you interested in the continuing “LocationGate” saga, you’ll be glad to know that Apple has released an official Q&A on their use of location data that is collected by their devices. (See also this piece from Peter Batty) . Some interesting tidbits & highlights from the report:
- Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone
- The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location
- These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data
- The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location
- Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years
- Our iAds advertising system can use location as a factor in targeting ads. Location is not shared with any third party
- Sometime in the next few weeks Apple will release a free iOS software update
Realtor.com Mobile App For iPad
The popular Realtor.com app is now available for users of iPad – a perfect match up really! The Realtor.com service (Sorry, USA only) now supports iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows Phone 7 mobile clients.
There’s likely no better example of an app or mobile service that can take advantage of location and geography than a real estate app like Realtor.com. Users navigate the service and desired listings on a map, spatial search is used to identify properties of interest, and now sse the iPad’s finger controls to slide, pinch, zoom and pan through a map to drill down into a neighborhood or particular street. Search results can then be located and visited using the device GPS functionality for navigation.
Realtor.com mobile For iPad
Originally uploaded by @gletham GIS, Social, Mobile Tech Images
see complete details in this announcement
The Realtor.com iPad app offers other notable features including:
- Easy-to-Use results feed directly from Realtor.com to a pull down menu that floats over a map with property pins or in a magazine-style gallery view with bold photos.
- Switching between views and three mapping options is easy, and diving into a listing’s detail page for open house dates, property details, large photos, agent contact details, map’s with GPS-based directions, and share buttons requires one touch.
- Self-Contained Listing Detail Pages feature maps enabling users to view properties on a street or satellite view and scan the neighborhood for items of interest.
- With one touch, quickly enter the information into your personal notes field saving notes on why a listing has great appeal, such as proximity to a local park or hiking trail.
- Remain Organized by using the visual ‘Check marks’ that appear on map-based property pins, the pull down menu and gallery view to track previously viewed properties.
More LocationGate as iPhone Location Grabbing Issue Hits the WNYC Radio Show
Are you following updates about the iPhone “Locationgate” topic? If so then you might be interested in this recording from the Brian Lehrer Show on radio WNYC today with Peter Batty making an appearance on the show about 7 minutes in. Seems Batty is getting loads of coverage and attention as a result of the informative information that he provided which essentially showed us that Apple isn’t gathering any accurate information – see Apple iPhone is NOT storing your accurate location, and NOT storing history. Overall the level of surprise and outrage on the whole is a little surprising…
Webinar Tip – Prepare Your LiDAR with FME
There’s no questioning that the use of LiDAR data is soaring in popularity. With FME you can now quickly prepare LiDAR data to meet your requirements and power more informed decisions. Attend this free 1-hour webinar presented by Dale Lutz and Mark Stoakes to learn how to easily perform coordinate system re-projection, format translation, and integration with GIS, CAD and raster data on millions of points in seconds. A few reasons to Attend:
- Learn how to quickly prepare LiDAR data to meet your requirements
- Discover how to transform your LiDAR data into the coordinate system and format you require
- See how you can create integrated datasets from LiDAR data to power decision making
- Get help from interoperability experts for your unique LiDAR data challenges
Date: Thursday April 28, 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 5pm CET
Duration: 1 hour Cost: Free
ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap Gets an Update
Officially rolled out at last year’s Esri USer Conference, Esri’s editor for OSM has received a substantial update according to the Esri Resource Center. Recall, The add-on allows ArcGIS users to download data from OpenStreetMap, store it locally in a geodatabase, and use the advanced editing environment of ArcGIS Desktop 10 to create, modify, or delete data. Once the edits are complete, the changes can be posted back to OpenStreetMap and made available to the OpenStreetMap community.
The OSM data collection/editing tool allows you to download data from the OSM servers and store it locally in a geodatabase. To stay informed of updates follow Esri’s own @martenhogeweg on Twitter. See esriosmeditor.codeplex.com
ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap
Originally uploaded by @gletham GIS, Social, Mobile Tech Images
SimpleGeo Places Data is Open and copyright free
Surprising many at Where2.0 was Matt Galligan of Simplgeo (See @mg on Twitter). Feeling in a generous mood, SimpleGeo announced that their Places data is now open – really open, as in Creative Commons Zero (CC0) and copyright free. Galligan referenced their stance on open data, in particular with reference to the open knowledge definition – a piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike.
On the SimpleGeo blog Galligan discussed the company’s philosophy on the open data and their position as a services company not a data company… ” take our data, use it, make it your own, and make it better”. Obviously the idea here is to focus on the services the company offers and to encourage developers to leverage location and location-aware data to create cool apps and services. While on stage at Where2.0 Galligan noted how we are all sensors, gathering data in real time and cited the importance of developers having access to data. With access to real time data developers are helping provide tools that are working on real problems in real time.
See More:
SimpleGeo blog
http://blog.simplegeo.com/2011/04/20/open-places-data/
SimpleGeo Plcase
https://simplegeo.com/products/places/
Where2.0 Videos
http://where2conf.com/where2011/public/content/video