Anything Geospatial

GIS, Maps, Geo and Location Technology by @gletham

Archives for May 23, 2012

HackCollege – Work Smarter, Not Harder

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Here’s details of an innovative effort from a group of keen College students – HackCollege. A clever collaboration effort, so far, University of Texas, University of Wisconsin Law School, University of Notre Dame, and University of Arkansas, among others, have listed the project as a resource link for their students. Jennifer from HackCollege shared details of their slogan with me, noting “Work Smarter, Not Harder” epitomizes what their project is about. The community is invited to suggest topic themes, apply to be a guest blogger, or submit a guest article.

About HackCollege… HackCollege is changing education. HackCollege is educating the students of the world about effective, open source software, putting techno-political arguments in everyday language, and creating a cult of “Students 2.0.”

You can follow the effort on Twitter @hackCollege or jump directly to http://www.hackcollege.com

Why Create An Interesting PR Announcement Then Tell Nobody About it?

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I’m constantly amazed at how some marketing, PR, and comms people operate in our industry. I recently noticed a very interesting PR announcement on a popular GeoTech news website – it was a pure fluke that I even noticed it actually. I found it interesting enough that I dug a little deeper and wondered to myself “how did I not know about this?” After searching around a bit I noticed that details of this news could not be found any place online at all… there were no other mentions of it, even the company themselves had no details of the news on their own website. A classic PR Fail and sadly, not isolated… I’ve seen this on many occasions. For marketing departments or anyone for that matter with an interesting announcement how tough can it be to identify most of the major Geo news outlets, evangelists, and vocal social media mavens? Seriously… if a person was to spend just an hour of their time doing a little research, Googling, and searching on the major social networks they could easily develop a pretty decent contact list and easily amplify word of their news tremendously. Sad to see all the effort going into developing an interesting news announcement and then not sharing it (heck, these guys didn’t even mention it on their own Twitter stream). If you happen to be such a marketing person then come on, I’m thinking that you can do much better!  As for the interesting news… I could likely reach out and pester the company for info but I think I’ll sit back and wait, maybe they will read this and come up with a more effective way to get their word out.

Marketing people, if you happen to be struggling and wondering how/where to distribute your news, contact me @gletham and perhaps I can help you out… FYI, if you or your company have periodic news to share, feel free to add press @gisuser.com to your contact list!

Some ways to get word out about your news – submit PR to a free newswire service; comment on a relevant LinkedIn group; create a facebook page post; ask your customers and staff to share; create a video on youtube; send news to journalists and popular bloggers; write a blog post; tweet, tweet again

The Top 10 Worst U.S. Traffic Cities

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According to the latest traffic report scorecard from INRIX, overall, traffic congestion has dropped about 30% in the US although that isn’t much help for those of you who live and work in the 10 worst cities for traffic and waste an estimated 40 hours a week per year simply idling in traffic! From INRIX, here are the 2012 worst cities for traffic.

By analyzing traffic in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas in 2011, the Top 10 Worst U.S. Traffic Cities1 are:

1. Honolulu: Drivers waste 58 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Tuesday from 5:15 – 5:30pm

2. Los Angeles: Drivers waste 56 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Thursday from 5:45 – 6:00pm

3. San Francisco: Drivers waste 48 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Thursday from 5:45 – 6:00pm

4. New York: Drivers waste 57 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Friday from 5:30 – 5:45pm

5. Bridgeport, CT: Drivers waste 42 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Friday from 5:30 – 5:45pm

6. Washington, D.C.: Drivers waste 45 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Thursday from 5:45 – 6:00pm

7. Seattle: Drivers waste 33 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Thursday from 5:30 – 5:45pm

8. Austin: Drivers waste 30 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Thursday from 5:30 – 5:45pm

9. Boston: Drivers waste 35 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Thursday from 5:30 – 5:45pm

10. Chicago: Drivers waste 36 hours in traffic2; Worst Hour = Thursday from 5:30 – 5:45pm

See more on the report card from INRIX

USGIF Trajectorymag Coming in June from the USGIF

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Info about this tidbit from the USGIF came to me via Twitter this morning as I noticed that the USGIF is planning a new magazine… it appears that it will be an online publication, however, I suppose it could also be in print… I guess we’ll wait and see. Until then check out http://trajectorymagazine.com where you can find the new home of the official publication of the US Geospatial Intel Foundation

Filed Under: Geo

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