Google have just announced a new Geocoding Web Service that implements improvements of version 3 of their Google Maps API. These improvements include a flatter response format that is easier to parse; ability to tag address components; support for full names and abbreviations;ability to differentiate between rooftop and interpolated results; and support for bounding boxes and recommended viewports for each result.
The Geocoding Web Service is also intended to enable pre-caching of results. Ie. you can locally store your geocoded lookups for efficiency. However in the Terms & Conditions, Google restrict this function so that you are only allowed to display cached results (or data derived from them) on a Google Map or Google Earth display.
A Google Maps API key is also no longer required, but requests are limited to 2500 per IP address per day.
Freeing up the conditions regarding data caching is a step in the right direction, but many users will find the limitations of display application and requests per day to be too limiting.
The blog announcement post can be found here.Author Jimmy Drago points out in this article that structured light laser scanners are the preferred hardware for scanning a fine surface at a great depth. The skin care industry being an example of where these scanners provide the optimal solution.
A structured light scanner produces a pattern of lines, usually stripes, which are projected onto the subject. A camera is then used to record the deformation of each point of light in the pattern. Then, using a technique similar to triangulation, the surface in question can be derived.
The primary advantage of structured light scanners is speed of data capture, since they are recording multiple points at the same time. This reduces or eliminates distortion from scanner motion. Some systems are capable of scanning moving objects in real time. This all sounds similar in concept to FLASH LiDAR.
I have blogged on several occasions about the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) infrastructure Report Card which accesses 15 types of infrastructure. Since the last ASCE Report Card in 2005, the grades have not improved. US Infrastructure still gets a grade of D, but the estimated cost of upgrading it to an acceptable standard has now risen to $2.2 trillion.
Rachel Maddow sums it all up neatly in a short video. Thanks to Dan Shannon for pointing me to this.
The data repository in Finder! has been growing and the variety of data within Finder! is now quite extensive. To help you navigate through this data we have added some new sort features and will give you a few new search tips as well.
When you do a general search in Finder! you now have the option to sort your search results by date and relevance. Here’s an example: Let’s start by going to the Finder! homepage and doing a search for ‘Bridges’.
Above we see the search results page. On the right hand side of the page you will now see that there are options to sort by relevance, sort by newest first, and oldest first (highlighted in red). This is especially helpful when looking for a dataset that was recently uploaded.
Now let’s discuss some helpful search tips. Let’s say that you want to search for data on pollution but you notice that many of the results lack proper metadata and you are unsure where the data is sourced from. To make sure your data is reliable and from a quality source try the following search technique.
When filling out metadata in Finder! after you upload your dataset there is a source field where you can indicate the source of your data. By entering into the Finder! search field ‘source: ______’ you are able to collect search results that only have the indicated source that you have entered. This will help filter out extraneous items and provide you with more focused search results. The example above searches for data from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), a well-known source for quality pollution data.
The same technique to search for a specific source can also be used to search for results for data from a particular GeoCommons user and for datasets that have a specific tag associated with it.
Above you can see that the search ‘user: Bill’ and the search ‘tag: pollution’. The user search allows you to search for data uploaded by a specific user and the tag search allows you to find data that has been tagged with a specific tag word.
Another unique search option in Finder! is the ability to cancel out certain search results. Let’s say that you are looking for data on the recent earthquake in Haiti but notice that you are receiving a lot of results about the earthquake in Chile. To make sure you get only results for Haiti try the following:
By putting the minus sign in front of the word chile in your search field you eliminate the possibility of receiving any data on Chile. This again is another technique to clean up your search results and allow you to eliminate extraneous results.
We are still in the process of making our Finder! search better here at FortiusOne, but hope these latest features are beneficial to a better search. Stay tuned to see new search features that will again better filter your search results to help you find exactly what you are looking for in our data repository.
Wired news is reporting that modern GPS sensors have be able to determine the Chilean city of Concepcion has been moved 10 feet to the west from the recent earthquake. Apparently this area is prime area for seismic activity due to its location over a subduction zone. The hope by researchers is to quickly get more GPS stations on the ground in that area so more precise movements can be detected.
Since Google Earth was first released, a variety of people (including myself) have looked for ways to use it for gaming. While it will never be a true gaming platform, there are still some fun choices out there to play with. Here are a few of the best:
• The Flight Simulator: This was first unveiled with Google Earth 4.2, and it's a built-in feature of Google Earth. You can fly as either an F16 or an SR22, and start from a variety of airports around the world. Press CTRL-ALT-A (or Command+Option+A on Mac) to get started. This video gives a nice overview of the controls:
• GEWAR: One of the first games people thought of when Google Earth came out was "Risk". Playing that kind of game on the Google Earth platform would be pretty cool. It was something I chewed on for a while, but couldn't figure out how to make it work. Eventually I discovered a way to create dynamic network links and I created "GE War" in mid-2005. It was mostly a proof-of-concept game, but it became quite popular. I eventually handed the game off to some of the more active players, and they've been improving it ever since. You can check it out at GEWar.net, where they have nearly 80,000 registered players.
• Ships: Last year, PlanetInAction.com released a neat game simply titled "Ships". It gave you the ability to take the helm on 3D ships, and was very well done. Here's a video tour of the game:
• Apollo 11 Moon Lander: The same guys that brought you "Ships" also released the "Apollo 11 Moon Lander" game. It's a very simple game, but it's very well executed with 3D models, responsive controls, and audio taken directly from the Apollo missions.
Beyond those, there are a wide variety of other games you can play. A few more:
• GEMMO: A DND-style game.
• Mars Sucks: Blast aliens from your space ship.
• Milktruck Madness: Drive a milktruck around the earth. No scoring or lives (and really, no point to it), but it's quite fun.
• Football: An American-style football game.
Do you know of any others we've missed? Let us know in the comments.
OK, lets be honest, talking about content management is about exciting as talking about metadata, or XML, or Canadian fiscal policy. I mean really, who cares about managing your information in ways that make it discoverable, usable and most importantly sharable.
Oh right, maybe this stuff isn’t as boring at we thought. I’ll tell you what is the most boring thing in the world. Watching your desktop search strain to find data on your local drives with wacky search strings like water.*. Think about how you find GIS data on your hard drives? Search or browse. Heck, you might even go back to an old project and try and find the dataset that was stored in my MXD or other map document.
Now this doesn’t mean that using search tools to find data isn’t valuable. I know many folks that use Google Desktop Search to index their GIS files. It just isn’t efficient and it sure as heck doesn’t allow you to share it with multiple users. Using these private search indexes is just like putting the data on your desktop, sure you can find it, but no one else can. It gets to the core why content management of geospatial data is so important and why it is actually really fun to talk about.
WeoGeo’s approach to content discoverability is to use the one thing that makes finding maps simple. A map! If I want to find hydrography layers in Wisconsin, I pan/zoom to Wisconsin and then search for hydro tags. If I want a worldwide country boundary layer, I zoom to the world and search tags for country. If I want to find demographic data from Arizona, I geocode that in my WeoGeo search and zoom right to that area.
WeoGeo manages content using maps
Textual based search is horrible at finding spatial data. Does “washington” mean the state, which of 31 counties, which of almost 50 cities and the countless lakes, islands, streets, neighborhoods and other place-names? A map allows you to narrow that down to the Washington that you are interested in and not have to parse though hundreds of records for other “Washingtons”.
OK, so we’ve all got these issues finding data on your hard drives. That is part of the problem though. Sharing this data amongst your peers is hard as well. Not everyone has that GIS data hard drive mapped, the VPN is problematic and slow causing off-site users to not have access and it is too large to email to your clients who want to see it. This makes it very hard to get the most value out of this dataset because you are fighting to share it as much as you are fighting to find it.
What a content management system such as WeoGeo brings into play with our web-based front end is a simple way for many people to access the same dataset from many different places. Across the hall, across the building, across the state and across the world. With user access controls, you can set which datasets are available to which users. Grant rights for your clients to gain access to your geodata, but see only those datasets that they are supposed to see. No worries about them rummaging through your FTP site looking for proprietary information that shouldn’t be seen.
Add users and give them access to datasets
One of the greatest fears I always had with archiving data was will it be usable in the future. I just found a CD the other day with a ton of Corel Draw documents on it. Nothing I had on my laptop could read those old .cdr files despite claims from the software package that it could. What about GIS data? I’m pretty sure that your shapefiles and GeoTIFFs will be readable in the future, but what about more obscure data formats? Will you be able to read that vector or raster format in 10 years? Who knows right? But WeoGeo has the industry standard on reading proprietary data files under our hood. Safe Software FME drives all our data format transformations. Safe FME allows WeoGeo to transform data stored in our Library to any format they support. So if you need to get your data out of Integraph MGE, because your company no longer supports it, into Autodesk SDF format, you can do that with FME and WeoGeo. Protecting your archival, system of record, datasets from obsolescence is just as important as making sure that you can find it.
There are tons of content management systems out there and for good reason. Companies want to keep control of their data because they can get more value out of it than they would storing it on DVDs in your desk drawer or on a DLT tape at Iron Mountain. Neither of those methods is a form of content management and neither makes your data discoverable or shareable.
What sets WeoGeo apart from most content management systems is that we are first and foremost a GEO content management system. We are designed from the ground up to allow you to manage all your geo-content; whether it be shapefiles, ERDAS or anything that has a reference to place (PDF, Word documents, video). We’ve also worked hard to integrate WeoGeo into your workflows with our new WeoGeo Tools for ArcGIS and our WeoApp which runs on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. Using content management shouldn’t be hard or require lots of training. We’ve made it as simple as “upload to WeoGeo” and “browse WeoGeo” to get data in and out of our content management system.
WeoGeo Tools for ArcGIS in action
Your return on investment putting your data in WeoGeo will be realized quickly when you no longer have to spend hours finding your data or invest in expensive, closed, proprietary content management systems. You can start using WeoGeo for Content Management today for free and see how it can change how you manage your geodata.
Last week I made my first 2010 trip to the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University for a workshop with researchers and programmers from the University of Heidelberg's Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg. The stuff I work on daily is only a fraction of ISAW's digital projects, which are in turn only a fraction of ISAW's business. I had a day before the workshop to catch up with what's going on in the ISAW library and exhibition groups.
But first I had to fly across the Atlantic in this A380, which flies as smoothly and quietly as advertised.
I shared a row with a retiree from Avignon. His US-based kids were flying him to NYC and then Aspen for his 60th birthday. We talked about the food and geography of France and the Southwest US ? Mexican cuisine in particular, which I've been craving and he'd discovered on a previous trip to Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. I heard French on the street in New York, and among visiting scholars at ISAW, but that would be the last French I'd speak for a week.
Next is a crappy mobile phone photo of one of the fine banners ISAW put up on the Museum Mile (ISAW is just half a block east of 5th Ave on 84th Street) to advertise the Old Europe exhibit.
In this context, "Old Europe" refers to a largely forgotten Neolithic and Copper Age culture established along the Danube River during a wave of emigration from Anatolia that also settled the Aegean islands and what are now Macedonia and Greece (see also Cucuteni-Trypillian culture). The objects in the exhibition are from museums in Bulgaria, Moldova, and Bulgaria, and are being shown in the US for the first time. Here's a nice Flickr photo set made by an exhibit visitor:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has nothing from this culture, but does have a collection of almost contemporary Early Cycladic objects.
The exhibit is very well done, widely reported and well reviewed in the local media, and well attended. Chapeau to Jennifer Chi and the exhibition team. There's a nice catalog book edited by David W. Anthony with chapters that dive deeper into the archaeology and history of the culture. The exhibits and digital projects groups have a bunch of ideas of how to improve the integration of physical, print, and web materials for upcoming exhibits as we roll out the new ISAW website. The catalog has some great maps by Brian Turner from UNC's Ancient World Mapping Center (where I worked previously) but I think a KML application could take the geography to another level. The exhibit runs through April 26 after which you'll have to travel to Southeastern Europe to see these objects.
I met ISAW's newest technical people, Michael Edgcumbe (who keeps the wheels on office computing) and Christopher Warner (lead on the new website), in person for the first time. The workshop went well, too. More about that later after I push new code up to our site.
While packing for the return trip, I heard that I'd be coming back to snow. Indeed: when we descended below the clouds I saw Montpellier and much of the Hérault department covered with snow. We got about 10 cm in the neighborhood, some of which remains to be seen in the photo below:
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.
The National Science Foundation is funding a two-day workshop June 1-2 at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Participants should have active research projects. Lodging and some meals will be provided. Transportation to Boulder, CO is not included. The deadline to reserve a place is April 1, 2010.
Recently, we covered a story that Wired's "Danger Room" broke about DARPA's "Transparent Underground", which creates real-time 3-D maps that display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth.” Cool stuff, no doubt. But, it seems that someone had someone has beaten DARPA to the punch on this one. Since 2005, Geospatial Corporation has been using a proprietary gadget called ‘Smart Probe’ to map deep earth via underground pipes. According to Wired's "Danger Room," the company’s probe can be inserted into pipes as small as 1 1/2 inches, and then travel their length while taking super-speedy coordinates — 800 per second — and saving them onto a USB key. The probe is removed, the data extracted, and a 3D map of the underground region is created. The probe can travel through pipes that are empty, or contain fluid or gas. And, it seems to be taking off. Check out this press release announcing Geospatial Corporation's partnership with Tom Ridge's firm, Ridge Global. Bigger takeaway: Geospatial Corporation was ahead of the curve...or perhaps they got luck with the timing? What do you think?Recently, we covered a story that Wired’s “Danger Room” broke about DARPA’s “Transparent Underground”, which creates real-time 3-D maps that display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth.” Cool stuff, no doubt. But, it seems that someone had someone has beaten DARPA to the punch on this one. Since 2005, Geospatial Corporation has been using a proprietary gadget called ‘Smart Probe’ to map deep earth via underground pipes. According to Wired’s “Danger Room,” the company’s probe can be inserted into pipes as small as 1 1/2 inches, and then travel their length while taking super-speedy coordinates — 800 per second — and saving them onto a USB key. The probe is removed, the data extracted, and a 3D map of the underground region is created. The probe can travel through pipes that are empty, or contain fluid or gas. And, it seems to be taking off. Check out this press release announcing Geospatial Corporation’s partnership with Tom Ridge’s firm, Ridge Global. Bigger takeaway: Geospatial Corporation was ahead of the curve…or perhaps they got luck with the timing? What do you think?
The entries really piled in during the last week of the contest. Now that it’s closed, I’ve created a YouTube Playlist of the entries by doing searches at YouTube for the required keywords (“ESRI 2010 Mashup Challenge”)
There were quite a wide range of entries – some that looked like they were done in 5 minutes, and others that clearly leveraged an entire team (China National Weather Service, I’m looking at you!). Interestingly, many entries did not put links to the live site in the details for their videos. If you entered the contest and your entry is not on the playlist here, just leave me a comment (and check the keywords on your entry!)
So, ch-ch-ch-check’em out…
ESRI 2010 Mashup Challenge YouTube Play List
Or, sit back and watch’em all right here…
Today at lunch we were kicking around some ideas on connecting various content with other content or to a location in a user friendly way and I couldn’t get past the thought of a touch interface. The problem is that we are still tied predominantly to a few things in the tech arena that makes this a limiting factor for deployment. Some of the main issues are interface, hardware, and SDK/API.
Interface is fairly obvious since touch apps are fairly new on the scene, especially well designed interfaces. Apple iPhone OS has the ball rolling well on the mobile side with Android looking to catch up, but Windows 7 is the only route to go right now for a broad audience app for laptops or desktops, though there are some Linux options if you aren’t worried about wide distro. Either way, the Win7 and Linux interfaces aren’t necessarily the most robust at this point since developers are just beginning to take advantage of what is available in the OS. On the upside it means we don’t have to wait for devs to roll out a driver and app compatibility for their device since they can probably use OS native libraries, but now we have to wait for software manufacturers to roll compatibility into their software for more than mouse input.
On the hardware side, especially the desktop (aka large[r] screens), there is still a long time to wait for device manufacturers to add a touch screen across their product lines. Cell phones are there, the upcoming tablets look promising, but if you want more than 2 people to look at your screen at once you have to jump-up to research $$ to afford a device or expect folks to Make a multiuser, larger display themselves. We have really liked some of the interfaces like the MS Surface, Diamond Touch, or TouchTable we have seen at various conferences, but they have the same limitations as something like a VR Cave or other stereo viewing device…they are meant to stay in one place so that people have to come to them.
Looping back around to developers and native OS libraries…YAY! It is phenomenal that we have access to hardware and SDKs that allow us to create whatever touch apps our imaginations can think up. There are limitations in the software SDKs available in GIS applications. Just as above, we are limited to the input methods that applications and OSes allow. We have applications from Autodesk that support Windows 7 multitouch (Mudbox for example) and ESRI is demoing an iPhone app, but will we be able to build apps with these libraries or will we have to recreate the functionality of these types of apps? It is a question that we will soon see the answers to as more users acquire touch capable hardware which will encourage developers to create for them in ever more interesting ways.
I’m looking forward to this year’s Where 2.0 in San Jose coming up in three weeks! Where is always a different mix of folks from a usual GIS show, and the Silicon Valley vibe is something you can only get… well, in Silicon Valley. I am going to be teaching a workshop with Steve Citron-Pousty on the open source geospatial stack, using our own OpenGeo Suite for a big part of the software we show.
If you’re coming to Where 2.0 and want to talk about OpenGeo in general or PostGIS in particular, please let me know! Either drop me an email or hit my Where 2.0 profile.
Tim Berners-Lee (yes, that Tim Berners-Lee) gave a great TED Talk called The Year Open Data Went Worldwide. And it’s all about maps. OpenStreetMap gets a special mention.
A late edition to the ESRI Developer Summit is the GeoDesign Idea Lab. This is going to be a set of lightning talks by developers showcasing how they’ve been using the concept of GeoDesign in their applications. I’ll be moderating the session with Eric Wittner of ESRI. If you’ve been telling everyone you’ve “been doing GeoDesign for years”, now is you chance to get up and show everyone how your stuff is teh sexay.
Most of what we’ve seen out of this GeoDesign has been with researchers and university types talking about concepts. Now is the time to show how developers have been in the trenches integrating disparate disciplines and bringing the results to the decision makers and the public.
Email your Lightning Talk (10 minutes maximum) abstract to geodesign_devsum@esri.com to be considered. I’ll be blogging the session in detail so this could be a great opportunity to get your GeoDesign chops out in the open. Plus since it is going on at the same time as the Business Partner Conference expect some of the marketing geeks to drop by and see what is up.
GeoDesign Idea Lab Part 1
GeoDesign Idea Lab Part 2
T.S. Elliott was doing GeoDesign before anyone else!
The FCC will announce its National Broadband Plan (NBP) next week. The objective of the NBP is to provide universal broadband access as well as encourage governments and industry to use broadband in health care, education and energy efficiency programs. The FCC has provided enough information over the past year that there appears to be a consensus on what is expected.
Wire Broadband
The goal is likely to be to deliver 100 Mbps to 100 million households by 2020. Providers relying on DSL and copper for the last mile will probably have to make a significant investment to achieve 100 Mbps.
Universal Service (USF) reform
The NBP will have to include a way to fund rural broadband access. Currently the Universal Service Fund (USF) is an $8 billion program targeted on voice communication. The NBP is likely to include a 10 year transition that will gradually shift USF from voice to IP-based services.
Wireless BroadbandAs I blogged previously, the NBP will likely ask the government to free up 500 MHz of spectrum by asking television spectrum holders to voluntarily sell spectrum to mobile broadband operators.
Adoption
The NBP will provide someway of providing broadband access for the poor.
National Purposes
The NBP will provide the basis for universal access for services such as health care, education, smart energy management and government programs.
To be implemented, the NBP recommendations will require congressional action as well as formal guidelines and directives from the FCC.Google’s Public Data Explorer continues their push to integrate their simply awesome visualization APIs with searchable datasets. Think big though:
If you’re a data provider interested in becoming a part of the Public Data Explorer, contact us.
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.
Don’t miss your opportunity to hear from the Bing Maps Platform team about the latest innovations including Streetside and the Silverlight Control. Whether you are building on an existing application or creating a completely new Web mapping solution, this event has something for you.
Ø On the Road with Bing Maps:
Learn Exciting New Ways to Bring Location-Based Data to Life
Join Bing Maps experts, as they provide an overview of how the Bing Maps Platform can be a powerful visualization tool for geographic and location–based information. Learn solution implementation and best practices -- and leave with the tools and resources to tap the power of location using Bing Maps.
Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Time: 1:00 P.M. – 5:00 P.M.
Place: 1290 Avenue of the Americas 6th Floor, New York, NY
Register today to attend this event.
Learn more:
http://www.microsoft.com/maps
-= Virtual Jerry
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.
Bing Maps has been steadily gaining ground with economic development agencies looking to add visualization of GIS data to web sites aimed to spur regional growth and investment. The latest adoption of Bing Maps for this type of application is up north. With the launch of its SelectOntario web site, Ontario is now the first province in Canada to implement a state-of-the-art geographic information system (GIS) tool for the purposes of investment attraction, and they are using my favorite mapping platform (is there another?!), Bing Maps.
Developed by Microsoft partner Orion Technology and ESRI Canada, SelectOntario was launched February 4th by the Ontario Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Sandra Pupatello. The app is a flexible and dynamic search tool that showcases investment properties, infrastructure and location advantages and workforce skills for site selectors to help make investment decision-making faster and easier. In addition to Bing Maps, the site leverages Orion’s OnPoint .NET solution acting as the configuration middleware and ESRI ArcGIS Server 9.3.1.
Orion, along with ESRI, did a great job in developing this application. It is full of features and functionality and more importantly, allows for visualization of an extensive amount of GIS data. SelectOntario allows you to conduct searches under general categories: site search, community search, industry sector search, and skills search. Within each category, you are presented with a form to allow you to set your criteria. I chose to execute a site search, specifying industrial/commercial properties for lease with office space, and within a 50 mile drive from an airport, anywhere in Ontario. There are a lot of other parameters I could have specified, but I am not actually looking to set up shop in Ontario.
The results are displayed on the map through pushpins that you can click on to get site details. And you can pull up property comparison and summary reports. And of course, once you locate sites of interest, you can then turn on the Bing Maps aerial views to visualize the region and get insight into that location, its surroundings and the quality of life.
Want to know more? Check out the application. As with most Bing Maps applications, it is pretty intuitive--the beauty of a web mapping application that runs in a browser, an inteface that web users (most everyone) are already familiar with.
Congrats to both Orion Technology and the Ontario Minister of Economic Development and Trade for their vision and initiative. Let’s see how quickly other agencies in Canada follow their lead!
-= Virtual Jerry