[ Ø ] Harsh's GIS Blog

This report provides a description of existing services, both external and in-house, available to APA divisions for hosting and broadcasting webcasts to their members and other interested professionals, and specifically looks at the external Planning Webcast series. In addition, it includes an analysis of options for expanding these services. The report was produced in response to a request from the APA Divisions Council (DC).

Options for Division Webinars (PDF, DOC)

Related:
* Planning Webcast series
* APA Audio/Web Conference series

Quotes:

“The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network.” (1985)

“The desktop metaphor was invented because one, you were a stand-alone device, and two, you had to manage your own storage. And that may go away.” (1996)

“Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

“The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television.”

“But we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves.”

“For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

“Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”

“The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

“Simple can be harder than complex.”

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me.”

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have.”

“The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”

“So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives.”

“But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea.”

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.”

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

“I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful.”

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

Related:
* Letter
* Patents
* Bio

Planning & Technology Today

“Six in 10 Americans regularly use the Internet for news.”

Related:
* Newseum (Map)
* Why the #iPad is not (and was not meant to be) ready for the public kiosk.

So it seems that some companies pay more importance to taking the right decision than doing the follow-through. I suspect that more often than not, you can make a “wrong” decision right in its follow-through. Doing so, along with setting up few arbitrary constraints, also lessens the often debilitating and sometimes paralyzing effects of decision-making in an over-abundance of choices, no matter how much you break the process down. And it increases the chances of a “command presence” which helps in the follow-through. Also, it opens up the possibility of more than one decision being right (or wrong, but don’t think about that too much because you’d never know until later anyway), especially since information relevant to decision-making is almost always still trickling in. Quite unlike in the academia where often all relevant information can be known via some analytical processes and the “correctness” of decision-making therefore mostly rests on how you apply those processes and put their results together, in “actuality” you can often never fully know all that is relevant and therefore have to act on incomplete imprecise implicit data points and shifting goal posts or evolving requirements. But by making the follow-through important, you end up taking more shots and while that decreases your batting average, it increases the probability of more home runs.

Related:
* Facebook
* How…

Updated: Aug 2011
* The Problem with Perfection
* The Cure for Analysis Paralysis

Category 4: The award for the ‘Best Paper on Technology in Planning’ goes to Omar J. Peters’ (University at Albany, SUNY) ‘Why-Fi: A Look at Information Technology as a Strategy for Urban Development’ for the outstanding paper on the use of technology in planning.

Our Award Committee comprised of elected members from the Division Leadership, namely Jennifer Evans-Cowley, Amiy Varma and yours truly. Join us at the award distribution ceremony at our Division Business meeting (National Planning Conference) on Sunday, April the 10th (11:45 AM – 1:00 PM) in Beacon G, Sheraton Boston Hotel. Congratulations again to our award winner!

Related:
* Technology Division of the American Planning Association (APA) Awards for 2010

This is a little fresh air for an old post that was collecting cobwebs as a draftee:

During this year’s Planner’s Day on Capitol Hill, I got an opportunity to interview Senator Cardin on changing federal policies that affect planning. This is an excerpt from our interview. The full interview can be found at the Division’s website.

Harsh – What are some of your main expectations from the next federal surface transportation bill?

Senator – We face three fundamental challenges with the new transportation bill -

With bridges failing, congested roadways, and transit systems strained to the limit, we need to make a major new investment in the nation’s transportation infrastructure. According to the US DOT, the average annual cost to maintain both highways and bridges at their current level for the next 20 years could reach $78.8 billion, while it would take approximately $131.7 billion per year to improve the condition of both highways and bridges Those figures don’t include the billions more needed for our transit systems and their needed expansions. We must act to make a major new investment in a system that is under extreme stress.

Our transportation policy needs to be reoriented to the nation’s needs in the new century. We need to better integrate our various modes of transportation for handling the nation’s commercial goods. That includes freight rail, harbors, and highway trucking routes, including their interconnection to air freight facilities. Our current system for moving people to and from their work, schools, and recreation also will need to be fundamentally rethought. That will mean a much greater focus on mass transit, alternative modes of transportation, smart growth, reduction in the number of vehicle miles traveled as a policy goal, and so much more. We need a transportation policy that supports our goal of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reduces the generation of greenhouse gases. The new surface transportation law will not accomplish all of these changes overnight, but the new bill should put us on a fundamentally different path than we have taken in the past.

We will need to explore new ways to fund our national transportation programs. Our current reliance on a static “gas tax” is already coming up short: $8 billion in the current fiscal year. If we are successful in moving more commuters out of their cars and into buses and subways, we will see those gas tax revenues decline, not increase. If we are successful in encouraging people to live where they work and to telecommute, gas tax receipts will fall even further.

Harsh – Given the bridge tragedy in Minneapolis last year and the subsequent findings of the National Transportation Safety Board, do you support in principle the National Plan for Infrastructure Investment, and also as a way to stimulate our economy in a time of financial uncertainty?

Senator – The collapse of the I-35 Bridge was a tragedy for Minnesota and for the nation. The bridge failure resulted in 13 deaths. The accident has already spurred the nation into action.

There are approximately 600,000 bridges on highways throughout the United States. About 51 percent of bridges are state owned, 47 percent are locally owned, and less than two percent are owned by the Federal government or private entities. National surveys indicate that nearly one-quarter of all these bridges are structurally deficient.

In addition to the funds provided directly for the repair of the I-35 Bridge, the Congress provided $1 billion in special funding to address our structurally deficient bridges. Of the 2,584 bridges along the Maryland State highway system, 411 (16 percent) are classified as functionally obsolete.

The American Society of Civil Engineers, the Nation, and others are calling for major infrastructure investments. I support a sustained effort to rebuild our national infrastructure. Doing so will provide an immediate stimulus to our economy and give us the network we need to restore the health of our commercial sector.

Related:
* Senator Benjamin Cardin (Wikipedia)
* US Department of Transportation
* US National Transportation Safety Board
* Planning & Technology Today (2009)
* US GPO
* US Green Building Council
* Data 360

Back in the summer of 2010, as one of the million proud owners of iPhone 4, I noticed a certain setting to switch phone carrier. That setting then portended the change we will see tomorrow. But should you bite the bait? Assuming CDMA and GSM don’t matter, here’s part 1 of my guide:

There is a lot of spin around Apple’s flagship cash cow, or as we have come to know it- the iPhone, which only recently represented about 43% of its overall sales. Not all of the coverage is positive (remember Foxconn?). Apple’s growing pains also include a big lawsuit fight. But for those with out a blind searing faith in Steve Jobs, the genius patriarch, the iPhone may very well be suffocating. If true, could Jobs be repeating his original sin? And if so, should your phone follow his sin to the grave?

iOS works better than Android out-of-the-box. To better understand the genesis of its famed usability and cool minimalism, watch Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. If you decide to switch, be prepared to shell out monies in cool apps and media. From a quick glance, I paid around $750 over 2 years. To Apple. Not AT&T (that averaged around $2,400 for the same time). And remember that MP3s from Amazon, somethings you can’t buy on your iPhone, tend to be less expensive and redownloadable – a big plus for some. And all that precious data would cost even more to put into MobileMe, Apple’s own cloud solution, never mind the naysayers. So more additions to your ever burgeoning monthly bill (Tethering, Personal Hotspot, …).

iPhone’s Mythical Advantage: Apps

Apple still disallows Adobe Flash (or Oracle Java) from iOS. It appears to be more a business decision than a technology constraint, designed to control the sprawl of Flash-based gaming mobile websites where you could buy outside of Apple’s walled-garden. How this affects HTML5 gaming websites is still unfolding, but it certainly helps the lagging QuickTime in the meantime. In any case, it goes against the customer’s best interests by taking away her choice to enjoy multimedia content in one of the industry’s most prolific formats. But Apple has you covered with the most commonly used app: the browser. Mobile Safari, hands down is the best mobile browser out there between the platforms that I tested, namely iOS, Android and Windows Mobile. For the GIS pros among you, Joben blogs about GIS apps for the iPhone. You can always find an increasing number at the App Store, like the iGIS.

Jailbreaking Folsom

So you switch and finally get that toy you were waiting for? Why jailbreak it? Jailbreaking the iPhone isn’t worth the effort, even if it is legal. And even if not upgrading to the latest and greatest release (something that iTunes would handle seamlessly for you, but something that you can’t always do with Cydia because Cydia often trots a step behind) is an acceptable risk, ask yourself if your precious data is too important to jailbreak. After all, you could brick your iPhone and quite possibly provide no way for iTunes to restore it. But if your phone data is not critical ahem, then you can add some developer functionalities by jailbreaking and escape the infamous iTunes bloat. Now jailbreaking could also introduce your spanking iOS to new viruses, but if you must, hope over to Cydia. If you need a copy of the old firmware during jailbreak, grab it from here. Once you jailbreak, remember to download a file browser or explorer, like iFunBox or iPhoneBrowser. You may also want to jailbreak if you want to install a phone firewall out of privacy concerns. After all, Apple did confess to collecting GPS data from iOS 3 and iOS 4 daily. Then again, if that is what propels you, why share your payment info with Cydia’s marketplace (just asking)?

Some quick notes on iFunBox or iPhoneBrowser – You can’t watch your uploaded pics or videos, or play your uploaded songs in their native app, even if you upload them to the folders that the iPhone looks under, say //var/mobile/Media/DCIM/100APPLE/. This is because the iPhone, much like the Android, extensively uses SQLite as its Swiss Army database, and all your uploads need to be first registered in the database, say //private/var/mobile/Media/PhotoData/Photos.sqlite which links your IMG_0001.JPG or IMG_0002.MOV. Now there are Cydia apps like iFile that help add your photos, but videos are still no go. But if you are brave enough to try, download the SQLite Manager add-on for Firefox and test your luck.

PS: More

OK, so tested Google, Bing, Yahoo, ESRI, Openlayers and MapServer mashups on the iPad, and much like on the iPhone, the slippy drag-and-droll interface doesn’t work. Except for one mashup. Take a guess?

Related:
* Safari
* WebKit

Mobile Webinar

Related:
* Mash-ups as Planning Tools
* GISP and AICP
* Technology Division of the American Planning Association (APA) Webinar Series – TECH 101: Mashups for Planning
* APA Technology Division: Education
* APA Technology Division Webinar Series: Event

Category 1: The award for the ‘Best Use of Technology to Improve a Plan or Planning Process’ goes to Marc Schlossberg‘s (University of Oregon) ‘Engaging Citizens in Active Transportation Planning with Mobile GIS‘ for its creative use of technology in improving planning processes.

Category 2: The award for the ‘Best Use of Technology for Public Participation’ goes to Michael Baker Jr.‘s ‘More For 1604 Social Media Program‘ for its good use of technology to enhance public involvement and participation in planning and decision making processes.

Category 3: The award for the ‘Best Use of Technology for a University Urban and Regional Planning Program’ goes to the School of Policy Planning and Development‘s (University of Southern California) ‘Multimedia Boot Camps‘ for its effective use of teaching with technology in preparing future planners for professional work.

Our Award Committee comprised of elected members from the Division Leadership, namely Jennifer Evans-Cowley, Amiy Varma and yours truly. Join us at the award distribution ceremony at our Division Business meeting (National Planning Conference) on Monday, April the 12th (7 AM) in the Hilton New Orleans Trafalgar Room. Congratulations again to all our award winners!

Related:
* Technology Division of APA
* Planning & Technology Today

* Part 1
* Part 2
Interviewed by Carl Williams.

Related:
2009
* Technology Division of the American Planning Association (APA) Webinar Series – TECH 101: Mashups for Planning
2008
* GISP and AICP
2007
* Mash-ups as Planning Tools
* Neogeography 101: Word Association
* Elite Systems Research Institute, Inc. [ESRI] et al
* Google Earth [GE] @ Work
2006
* ESRI Ketchup!
* Why do you like Geography?
2005
* A Rose by Any Other Name
2004
* Graphic Software
* Map Viewer and Google
* Brevity is the soul of wit

“Big-City Rush Hour Blues Now Afflict Smaller Cities: 36 hours. That’s the additional time the average U.S. urban traveler spends on the road per year because of rush-hour congestion, according to the Texas Transportation Institute. What’s more, commuters in medium-size cities now face about the same delays that residents of “very large” cities experienced a quarter-century ago, the TTI says”.

Related:
* Follow Up [1]: Les Misérables
* Les Misérables
* Rural Clusters and Relative Rurality
* Cost of Living and Higher Education

Top 10 most congested metro areas:
1 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
2 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA
3 Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI
4 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV
5 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
6 Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
7 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
8 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH
9 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
10 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD

Related:
* Les Misérables

America’s 10 Most Miserable Cities
1 Cleveland, Ohio
2 Stockton, Calif.
3 Memphis, Tennessee
4 Detroit, Mich.
5 Flint, Mich.
6 Miami, Fla.
7 St. Louis, Mo.
8 Buffalo, N.Y.
9 Canton, Ohio
10 Chicago, Ill.

Related:
* Cost of Living and Higher Education
* Rural Clusters and Relative Rurality
* Les Misérables by Victor Hugo – Project Gutenberg

CO2 emissions per capita: Carbon dioxide emissions in metric tons per capita

Population: Midyear estimates of the resident population

Related:
* Total Area:
#COUNTRY RANK
1 Russia 1
2 Canada 2
3 United States 3
4 China 4
5 Brazil 5
6 India 7
7 France 43
7 Japan 61
8 Germany 62
9 United Kingdom 79
* Follow Up [1]: Unshared Sacrifice
* BRIC
* IBSA

Nearly 6 months after starting work on a Touch mapping project for kiosk deployment running Windows 7 RC on a HP TouchSmart, it sure is good to see touch taking-off. Slowly but surely:

* Gateway One ZX6810-01

* Sony next with Windows 7 multitouch all-in-one

And yes, I used 3rd-party x64 drivers to turn it from single-touch to double-touch.

So any of you guys working with touch?

Related:

* A Touch of Play

Interesting post @ Google Redefines Disruption: The “Less Than Free” Business Model.

Got Photoshop and Autodesk on the iPhone? Will sketch.

Those investors who are rushing to their brokers for a piece of TeleNav’s IPO (TeleNav GPS Navigator needs extra cash to fight Google Map Navigation, or prep itself for a buyout), note that TeleNav (read LBS) has nothing to do with TeleAtlas of TomTom (read data). Yet.

Wolfram|Alpha is being billed as an Answer Engine for the scientifically-minded, as opposed to a Search Engine: It takes your query, implied or otherwise, that critical step further by selecting from its list of matches, the one objective description, image etc, and lays them out in context. Not that Google never attempts definitive answers [chord], but when it does, Wolfram|Alpha [note] handily beats it to it with background information. START, on the other hand, is sometimes embarrassing. Note that it may not know what to do, but it does not give the wrong answer. Yet.

So Wolfram|Alpha dares to do more than say, Google or Yahoo or Microsoft, and impresses despite its alpha status.

There are inherent risks in such an approach in that it hopes our queries are frequently specific enough, which in some cases, will not be because that is how we generally are. There is also that small issue of assigning culpability to its user for a dumb query. But through consistent performance and by avoiding curation, link-fraud etc pitfalls, Wolfram|Alpha has the potential to wean away some of the Google fan-base, notwithstanding Google Squared. And by targeting the scientific community, it has the potential to emerge as a niche Answer Engine despite semantic ambiguity or crowd-sourcing.

Bookmark it now. And keep checking.

Here are some stumpers:
* What is the elevation above sea level at 38.889483,-77.035254? Wolfram|Alpha v Google v START
* What was the annual revenue of the state of Maryland for Fiscal Year 2007?
Wolfram|Alpha v Google v START
* What is the maximum height of the Guggenheim Museum NY? Wolfram|Alpha v Google v START
* How many symphonies did Sergei Rachmaninoff compose? Wolfram|Alpha v Google v START

Related:
* Developers

Selected Influenza A(H1N1) Maps

Related:
* CDC (more)

We are looking for a Senior Mobile Developer, GIS or otherwise, in the Washington DC Metro. Given the niche, pass it along to qualified professionals or contact me with your resume.

Related:
* Job

Oracle -> Sun -> MySQL

Positioning Timeline

* Oracle buys PeopleSoft (2004)
Ending a long-running and bitter battle: “We won’t do any other major mergers ($200 million plus) until it’s clear to us we have integrated this one to our satisfaction.” (Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle)

* Oracle buys Siebel (2005)
Customer Relationship Management: “Oracle becomes CRM applications company.” (Larry Ellison)

* Oracle buys InnoDB used by MySQL (2005)
Oracle buying Innobase: “If Oracle thought it was threatened by MySQL, this was a very easy move.” (Paola Lubet, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, Solid Information Technology)

* Oracle tries to buy MySQL (2006)
Why he turned down Oracle’s offer: the desire to keep his company’s independence: “They’re obviously entrenched in different areas of the market. But is there overlap in the middle? Sure.” (Stephen O’Grady, Analyst, Redmonk)

* Oracle buys opensource embedded Sleepycat (2006)
Linux and BSD UNIX operating systems, and Apache web server, embed Berkeley DB: Embedded databases also include Oracle Lite (mobile) and Oracle TimesTen (in-memory). (Oracle)

* Sun buys MySQL (2008)
We’re acquiring MySQL: “The world’s most popular opensource database.” (Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President, Sun)

* Oracle buys Sun (2009)
Solaris is the leading platform for the Oracle database, Oracle’s largest business: While Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s fastest growing business, is built on top of Java. (Sun)

Related:
* Gartner (2007)
Oracle’s database etc sales: $8.3 billion (up 14.9%) | Market share: 47.9%->48.6%
IBM’s DB2 etc sales: $3.5 billion (up 10%) | Market share: 21.3%->20.7%
Microsoft’s SQL Server etc sales: $3.1 billion (up 16.5%) | Market share: 17.6%->18.1%
Total database sales: $17.1 billion
* Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle
* Jonathan Schwartz (conspicuously MIA from his blog in recent days)
* MySQL Resurrection?
* PostgreSQL > MySQL > Drizzle > SQLite
* My Pick of FOSS4G 2007 Presentation Submissions

Related:
* GISP and AICP
* Mash-ups as Planning Tools

First impressions after testing Microsoft’s Surface Table:

It is a coffee-table sized hardware running Windows Vista and allowing collaborative interaction from up to 4-6 participants. The number of hand-gestures it can recognize is obviously higher than that of a standard touch-screen which can typically handle only a single tap and drag, and maybe multi-touch. On the other hand, the Surface Table can recognize multiple taps, imprecise flicks and resizes, and touch-intensity. Actually, much like a TouchSmart, it can even detect movement just above its surface. Simply put, it is like a giant iPhone.

Application

So how does it lend itself to GIS/Planning application development? Well, it is more eye-candy than useful for its cost at this point and appropriate application ideas may not come readily. If you try to recreate a similar collaborative environment with a series of Tablet PCs, TouchSmarts and Windows 7, you might just be successful. Note that it can’t be detached from its base and wall-mounted since it has a projector underneath.

The Surface Table’s biggest strength lies in its enabling a collaborative environment, and therefore, it is more suited towards “playful infotainment”-type applications. If you develop GIS/Planning applications for the Surface Table, note this: It would be a lot of fun, but maybe not a lot useful. And also, it doesn’t carry any browser application (!) so you can’t simply start using your planning mash-up and development would present its own WPF learning curve for the web savvy. For an elegant GUI design, remember that fat shaky fingers need big buttons. In terms of pricing, Microsoft is currently also charging for its SDK (approx. $3K): Not sure of their pricing model, but it doesn’t seem like a smart idea if their goal is to also encourage the Viral Phenomenon. And although, they don’t yet come pre-installed (!), a wireless card and wheels can easily be mounted to turn your Surface Table into a self-contained unit to enhance its portability.

Sync

There are already some creative applications in-use: Soldiers returning from a patrol dump their head gears onto the Surface Table, and its docking corner instantly syncs their captured data with their sync folder- no fumbling there! Special ID tags can “identify” themselves to the Surface Table, but cell phones running Windows Mobile require a download before they can sync. Selected Omni Sheraton hotels and others are currently showcasing Surface Tables.

Technology

So how does it work? Well, conventional technologies detect touch-location by interrupting:
* Infrared
* Optical Field
* Surface Acoustic Wave
This interception happens just above the screen substrata and its grid coordinates are then translated to screen position. Alternatively, you can do a makeover of your current display using Dispersive Signal Technology (DST). DST integrates chemically-strengthened glass onto existing display. It detects bending wave within the glass radiating to the 4 corners where it gets converted to electric signals. This approach also makes it ideal for heavy-duty use to filter out “noise”, say when outdoors or think glass spills and crumbs in a snack-rich community planning meeting. Then there is Proximity Capacitive Resistance (PCR) for touch-across-surface.

Given the niche, pass it along to qualified professionals or contact me with your resume:
“The project objectives are to develop Virtual World applications to study how people acquire, organize and apply information. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in Virtual World development, and a demonstrable interest in Social/Bio Sciences and/or Communication/Media.”

Well, I have switched from b2evolution to WordPress CMS. And thanks to Apache’s mod_rewrite, I was able to keep all my old links intact. Here’s how:

### wordpress:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
# basic:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/
# file:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# dir:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/index.php [L]
# [R] Redirect [L] Last rule
# post:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} title=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^index\.php /gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/%1\.html? [r=301,nc]
# archive – monthly:

http://www.spatiallink.org/gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/pi.php?m=200807

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} m=([0-9]{4})([0-9]{2})
RewriteRule ^index\.php /gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/%1/%2? [r=301,nc]
# archive – category:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} cat=15
RewriteRule ^index\.php /blog/category/aspatial [r=301,nc]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} cat=14
RewriteRule ^index\.php /blog/category/spatial [r=301,nc]
</IfModule>
### end wordpress

This was how the old URL looked like, http://www.spatiallink.org/gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/?title=gisp_and_aicp. Note that there were limitations to permalink, since %year%, %day% or %category% were unknown from the old URL. Fortunately, I had only 2 categories, so this was a cinch.

Although I am still on the fence on GISP given the relative lackluster, what APA has done with AICP‘s CM could give it some shine when it comes to creating a provider ecosystem.

To quickly fill you in: Last year at its Leadership Meetings, APA launched the CM program for AICP. In short, it required professional planners to continuously seek training in order to maintain their certifications, and allowed 3rd-party providers to offer that training.

For SIS, adopting a similar approach would require forsaking a fee-centric approach, letting someone like OGC bite a bigger share and sinking deeper into some sort of GIS accreditation, far beyond ESRI Authorized Training Program, before the “Surveyor Usurp” (see below).

–π

Related:
� The Status of Professional Certification in GIS – Conclusion:
“GIS application areas range from engineering to computer and information sciences, geography, business, logistics, forestry, and many other academic and professional preparation fields. Because GIS professionals come from a wide variety of backgrounds and academic preparation, no one group can claim to represent all approaches and applications within the GIS community. Also, given the volatile nature of the field, and the rapid change currently underway in software development and application deployment, adequate preparation today does not guarantee competency in the future. For these reasons, an overarching program to ensure appropriate professional preparation and competency must be developed by those parties interested in safeguarding the viability of the field and the competency of those claiming professional status.

It is unlikely that voluntary certification can assure competency across the profession if most practitioners choose not to be certified or if employers don’t insist that their employees be certified. Therefore, it is essential that benefits of certification be clearly articulated. By including a wide range of professional organizations within the certification development process, and working to include the interests of all GIS professionals by developing both a reasonable core set of competencies and appropriate specialized evaluations within the certification process, all groups will benefit from certification.”

� Groups – “The Usurp“: Spatial Sciences Institute (SSI), Australia and Board of Surveying and Spatial Information, New South Wales, Australia

� Degrees: University of Southern Queensland, Australia – Bachelor of Spatial Science (BSPS) and Bachelor of Spatial Science Technology (BSST)

� Ideas: For ideas on what required trainings could entail, here’re some courses (article) and my GIS suggestions for AICP’s CM:

— PLAN TECH 101 – Desktop GIS (vendor-neutral) —
Featuring:
- QGIS (opensource)
- ArcGIS (proprietary, $)
- MapInfo (proprietary, $)
Outline:
* Intro to GIS data
- Vector
- Raster
- KML, GML, WMS etc
* How to acquire GIS data – Resources
* How to work with maps – Common tasks
- Geocoding/Geoprocessing
- Spatial analyses
- Editing
- Printing, publishing
* Intro to spatial databases
* Best practices
* What lies ahead – Industry trends
* Other notable resources – handy tools and hacks

— PLAN TECH 102 – webGIS (vendor-neutral) —
Featuring:
- Mash-Up APIs
- Google Maps (proprietary, free)
- ArcWebServices (proprietary, $)
- Virtual Globes
- NASA World Wind (opensource)
- Google Earth and SketchUp (proprietary, free versions)
- IMS
- MapServer (opensource)
Outline:
* Intro to webGIS
* How to mash-up
- Text to maps etc
- How to use MapMaker, MyMaps and Charts
- License considerations
* How to use Virtual Globes
- How to add placemarks, polygons, photographs etc
- How to georeference photographs
- How to create network links
- How to create tours
- License considerations
- Other presentation considerations
- 3D models
* Intro to in-house interactive mapping
- How to set-up and serve
* Best practices
* What lies ahead – Industry trends
* Other notable resources – handy tools and hacks

— PLAN TECH 103 – Web 2.0 (vendor-neutral) —
Outline:
* Intro to Web 2.0
* How to set-up
- CMSs
- Blogs and forums
- Mailing lists
- webGIS
- Mash-Ups
* How to use Social Networking
- YouTube
- MySpace
- Facebook
* License considerations
* Intro to Section 508
- Guidelines
- Resources
- Tips
* Best practices
* What lies ahead – Industry trends
* Other notable resources – handy tools and hacks

GEMMO is a massively multiplayer online game [MMOG or MMO] for Google Earth that allows you to “explore the world as you collect gold, fight evil monsters and try to collect the crystals that are guarded in major cities [19 so far] across the planet” without any additional software to download.

Given the gathering whispers of our rumor-mill, some morph of this could make it big- a la Scrabulous. Good job Mickey of MickMel Inc!

– π

Related:
• Google Earth [GE] @ Work
• Google Earth in Second Life!
• Metaverse

Quotes from the recent Net Neutrality Hearings:

David L. Cohen, Vice-President, Comcast- ‘…on a “very limited basis” Comcast was delaying traffic in limited areas when there is heavy traffic.’”Don’t let the rhetoric of some of the critics scare you- there is nothing wrong with network management. Every network is managed.”

Tim Wu, Professor, Columbia Law School- “I have this terrible fear we are going to have an exam after this on what is reasonable network management. And we are all going to fail.”

Related:
• FCC to Act on Delaying of Broadband Traffic [NYT]
• FCC
• Network Management

I started the year with this ‘Time Management‘ video by Randy Pausch. You may know him from ‘The Last Lecture‘. His introduction is by Gabe- my website mentor at UVA Computer Science Web Team. A must-watch if you haven’t already.

– π

Related:
• 2007
• The Legacy of Randy Pausch

• Medium Maximization: “A medium, for example, points or money, is a token people receive as the immediate reward of their effort. It has no value in and of itself, but it can be traded for a desired outcome. Experiments demonstrate that, when people are faced with options entailing different outcomes, the presence of a medium can alter what option they choose. This effect occurs because the medium presents an illusion of advantage to an otherwise not so advantageous option, an illusion of certainty to an otherwise uncertain option, or an illusion of linearity to an otherwise concave effort-outcome return relationship. This work has implications for how points influence consumer choice and how money influences human behavior.”

• “With the lure of points added to the mix, more than half of students chose the longer task and the less desirable pistachio prize that went with it. Independent of their actual value, ‘points’ apparently give people some satisfaction. That’s just one reason that frequent-flier programs have been so successful for so long.” [NYT]

Related:
• The Power of Ten

1,000 CONTACTS > 100 VISITORS > 10 SIGN-UPS > 1 ACTIVE USER

– π

Related:
• “It is claimed that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like [Silverman, George. Secrets of Word Of Mouth Marketing. 2001]. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior.”
• Bizsum Book Summary [Amazon]

Planning departments, especially those of smaller cities, have long hesitated because of technology, budgetary and other constraints to engage their constituents through web-based mapping tools. Part of the reason is simply an uneasiness with Web 2.0-esque mapping technologies.

Well, these days they have less to worry about. That is, if they don’t mind piggy-backing on corporate giants.

Recently, the BurbankLeader reported on how the City of Burbank, Los Angeles County, California, the not-so-undisputed “Media Capital of the World” with a comfortable population of 104,317 (2006), has trusted some online service providers and their armies of 24/7 network-support staff to host part of its mapping data. Not a mash-up feat by today’s standards, but the City has invited public input by publishing its planning project status using Google Maps‘s free Application Programming Interface (API).

According to the City’s Principal Planner Michael Forbes, AICP, “the planning projects map, run by Google, is an interactive list of all residential, commercial and industrial projects throughout Burbank that are being processed or have been recently approved or denied. Each project icon on the map includes information about the project and a link to its current status.”

A note of caution for the impatient GIS Planner: While nowadays, a mash-up is more than a hack, most public map APIs are still constrained by their ask-coordinates-get-flat-tile design, albeit smart, when it comes to geometry-aware mapping that requires ‘queriable geometry’.

Consequently, despite the established familiarity of mash-ups, the appropriateness of such mash-ups to enterprise GIS for large-scale custom mapping is still debated.

Then there is that question of commercial advertisements on publicly-funded maps. Note that there are ways around it: Google Maps for Enterprise, for one, allows the option to disable location-based advertising for an annual fee. The free Google Maps also requires map and custom data to be publicly-accessible. But as far as the cause of community’s access to information is concerned, it is well-served by such mash-ups.

So nearly two years after chicagocrime.org- the seminal Google mash-up that won the 2005 Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism and was named by the New York Times as one of 2005′s best ideas (“It turns out that the best way to organize much of the information online is geographically.” – Do-It-Yourself Cartography, NYT), arrived at the mapping scene followed by hordes of Google Earth KMLs; At a time when some Elite Systems Research Institutes have already tried similar approaches and not quite succeeded; At a time when companies have been successfully built from mash-ups; At a time when real-estate mash-ups have become stale and foreclosure mash-ups have become hot; ‘smallish’ planning departments are warming up to the idea of neogeographic mash-ups as planning tools. Finally.

– π

Related:
� Online Tool Spotlight: Mash-Ups as Planning Tools (Summary)
� Planning and Technology Today: Technology in Public Participation (Issue 90, Fall 2007) – A Publication of the Technology Division of the American Planning Association
� Neogeography 101: Word Association
� Google Earth [GE] @ Work
� Follow Up [1]: ESRI Ketchup!
� Follow Up [4]: Graphic Software
� Follow Up [2]: Map Viewer and Google
� Virtual Earth For Government
� ESRI ArcWeb Services: Pricing Guide
* Find sample region by geometry – $0.02
* Get map of region – $0.02
* Zoom in/out of above map – $0.02
* Find places – $0.02
* Measure distance on map – $0.00
� Other Examples: OpenLayers – Web Processing and Routing

BBC News | Special Reports: “Weather disasters ‘getting worse’”

Related:
• Unshared Sacrifice
• Oxfam

Paul Ramsey points to Danny de Vries‘s take on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial [FOSS4G] 2007:

“What we saw was a young and passionate movement not-so-subtly showcasing their dedication for open-source as a tool by which to challenge corporate, or closed-source, IT monopolies in the geospatial domain.”

I want to underline the ‘showcasing’ part. It is important to not ignore why that is significant for contribution to opensource, which as some would like you to believe is often lacking direction and profit and not the best use of your time. And it can be summarized like so:

                        +—[IN]—> LEARN
CONTRIBUTE —|
                        +—[OUT]—> SHOWCASE —> GET WORK

–π

Related:
• My Pick of FOSS4G 2007 Presentation Submissions
• Contribute

• What if Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
• If Microsoft packaged the iPod…

Related:
• Never the Twain Shall Meet

As far as the OpenHandset Alliance SDK is concerned, in spite of how Jonathan Schwartz feels about it and the 10 million that Google is giving away in developer prizes, the SDK could become an albatross around Google neck, courtesy Java.

Google appears to also have successfully convinced the opensource Mozilla Foundation to promote its own services above and before other compelling interests. This may be akin to special interest groups’ manoeuvrings on Capitol Hill, and certainly begs the question – did Google push the Foundation to go slow on mobile? Certainly, Minimo with its XUL environment and many extensions could have made for a speedier development cycle.

PS:

* Back in 2005, realizing the potential of WAP, I tested XHTML/WML/WMLscript v HTML/Javascript on Nokia emulators, and wondered how best to balance the 2 different development requirements. After all, you want to get the many more people who own a mobile but not a computer, access your services.

* Symbian Python

As the Google-backed Open Handset Alliance takes shape, I have been testing dominant WAP browsers on my 2-year old touchscreen PocketPC. This resulting post should narrow down the choices for those who follow:

• Deep Fish by Microsoft appears to be the most promising of the lot. Unfortunately, it is in a strict testing phase and no longer accepting registrations. Until then, you can always make do with Internet Explorer for Mobile.
• Opera, arguably the slimmest desktop browser out there, has a paid version- Opera Mobile for $24. But if you do not have a smartphone and/or do not wish to spend any money, try Opera Mini.
• The Mozilla Foundation has the amusingly named Minimo.

Opera Mobile offers tab-browsing like Minimo, and does a better job at handling pop-ups and javascripts than Internet Explorer. And like Minimo, it offers ‘grab and drag’ navigation thus eliminating scrollbars. Opera Mobile also offers subtle other improvements, like allowing you to change your User Agent- a must-have for those websites that recognize mobile browsers, but remain inexplicably unprepared for them. On the other hand, Minimo features XUL [try this in Firefox - chrome://browser/content/browser.xul] that has impressively found its way into Mozilla Amazon Browser etc, and is the most customizable.

Absent from all these is the Nokia Web Browser- the sometime favorite of opensource mobile development. After all, its early emulators are what helped a lot of programmers/developers gain a handle on mobile development long before Google.

–π

Related:
• Follow Up [1]: Wireless Application Protocol
• Wanted: Proactive Policies
• >> WAP
• News:: Spatial
• News:: Science & Technology
• Sample *.xul
• xda-developers Forum
• Picsel Browser
• Zumobi
• Proxy Server
• Mini-Me

Try this page to compare Ruby‘s and Python‘s language elegance side-by-side. Spoiler Warning: There is a winner!

To get you started:
Ruby – string.method ["String".reverse or "String".length]
Python – string[slice] or function(string) ["String"[::-1] or len(“String”)]

–π

Related:
• Python Interpreter
• ASP
• Cold Fusion
• JSP
• Perl [ActivePerl]
• [ActivePython]
• PHP
• Tcl [ActiveTcl]
• A Tale of Two Cities

I was a little surprised to find MapServer listed on Nessus- the network vulnerability scanner website chugging along on Apache/PHP: Its mention points to greater usage than earlier anticipated. So if even AGG- its Google-esque 5.0 rendering backend is not enough, here‘s another reason for -4.10.3 users to upgrade:

Synopsis:
The remote web server contains CGI scripts that are prone to arbitrary remote command execution and cross-site scripting attacks.

Description:
The remote host is running MapServer, an opensource internet map server.

The installed version of MapServer is vulnerable to multiple cross-site scripting vulnerabilities and to a buffer overflow vulnerability. To exploit those flaws an attacker needs to send specially crafted requests to the mapserv CGI.

By exploiting the buffer overflow vulnerability an attacker would be able to execute code on the remote host with the privileges of the web server.

Solution:
Upgrade to MapServer 4.10.3.

Notice how their solutions are always short and sweet. Savvy programmers/developers would know of a couple of other ways to fail such automatic scanning.

On Nessus, MapServer shares the company of the spatial heavy-weight: Google Earth- ‘heap overflow in the KML engine [FreeBSD]‘. Given Nessus’s reputation in the enterprise class, ESRI’s ArcGIS Server and ArcIMS are both conspicuous by their absence- impossibly secure? less likely; less widespread and not sufficient to warrant a mention, atleast in the enterprise community? quite possible.

–π

Related:
US-CERT Vulnerability Notes Database

Question:
‘Genre Books’ is to ‘Writer’
as
‘Web Maps’ is to …?

Choices:
• [a] iPhone [...since the buzz is about it- the Paris Hilton of the technorati]
• [b] Paris Hilton [...since the buzz is about her- the iPhone of the glitterati]
• [c] Geographer [...since ESRI Press said so]
• [d] Programmer/Developer

Answer:
• If you answered [c], you have spent a lot of time around ESRI-championed web maps with 8 direction tags, a dogged insistence on not exploiting browser cache and a ridiculous north arrow on every map- never mind that so far no one has turned a browser upside down.

–π

Related:
• A Rose by Any Other Name
• Web Mapping
• The New Yorker

Bush Official Goes Nuclear in Net Neut Row. The Register. 2007

Related:
• Debating Net Neutrality: A Nutshell
• Network Neutrality
• Network Neutrality in the US

Top 3 Contributions Over $2,000 from the Big 3:
—————————————————————————————————————-
NAME | CITY ST ZIP | POSITION | CONTRIBUTION | RECIPIENT
—————————————————————————————————————-
Microsoft-
• Chen, Ling | Bellevue WA 98006 | – | $4,600 | Hillary Clinton
• Giblett, Leslie | Seattle WA 98119 | Microsoft Visual C++ Box Program Manager | $4,600 | John Edwards
• Gonzalez, Christopher | Glen Ellyn IL 60137 | – | $2,300 | Barack Obama

Google-
• Lee, Alissa | San Francisco CA 94114 | Senior Corporate Counsel, International Affairs | $4,600 | Barack Obama
• Merrill, Douglas | Danville CA 94526 | Vice President, Engineering | $4,600 | Barack Obama
• Cerf, Vinton | Mc Lean VA 22102 | Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist | $4,200 | Hillary Clinton

Yahoo-
• Goldberg, David | Atherton CA 94027 | Vice President and General Manager of Music | $4,600 | Hillary Clinton
• Semel, Terry | Beverly Hills CA 90212 | Chairman and Chief Executive Officer | $4,600 | Hillary Clinton
• Garlinghouse, Brad | Menlo Park CA 94025 | Senior Vice President, Communications, Communities, and Front Doors | $2,300 | Barack Obama
—————————————————————————————————————-
Source:
• Map of Contributions to Presidential Campaigns, New York Times [NYT]
• Presidential Campaign Finance Map, Federal Election Commission [FEC]

–π

PS:
• Political Equilibrium
• Godin, Seth | Irvington NY 10533 | Author, Speaker and Blogger | $999 | John Edwards
• US Technology Administration

Source:
The Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies [IES], University of Wisconsin at Madison

Related:
• Climate Shift Tied To 150,000 Fatalities. Washington Post. 2005
• United Nations Environment Program [UNEP]
• Climate, The Earth Institute, Columbia University
• Global Warming, New York Times [NYT]
• Climate Analysis Indicators Tool [CAIT]
• The Pew Center on Global Climate Change
• Climate Change
• Climate and Radiation Branch, Goddard Space Flight Center [GSFC], US National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA]
• Climate, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA]
• Climate Change, US Environmental Protection Agency [EPA]

–π

Related:
• [my comment]
The Coming Internet Traffic Jam: “…argument on government legislation. It is a false argument that some proponents of non-neutrality wish to spread. Surely, in this age of war-profiteers turning in record-breaking quarters, loose monopolies of mergers and bundles, debatable price gouging etc, it is a little naive to want to believe that all the companies involved will tow some good line on the other side of short-term profits for the greater common good.

If anything, some private companies interfere with day-to-day governance through unabashed lobbying and kickback offerings, creating grossly unfair access to government.

If a government legislation has caused long-term damage in the past, the legislation must be refined or redone and the legislators should be unelected, not have the people’s say through ‘smart legislation’ be silenced.”
[/my comment]
• Making Public Policy: A Nutshell
• Wanted: Proactive Policies

An impressive summary of presentations, but my professional favorite would be ‘IBM DB2 Express-C: A Free Database for Open Source Spatial and XML Development’. Although something tells me that something else might be the crowd favorite.

On DB2 Express-C: It went free soon after its counter-weights Oracle XE and SQL Server XE last year, but its press “news” release has not found its way into major SIS publications. DB2′s continued advancements in the free spatial database market could only make things tighter for PostgreSQL+PostGIS.

–π

Related:
• Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial [FOSS4G] 2007
• ‘DB2 Express-C, the developer-friendly alternative’
• ‘Oracle XE and Geospatial Information Systems: An Interview with
Dennis Wuthrich of Farallon Geographics’

This GCN article titled ‘Geospatial and the elite: Old-school geographic information systems still dig deep on mapping and analyses’ points to a tortuous debate within the traditional GIS industry, and the new industry push to remodel itself as solely an “enterprise class” industry while it continues to loose ground to an increasing domestication or democratization of GIS services.

ESRI: Elitist or Commonplace?

But this new industry push is not without some strategy confusion as old-school GIS faces its mid-life identity crisis without the “cool factor” spouse.

–π

Related:
• More

As I returned from the American Planning Association‘s 2007 National Planning Conference in Philadelphia, I rummaged through some past papers and chanced upon an offer letter that I have been unable to let go of.

Thomas Jefferson or William Penn?

When I look back to why I chose UVA over UPenn, the cost of living at Charlottesville v. Philadelphia, not Public Ivy v. Ivy League, proved to be the determining factor given finances. Although UVA did not play to my strengths in physical design, focusing more on the sociological aspects of planning that I now believe to be closer to the core principles of planning, it was extremely enriching and rewarding.

So, as some of you may be deciding on which offer letter to accept this fall, here is a little advice- focus on the one you really want and everything else might just fall in place. But even if you do not or can not, individual effort can even things out.

Good luck!

–π

Related:
• USATODAY:
‘Mr. Jefferson would be proud’: Charlottesville is No. 1
• Rural Clusters and Relative Rurality:
—————————————————————————————————————-
COUNTY ST | PER CAPITA INCOME [PCI] | RELATIVE RURALITY | HOW FAR WOULD PCI GO? [2004] *
—————————————————————————————————————-
• Albemarle VA | $37,638 | 0.358 | $13,474.40
• Philadelphia PA | $29,755 | 0.037 | $1,100.935
—————————————————————————————————————-
* Roughly, the higher the Relative Rurality, the further the dollar would go
• Cities Ranked & Rated: ‘The Ten Best Places to Live [2005]‘ and ’2005 Best Places to Live’
—————————————————————————————————————-
RANK | METRO AREA
—————————————————————————————————————-
• 1 | Charlottesville VA
• 76 | Philadelphia PA-NJ
—————————————————————————————————————-
• Frost, Robert. The Road Not Taken. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15717
• More
* Ways to give

The US Economic Development Administration [EDA], in conjunction with the State of Indiana, has recently released an interesting research titled “The Role of Regional Clusters: Unlocking Rural Competitiveness” [2007] on the benefits of regionalism in rural America.

One of the primary objectives of this research is to help rural America find its competitive edge in our rapidly globalizing world. It accompanies another research in a similar vein named “Rural Clusters of Innovation: Berkshires Strategy Project- Driving a Long-Term Economic Strategy” [2006]- a public-private study funded in part by the US Department of Commerce. These 2 studies follow an earlier precursor report titled “Competitiveness in Rural US Regions: Learning and Research Agenda” [2004] led by the Harvard Business School. That report arrived at 2 main conclusions:

• ‘Capacity for regional innovation is often driven by industry ‘clusters”.
• ‘Clusters also significantly enhance the ability of regional economies to build prosperity’.

First, some quick background:

Clusters- industry and region, have been defined as ‘broad networks of companies, suppliers, service providers, institutions and organizations in related industries that, together, bring new products or services to a market’. A cluster-based approach provides an effective planning tool for economic development in the rural countryside. Graphically, I can summarize a rural cluster like so:

The research’s findings, lessons, conclusions, recommendations and directions that I found relevant are:

• ‘Labeling a region around a single cluster or economic activity is too simplistic due to considerable co-location of clusters’
• ‘Clusters most strongly associated with higher levels of economic performance are business and financial services; IT and Telecom; and printing and publishing’.
• ‘Human capital, as measured by educational attainment, is the primary factor related to differences in income growth among counties’.

This research also underlines the importance of spatial technologies as follows:

• ‘Much of the analysis of rural America has been overly simplistic. GIS tools and advanced spatial analyses are not commonly used. It is important that greater use of these powerful approaches be applied to a wide range of issues facing rural America’.
• ‘Mapping is particularly helpful to illustrate and communicate data on clusters’.

Some of the maps coming out of this research can be found here.

Anyway, as I see it as a Planner, an uneasy socio-cultural issue remains unenlightened, and that is…

When you take rural America or for that matter rural Anywhere, and strip it of all its social stereotypes and negatives, you are left with something or end up attracting something that is far from rural- something that will jump, skip and run to the New Yorks of our world in time.

Rural Anything does not clamor for riches; it does not yearn for the hustle-and-bustle of urban life, or for its smog-filled jam-packed commute traffic, or for that neck-breaking workday; it is not awed by the many skyscrapers of the City on whom it conveniently blames all social ills; none of the multi-cultural nightlife or rebellious ways.

Rural Anything simply desires simplicity- a dog yawning in the backyard farm; a winding trail to work; free parking; quiet and quaint neighborhoods topped by the clichéd church tucked away inside the folds of its countryside; fishing expeditions on weekends; just yearning to stretch on a summery afternoon without having to worry about city-like pollutions and crimes; content only to drift and conform to its tightly-knit value-system.

It is a different “make” of people.

How then do you convince it to join the rat-race?

–π

PS:
• As I see it, Relative Rurality- a measure used in this research, helps answer the age-old question: How far would the dollar go? Roughly, the higher the Relative Rurality, the further the dollar would go

Related:
• More
• Even More
• A Lot More

This week I had the opportunity to listen to the Google Guys. Having earlier missed a similar opportunity for Jack Dangermond due to schedule conflicts, I made sure I was present at this seminar.

On display were the GE Enterprise solutions- Fusion, Server and Enterprise Client. With GE Enterprise, you can sign into multiple servers, grab the most accurate data from each and roll everything into one seamless experience. You may even squeeze your private globe onto a pocket-sized device and strut it out on a field. For a private domain, GE Enterprise can scale upto a healthy 250 concurrent users, or a little less than those supported by a default PostgreSQL 8.X on Windows.

One astounding statistic quoted was the vast number of users GE has been able to accumulate over its short life- approximately 200 million; reportedly many more than those by Google Maps, with nearly 80% for casual uses. And a surprising number, or so we are told, falls in the 45+ age group.

Approximations aside, here’s my take:

When you try to fathom the 200 million number, you are reminded yet again how ESRI, Intergraph, MapInfo, Autodesk et al, poorly missed the globe software bandwagon. And the traditional SIS companies still do not have a clear winner when it comes to 3D buildings and surface textures, despite counting 3DS Max and Maya. All that information is what users now expect from any cutting-edge globe software.

From the looks of it and the high-end price tag of over $100,000, Google has smelled blood- the fat inside some governments; ESRI and Intergraph can attest to that. If Google succeeds in this aggressive push, the traditional SIS companies will cede further into the background on data visualization; they are anyway planted firmly in the backseat with regards to a lot of casual uses.

So when you combine this push with GE user groups, the KML offer to OGC, KML-based searches and other enterprise solutions, then you can see why some traditions may be feeling nervous. Add to that the general perception about Google’s speed-of-innovation- ‘when you use a Google product, Google would innovate faster than the traditional SIS companies to support it’.

As I see it, that growing perception should be the biggest reason for the traditional industry’s nervousness.

–π

Related:
• Application: PortlandMaps
• Ogle Earth
• More

Here are four “events” from 2006 that I consider as evolutionary milestones of our burgeoning SIS industry:

• E2- ESRI finally catches up to GE. Almost
• Virtual Earth- Microsoft adds the ability to add and save shapes, and browser-based GE-esque 3D views
• GE- Google gulps SketchUp and consolidates GE’s usergroups by jumping head-first in collaborations
• Spatial Web Services- Be it ESRI’s ArcWeb Services with GlobeXplorer, or DM Solutions Group‘s MapSherpa Spatial Web Services and Mapgears, spatial web services gain a firmer footing at the enterprise level.

–π

Former senator Stafford of Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, familiar to anyone requesting, managing and mapping disaster grants under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program [HMGP] AKA Buyout Program, dies at 93.

–π

Related:
• Pre-Disaster Mitigation [PDM] Grant Program
• More

Following on the heels of E2, Google recently consolidated GE’s usergroups through some interesting collaborations with Wikipedia and Panoramio. These follow earlier deals with UNEP, NASA, USGS, ESA, Discovery, National Geographic et al.

These steps slowly push one other software- ESRI’s ArcGlobe, part of the ArcGIS 3D Analyst extension, further away from all that is important. ArcGlobe was useful in that it eventually led to E2, but ESRI had much bigger plans- it was promoted to become widely adopted for 3D data mapping and visualization.

Then Google came along, and ArcGlobe and all the shabby flyby animations and painstaking multipatches in ArcScene, also part of 3D Analyst, suddenly became embarrassing.

That leads me to my prediction of the week: all this will force ESRI to either lower the inflation-adjusted cost of its pricey 3D Analyst- currently marked at $2500, or absorb some of it into E2 or the desktop. Note that Google Earth Pro today costs a fraction at $400.

Fortius One‘s GeoIQ: A free simple Spatial Analyst?

–π

Related:
• ArcGIS Extensions
• More via Google Earth Links
• More

“FEMA Told to Resume Storm Aid”

Related:
• Blogs about this article
• “Katrina Victims in Limbo as FEMA Appeals Aid Order”
• Government Accountability Office [GAO] Report: Abstract- Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Disaster Relief. Continued Findings of Fraud, Waste and Abuse. GAO-07-252T. December 6, 2006
• Video: Reactions from the Grassroots- Effects of Flood Map Modernization [Map Mod] Program’s Digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps [DFIRMs] on National Flood Insurance Program’s [NFIP's] Ordinance Updates
• More

After months of wild speculations and foot-dragging, ESRI finally released ArcGIS Explorer- twice as big as Google Earth and a shade shy. Here is why:

Google Earth [googleearth.exe]
+ Searches better
- Does not offer native support for popular spatial data types

ESRI ArcGIS Explorer [E2.exe]
+ Offers native support for popular spatial data types
- Clunkier navigation and interface

• Both show comparable spatial data displays and memory usages. I am pleasantly surprised by how consenting NASA of World Wind fame, has been to all such uses, given the murky legal waters of the future when others start using this precedent to demand equal treatment.

ESRI ArcGIS Explorer: Adding content

Being true to the misplaced compulsions of most commercial companies, ESRI only lets you export your layers in E2′s markup language [*.nmf]. However, to piggy-back on the growing user community around GE and because ESRI has no current alternative to Google SketchUp, E2 allows you to import *.kml and *.kmz files. GE, on the other hand, also imports *.gpz and *.loc GPS files in its commerical flavor.

E2 can also create geoprocessing tasks, and styles and symbologies; export identification results; display attribute tables.

So what is the bottom-line: GE is better suited for consumers of spatial data, while E2 is targeted more at the creators and editors. And how close does E2 come to following the “if you are late, you better be better” mantra? Not quite, but then again, it is just a beta.

Now the waiting game begins for arguably the most innovative internet company in recent times, notwithstanding the acquired nature of GE and SketchUp- Google, to hit back after losing ground to Yahoo Maps- better driving directions planning, and Microsoft Virtual Earth- ability to add and save shapes, and browser-based GE-esque 3D and street level views.

–π

PS:
•
I wonder how the good folks at Arc2Earth and Shape2Earth would maintain their rates of innovation in response?

Related:
• ArcGIS Explorer Overview Podcast
• ArcGIS Online Services
• Server Object Manager [SOM] Setup
• Sample *.nmf containing 1 point feature derived from feature class [e2.shp] in GCS_North_American_1983 coordinate system
• TerrainView
• Follow Up [4]: Graphic Software
• Follow Up [2]: Map Viewer and Google

As the Secretary/Treasurer of the Technology Division of APA, I recently had the opportunity to interview Ric Stephens, our Immediate Past Editor:

π: So what got you into planning and publishing/editing?
Ric: I worked as a cartographer/German language translator for USAID during college and was hired by a civil engineering firm to prepare maps during summer break.

After school, the firm offered me a job in their planning department and …voila! There are still some plat maps on file from the late 70s with elaborate compass roses for north arrows. I began helping with a local APA section newsletter out of curiosity. A quarter of a century and thousands of newsletters later, I am still interested in desktop publishing.

InfoTEXT began as a paste-up effort ten years ago and is now ‘completely digital’. I’m still helping with two APA newsletters, ‘Private Practice Perspectives’ and ‘Mountains and Shores’. I’ve also published two books: ‘Plannerese Dictionary’ and ‘International Planning Organizations’ and am working on a third, ‘Dark and Stormy Planning Prose’.

π: Any favorite planning story that you edited?
Ric: There are three unique stories-

Ric Stephens at the Street of Dreams

For several years, I organized the ‘Dark and Stormy Planning Prose Contest’ to collect and share humorous planning stories. One of my favorites is the 2002 Winner, ‘Zone Noir’ by Michael Young who merged the feel of a 50s detective novel with current planning issues. It’s hard to imagine, but Dr. Seuss wrote a humorous poem on regulating signage for the city of La Jolla, California!

Lastly, while living in California, I received ‘The Story of Sexton Mountain Meadows‘. It revolves around the continuous removal of the ‘t’ from ‘Sexton’. I now live a few miles from this very street in Beaverton, Oregon and am a Planning Commissioner for the City. I found the listed author, but he denies writing the story and referred me to a blog author who remembers the incident, but also denies writing the story. The mystery continues to this day.

I am still collecting stories and if you have a ‘hearing from hell’, ‘purple planning prose’ or other contributions, please email a copy to ric@alphacommunity.com.

π: Any thoughts on the New Media?
Ric: We are far from reaching a paperless office environment, but we are clearly moving towards digital information and communication technologies.

For planning in particular, it is an exciting time to expand GIS with numerous databases including satellite imagery. The REAL CORP 007 event will showcase some of these outstanding IT innovations. Our firm, Alpha Community Development, is developing software to link our projects with these databases. We are also developing project-specific websites and looking for new ways to provide online project management.

π: Any thoughts on increasing readership for the Technology Division?
Ric: InfoTEXT contributors have provided outstanding content that is very relevant to practicing planners, agency officials, educators and students. I believe the missing element is visibility.

It would also be helpful for APA to actively promote the Divisions, and for the Divisions to have programs to promote the newsletters to planning departments, governmental agencies, universities and other institutions.

π: And finally, any advice to the new editor[s] of the Technology Division?
Ric: It’s very difficult to find contributors for articles- I’m several weeks late in responding to this interview.

Having a large group of people to help gather material would be ideal. As the newsletter migrates to the web, the publication should probably adapt a monitor-friendly format and be rich in hyperlinks. I enjoyed editing InfoTEXT and am indebted to all who helped make this a memorable experience.

π: Thank you and good luck!
Ric: Thanks!

Related:
• Planning Publications Directory
• What’s New: Books and Documents

Here’s one of many reasons:

“… And then the strange people of Asia- the Tartars, who are such splendid horsemen; the Arabs, who travel over the deserts upon camels, and at night stop and tell stories to each other; and the Hindoos, who burn their widows and drown their children, thinking these things are pleasing to God; and the Chinese, who eat puppies and rats, and furnish all the world with tea; and the Turks, with their big turbans- what a wonderful thing it is that in one little book we may learn all about these queer [sic] people.

Perhaps I like geography the more for this reason: Uncle Ben has a great many pictures of different countries, with the people who live there; and when I am studying about a country I look over these pictures…”

[Goodrich, Samuel G [Peter Parley]. pp 45. Chapter V- Geography. The Adventures of Billy Bump on the Pacific Coast- A tale of ’49. 1793-1860. http://www.openlibrary.org/details/billybump00goodarch ]

–π

“Storm Surge Is Flood, Judge Says”

Related:
• Blogs about this article
• More

One of the pleasures of my current job is the annual opportunity to interact with professionals from around the world, thanks to the International Visitor Leadership Program. During these interactions, I share with the visiting delegations how regional government works in West Virginia.


Mayoral Delegation from the Republic of Tajikistan, 2006


Public and Private Sector Delegation from the Russian Federation, 2005

I always end my presentation on regional governance and SIS with a quick display of Google Earth when we try to locate the remote places the delegation members come from. As can be deduced from these pictures, the members stand in rapt attention of how one private enterprise gives back to the greater common good.

–π

According to TheStree.com, American Online recently bought Truveo. Note that this was predicted by Technology Review earlier.

–π

More crystal ball gazing:

• A tough year ahead for Sony ["fate deserved, although XBox would probably hurt more"]
• AJAX cleans up the Web ["impressive"]
• Cracks appear in Apple’s iTunes shiny armor ["would take more, but also refer to hymn"]
• Telco companies get ensnared in a domestic eavesdropping scandal ["a very tight-rope"]
• A video search company is acquired by a major player ["iFilm?"]
• Municipal Wi-Fi ["refer to South Korea and Japan"]
• Silicon Photonics [ ~ 'integrating light with silicon']
• Social Machines [ ~ 'social web']
• Search ["Google"!]
• Feeds ["RSS and podcasting and videos, need I say more?"]

–Technology Review [π]

Related:
• Gates on Vista
• Directions Magazine takes a swing

1. First there were WiFi hotspots, then hot zones ["even more so"]
2. Cell phones do everything ["right-on"]
3. Internet phone calls become more popular now that major Web companies are making it easier ["about time"]
4. The [MS] Office moves to the Web. Documents, e-mail and spreadsheets move off your desktop computer to the Web ["about time"]
5. Stem-cell research advances despite legal challenges ["right-on"]
6. Biotechs target flu vaccines ["right-on, same for other vaccines"]
7. Even small start-ups go global ["even more so"]
8. Video comes to the blog ["refer to 9"]
9. On-demand video everywhere ["refer to 2"]
10. Clean technologies ["even more so"]

–Top 10 Tech Trends for 2006 [π]

Yet more evidence of acceptance of Google Maps and through it, of spatial relevance, by established publications:

• A Guide to Commuting and Readers’ Stories
• How Much Is Gas In Jersey?

In a related development, Microsoft continues to play catch-up with Google by acquiring GeoTango. However, with its “3D Internet Visualization- a truly open and web services-oriented solution”, GeoTango may just be the partner Microsoft needs for a tango.

–π

Related:
• ESRI ArcWeb Services
• NASA World Wind

An intriguing article that may help those interested in best meeting project expectations in a team-setting. Here is my take on that- for rewards, it is often best if expectations are lower than the actual; for punishments, it is often best if expectations are higher than the actual; so that in both cases, the resulting momentum is kept pointing upward. The old adage of “under-promise over-deliver” follows along the same line.

–π

“… The probe, called the Stroop Test, presents words in block letters in the colors red, blue, green and yellow. The subject has to press a button identifying the color of the letters. The difficulty is that sometimes the word ‘Red’ is colored green. Or the word ‘Yellow’ is colored blue.

For people who are literate, reading is so deeply ingrained that it invariably takes them a little bit longer to override the automatic reading of a word like ‘Red’ and press a button that says green. This is called the Stroop effect.

Sixteen people, half highly hypnotizable and half resistant, went into Dr. Raz‘s lab after having been covertly tested for hypnotizability. The purpose of the study, they were told, was to investigate the effects of suggestion on cognitive performance. After each person underwent a hypnotic induction, Dr. Raz said:

‘Very soon you will be playing a computer game inside a brain scanner. Every time you hear my voice over the intercom, you will immediately realize that meaningless symbols are going to appear in the middle of the screen. They will feel like characters in a foreign language that you do not know, and you will not attempt to attribute any meaning to them.

This gibberish will be printed in one of four ink colors: red, blue, green or yellow. Although you will only attend to color, you will see all the scrambled signs crisply. Your job is to quickly and accurately depress the key that corresponds to the color shown. You can play this game effortlessly. As soon as the scanning noise stops, you will relax back to your regular reading self’…

In highly hypnotizables, when Dr. Raz’s instructions came over the intercom, the Stroop effect was obliterated, he said. The subjects saw English words as gibberish and named colors instantly. But for those who were resistant to hypnosis, the Stroop effect prevailed, rendering them significantly slower in naming the colors.

When the brain scans of the two groups were compared, a distinct pattern appeared. Among the hypnotizables, Dr. Raz said, the visual area of the brain that usually decodes written words did not become active. And a region in the front of the brain that usually detects conflict was similarly dampened.

Top-down processes overrode brain circuits devoted to reading and detecting conflict, Dr. Raz said, although he did not know exactly how that happened. Those results appeared in July in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…”

–Sandra Blakeslee

Related:
• NYT Article

“Building a Better Boom

… The Internet is exciting again, and once again folks are rushing in. In some categories – like search or social networking, for example – there are scores of start-ups vying for pretty much the same market, and it’s certain that, just like last time, most of them will fail.

But regardless of all this déjà vu, we are not in a bubble. Instead we are witnessing the Web’s second coming, and it’s even got a name- ‘Web 2.0′, although exactly what that moniker stands for is the topic of debate in the technology industry. For most it signifies a new way of starting and running companies – with less capital, more focus on the customer and a far more open business model when it comes to working with others. Archetypal Web 2.0 companies include Flickr- a photo sharing site; Bloglines- a blog reading service; and MySpace- a music and social networking site…

Start-ups are leveraging nearly a decade’s worth of work on technologies that are now not only proven, but also free, or very nearly so. Open-source software can now do nearly everything that Oracle, I.B.M. and Microsoft specialized in back in the 90′s. And the cost of computing and bandwidth? You can now lease a platform that can handle millions of customers for less than $500 a month. In the 90′s, such a platform would have run tens of thousands of dollars or more a month…

Or just ask Joe Kraus- a founder of the once high-flying Excite portal. Excite ran through millions in venture capital, then tens of millions of I.P.O. money, before its spectacular demise [Mr. Kraus had left before then]. His latest start-up- JotSpot, is built on open-source software, and cost less than $200,000 to begin.

Mr. Kraus exemplifies the second reason I believe we are not in a bubble: this time, the financiers aren’t driving. Instead, the entrepreneurs and geeks – often one and the same – are. The lessons of Web 1.0 are never far from their minds, and the desire to create something cool that might foster some good in the world is often equally paramount with the desire to make money. The culture of Web 2.0 is, in fact, decidedly missionary – from the communitarian ethos of Craigslist to Google‘s informal motto- ‘don’t be evil’.

Ah, yes, Google. That brings us to the third reason we are not in a bubble: vastly improved search technologies. Recall that the demise of Web 1.0 was predicated in large part on the collapse of the Internet advertising business – people were spending millions buying billboard-like ads that, it turns out, nobody was paying attention to…”

–John Battelle; Co-producer, Web 2.0 conference; Author, “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Reinvented Business and Transformed Our Culture”

Related:
• NYT Article
• Memorandum Excerpt, Alleged

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2005 9:56 PM
To: Executive Staff and Direct Reports; Distinguished Engineers
Subject: Internet Software Services

“… Ten years ago this December, I wrote a memo entitled The Internet Tidal Wave which described how the internet was going to forever change the landscape of computing… Five years ago we focused our strategy on .NET making a huge bet on XML and web services… We will build our strategies around internet services and we will provide a broad set of service APIs and use them in all of our key applications… This coming ‘services wave’ will be very disruptive… This next generation of the internet is being shaped by its ‘grassroots’ adoption and popularization model, and the cost-effective ‘seamless experiences’ delivered through the intentional fusion of services, software and sometimes hardware… I’ve attached a memo from Ray which I feel sure we will look back on as being as critical as The Internet Tidal Wave memo was when it came out…”

–Bill

PS:
•
From: Ray Ozzie
Date: October 28, 2005
To: Executive Staff and direct reports
Subject: The Internet Services Disruption

“… This isn’t the first time of such great change: we’ve needed to reflect upon our core strategy and direction just about every five years… In 1990, there was actually a question about whether the graphical-user-interface had merit… When we reflected upon our dreams just five years later in 1995, the impetus for our new center of gravity came from the then-nascent web… In 2000, in the waning days of the dot com bubble, we yet again reflected on our strategy and refined our direction… It is now 2005, and the environment has changed yet again- this time around services…

The Landscape:

… In the US, there are more than 100MM broadband users, 190MM mobile phone subscribers, and WiFi networks blanket the urban landscape… We should’ve been leaders with all our web properties in harnessing the potential of AJAX, following our pioneering work in OWA [Outlook Web Access]. We knew search would be important, but through Google’s focus they’ve gained a tremendously strong position. RSS is the internet’s answer to the notification scenarios we’ve discussed and worked on for some time, and is filling a role as ‘the UNIX pipe of the internet’ as people use it to connect data and systems in unanticipated ways. For all its tremendous innovation and its embracing of HTML and XML, Office is not yet the source of key web data formats- surely not to the level of PDF. While we’ve led with great capabilities in Messenger and Communicator, it was Skype, not us, who made VoIP broadly popular and created a new category. We have long understood the importance of mobile messaging scenarios and have made significant investment in device software, yet only now are we surpassing the Blackberry… The same is true of Apple, which has done an enviable job integrating hardware, software and services into a seamless experience with .Mac, iPod and iTunes, but seems less focused on enabling developers to build substantial products and businesses.

… Only a few years ago I’d have pointed to the Weblog and the Wiki as significant emerging trends; by now they’re mainstream and have moved into the enterprise. Flickr and others have done innovative work around community sharing and tagging based on simple data formats and metadata. GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting are very popular low-end solutions to remote PC access and online meetings… VoIP seems on the verge of exploding- not just in Skype, but also as indicated by things such as the Asterisk soft-PBX. Innovations abound from small developers- from RAD frameworks to lightweight project management services and solutions…

Key Tenets:

… 1. The power of the advertising-supported economic model… 2. The effectiveness of a new delivery and adoption model… 3. The demand for compelling, integrated user experiences that ‘just work’…

The Opportunities:

Seamless OS… Seamless Communications… Seamless Productivity… Seamless Entertainment… Seamless Marketplace… Seamless Solutions… Seamless IT…

Moving Forward:

… Platform Products and Services Division- a. Base v. Additive Experiences… b. Services Platform… c. Service/Server Synergy… d. Lightweight Development- The rapid growth of application assembly using things such as REST, JavaScript and PHP suggests that many developers gravitate toward very rapid, lightweight ways to create and compose solutions. We have always appreciated the need for lightweight development by power users in the form of products such as Access and SharePoint… e. Responsible Competition…

Business Division- a. Connected Office… Should PowerPoint directly ‘broadcast to the web’, or let the audience take notes and respond?… b. Telecom Transformation… c. Rapid Solutions- How can we utilize our extant products and our knowledge of the broad historical adoption of forms-based applications to jump-start an effort that could dramatically surpass offerings from Quickbase to Salesforce.com?…

Entertainment and Devices Division- a. Connected Entertainment… b. Grassroots Mobile Services… c. Device/Service Fusion…

What’s Different?:

… Complexity kills… Another simple tool I’ve used involves attracting developers to use common physical workspaces to naturally catalyze ad hoc face-time between those who need to coordinate, rather than relying solely upon meetings and streams of email and document reviews for such interaction…”

–Ray

• “What is Web 2.0″: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software

It’s time to move these to del.icio.us:

• http://labs.google.com/ Google’s showcase
• http://next.yahoo.com/ Yahoo’s showcase
• http://research.microsoft.com/ Microsoft Research

• http://geoportal.kgs.ku.edu/googlemaps/ks_gm.cfm SDE+GMap
• http://traffic.poly9.com/ Traffic, weather and news glues for Google Maps

• http://opensource.nokia.com/ Nokia in opensource WAP

• http://www.webstyleguide.com/ Web style guide
• http://jibbering.com/faq/ comp.lang.javascript FAQ

• http://robin.sourceforge.net/ Browser-based desktop
• http://www.writely.com/ Browser-based word processor
• http://www.ktdms.com/ Document management system
• http://www.openfiler.org/ Browser-based network storage software distribution
• http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ Tutorial and presentation creation software

• http://www.lexisnexis.com/sourcelists/ Legal and public records
• http://www.issues2000.org/ Candidates on issues

• http://senseable.mit.edu/grazrealtime/ Mobile Landscape
• http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/08/tech/main927858.shtml “Could cell phones stop traffic?”

–π

This week Yahoo released its own take on online mapping. Its new service includes both Flash and AJAX APIs coupled with the ability to geocode.

If you think about it, sooner or later this had to happen- developers finally mustering the courage to embrace arty Macromedia Flash for distributing spatial information in a big way, like Geocentric. Actually, Google has been using Flash for a different distribution for quite some time now. But this release by Yahoo and its under-1000 dollar price-tag should help Flash emerge as a more visible player in the online mapping game.

Did the earlier musings portend this?

–π

Related:
• Yahoo Developer Network
• GeoCool! Tutorial
• Google Local, MSN Virtual Earth, Amazon A9, AOL MapQuest
• Application: Google Earth
• Discussion Forum

Related:
* Norman L. Kirkham

–π

“Rethinking Flood Insurance” [09/21/2005]: A timely but poorly-researched editorial in The Washington Post on the levee problems plaguing the National Flood Insurance Program.

As much as some may cringe to what they see as their tax-dollars being spent on bail out, the often-omitted fact remains that many New Orleanians were not required by the National Flood Insurance Program to purchase flood insurance because they enjoyed the protection of levees. So the federal government through the Corps of Engineers is at least partly responsible for creating a false sense of security by failing to repair levees in a timely manner. Bear in mind that the State of California has been asked by its court to shoulder responsibility for damages from failure of levees for which it is a sponsor. And if we did not cry “welfare state” when the federal government stepped in to ease out the airline industry after 2001, surely we can hush our moans now.

For more discussion points, refer to my earlier post or this white paper by the Association of State Floodplain Managers.

Related:
• Blogs about this editorial

–π

• WIKI
• Red Cross: Family Links Registry
• Lycos: Missing Persons Search
• Housing Information Gateway
• Shelter Map
• Information Map
• ESRI: Katrina Disaster Viewer
• Google Earth: Imagery
• NYT: Draining New Orleans Map
• Contact: Mitigation Planners and Substantial Damage Assessors

Expounding on my earlier post on this disaster management and planning, the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 had laid down clear requirements to plan for such events. And as I understand, the National Incident Management System laid down a similar framework with regards to response-coordination. But no amount of planning [State of Louisiana Hazard Mitigation Plan, State of Alabama Hazard Mitigation Plan] could prevent the failure from happening.

Having observed this breakdown in leadership and with some benefit of experience, I cannot stress enough how planners should restrict their impulse to pen a plan for every problem and how they should also focus on becoming “political actors” for one cannot write a plan that accounts for the failure in carrying out the plan itself.

–π

PS:
• On another note, many of the residents of New Orleans were not required by the National Flood Insurance Program to purchase flood insurance since they were protected by levees. Although non-discriminatory exceptions can always be made, this further complicates relief efforts as it currently limits the amount of disaster assistance available through certain agencies.

• Katrina
• Craigslist: Lost and Found- New Orleans LA, Baton Rouge LA

While on this disaster as one watches events unfold, it becomes clear that an infuriating management style marked by a “hands-off” approach that is prone to making excuses for ignored red flags can only get rewarded for ideological and rhetorical reasons rather than merit. And such a management style finds a willing bed-partner in a “let’s-eat-at-steakhouse-since-the-proceeds-go-towards-relief-efforts” empathy-response. In itself, such a response cannot be right all the time for it is primarily detached and “feel good”.

–π

On the eve of the launch of Virtual Earth, as Microsoft plays catch-up with Google‘s high-rate of innovation, here’s a transcript of some tete-a-tete:

[Sometime before 2000]
Bill Gates: Now that we are in the email business with Hotmail, we need to think of ways to fatten the bottom-line.
Steve Ballmer: Online marketing is the way to go Bill! Let’s just create ahem ahem unnecessary page-views when the user logs-in and put as many graphic-intensive ads on each one of them as possible.
Bill Gates: …something like that SNL skit about advertisements on MSNBC flooding the screen and blocking the anchor’s face?!
Steve Ballmer: …hehehe, something like that! Hey, it’s a free service- the user might as well pay for it through ad views. You’ve got to market these goodies aggressively!
Bill Gates: Yeah, the bottom-line is the key!

[Sometime before 2004]
Larry Page: We need to get into the email business with a Google mail. The current services aren’t up to par.
Sergey Brin: Yeah, but given our relative size we must offer something that is significantly superior to what the market currently offers to make any reasonable in-roads.
Larry Page: OK, let’s start with a clean slate- how do we offer a better email service?
Sergey Brin: It’s all about the user-experience. At the end, if the user likes it, she will come back for more.
Larry Page: So we don’t flood the page with pop-ups and such junk??
Sergey Brin: That’s right! Advertisements should be useful but as unobtrusive as possible.
Larry Page: Agreed, the user-experience is the key!

Related:
• Follow Up [2]: Map Viewer and Google

–π

PS:
• Rudyard Kipling

Now that I would update the DFIRM WIKI more frequently, I added a lock this past weekend to prevent simultaneous editing. And after being hit by abuse through automated comments, basic verification was also added while still allowing relatively hassle-free editing.

At some point, I may submit these improvements back to TipiWiki.

–π

The definition of GIS has evolved from ‘Geographic Information System’ to ‘Geospatial Information System’. It is time that it takes the next logical step to ‘Spatial Information System’. My earlier post wrestled, well not quiet, for a truer understanding of “GIS” given the advent of non-traditional spatial software. Since then I have been convinced that spatial information is better understood by snapping links that tie, and thus confine, it to geography.

Inside Space- An Unventured “GIS” Frontier: Magnetic Resonance Image [MRI] of my right-wrist

It is therefore disappointing that professionals continue to look at spatial information from behind the narrow screens of geography. Hopefully, with the entry of non-traditional market forces, this viewpoint will be shaken to the point of abandonment. A truer appreciation of spatial information will require a visual mindset where all spatial components to information are addressed.

–π

PS:
•
Front, Side and Top View: Construct two valid isometric projections

•

“As we become aware of the ethical implications of design, not only with respect to buildings, but in every aspect of human endeavour, they reflect changes in the historical concept of who or what has rights. When you study the history of rights, you begin with the Magna Carta which was about the rights of white, English, noble males. With the Declaration of Independence, rights were expanded to all landowning white males. Nearly a century later, we moved to the emancipation of slaves and during the beginnings of this century, to suffrage, giving the right to women to vote. Then the pace picks up with the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and then in 1973, the Endangered Species Act. For the first time, the right of other species and organisms to exist was recognised. We have essentially “declared” that Homo Sapiens are part of the web of life. Thus, if Thomas Jefferson were with us today, he would be calling for a Declaration of Interdependence which recognises this. This Declaration of Interdependence comes hard on the heels of realising that the world has become vastly complex, both in its workings and in our ability to perceive and comprehend those complexities. In this complicated world, prior modes of domination have essentially lost their ability to maintain control. The sovereign, whether in the form of a king or nation, no longer seems to reign”.

–William McDonough [WIKI]; Architect, William McDonough Architects; Centennial Sermon On the 100th Anniversary of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City

Related:
• 2004 National Design Awards: Environment Design Finalists
• Virginia Association for Mapping and Land Information Systems 2001 Annual Scholarship: Growth Study for Charlottesville VA for 2000-2030- Analysis and Possible Energy-Conscious Applications

• Website
• Post
• Hacks
• Follow Up [1]: Map Viewer and Google

–π

• dodgeball: Mobile Social Software
• Place Lab: Privacy Observant Location System
• !Cellphedia: Ubiquitous Social Encyclopedia
• Wireless Application Protocol
• Technology Provider for WV E911 Selected

–π

The primary objective of this blog is to mull over industry trends and abstract ideas relevant to the profession, not to regurgitate “operational details”. However, this post may bend that rule.

For those not in the know, a webpage does a lot of behind-the-scene work before it spits-out text on the screen. Here’s a summary of what this webpage does:

• The very first thing it does is send out a header depending on the client-browser. This is recommended when, say, different protocols are used to access the webpage. Note that this step gets initiated only after the Apache Webserver has finished running through its configuration directives. The webpage then marks the start-time for script download and execution. Measuring script download and execution time helps in diagnostics. The webpage also goes down a list of red-flags checking for browser compatibility and permission-settings. Later, it establishes connections with MySQL databases and fetches or defines client and script variables.

• Only then does the layout begin to emerge with some CSS, XHTML and plenty of include files. Care is taken to separate presentation which has been kept to a minimum given the volunteer nature of the website, from content and function, and make it easier to reuse data. To display news feeds, as is the case here, the webpage fetches the feed URL and slices its content into nodes. Sometimes feed URLs do not provide information as desired. For example, this feed URL does not provide a direct hyperlink to its article. Sometimes a feed URL includes an image-path in its description that needs to be dropped. For such cases, scripting languages like PHP offer a wide-array of string-manipulation functions. It is advisable to ensure that the webpage continues to get parsed in a timely manner even if the fetching fails.

• The webpage then wraps-up logging of relevant variables and closes open database connections. If script execution has generated any errors, a summary gets emailed to the administrator. The webpage then spits-out the footer. Its decay into dead text is finally complete [...well, unless you use AJAX to monitor client-behavior, as is the case here].

• A quick note on the website maintenance: Given its volunteer nature, it is maintained in small nudges i.e. “minor increments made frequently”, with the emphasis being on function over form.

Related:
• World Wide Web Consortium
• Web Style Guide
• Interesting Website
  º http://www.nyas.org/
  º http://news.google.com/
  º http://www.cancer.gov/
  º http://www.nobodyhere.com/
• Website Theme: A lot of experiences came together to start and shape the evolving theme of this website- During the 2002 Colorado/Arizona wildfire disaster, I received an email from the FGDC list serve requesting volunteers for assistance; Then at the 2003 ESRI Annual Conference, I learnt how volunteering is not easy- how the volunteer is not always in control; The omnipresence of mature opensource software not getting enough attention from the general public was a cause for concern; Also, a need was felt to enhance the functionality of my cellphone by connecting it with custom online applications; Additionally, there was a personal need to digest vast amounts of professional information from anywhere.

–π

Two companies whose product GUI I enjoy interfacing with- Adobe and Macromedia, announced their merger earlier this month.

Both their flagship products have become industry-standards in exchanging documents and creating experience-rich applications across platforms. The largely unused spatial potential within Macromedia Flash combined with the increasingly widespread use of Adobe PDF/SVG maps and the sprouting of some exciting derivatives like geoPDF, pstoedit and GSview, make this merger important to how spatial information is exchanged in the near future.

–π

A quick note on the happenings at Google: Yesterday, Google added satellite imagery to its mapping. For speedy displays, 256px*256px JPEG image-tiles scanned at different zoom-levels and each weighing around 30 KB, coupled with some nifty AJAX come handy.

Such a drag-and-drool tiling paradigm, although practised for some time now by website developers to load large images, when applied to internet mapping represents a refreshing out-of-the-box approach. The GET HTTP request method uses a cryptic naming convention to fetch these image-tiles from a preexisting pallette, like so:

http://kh.google.com/kh?v=1&t=TILE…

WHERE in one instance, TILE zooms closer from [tqtsqr] to [tqtsqrtssssrq] and still closer to [tqtsqrtssssrtrttr].

Unlike for its regular mapping where Google predictably uses GIF image-tiles each sized at 128px*128px, for its satellite imagery, Google’s preference for JPEG over another competitive format PNG, is worthy of a second glance: As is common knowledge, JPEG supports millions of colors, but is infamous for its lossy compression. PNG on the other hand, is lossless while supporting millions of colors. However, PNG is currently not supported by all browsers and depending on compression settings, may end-up weighing more.

–π

It is good to know that some professionals concur with the views expressed in my earlier post on the potential for graphic software, like Macromedia Flash. One comment links to an impressive demonstration of this largely untapped potential.

–π

My pick of technology-related headlines from The New York Times Page One 1851-2002:

•
[10/18/1907] Signalizing the opening of the Marconi Service to the public, and conveying a message of congratulation from Privy Councillor Baron Avebury, formerly Sir John Lubbock
•
[01/08/1927] Opening new radiophone service; First private call to The New York Times
•
[10/05/1957] The Naval Research Laboratory announced early today that it had recorded four crossings of the Soviet earth satellite over the United States
•
[07/21/1969] Astronauts land on plain; Collect rocks; Plant flag

Since the most important technological developments in the time period covered occured in the western world, and since The New York Times can safely be assumed to best mirror these developments, notwithstanding the selective sample included in Page One, I consider these to be our most important technology-related headlines from 1851 to 2002. Although, sometimes technological change can seep in without so much as a loud knock or one bold headline [think Internet].

For those wondering about a headline that may seem conspicuous by its absence, say one that heralds the omnipresent automobile, keep in mind the time period covered. It is widely accepted that the automobile, for example, was invented by France’s Nicolas Cugnot between 1725-1804.

• LoC: Auto
• Wikipedia: Automobile
• Encyclopedia: Automobile
• Encarta: Automobile
• About: Automobile History
• Mercedes-Benz: History

–π

PS:
• From the same source, my pick of highly arguable socio-political turning points important to a broad American psyche:

[12/08/1941] Japan wars on US and Britain
[08/07/1945] First atomic bomb dropped on Japan
[05/18/1954] High Court bans school segregation
[04/30/1975] Minh surrenders, Vietcong in Saigon
[09/12/2001] US attacked

Nutshell: “‘Substituting tax-increase with state lottery’ [Policy - Director/Manager/Planner] as a means to generate additional revenue. Here, it becomes important to first find the ‘percentage of non-gamblers/gamblers/disinterested in the effected constituency’ [Information - Spatial Analyst] because ‘opposition to such a move is more likely to come from non-gamblers’ [Theory - Planner]“.

Nutshell adapted from [Skinner, B. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. 1971].

Such a policy-decision can then be supported by any of the many preferred values for its successful adoption: Religious Value- ‘Scriptures say lottery is a sin, but taxing is a bigger sin. Hence…’; Nerdy Value- ‘People who are weak in probability must pay for it. Hence…’; and so on.

By similarly lopsiding options and obfuscating issues, policy-makers often nudge the intellectually lethargic mass along a preferred course.

–π

PS:
• “There is no subjugation as perfect as the one which keeps the appearance of freedom, for in that way, it captures volition itself” [Rousseau, Jean-Jacques].
• Political Equilibrium

Below is a simple inquiry into how natural check could kick-in from a market stand-point to curtail a growing population. Although, a more interesting inquiry would have been “when” would it kick-in?

First, a sample population was divided into 3 basic groups- consumers, laborers and producers. Then the general effect of each on the other because of a growing market and the resulting downward pressure on price was ‘guessed at’.

WHERE
SOL = Standard of Life
c = Consumers
l = Labor
p = Producers
e = Environmental Resources
* = Note: A higher Standard of Life may not always result in a positive contribution to a growing population. It may however lead to a more socially-amicable world environment, thus causing higher SOLe.

Needless to say, this simple inquiry did not even touch the complexity of our market of more than 6 billion. But it did help throw some light on a topic I have been thinking about for some time now- Labor Optimization, which some would say is just another euphemism for Competitive Outsourcing.

–π

Related:
• International Organization for Migration (IOM)

• NOAA: Tsunami Research Program
• NOAA: Tsunami Animation
• USGS: Natural Hazards Support System
• USGS: Earthquake Hazards Program
• UN News Center: Tsunami
• UN Map: “Serving the Information Needs”
• Tsunami Homepage
• IASC: Humanitarian Early Warning Service
• Nature: Photographs
• BBC: Asia Quake Disaster
• ESRI Pressroom: Indian Ocean Disaster
• Penn State: World Data
• webGIS: Tsunami

–π

What is the most effective method to spread the digital wave, especially of the spatial kind, in rural communities and developing countries? The following links offer some fodder, although Korea left the company of developing nations some time ago. A lot of talk has centered around the potential of wireless to bridge the digital chasm between the Knows and the Know-nots in places lacking adequate infrastructure.

• “Broadband Korea”
• “Broadband Wonderland”
• “South Korea leads the way”

More musing on this topic with time.

Related:
• Political Equilibrium

–π

The discussion “So …How About That Election Coverage?” at Directions Magazine makes you think about graphic software, like Macromedia Flash, that cater to small-time spatial needs.

Such graphic software, minus the topology and advanced query benefits, function well as basic spatial tools and comfortably serve data over the web with a “fair” amount of interactivity.

Does this make your overpriced IMS overhyped and overblown too?

[my comment]
“Macromedia Flash fills this niche quite well as demonstrated [here]. And as the market seems to indicate, it does that [while] satisfying more customers than what an overly fancy GIS would. [This] reminds me of the MapQuest survey when polled customers had expressed great contentment with their level of map detail, whereas cartographers were red with indignation. Akin to using an atomic clock to serve your wake-up call- not needed!”
[/my comment]

So is the complexity in Geospatial, better still Spatial, Information System or SIS overblown too? Much of SIS requires common-sense logic arranged linearly. If a person can drive her car in rush-hour traffic as she deciphers vague directions off a schematic map while trying to make sense of rain-washed road signs and maintain a semblance of conversation with her passenger, and still manage to engage the kid in the back-seat [read “multi-linear tasking”]; she can achieve a sound understanding of spatial databases with little persistence, except for the eye-for-details that comes with practice.

My point: SIS is non-complex and not at the cutting-edge of technological change, and there is ample room for non-traditional spatial software!

–π

PS:
• This rise of non-traditional spatial software challenges the accepted definition of SIS. If you were to follow the modernist’s approach to design where in the end you remove everything you can without taking away from the essence of your creation and apply it to defining a SIS, you wonder what such a conceptual SIS would be in its simplest stark-naked Spartan form?

As the year-end inches closer, let us look at one significant industry trend:
A potential increase in location-based wireless services ["Where are my kids ...no really, WHERE are my kids ...and give me that in Lat/Long"]? This could be brought about by a spread of handy ‘location-aware’ productivity tools, such as a GPS-enabled internet-ready Blackberry phone that also functions as a TV. Such tools could tell you when your family members or selected friends move into your vicinity. Based on industry reports, this might be old news in parts of Japan.

• SmartPhlow: Real-time Traffic Monitoring
• Real-time Mobile Mapping

Related:
• Social Software

The earliest benefit could be in emergency-response which just might be the area most likely to get heavy government funding. Ex: Volunteer Fire Departments being able to access critical layout and hydrant information that they need for machine placement and egress route planning as they respond to a distress call. Or, first-responders being able to retrieve medical history on-the-go. Check out an earlier National Incident Management System memo. Also, take a look at the developments at the WV Statewide Addressing and Mapping Board which plans to implement a statewide Spatial Information System [SIS] using aerial photography etc. The project has been funded in part by Verizon. Its objective is to help emergency-response by integrating mapping with E911, postal and public utility services, and telephone companies. This project was initially started to provide city-style addresses for rural areas so that all areas receive the same level of emergency services. With this broadening of its scope, it could serve as a guide for other states.

• ESRI Library: Challenges for GIS in Emergency Preparedness
and Response
• “Efficient Operations and Emergency Response”

Related:
• Google: SMS, Froogle, [http://www.google.com/wml]
• “U.S. launches a new Global Positioning Satellite”

–π

Interesting blog on Life With Alacrity about Social Software. For the ignoramus, crudely put Social Software or Groupware or Collaborative Software is software that facilitates group interaction. Often, there is “no overt coordination with the group functioning as an aggregation of interested individuals” rather than as a cohesive unit.

Two intriguing perspectives on the internet from the blog:
• “By ‘augmenting human intellect’ we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems” [Engelbart. Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. 1962].
• “To appreciate the importance the new computer-aided communication can have, one must consider the dynamics of ‘critical mass,’ as it applies to cooperation in creative endeavor. Take any problem worthy of the name, and you find only a few people who can contribute effectively to its solution. Those people must be brought into close intellectual partnership so that their ideas can come into contact with one another. But bring these people together physically in one place to form a team, and you have trouble, for the most creative people are often not the best team players, and there are not enough top positions in a single organization to keep them all happy. Let them go their separate ways, and each creates his own empire, large or small, and devotes more time to the role of emperor than to the role of problem solver” [Licklider. The Computer as a Communication Device. 1968].

• Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems
• Open Groupware
• “A group is its own worst enemy”
• Friend of a Friend
• Applications: E-voting, WAP, Blogging [...of course!]

Related:
• “Friendly foxes are cleverer”

–π

Interesting web-based map viewer- very snazzy. Now only if the download was quicker.

In related news, Google acquires Keyhole: a company promising a similar 3D interface. Right now, if you google an address, Google provides links to its 2D maps from Yahoo!Maps and MapQuest. Google also provides possible address matches and map links if you type in a name, akin to what Switchboard does.

It would be better if you could click and drag on a map to limit the spatial extent for your search. Although that would clutter the clean interface of Google Local, which by the way, does show maps.

Note to self- invest in Google.

PS:

• Google acquires gbrowser.com, and moves into video search. And here‘s the Google Blog.