LInks: Twittervision, Microsoft funding sensor web research

Monday, April 09, 2007 (19:39 UTC)

Easter weekend reading of note:

Mikel Maron looks at the possibilities involved with georeferencing Twitter messages, and how it's being done in Twittervision, which maps the latest messages in real time. I can't wait until my GPS-enabled phone automatically adds geotags to my twitters. (Main impediment to Twittering here in Cairo: Every sms goes to and comes from a UK number, which costs a non-trivial sum for cute but mostly trivial information. And that's a pity, as Twitter couldn't be more perfect as a developing-world publishing tool &mdash because everybody has a mobile phone. One challenge to overcome: It is relatively easy for more censorious governments to ban twitter, as all twitters come from and go to one number, which can be nabbed at the exchanges.)

While in the UK, the debate is about whether tax-payer funded GIS data should be made free, in Santa Clara County, California, the debate is about whether the ~~terrorists~~ taxpayers should have access to the data at all. Because, you know, Santa Clara is really high on the terrorist target list, compared to all the other counties in the US.

3pointD flags the news that Microsoft is funding USD 1.1 million-worth of university research projects in sensor maps and mass GIS, and adds salient commentary.

Sometimes maps make the most eloquent political statement. Gregor J, Rothfuss uses MyMaps to map the top farm subsidy recipients from the USDA in the US and from CAP in the UK. Shameful.

Adobe's AEC product manager blogs Adobe Photoshop Extended's support for KMZ, and has a colleague explain more fully what this means.

All Points Blog: Is IBM the Next Major GIS Player? Most of the comments recommend that IBM go the open source route instead of buying ESRI, but one person mentions sagely that ESRI has lots of paying customers. Why not do both — and force James Fee to use Linux:-) (Missed it originally, via AECNews)

Easter weekend KML content of note:

A few weeks ago, The Map Room carried news of a new claim that the Portuguese in fact discovered Australia in 1522, a good quarter millenium before ~~Thomas~~ James Cook. Now somebody at Google Earth Hacks has taken the rather grainy image and overlaid it on Google Earth. It's a pretty good match, it has to be said.

Rotterdam is using the occasion of its annual marathon to turn a good chunk of its buildings into KMZ files, some of them textured, to provide context for the marathon route, which you now fly along in Google Earth. (Hat tip to Tom van de Wetering of www.dutchearth.com, "an upcoming Google Earth Consultancy Company")

Valery Hronusov does the obvious (with hindsight) with MyMaps, pointing a network link to the KML permalink for a Google MyMaps map and then having that refresh regularly, so that updates to the map are pushed automatically in all those who subscribe. Just be sure to send people the network link, then.