As posted earlier, we're teaching a hands-on workshop on Google mashups during UW-Milwaukee's GIS Day. We'll also be working with grad students before and after the workshop. All of the materials used before, during, and after the workshop [lectures, powerpoints, demonstrations, etc.] will be available online.

Internet GIS: Google Maps + Mashups
15 November 2006 . 1:30 pm–4:00 pm
Lubar Hall N234A
After a brief introduction to mashups [web applications that combine content from more than one source], learn how to create your own Google Maps mashup. You'll be amazed at how fast and easy it is!
[some familiarity with HTML and JavaScript will be extremely helpful]
free [registration required]

We hope to see you there!

there was a cute [well, quirky anyway, and somewhat offensive to the geotagging community] and informative article on flickr and geotagging in today's new york times, "pictures, with map and pushpins included." the article defines geotagging, mentions different ways to do it, discusses EXIF headers, and even mentions a product the labs uses and endorses, robogeo. it also questions [and provides several different takes on] the rationale for geotagging.

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"put an interactive map on your website/blog in under a minute" via platial's new mapkit, or so we heard. okay. start: 0.00

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'Class DbConn - Line(461) Failed to execute query'…

end: 0.56. oops. we had the very easy registration form completed in under a minute and were ready to receive our mapkit, but received the above error on submit.

try again. start: 0.00

end: 0.20

wow!!! instant mashup in under a minute. the claim is true, but will it work for you? mapkit will work on any site that doesn't strip out javascript or force content through an html conversion. many of the blog services and products [such as wordpress, which the labs uses^*] do strip & convert blog posts.

ok. let's get advanced and try to customize our map. start: 0.00

end: 0.45. ok. a little disappointing, though, since the only customization permitted was changing the marker to one of six predefined styles. [it also appears that one can only have one mapkit per page.]

overall, mapkit is a very simple to use, fast, and useful application. and, at a cost of $0, one can't beat the price point.

^*to run javascript on a self-hosted wordpress blog, download and install the text control plugin. cut and paste your javascript into the body of the post [<script type="text/javascript" languge="javascript"></script>], and set the text control to format the post with "no formatting" and "no character encoding."

via the official Google Maps API Blog:

"As an important reminder, we plan to shut down API Version 1 in the first week of November. If you haven't upgraded yet, please visit our upgrade guide. The Incompatibilities section contains a helpful list of known incompatibilities between Version 1 and Version 2 of the API. We did not preserve many of the undocumented functions between Version 1 and 2 of the API. Please join the Maps API discussion group if you have any problems.

"The quickest way to upgrade is to update your Maps API <script> URL to refer to 'v=2' instead of 'v=1.' Since Version 2 preserves the old GMap interface, your site should theoretically continue to work without any further changes. However, in practice, you may have to spend some time debugging. Once we shut down Version 1 of the API, we will serve Version 2 to your site, even if you are still specifying 'v=1' in your <script> tag. For this reason, it is important that you test your site with 'v=2' before November's transition."

→ read the entire post

On 15 November 2006, during UW-Milwaukee's GIS Day, schiller labs will be teaching a hands-on workshop on Google mashups. Here's what you need to know:

Internet GIS: Google Maps + Mashups
15 November 2006 . 1:30 pm–4:00 pm
Lubar Hall N234A
After a brief introduction to mashups [web applications that combine content from more than one source], learn how to create your own Google Maps mashup. You'll be amazed at how fast and easy it is!
free [registration required]

we hope to see you there!

[[ Technorati Profile ]]

The My Community, Our Earth Partnership will award six [6] stipends of $1,500 each to support student participation in community-based projects using geographic methods or technologies for sustainable development. Successful projects will comprise a constellation of undergraduate or graduate students, faculty, and extension personnel in land grant and/or sea grant universities to jointly conduct a set of research/outreach activities during the period between November 2006 and April 2007. Awardees will be invited to present a paper in a featured illustrated paper session at the AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, April 17–21, 2007 [see http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/SF2007/ill_paper.cfm].

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BYTES of the BIG APPLE is a family of software, data, and geographic base map files for the City of New York. Here's what you can get for free:

• Administrative and Political Districts—MapInfo table and ArcView shapefile.
  
  • Political & Election Districts: New York State Assembly Districts, New York City Council Districts, U.S. Congressional Districts, New York State Senate Districts, New York City Election Districts and New York City Municipal Court Districts.
  • Borough & Community Districts: Borough Boundaries [with and without Water Area], and Community Districts.
  • School, Health, Fire & Police: School Districts, Instructional Regions, Police Precincts, Fire Companies, Health Areas, and Health Center Districts.
  • 2000 Census Blocks & Tracts: [with and without Water Area]
• DCPLION—A single line street base map representing the city’s streets and other linear geographic features such as shorelines, surface rail lines and boardwalks, along with feature names and address ranges for each addressable street segment. MapInfo tables or ArcView geodatabase.
• Selected Facilities and Program Sites—Data providing the location, type and capacity of public and private community facilities in New York City, including schools, parks, libraries, public safety, day care, foster care, special needs housing, health and mental health facilities and programs. ASCII delimited text files or Microsoft Access database.
• Tax Block Base Map Files—Geographic base files of tax blocks in New York City. MapInfo table, ArcView shapefile, or Adobe Illustrator file.

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission provides the following data as ESRI^tm shapefiles [.shp]:

• boundaries of the historic districts [polygons]
• locations of individual landmarks [points]
• locations of interior landmarks [points]
• boundaries of scenic landmarks [polygons]

These data can be downloaded here.

haven't used it yet, but we're intrigued:

GPS Visualizer is a free, easy-to-use online utility that creates maps and profiles from GPS data [tracks and waypoints], street addresses, or simple coordinates. Use it to see where you've been, plan where you're going, or visualize geographic data [business locations, scientific observations, events, customers, real estate, etc.].

GPS Visualizer can draw maps in SVG, JPEG/PNG, and Google Maps format, and can also create map overlays and KML files for Google Earth. For non-Google maps, JPEGs are easier to deal with, but SVGs are interactive—to view them, make sure you've installed Adobe's free SVG Viewer plug-in [see also "Adobe to Discontinue Adobe SVG Viewer"].

cost? free.

Mill Valley, CA: Boundary Solutions, Inc. is pleased to announce that it has been awarded U.S. Patent 7,092,957, entitled "Computerized National Online Parcel-level Map Data Portal" for multi jurisdictional search and display of digital parcel map boundaries. The patent relates back to the date of the original provisional patent application filed January 18, 2002.

Boundary Solutions, Inc.'s, National ParcelMap Data Portal, or NPDP, is a turnkey online geoinformation resource. We are pleased to obtain this patent award in recognition of the seminal work BSI has performed in this field explained the company's CEO and founder, Dennis H. Klein.

Under this patent, an entered street address, ZIP Code and/or Assessor Parcel ID Number returns a display of the pertinent parcel boundary feature highlighted to differentiate if from the surrounding parcel boundaries. A jurisdiction look up table is referenced to determine which jurisdiction(s) are accessed to retrieve and display the pertinent polygons. Among other features, spatial data is linked to non-graphic property tax records to act as a spatial database model. A metadata profile describing the pertinent data is displayed as needed. Queries can be applied to all parcels on the screen to highlight ones with matching spatial and/or attribute characteristics.

Customers purchasing digital parcel map data from Boundary Solutions receive a limited license to use this patented technology in conjunction with the acquired content.

→ National ParcelMap Data Portal
→ USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database