Entries by Nina KF

So. California Fires Mapped

Huge fires are raging in California, fanned by strong winds yesterday.  Looking for maps online… and there’s not too much available if you wanted to know which way to run.  Of course, you’re probably not sitting at your computer, but more likely talking to the competent guy with the orange hard hat who is patrolling […]

Map Shot

Snap Shots (formerly Snap.com) has launched a new feature with great potential.  They warn that it is still “beta”, and needs to be improved, whatever that means.  (I’ll try it in the next post.)  SnapShots is the free website “plug-in” which puts the little balloon next to all the outside links on my webpage, and if you […]

How Google Maps

There’s a nice article in Technology Review, How Google Maps the World, with a simple explanation of the process from satellite to website.  Makes it sound so easy.  By the way, the company producing most of the high resolution satellite images is DigitalGlobe, and if you want to buy just one of the little snapshots, say a […]

EPA Chooses Microsoft Virtual Earth

James Fee wrote about the Sept 13 Microsoft announcement that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has licensed Microsoft Virtual Earth (for one year, with possible extension to two) for “mission critical” applications.  According to an article in Federal Computer Week (FCW), the partnership between Microsoft and ESRI contributed to the selection, as the EPA […]

Microsoft VE vs. Google Maps

To compare the coverage offered by these two Web online mapping tools, a programmer, Ryan Jonasson, in South Dakota has come up with a “side-by-side” viewer. While Microsoft’s VE is really a cross between Google Maps and Google Earth (right now), it lacks detailed “aerial” views outside of the US, UK and France.  (The default […]

Public Health in the Netherlands

This RIVM (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheit en Milieu)website includes a comprehensive Atlas of public health in the Netherlands.  For example, this map of smokers in the Netherlands, by region. While the average has dropped since 2001 from about 33% to 30%, there has been little change despite bans on smoking in many public places in 2004.  […]

EUC2007: Cellular Expert

An exhibitor at EUC 2007 in Stockholm was HNIT Baltic from Lithuania, makers of Cellular Expert, an ArcGIS extension for wireless telecommunications networks planning, optimisation and data management. A technical article in an ESRI’s Telecom Connections Winter ’07 (see page 4) publication describes research done by Ball State University, using Cellular Expert together with ArcGIS […]

EUC2007: SpaceNavigator

At ESRI EU conference in Stockholm,  3DConnection, a division of Logitech, demo-ed SpaceNavigator for use with ESRI’s ArcGlobe (but of course, it works with Google Earth, too).  Its a 3D mouse priced for consumers (59€ or $59, so guess where I’ll buy it.)  This has been available for a year, launched in Australia, so maybe I’m the […]

EUC2007: Diamond Touch

Now this is really, really cool. MERL (Mitsubshi Electric Research Labs) showed a tabletop ”touch-and-gesture-activated” screen, hooked up to an ordinary laptop and ordinary projector (suspended above). It is billed (in the online fact sheet) as “the world’s first multi-user touch technology”. Maybe gaming will be the killer app for this product, but disaster response […]

Heatloss Map

All Points Blog recently commented on an interactive map of Harringay (a London borough) showing on a house-by-house basis the amount of heat at the time of a “flyover” in the year 2000.  This public website has been somewhat controversial, but may point the way to a future application which could help identify soruces of heatloss.  A […]