As you are hearing everywhere today (glad I could add to the noise ) Apple, Inc has announced some interesting location features to their iLife ‘09 applications. iPhoto adds geotag support (along with direct connection to flickr and Facebook) which can be used to create maps (in iPhoto) of picture locations and to create maps that you can include in the photobooks that you can create with iPhoto. This is a great application of fairly straightforward technologies. The picture locations interface really looks like it took a que from Magrathea (or whatever is it called now) and is a fairly GISy interface.

photos from gizmodo

In iMovie they added a great little effect for folks making travel videos. You can drag and drop a map with locations chosen and iMovie will apparently create and pan and zoom effect movie clip between the locations. I promise to use this sparingly when I get hold of the software

Core Location, geotagging and maps in iLife. These are great steps by a big company. I hope they are just the tip of the location iceberg for Apple.

We recently got an email from Kelly at Learn-gasm about the recent article from Alisa Miller on their choices for 100 Best Blogs for Earth Science Scholars, and we made the list! The 100 blogs on the list cover a wide range of content, from Geology, Meteorology, and Climate Science to Geography. My favorites are Magma Cum Laude, about volcanoes of course, and Geologic Froth, which is about geology AND geospatial technologies.

Learn-gasm is a new blog on the site BachelorsDegreeOnline, which is a resource site for online higher education and includes listings of schools that offer online programs, articles about financing, accreditation, and other topics.

A VerySpatial Podcast
Shownotes - Episode 181
January 4, 2009

Main Topic: Interview with Sergio Rey, Arizona State University

Click for the detailed shownotes

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In early December Matt Artz of ESRI began the new GIS and Science blog, which has been a fairly good source of information so far. Most recently Matt posted his conversation with David Maguire about his plans for the future and thoughts on his time at ESRI. The post, titled “A Farewell Chat with David Maguire, ESRI’s Chief Scientist « GIS and Science” is definitely worth a read. We wish Dr. Maguire the best as moves into a university atmosphere.

Thanks to GeoDawg and VectorOne for pointing this out.

Yes, I am finally back online after a week with limited internet and then a brief bout of cold/flu. I was going over this year’s predictions on all sorts of tech sights, and the list at Trendwatching.com had “Mapmania” as their number 5 consumer trend for the new year. Big surprise for most of us, I know, but I just had to post this quote from their entry-

Will 2009 be the year in which all things ‘contextual’, ‘app’, ‘local’, ‘urban’, ‘tags’, ‘lidar’, ‘smartphone’, ‘convenience’, ‘Cell ID’, ‘spontaneity’, ‘infolust’, and ‘GPS’ come together in one orgasmic celebration of map-based tracking, finding, knowing and connecting?

And I say Yes!, let the Mapmania begin!

Via Poynter Online

All the way back in October, during the URISA conference, I had the chance to talk to the folks from the WE Upjohn Center for the Study of Geographical Change at Western Michigan about their work in capturing data and their plans for sharing it.

Click to download mp3 version

Click to download aac version

This is an example for intro text books. The BBC is reporting on the use of 150 year old landscape paintings to study coastal change along parts of the English coast line. The article outlines the use of art that is similar to the use of paintings and photos to study glacial retreat in parts of Europe. Head over to the BBC article to read the details.

With the New Year almost upon us I thought it might be interesting to ask whether folks have resolutions this year that relate to Geography or geospatial technologies, and if so, what those resolutions are. Two of mine are 1) that I want to scratch out time to do more hands-on again with products I don’t use very often and 2) to finish up all of the analysis and writing for my dissertation. Yeah, I know these are pretty straight forward, but I like to aim low so that I can be happy that I actually succeeded in my resolutions at the end of the year.

So what are your resolutions? We may read a few on next week’s episode so leave a comment or send them to us directly.

A VerySpatial Podcast
Shownotes - Episode 180
December 28, 2008

Main Topic: 2008 in Review and a look to 2009

Click for the detailed shownotes

(more…)

Ho ho ho and all of that

Hopefully the Sue elf brought you all the podcasts you asked for this year! We here at VerySpatial plan to do a little updating over the next month as we head toward our 3.5 year anniversary in January. Keep an eye out for a new site design, a new contest, and for our live shows at the AAG, ESRI UC, and other locations throughout the year.

Happy Holidays one and all!