ASA-CSSA-SSSA Day 2

Posted on by Posted in Events, General

Ummm…yeah. So today, I skipped the morning, but sat in on a session in the afternoon on erosion and runoff (under the soil physics section – S01). I have only recorded on interview so far and it doesn’t sound great. We were standing in front of a poster (use of handheld hyperspectral sensors in recording soils information in a profile) in a room that was quite busy, 2 people talking right next to us, and, most importantly, recorded with the iPod. I will try to clean it up, but I will try to corner people in quieter areas. Another poster presenter I wanted interview was presenting on soil in subacqueous landscape, but I didn’t want to seem like a stalker.

Today’s posters were a little more interesting to me, plenty of geography, especially geostats, most of which were out of Florida, Sabine Grunwald’s lab I would guess since she was second author on a few. Tomorrow there is a session on geospatial tech and soils that will be attending. Til then.

GeographyZone

Posted on by Posted in Education

Yesterday MSNBC.com featured a profile of GeographyZone, a website started by Roger Andreson that features puzzles, games and other educational resources to promote geography awareness. Although the site is not new, it’s nice to see geography education in the spotlight on a prominent news site.

EOGEO

Posted on by Posted in General, GeographyBlogs

Earth Observation and Geospatial Technology for Civil Society…EOGEO is somewhat related to our topic of community mapping this week as their mission is to “provide rapid access to geospatial data content, tools, and services for NGOs, aid agencies, charities, and individuals via the internet and electronic media.” The projects the nonprofit is working on include:

  • FreeGIS Book
  • Landsat Access
  • GeoRSS Wiki

    • These are just some of the web based projects included on the site. To find out more about the EOGEO efforts or how you can become involved or support EOGEO visit eogeo.org.

    ASA-CSSA-SSSA Day 1

    Posted on by Posted in Events

    I am skipping out on sessions right now, but I will head back in a few. Salt Lake City is still a nice town (I was here in March for the NRCS cultural resource specialists meeting). The conference seems a little smaller than I expected since it is three groups at one conference. I am use to the 4000 or more people wandering around at the Society for American Archaeology and Association of American Geographers conferences.

    Also, there are a lot of posters, in fact it seems to be a 1:1 ratio between presenters and posters (I might do the math later if I get bored enough).

    Online mapping from the data gatherers’ perspective

    Posted on by Posted in WebMapping

    I just finished an article on CNET.com by Elinor Mills that poses the all-important question – why are the route directions and locations often inaccurate. She posed this question to a TeleAtlas (a major data provider) executive, Michael Mitsock, and received this response – “It could be that the map is out of synch with reality.” I think I will have to try that the next time someone notes an error on one of my maps.

    But seriously, it’s an interesting perspective from the viewpoint of one of the leading players in the market of providing geographic data for online mapping applications.

    Check out the article here

    Goin’ Mobile!

    Posted on by Posted in General

    Google local is going mobile! You can now download google maps to your cellphone, if you’ve got the right service. And phone. And location. And are willing to shell the clams for it. A rather hefty premium to step onto the location based service monorail to the future, if you ask me. But it’s still pretty cool :)