Friday, June 20, 2003

Geospatial Fire Monitoring GEOMAC is Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination of wildland fires.  GEOMAC is an online, GIS-enabled system that allows the user to drill down into wildland fire information geographically and then access associated data, such as estimated damages, costs, firefighting activity, related resources, etc.  Earlier today, Governor Leavitt mentioned that this week is Lighning Safety Awareness Week.  White Mountain Apache firefighter Rick Lupe died yesterday fighting a fire in Arizona.  Lightning has caused six wildfires just in the last few days in the SouthWest area. The National Incident Information Center produces the daily Morning Report which outlines daily and year-to-date information on fires throughout the country.  Meanwhile, recent satellite images show hundreds of fires burning out-of-control in southern Siberia. The Global Fire Monitoring Center helps coordinate international activities.   3:40:37 PM    comment []

Urban Planning and Transportation Weblogs A couple of interesting blogs for government planners: Transport Blog A weblog by Patrick Crozier that explores issues associated with public transportation systems, transportation policy, congestion management, even air and rail. City Comforts This excellent site by David Sucher covers topics such as architecture, urban planning, historic preservation, and land use. 11:21:49 AM    comment []

Agile Software Conference scheduled for next week The First Annual International Agile Software Conference will be held in Salt Lake City at the Hilton Hotel on June 25-28, 2003. As a sponsor, the Utah Technology Alliance is helping to promote this event. The conference will bring together world leaders in Agile Software Development and Project Management. They will discuss, teach and present the latest advancements in this productive development methodology as well as offer presentations in four areas: research papers, experience reports, tutorials, and technical exchange topics and tutorials. Details about the conference can be found in the attached a press release and media advisory or by visiting the following web site: http://agiledevelopmentconference.com 10:59:12 AM    comment []

Reboot 6.0 Orrin Hatch is taking a lot of heat these days after pronouncing his support for "legal" computer sabotage.  On BoingBoing, we hear that Senator Hatch's website links to a porn site.  The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Senator's site is also making illegal use of copyrighted software.  Others have referred to the Senator as a vigilante.  I agree with Bart Barker that we should not "implement solutions that are worse than the problem."  Senator Hatch is now seeking more moderate remedies. Also in this morning's Tribune, Rolly and Wells report on how our Division of Information Technology Services screened out an Administrative Rules email containing some "offensive words."  Having reviewed logs of thousands of filtered emails, I am really glad that ITS filters this stuff. By the way, I would suggest keeping an eye on John Gotze's live reports from Reboot 6.0.  The conference includes some real blogging and open source heavyweights like Dan Gillmor, Meg Hourihan, Cory Doctorow, Ben Hammersley, Tim O'Reilly and Marc Canter.  Whoever set up the conference agenda did a great job. 8:55:14 AM    comment []

Utah.gov Launch! The new Utah.gov portal launched last night after close of business.  We already have this feedback from Brian Sweeting on the portal and some associated RSS feeds.  The news on the front page is actually generated from this feed.  During the first thirteen hours, we only had eighteen responses to the poll question, but these were all during the non-business, overnight time frame and this initial poll is not on a controversial topic.  We are still working out some issues on 24 hr. live help and it can only get better, especially as we begin adding more agencies to the operator network. 7:41:21 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.