Russ Savage: Digital Space

Sat, 19 Apr 2003 14:16:12 GMT

Oh, Nooo! What If GPS Fails?. John Petersen, the director of the Arlington Institute, helps the government think about the unthinkable. His latest inquiry: What if the U.S. Global Positioning System stopped working? By Andrew Zolli from Wired magazine. [Wired News]

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 11:23:16 GMT

Revealing Ohio's Buried Treasure. Centuries ago, earthen structures of great scientific and cultural significance were built in the Midwest, but farmland and parking lots replaced them in the modern age. A new digital project will create virtual renditions of these earthworks. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]

Mapping Physical Space & Digital Space Together in Our Personal Virtual Space

Wed, 05 Feb 2003 01:33:32 GMT

BuddySpace. Now that the notion of presence is beginning to infuse our electronic communication, an inevitable next question is: presence where? Marc Eisenstadt, chief scientist at the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University in the UK, wrote to show me a Jabber-based system called BuddySpace that locates presence indicators on maps. In the map shown here, Marc (top row, third photo from right) is present in the office, but idle. Martin Dzbor (bottom row, far right), KMI's "chief presence architect," is present and active. And that little dot on the US map, in New England, is me, present and active. ... [Jon's Radio]

Ah, the visual image giving us an anchor! A grounding that wires the digital into our mental image of space and sense of presence!

Tue, 21 Jan 2003 11:15:01 GMT

More on Grid Sensors. Dave Fletcher picks up on my riff about grid sensors or sensor nets and mentions a couple of sites that give real time data for seismic data (both for Utah---Dave's ever loyal). As far as I can see, neither of them make this data available in a way that something other than a human can use it. I'd really like to see more of these sites following correct principals for putting data [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

Tue, 21 Jan 2003 01:17:44 GMT

Grid Sensors. Last week, I wrote about using the temperature sensors installed in cars in a cooperative way to monitor weather conditions in over a large area. It strikes me as I've thought about it over the week end, that there are sensors everywhere and society would be better off if they were widely available. Let me give some examples. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

4 sides of Dimensions

Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:40:37 GMT

When Location Is Everything. The demand for personal locators is getting stronger. Companies have responded with an array of tracking devices. [New York Times: Technology]

Adventures in Driving, Via Web Map. Online mapping services have become a part of everyday life for millions of travelers, but getting from point A to point B is often frustrating. By Katie Hafner. [New York Times: Technology]

Keeping Tabs: A Two-Way Street. Location-sensing technologies can now be built into bracelets or backpacks and monitored on the Web. By Will Wade. [New York Times: Technology]

Pssst! This Note's for You
Grab your Palm, plug in your GPS, and head for the 3-D Internet
By Steven Johnson, DISCOVER Vol. 24 No. 2 (February 2003)

Wed, 15 Jan 2003 11:08:51 GMT

Open GIS Consortium. I've written about a GIS tool called Earthviewer. Jeff Harrison is giving a talk about a group called the Open GIS Consortium, or OGC. OGC is trying to do something similar, but more general and more extensible. They have markup languages for lots of things including geographic data, sensor data, mobile data collection devices, mapping data, and so on. They did a demo last month where they pulled in data from dozens of different data sources all over the world using web services for emergency response. During the project, they actually flew a plane over the area they were interested in and brought in the data live. Pretty cool. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

Sat, 04 Jan 2003 15:21:08 GMT

GeoURL. At randomchaos, Scott Reynan suggests that LibraryLookup and GeoURL ought to get together. I'm not sure that's a match made in heaven, though. The barriers that stand in the way of more comprehensive coverage of libraries include incomplete directories of OPACs and noncompliant OPACs (e.g., no URL-line access, or no ISBN lookup on the URL-line). Mapping libraries to GIS coordinates doesn't seem to address those problems. Like any website, of course, a library's homepage could announce its coordinates in this way, and that would be fun and useful. GeoURL is a fascinating service! Here is the GeoURL universe from my perspective. ... [Jon's Radio]

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 14:49:08 GMT

Satellite Surveys Retrace the Lewis & Clark Expedition
By Leonard David, Senior Space Writer, Space.com
posted: 07:00 am ET, 02 August 2001

WASHINGTON -- Satellites are taking sharp-eyed snapshots of a trail traveled nearly 200 years ago that opened up vast expanses of the unexplored American frontier to the fledging United States.

The heroic expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark from 1804-1806 took the team across approximately miles 3,700 (6,000 kilometers) of uncharted wilderness. Now, satellite imagery is mapping their pathway to help reveal the contrasting ecological, environmental and cultural changes that have occurred over the past two centuries.

Lewis & Clark Revisited: Satellite Archeology Digs Out The Past
By Leonard David, Senior Space Writer, Space.com
posted: 07:00 am ET 23 December 2002

Superb discussion of Government GIS uses

Wed, 18 Dec 2002 20:48:53 GMT

Keeping Score
What's the payback from investing in GIS?
By Bill Lloyd, Government Technology magazine, December 2002

Thu, 12 Dec 2002 17:22:43 GMT

Microsoft updates mapping Web service. MapPoint 3.0 features new geographical data for driving directions [InfoWorld: Top News]

Mon, 09 Dec 2002 13:08:56 GMT

"The Last Mile"
Developing Standards for the Deployment of Optical-Fiber Cable in Underground Utility Systems
by Jey K. Jeyapalan, Standardization News, August 2002

Your city office building may be only one kilometre or a mere 10 metres from the nearest end of laid optical-fiber cable, but it might as well be one thousand kilometres. The prospect of upheaval caused by the street excavations required to complete the optical-fiber circuit is too great for most city officials to tolerate. So in many municipalities, what[base ']s known in the industry as [base "]the last mile[per thou] remains unbridged.

The innovative process of either robotically laying optical-fiber cable in existing underground utility pipes or including it as part of the relining of these pipes offers a way to complete the circuit without destroying city streets. But standards are essential to assure telecom and utility companies that public safety will be preserved, and that[base ']s where a new ASTM technical committee comes in[~]as a place where telecom companies and others will pull together their expertise to serve the optical fiber in underground utilities industry.

BoingBoing has a picture A new standards-setting committee has formed to create best-practices for sewer-bots, semi-autonomous robot subterranean conduit-zippers that pull high-speed data lines around.

Sun, 08 Dec 2002 13:03:59 GMT

'The Map That Changed the World': Sedimental Journeys
extract from bookreview in the New York Times by Malcolm C. McKenna, August 5, 2001

William Smith (1769-1839) was a surveyor, a largely self-taught land drainer and a superintendent for a company building canals to barge coal cheaply to rapidly growing English cities as the Industrial Revolution took hold. His interests and occupation made it possible for him, almost single-handedly, to change the way the English-speaking population of the world looked at the pile of fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers that embalm much of Earth's history.

''Strata'' Smith was Britain's first great field stratigrapher and stratigraphic paleontologist. After more than 20 years of work and many reverses, he produced the first geological map of the British isles, an enormous and beautiful affair titled ''A Delineation of the Strata of England and Wales With Part of Scotland.'' It consisted of 15 sheets, published over several years but with a printed date of 1815, on a scale of five miles to the inch. When put together on a wall, the map is 8 1/2 feet high and 6 feet across. On it stretch long bands of color, depicting the surface outcrops and subsoil extension of a stack of 23 major sedimentary rock units, whose sequence Smith had determined by dint of ceaseless travel and at ruinous personal expense.

Despite its considerable price when it was finally published, Smith's colored map sold about 400 copies. That wide dissemination, and the fact that he compiled the information in it from original observations, changed the way his countrymen looked at their land and the mineral wealth that underpinned it. Smith added a third dimension to scenery, and he demonstrated the utility of fossils for opening up the history and development of the planet. For him the earth was transparent.

The Toughest Job In I.T.

Sat, 07 Dec 2002 19:12:14 GMT

Ben Standifer battles red tape, poverty, rickety equipment, heat, and flash floods to do his job
By Brian Gillooly, InformationWeek, Dec. 2, 2002

Imagine being in charge of IT for an entire nation, one in which four out of 10 families live below the poverty line and few make it far enough in school to qualify for IT jobs. Imagine dealing with a remote and rugged landscape that still denies many residents access to electricity, much less the Internet. And imagine doing your job on a slim budget while serving a region the size of Connecticut. Now heap on several layers of bureaucracy that turn the simplest tasks into odysseys. Welcome to the world of Ben Standifer, director of information and technology for the Tohono O'odham Nation, an American Indian reservation in south-central Arizona.

Fri, 06 Dec 2002 19:30:54 GMT

DigitalGovernmentOnline, December 2002

Just building more roads, airports, ports and railroads will not eliminate bottlenecks in the nation's freight transportation system, especially because construction projects will become more difficult and expensive in the future, says a new report from the National Academies' Transportation Research Board. Instead, government agencies should make better use of the existing transportation infrastructure and identify and fund new construction projects with the biggest payoffs. The federal government should develop a comprehensive national policy to promote better freight system management and spending decisions.