Marylaine Block's always informative “Neat New Stuff” [Neat New Stuff I Found This Week at http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html] tipped us to the DataWeb site and its interesting tool, the Data Feret (or “dataferet”).

“TheDataWeb is a network of online data libraries that the DataFerrett application accesses the data through. Data topics include, census data, economic data, health data, income and unemployment data, population data, labor data, cancer data, crime and transportation data, family dynamics, vital statistics data, . . . As a user, you have an easy access to all these kinds of data. As a participant in TheDataWeb, you can publish your data to TheDataWeb and, in turn, benefit as a provider to the consumer of data.”

What is the DataFerrett?
DataFerrett is a unique data mining and extraction tool. DataFerrett allows you to select a databasket full of variables and then recode those variables as you need. You can then develop and customize tables. Selecting your results in your table you can create a chart or graph for a visual presentation into an html page. Save your data in the databasket and save your table for continued reuse. DataFerrett helps you locate and retrieve the data you need across the Internet to your desktop or system, regardless of where the data resides. DataFerrett:
* lets you receive data in the form in which you need it (whether it be extracted to an ascii, SAS, SPSS, Excel/Access file); or
* lets you move seamlessly between query, analysis, and visualization of data in one package;
* lets data providers share their data easier, and manage their own online data.
DataFerrett Desktop IconDataFerrett runs from the application icon installed on your desktop.

Check it out at http://www.thedataweb.org/

What have we here? Cooperation between two academic departments in the same university? Largely unheard of in most schools, but it has happened with positive results in Hong Kong.

23 Nov 2007
http://www.hku.edu/press/news_detail_5671.html

Power Distribution of the Four Political Camps, Seeing the 2007 District Council Election Results with Maps

The Department of Geography and the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) announced today (November 23) an analysis of results of the 2007 District Council Election of four political camps from the spatial perspective.

Dr. P.C. Lai, Associate Professor of the Department of Geography, and her team applied the Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyze results of the District Council Election. The GIS technology was used to explore the power re-distribution of the four political camps or affiliations – pro-government, pro-democrat, moderate (Liberal Party) and independent candidates – of the said election. [more]

Who says radio can't do stories on something as image-rich as maps. 

See this from NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17173936&ps=bb2 

'Cartographia' Showcases Maps as History, Art

 

See the maps in “Cartographia”

 

 

 

Blog of the Nation: Virga writes about being a “visual person”

 

   “A map is a dream, an idea, an action, an emblem of human endeavor. It instigates adventures… Careful perceptions of our surroundings have always been matters of life and death.”

From Vincent Virga's 'Cartographia'

 

Talk of the Nation, December 12, 2007 · Vincent Virga's Cartographia is a rare collection of 250 color maps and illustrations drawn from the world's largest cartographic collection at the Library of Congress. The collection spans everything from maps of ancient Mesopotamia, to maps of Columbus' discoveries, to contemporary satellite images and maps of the human genome.

Virga says that maps are like time machines — they reveal as much about the society that created them as they do about the geography of the places they describe.

Virga discusses the collection, which he culled from the Library of Congress' millions of maps and tens of thousands of atlases.

“Maps always have and always will help us communicate our physical, mental, and spiritual journeys,” Virga says.

A good tip comes our way from the Librarians' Internet Index, which is something of a venerable digital resource these days.  Social Explorer has put a good front end on census data and generates dynamic maps.  There is a fair amount of free material, but a subscription fee is necessary to slice and dice data to meet your specific needs.  Still, the price isn't too high for what you get if you're in an organization kicking out a lot of maps.  (Wow, where was this tool when, 40+ years ago, we were trying to figure out the best location for Volkswagen dealerships?)

Social Explorer








This site “provides easy access to demographic information about the United States, from 1940 to 2000,” by featuring “thousands of maps and hundreds of reports with thousands of variables.” Includes interactive census maps (showing population, age, race, occupation, and other factors) and related reports. Additional features are available for a fee.

URL: http://socialexplorer.com/

LII Item: http://lii.org/cs/lii/view/item/25076

The 9th Crime Mapping Research Conference has issued its Call for Papers for the 2008 conference. The deadline is January 18, 2008. Feel free to pass the information along to your colleagues.
All of the important information is on NIJ's Crime Mapping website– http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/
Call for Presentations– http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/presentations_neworleans.pdf
Call for Workshops– http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/maps/workshops_neworleans.pdf

And even if you're not inclined to give a presentation, it's a great conference.

Deep Web Research 2008

http://www.llrx.com/features/deepweb2008.htm

By Marcus P. Zillman, Published on November 24, 2007

Bots, Blogs and News Aggregators is a keynote presentation that I have been delivering over the last several years, and much of my information comes from the extensive research that I have completed over the years into the “invisible” or what I like to call the “deep” web. The Deep Web covers somewhere in the vicinity of 900 billion pages of information located through the world wide web in various files and formats that the current search engines on the Internet either cannot find or have difficulty accessing. Search engines currently locate approximately 20 billion pages.

In the last several years, some of the more comprehensive search engines have written algorithms to search the deeper portions of the world wide web by attempting to find files such as .pdf, .doc, .xls, ppt, .ps. and others. These files are predominately used by businesses to communicate their information within their organization or to disseminate information to the external world from their organization. Searching for this information using deeper search techniques and the latest algorithms allows researchers to obtain a vast amount of corporate information that was previously unavailable or inaccessible. Research has also shown that even deeper information can be obtained from these files by searching and accessing the “properties” information on these files.

This article and guide is designed to give you the resources you need to better understand the history of the deep web research, as well as various classified resources that allow you to search through the currently available web to find those key sources of information nuggets only found by understanding how to search the “deep web”.

This Deep Web Research 2008 article is divided into the following sections:

ARTICLES, PAPERS, FORUMS, AUDIOS AND VIDEOS (Current and Historical)

We're big fans of the breakthroughs in applied GIS being done by crime analysists and the legal system broadly defined.  In fact, I would say that the conferences of these professionals are second only to the ESRI International Users Conference for new ideas and take-it-to-the-street learning.  So if you live near New Orleans — no matter what your profession — check this out.

The call for presentations and workshops for the 2008 Crime Mapping Research Conference is now posted.  The conference will take place September 17-20, 2008 at the Sheraton New Orleans.

Last week, O'Reilly's Radar posted an interesting account of a project to scan historic photos of Philadelphia and link them to Google Maps.  Hence, the reader can see the pic and then relate it to the photo's original location.  Most newspapers have photo archives.  Many of these shots are not just of people, but events which have a geographic location.  It might be difficult to tie a picture with a specific location, but  some might be possible.  So why don't newspapers start scanning those photos and put them on the paper's web site, a la “Mapping Philly”?  Doing so builds a reporter's sense of place in the community's timeline, the photos will attract a certain audience to the web site (and that could then reflect specific advertisers) and the photos would be preserved by the scanning. 

Yes, it would require an investment in time and money, but hey, instead of just cutting expenses by laying off staff, how 'bout a little investment in the future of the enterprise?

Source:  http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/11/mapping_philly.html

Mapping Philly

Posted: 08 Nov 2007 06:12 PM CST

By Peter Brantley

One of the most engaging sessions at the Digital Library Federation Fall Forum meeting in Philadelphia this week was a panel discussing a georeference-supportive project from the City of Philadelphia itself. We were thrilled to have representatives from Philadelphia's Department of Records, who have been gradually developing a project called PhillyHistory.org with several technology partners including Avencia, a firm in Philadelphia; it is Avencia's presentation [pdf] that I highlight in this entry.

The Department of Records in Philadelphia has one of the best historical image archives in the country, with over two million photographs. To date, some 47,000 pictures have been digitized, with descriptive metadata; the Department is digitizing photos at a rate of approximately 2000 each month. The most critical information associated with the images are locational data that facilitate mapping and georeference services.

An image search can be delimited by time period and location, and relevant results are returned as thumbnails with brief descriptions. Advanced search operations on many other metadata fields are also available. Location based searches are mapped, and presented as a tile on a nearest-to-furtherest scale. Clicking on an image's descriptive information will provide a screen of detailed metadata, and clicking the image itself produces a higher resolution version of the picture.

The most attractive features of the site are social; images can be shared with others (via email, right now, although theoretically it would be possible to export out to other social environments or provide internal community social site features, such as neighborhood blogs). Images can also be collected in a Favorites list.

PhillyHistory also has a mobile interface, so one of the things that I've most wanted to see in a metropolitan image archive application — standing on a street corner, and being able to retrieve both historical and contemporary information about the location — is within reach of this project. PhillyHistory is not integrated into the mobile stack, and so a location must be manually entered, but it is still pretty cool.

PhillyHistory also has a blog, where interesting archival images are discussed, as well as general application updates and news. The site also provides advanced sections where it provides detailed information on how to construct url query strings against specific metadata fields, such as location or time period. Searches can be named (“bookmarked” in the site's nomenclature) and then made available as an RSS. Using GeoRSS, a set of images can be easily displayed within Google Maps.

In a terrifically cool new feature just added this November, the first 100 image search results from any query can be mapped into Google Earth. Clicking on any of the result markers pops open a window with the original archival image. This is fantastic.

PhillyHistory's sustainability model is straightforward, financed in part by taxes, and through the sale of quality image prints (e.g., $20.00 for an 8 x 10 color print).

The app has generated a tremendous amount of enthusiasm in Philly. The locally based Editor of the City Paper, Duane Swierczynski, said in a post, “I've become a PhillyHistory.org junkie … This is the best use of taxpayer money I've heard of in a long time. I'd even be willing pay more taxes … “

We don't normally think of city governments as maintaining currency in software application design, but it happens more often than we realize. At the meeting, someone from NYC was nearly jumping up and down with excitement, at the hope that it would be possible to migrate the application north.

Perhaps west, as well.

 We knew this was coming, but missed the announcement in July of Ricoh's GPS WiFi camera.  This strikes us as something that can become a high-impact journalism tool.  Imagine how it could be applied for covering mass demonstrations or even sporting events.  It could also be great for travel stories — everything from walking tours through Scotland to pub crawling in New Orleans — when linked to Google Maps.

 The opening day price is about $1,100.  Not too much, we think, as an investment for a newroom's digital R&D person/team.  (Those do exist, don't they?)

 Anyway, check out the link below.

Ricoh 500SE GPS-Enabled Digital Camera

Posted Jul 16th, 2007 by Chief Gadgeteer

The continuing growing popularity of mapping (particularly Google Maps, Google Earth and their street views) and GPSRicoh 500SE Digital Camera that is GPS enabled. Take a photo with the 500SE and it automatically embeds the position info into the photo. In a year or so, this will probably become a pretty standard feature on digital cameras and camcorders, or at least highly coveted. solutions means that consumers will want more products that automatically tie those things together. Enter the

The Ricoh 500SE is no slouch in the camera department either. It is an 8 megapixel CCD, 3x optical zoom, large 2.5″ TFT LCDWiFiBluetooth 2.0 connectivity.

Now back to the GPS stuff. Just imagine how cool it would be to embed your photos automatically in the right spot on a map by adding them as layers to existing maps that have GIS capabilities. Well, nevermind the last part if you don’t get that. Think about how cool it would be if you could pull up your pics in Flikr, Gallery or whatever, and then display a map alongside it that shows where the pic was taken. monitor screen, SD card slot, camera shake blur reduction and a 28mm wide-angle zoom lens. It also comes with 802.11b/g and

This comes from the Poynter blog…..

twitter.com KPBS San Diego is offering fire news updates via Twitter — possibly the best use of this service I've ever seen.

While much of Southern California burns, online news staffs and citizen journalists definitely aren't fiddling around. Here's a quick roundup of some of the more intriguing efforts:

• KPBS, the NPR affiliate in San Diego, offers updates on Twitter. This is probably the best use I've ever seen for Twitter. It's simple to subscribe to get the updates by cell, or check them on the Web. Undoubtedly useful for evacuees whose only contact with the outside world right now might be their cell phones.
• More from KPBS. The station has also put together a Google Map of the fire area that's more sophisticated than what the LA Times offers. Note the variety of icons and information types, the highway and train closures, the burn area demarcation, and the map legend. (Click the yellow pin to see the legend.)
  
• And Still I Persist This blog written by three San Diego-area information technology professionals normally covers an eclectic range of topics, but currently is publishing considerable citizen journalism and other information about the wildfires around San Diego.
• Barboni.org, a personal weblog started by a resident of San Marcos, Calif. (north of San Diego), features another kind of map — Google Earth overlaid with data from the U.S Forest Service and other sources.
• Help in San Diego This assistance-oriented blog, very reminiscent of NOLA.com during Hurricane Katrina, was set up by the San Diego Union Tribune site SignOn San Diego. It's just a simple Blogspot blog — which shows that if you don't have the in-house tools to do something important online fast, don't hesitate to use an available service. Tools should never limit your journalistic choices.
• Housley in the House. This blog, by Los Angeles-based FOX News TV correspondent Adam Housley, is currently featuring frequent updates from the field and raw video footage of the fires and evacuations.
• 
  NowPublic's “Emergencies” section is offering a steady stream of citizen journalism, photography, and other kinds of “crowd-powered news” from and about the affected regions. I found this inquiry under the “news wanted” section intriguing.
• PR Newswire has created a special page of current press releases from businesses, governments, nonprofits and other organizations. Jonathan Evans of PR Newswire said this is “a service we're providing for free to those needing to send out announcements.”
• Flickr group, The Southern California Fires 2007 currently has 169 members and over 1500 images. Not all of these photos are great, but there's an amazing diversity of subject matter, communities, and views represented.

What kinds of innovative online coverage of the fires are you seeing today? Please comment below.

(Thanks to the members of Poynter's Online News discussion group for tips to some of the items above.)

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