In+ersec+ion for Spatial People

Worth taking a look at Directions Mag's article named Beyond Foursquare: Geolocation Services Proliferate, Mature. There's a useful list of LBS themes and related apps.

From the article: "Now that the table has been set, what's next for geolocation? Is it all about Foursquare,Yelp, yawn and go home? I don't think so. Instead, we're seeing geolocation begin to splinter into niches and verticals. And, within a couple of years, geolocation capabilities will simply be baked into our everyday on-the-go lives. From Silicon Valley and elsewhere, startups have emerged with powerful, useful geolocation capabilities central to their business model."

MacRumors report that Nokia will Launch a Free Maps App with Offline Mode and Transit Directions for iOS.

From MacRumors: "Nokia today announced an expansion of its mapping services, launching a new "HERE" brand for the products and announcing that it will be introducing a new iOS mapping app in the coming weeks. [...] Based on HTML5, it will include offline capabilities, voice-guided walk navigation, and public transport directions. The application is scheduled to be available for free download from Apple's App Store in the coming weeks."

It's not new that we find examples of major privacy issues brought forward by location-based services and geospatial technologies (remember creepy and pleaserobme?). The last example is discussed in a Slashdot story named World's Creepiest iPhone App Pulled After Outcry.

Their summary: "Ben Grubb reports that an iPhone app that essentially allowed users to stalk women nearby using a location-based social networking service has been pulled from the iTunes app store by its developer after an outcry of criticism including a comment by Gizmodo labelling the 'Girls Around Me' app as the 'world's creepiest' app and a comment in The New York Times Bits blog, which said it 'definitely' won the prize for being 'too creepy'. The 'Girls Around Me' app utilized publicly available data to show a map with women who had checked-in to locations nearby using Foursquare and let users view Facebook information of those ladies if they had tied their Facebook account to their Foursquare account and if their Facebook account privacy settings were lax enough to allow any user to access it. The promotional website used for marketing the app states that the service 'helps you see where nearby girls are checking in, and shows you what they look like and how to get in touch, adding 'In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control! Reveal the hottest nightspots, who's in them, and how to reach them.' Foursquare yanked the Girls Around Me app's access to its data, which in turn led to the app's developer removing it from iTunes as it didn't work properly. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the company behind the app defended its creation: 'Since the app's launch till last Friday nobody ever raised a privacy concern because, again, it is clearly stated that Girls Around Me cannot show the user more data than [what Foursqure or Facebook] already does.'"

Over the past week, I read all the content of National Geographic's '7 Billion' iPad app. I found it of excellent quality and pretty interesting. Interesting enough for me to spend some time sharing my thoughts about it with you. 'Geography' is at the core of the topic and content of the app. The iPad app is free "for a limited time", so I encourage you to download it right away (provided you have an iPad of course).

But first, here's the official description: "National Geographic magazine presents 7 Billion: How your world will change - to coincide with the arrival of the 7 billionth human being to our world. This app explores the challenges of a growing human population in a world of limited resources with informative videos, interactive maps, in-depth articles, and stunning photography. 

Featured content includes….

• How big is 7 Billion? An insightful video of the demographic trends that got us here today and how it will impact us tomorrow.
• Birth of a New Brazil: How big families are out, to the credit of strong-willed women—and the steamy soaps that inspired them.
• The Face of Seven Billion Interactive: Tap on the “typical face” to find out who the most typical human is
• Rift in Paradise: As the global population increases Africa’s Albertine Rift gives us a glimpse of what is at stake in the decades ahead.
• Bangladesh: See how resourceful residents of this country refuse to give in to rising seas
• Food Ark: Explore how preserving heirlooms seeds and breeds are crucial if we hope to feed our hungry world.
• And to be incorporated into the app in December 2011, Cities are the Solution: They may be the best way to lift people from poverty and preserve the environment."

And now my notes:

• The app contains several beautiful photos with captions, quite a few slightly interactive maps, about three short videos, and about a hundred pages of articles to read
• The articles are generally very well written, documented and quite pertinent, well worth the time
• The design is the app is beautiful, and so are the maps, but in both cases, design takes precedence on usability. Ideally, maps must be beautifully designed -and- usable
• The surprise of the first section, is that despite population having increased exponentially in in the past decades, most scenarios indicate we'll stabilize and start to decrease in the middle of this century. In fact, population is even already on a decreasing course in a lot of parts of the world, notable exceptions are India and Africa, so the problem is not population, it's resources, mainly food and energy (both are linked of course (population <=> resources & food <=> energy), everything is related, and as we know in geography, near things are more related than distant things)
• The second section, focusing on Brazil, shows that you don't even need laws to reduce family sizes, you need "modernity"
• The section on Africa is insightful, and shows that we're not safe from additional Rwanda-type wars, since population is not evenly distributed and so are resources. When people starve, they don't care about "national natural reserves" and are willing to pillage anything they can to survive (this reminds me of Collapse, by Jared Diamond)
• The section on Bangladesh is reassuring. When we don't have access to much, we do with what we have and imagination helps, but be ready to move frequently and systematically adapt to new situations. To be bold, I'm not sure we're that flexible in the "modern" world
• There's a section on oceans acidification, dubbed "climate change's lesser-known evil twin". Oceans are degrading at a dramatic rate, mostly because we don't do anything and continue with our unsustainable practices, and we're going to start paying the price real soon 
• There's also a section on food production, but I don't remember reading anything surprising in there
• The last part of the app, titled "Cities are the Solution" is not yet available (next month), I will certainly read it once it becomes available

In short, it's a great informative app that I can only recommend. It's well documented, beautiful and pertinent. Anyone else has comments?

On the same topic and in addition to what we already shared, O'Reilly has an entry on visualizations of 7 billion humans.

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode, exceptionally covering the last two weeks. We're now up to date regarding geospatial news!

From the open source front:

• You can influence what the OSGeo priorities should be with this quick survey, here's funding ideas partial results
• Here's an entry on Sextant, a geoportal solution from IFREMER
• In a maintenance release, GeoTools 2.7.1 is now available

From the Google front:

• Google Transit is now available in Washington DC
• Google shared an entry named Make beautiful interactive maps even faster with new additions to the Fusion Tables API
• Google Places now supports in-business 360-degree perspectives, in another entry, the new Google Places API is described
• The GEB compares Nokia's new Ovi Maps 3D vs Google Earth
• The GEB discusses using Google Earth to confront government lies about damaged rainforest in Sarawak

From the ESRI front:

• Andrew Zolnai has en entry on ESRI's Change Matters website to compare satellite imagery, and that's possible thanks to Landsat imagery dating back to 1972 now available through ArcGIS Online

From the  Microsoft front:

• While we mentioned it before, Kurt too is, as I am, enthusiastic about Microsoft's free Photosynth iPhone / iPad 2 app
• There's a New Bing Maps iOS SDK
• Microsoft invites you to See AJAX 7.0 in action with the new interactive SDK

In the miscellaneous category:

• The MapQuest for Android Navigation App got updated and improves GPS capabilities
• Slashdot discusses using credit card transaction locations to determine CO2 footprints
• Spatial Law mentions a California Bill that would regulate 'Precise Geolocation Information'
• Vector One argues on Why Now is a Good Time to Invest in Geospatial Technology Stocks, and here's entries specifically on Trimble and DigitalGlobe stocks
• SS informs us Moscow Upholds Limits on the Resolution of Satellite Imagery

In the maps category:

• TMR links to an excellent series of 12 static maps of the 2011 Canadian federal election results 
• Mapperz mentioned WeatherSpark Beta, a Google Maps mashup to visualize historical weather patterns
• The FGT blog mentions Free Marine Chart Views, Plus An Online Waypoint/Route Editor With GPS Export
• Here's a New York Times's Natural Disaster Map for the U.S.

 Via AppShopper, I learned that the 'You Need A Map' app for iOS will be free for the month of April.

From the description: "A map that covers all 50 states. [...] It contains every mountain, hill, stream, lake, pond, freeway, highway, local road and track from two large online databases compressed into a 2GB app. In addition it contains many buildings, trails, railways, points of interest and polygon features. [...] Two maps in one! You Need A Map contains the roads from OpenStreetMap.org AND the US Census. OpenStreetMap has more accurate highways while the US Census has more accurate local streets. [...] You Need A Map supports GPS tracking while the app is in the background."

So maybe you have a new fabulous idea for a Location Based Services (LBS) mobile application. Or, you are looking to migrate or extend your non-mobile Web presence to mobile. Where do you begin and what questions should you ask? Let’s demystify the landscape a little and maybe help frame some of the questions you should ask.

February 7th 2011 - Augmentra, the maker of the award winning outdoor navigation app ViewRanger GPS has partnered with Cumbria Tourism to publish walking & biking routes in the Lake District on their mobile platform. The deal means that residents & visitors to the Lake District with a smartphone will be able to use the ViewRanger mobile app to access these tourist board endorsed routes as downloadable, interactive guides - with maps, GPS navigation & detailed, reliable local information. The aim is that it will drive an increase in accessibility to the countryside and landmarks, while encouraging more people overall to visit Cumbria in 2011 and beyond.

Available from 7th February 2011, the initial 30-plus walking & biking routes to be released by Cumbria Tourism & ViewRanger includes favourite routes in the region. The partnership re-interprets existing materials published on the Cumbria Tourism website. Publishing on mobile with ViewRanger, goes one step further than the existing web based access to visitor information about the Lake District and enhances the visitors’ experience by providing the peace of mind of GPS mapped location and location specific information.

The popular ViewRanger GPS app is available for Apple, Android and Symbian smartphones and can run 1:50K or 1:25K OS mapping. ViewRanger is already popular with Outdoor enthusiasts around the world. The fact that it is used by a growing number of UK Search & Rescue teams is a testament to its accuracy & reliability.

Each route with full navigation and local information can be purchased (£1.50/route) and downloaded to the visitor’s smartphone using the ViewRanger app. Visitors can purchase ViewRanger from their app store or even via Cumbria Tourism own web e-shop together with OS mapping for the whole of the Lake District. Importantly, it is the first time that a regional tourist board has implemented this approach.

Ellis Butcher, a spokesman for Cumbria Tourism, said: "The Lake District and Cumbria is the best walking and cycling destination in Britain. With increasing numbers of our visitors packing smartphones it makes perfect consumer sense to give them the chance to download some of this area's best routes direct to their handsets. When visitors are in the area they often need additional information which is not necessarily always found on traditional maps. This is where the new project comes into its own by utilising the information we have on our tourism website and putting it into the hands of visitors when they need it.

Anyone wanting access to the routes can get them through both the ViewRanger App and our own online e-shop at www.golakes.co.uk

Craig Wareham, CEO of Augmentra - the company that develops ViewRanger commented – “This is a great partnership. The Cumbria Tourism has been really forward thinking about this project. Obviously, they have unparalleled regional knowledge and we have offered them a way to ensure that it is made available to a wider audience. Hopefully this will encourage more people to visit Cumbria in the next twelve months. I believe we will see many more Tourist boards across the UK adopting similar approaches very soon, as it offers an innovative way to generate additional income from existing content”.

For more information go to www.viewranger.com/lakes

-Ends-

About Augmentra
Augmentra Ltd is the Cambridge UK based Angel funded software development company behind ViewRanger GPS, and is partnered with national mapping agencies across Europe including Ordnance Survey in the UK, BKG in Germany and with a range of content publishers, including National Geographic in North America.

ViewRanger GPS is their award winning mobile phone application which delivers GPS navigation, mapping and location-based content to outdoor activity enthusiasts and outdoor professionals worldwide.

ViewRanger has been running on a range of Symbian S60 mobile devices for over two years and in 2010 launched on Apple iOS (iPhone/iPad) and on Android OS. ViewRanger GPS uses global map coverage from Open sourced mapping, and can be upgraded to run premium topographic map data available for a growing number of countries, including Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Ireland, parts of Italy, Norway, New Zealand, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, USA.

Follow Augmentra at www.twitter.com/viewranger

www.viewranger.com

Contact:
Ian Pond - Chief Marketing Officer ViewRanger
E: ian[at]viewranger[dot]com
Tel: +44 7973 200006 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            +44 7973 200006  

 Here's Friday geonews in batch mode. Exceptionally, the last two weeks are covered.

From the Google front:

• Google now offers 'Follow Your World', an alert system to let you know when new imagery is available for your area of interest
• The official entry on this week's imagery update
• Google discontinues the real estate feature in Google Maps
• The California Bay Area is now in 3D and the GEB discusses the nice 3D models of Belgrade

From the open source / open data front:

• MapQuest is providing an update on their increasing use of OpenStreetMap data, 8 new countries is now using OSM data, MapQuest also continues to financially support OpenStreetMap. There's even a new MapQuest Directions API based on OSM.
• It seems SPRING GIS is now open source software (GPL) [post in Spanish]
• Fortius One announced their new tool called Acetate, "a brand-new custom styled map that is designed for visualizing data and reintroduces the idea of a multi-layered basemap". Here's their technical introduction to Acetate, and the software they've used is open source.
• The city of Paris now offers open data and Finland's Land Survey opened its data too
• Ushahidi will be using the open source GeoDict free form geocoder. GeoDict is described as "a simple Python library/tool for pulling location information from unstructured text"

From the ESRI front:

• The Geodatabase Toolset for ArcCatalog 10 is now available

From the Microsoft front:

• Microsoft released a new Bing Maps Drupal module

In the miscellaneous category:

• Here's an entry named playing with the HTML5 Geolocation API
• O'Reilly offers an article named Social data and geospatial mapping join the crisis response toolset, another one on Urban Mapping's Mapfluence and two articles on health and location: New geolocation app connects citizen first responders to heart attack victims and Healthier living through mobile location data
• Via TMR, MacWorld offers an article named Apps with Maps: 11 iPhone GPS apps compared
• The FGT blog mentions iCMTGIS, a free field GIS data acquisition tool for the iPad
• ESA's budget rises to $4 billion, with 14 nations boosting contributions. And the GALILEO program is on track. And guess what, a Wikileaks cable forced a GALILEO head to step down.
• TMR also mentions U.S. Defense Department testing may affect GPS signals in Southeastern U.S. until Feruary 22nd
• TMR also note that the book "Map Projections: A Working Manual" published in 1987 by John P. Snyder is now available online.
• NAVTEQ is still selling more and more data

In the maps category:

• Here's a discussion on a map of worldwide suicide statistics, let's hope you don't live in Mari El
• Here's a map of scientific collaboration