Get Your Data on the Map
by james robinson, cto, opensignal.com

On 23rd of April I'll be talking at the Big Data Show in London on visualizing the 4G experience. One topic I'll tackle is how to map data. In 1854, John Snow created one of the world’s first data maps -- a plot of cholera deaths that helped confirm the theory that the disease was waterborne.

Clearly maps can be powerful, and now they’re also surprisingly easy to create. What follows is a rundown of some of my favorite maps packages, from the simple and beautiful to the downright powerful.

Google Spreadsheets offer probably the quickest way of mapping data. Don't believe me? Try this: Create a Google Spreadsheet (you will need a Google account), type in a list of cities in column A and some numbers in column B, go to Insert>Chart>Charts>Map, and… you've made a map! It’s so simple and even does the work of geocoding city names to locations.

Unfortunately this method doesn't offer many customization possibilities, only works well at a global level, and can't handle much data, but for quick and dirty analysis of small yet global datasets it's unbeatable.

Details Here

first published week of:   04/01/2013

GIS technology & Mapping for the Non-GIS Professionals
by amy dewolf

As much as we may try, we can't all be GIS professionals or expert mappers. But that doesn't mean GIS technology should be ignored by the non-GIS professionals. Maps can and should play an integral role in helping us do our job better. One of the most significant benefits of GIS technology is improved communication internally between different teams and departments, and externally with the public. GIS-based maps and visualizations help tell an interactive story and provide context to information that is often difficult to understand. For many organizations, it is a way to reduce costs, increase efficiency and most importantly, share their message and information with the largest audience possible. 

Whether they are an entry level researcher or a senior level executive, staff with any background can add the power of maps to their analysis just by learning the basics. One great example of an organization doing exactly this is the City of Fullerton, California. Since 2000, Fullerton used Esri software for many applications, ranging from creating maps for property owner notification about conditional use permits and new projects to managing addresses for the police and fire departments' computer-aided dispatch. However, one thing the city couldn't do was easily determine demographics and population counts for specific areas at certain times. Using the cloud-based Community Analyst GIS software,which helps organizations plan for growth and and allocate critical resources, they were able to create reports that mapped sociodemographic data and pinpointed the types of businesses that might find new opportunities there. According to Diana McCarthy, a GIS specialist in the city's community development department, the program has an intuitive user interface, so anyone can create reports or retrieve specific data to give customers exactly what they need. It also helps staff make better decisions because they can access more current and reliable data in under 10 minutes. 

The power of maps to make sense of endless amounts of data shouldn't be limited to only GIS specialists. For this reason, Esri is hosting a session at their annual Federal User Conference for the Non-GIS Staff in your agency.

Details Here

first published week of:   02/18/2013

Google must stand trial for Wi-Fi data grab, appeals court rules
by joe mullin

In 2010, Google admitted its Street View cars were collecting too much data. Instead of just getting the bare minimum data needed to map out the locations of Wi-Fi networks, the cars had—by accident, Google insisted—collected "packet" data that contained private user information. The disclosure led to government probes in both the US and Europe.

Those investigations have wound down, at least in the US, but the civil lawsuits over the issue have not gone away. The Google Wi-Fi incident happened in 2010, a point in history when Internet privacy lawsuits started getting filed at the drop of a hat. Google admitted that it had, at a minimum, made an honest mistake—and so the class-action lawyers pounced, saying that the search giant had violated federal anti-wiretapping laws.

In August 2010, the suits were consolidated in the San Jose federal court, which was closest to Google's headquarters. Google said the case should be thrown out and that old pre-Internet telephone privacy laws don't apply to this case. But the following year, US District Judge James Ware, who is overseeing the case, disagreed with Google's argument and ruled that the case can go forward.

Google appealed, and the issue was considered by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. In an order published by that court today, a three-judge panel ruled against Google. continued…

first published week of:   09/16/2013

Google Wants to Help Apps Track You
by jessica leber

Google is giving mobile app creators more ways to tap into people’s activities and locations without draining too much phone battery power.

More and more apps look at a person’s location to offer services, advertising, and discounts that are relevant to what they’re doing, and also to help people track their own activities. Google itself is at the forefront of this trend—with its Google Now service, it uses sensor data and other inputs, like e-mail, to try to anticipate people’s needs before they have to open an app or a search box. The more services it provides to other Android developers, the more people may see similar in-the-moment features in third-party software.

One new service announced … at Google’s annual developers’ conference in San Francisco will let developers build apps that recognize whether a person is driving, walking, or cycling without having a power-hungry GPS sensor reporting data in the background. Rather, the “activity recognition” service would let them tap into the device’s accelerometer and run Google algorithms that can learn over time whether a person is stuck in traffic or just out for an evening stroll. continued…

first published week of:   05/20/2013

GPS & Geotagging Tips

Recording GPS data can be a fun as well as practical way of keeping a track of where images were shot. It becomes particularly useful when on your travels, shooting in various locations, as when you're back home and you have 300 shots to look through, you can easily catalog them into shoot locations by looking at the images' metadata where the GPS information is stored.

GPS devices such as Sat Navs, mobile phones and some Nikon compacts detect signals from a system of satellites in the earth's orbit and these signals are used to triangulate where the device is, its altitude and other useful information. This data is embedded into an image so the photographer can see where the camera was when the image was taken. Do remember that the GPS data recorded is of where the camera was located, and not necessarily the subject photographed. What we mean by this is that you could have used your zoom to fill the frame with a subject some distance away. By doing so you get a better picture but the GPS data recorded won't be accurate for the location of the subject, instead it will record where you were stood with the camera. continued…

first published week of:   08/26/2013

great online tool for GPS, GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth issues
by labels in gis

I looked for a program to draw circles of a pre-defined radius around some points on earth I had the coordinates from. A quick search returned the website GPS Visualizer, and I absolutely love it! It is not only a great free website to convert GPS data in formats that can be used in GoogleMaps, GoogleEarth, jpgs and many other formats, it also allows you to customize maps very easily. Plus, you can use a large number of different maps as base data layer. It looks like the site has been created to deal with tracks and waypoint data, but the other features are not less interesting!For example, I wanted to do some kind of triangulation like for seismogram data: You have the distances from the source for at least three seismometer stations and you want to draw three circles around them. Where they meet there is the epicentre.  Well, I have to admit I had more stations but less precise distance information. The tutorial of the website told me which syntax to use to produce my own customized map, and this is what I copied into the data field:

name,desc,color,latitude,longitude,circle_radius
Karachi, Pakistan,red,24.8117,66.9750,0
Jask, Iran,orange,25.6300,57.7700,"523"
Chabahar, Iran,black,25.2958,60.6030,"303"
Diba, Oman,green,25.6490,56.2690,"548"
Khawr Wudam, Oman,blue,23.8200,57.5200,"498"
Muscat, Oman,yellow,23.6333,58.5667,"677"
Quaryat, Oman,purple,23.2600,58.9250,"368"
Sur, Oman,red,22.5700,59.5200,"448"
Masirah, Oman,black,20.6833,58.8667,0

First comes the name, then the description, the color options sets the color of the circle, then we have the coordinates and finally the circle radius. continued…

first published week of:   11/18/2013

Handy Guide To Google's Project Loon
by brian s. hall

No one can accuse Google of not thinking big. Project Loon, Google's audacious "moonshot" vision to bring mobile Internet connectivity to the billions without - via balloons - is one of the company's biggest ideas ever. It's madness, but it just might work.

Considering the uniqueness of the idea, its use of old technology, and the potential impact it will have should Google succeed, you no doubt have questions. Here is a handy Q&A guide to help you understand Project Loon.

Balloons? Really?

Yes, really. The balloons are made of polyethylene plastic. They are approximately 15 meters in diameter and the entire apparatus is about 12 meters tall. Each balloon is powered via solar panels.

The balloons will float along the winds in the stratosphere, approximately 20km above the surface. At such a distance, they cannot be seen with the naked eye. Each balloon is equipped with transceivers to communicate with nearby balloons and with a regional ground station and the specialized antenna Google developed to receive the signal.  continued…

first published week of:   06/24/2013

How Do You Break Into iPhone App Store Top 50? Try 23K Free Daily Downloads, 950 Paid, Or $12K In Daily Revenue
by sarah perez

An iPhone app needed 23,000 free downloads per day to reach spot number 50 in the top Free charts in the Apple App Store, says mobile app analytics firm Distimo, based on research performed during the month of May 2013 aimed at discovering what it takes to break into the App Store’s top Free, Paid, and Grossing charts. For paid applications, that number was 25 times lower, at 950 downloads. Meanwhile, to reach the #50 spot in top Grossing charts, an app needed daily revenue of $12,000.

In this analysis, the company looked only at iPhone downloads and revenues, not downloads of universal apps on iPads.

Though reaching the top 50 brings an app greater visibility, getting into the top 10 is more ideal, but a lot tougher, as well. According to Distimo, a free iPhone app in May needed to see more than 70,000 downloads per day to reach a top ten free position, and a paid app need more than 4,000 downloads on average to do the same. To reach the top 10 Grossing chart, an app need $47,000 in daily revenue. continued…

first published week of:   07/01/2013

How geolocation technology is helping save lives in the developing world
by Jon Henley

In the developed world, geolocation technology has its upsides and its downsides. On the one hand, we can now follow our progress as we walk from A to B without getting lost, and find the nearest two-for-one pizza deal in the process. In the future, says Jane Frost of the Market Research Society, governments will use such data "to understand how people interact with services such as public transport and health, and to monitor criminals and detect and prevent fraud." On the other, companies will aggressively mine geolocation data to target customers with goods and services according to their habits and location.

In the developing world, and in fragile and conflict states, though, the technology is being put to less controversial use. A project in Nigeria for the UK Department for International Development, for example, which is funding a program to help reduce child and mother mortality in childbirth by encouraging more mothers to give birth in clinics, has successfully combined GPS data collected during interviews with satellite imagery to clearly show the effect of distance on mortality.

"We knew there was a huge difference between the muslim north and the Christian south," says Johnny Heald of ORB International, the opinion research firm that carried out the interviews using GPS-equipped PDAs. "By interviewing people where we knew clinics were funded, and also a matching sample where they weren't, then overlaying that data on satellite maps, we could show the effect of distance on mortality very effectively." continued…

first published week of:   04/15/2013

How Wireless Gadgets Are Breaking the Internet
by david talbot for mit technology review

Behind all the dazzling mobile-ready electronics products on display at the International CES in Las Vegas this week is a looming problem: how to make the networks that support all these wireless devices function robustly and efficiently.

With less fanfare than you’d see in Vegas, potential solutions are arising in labs in like Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. The grand challenge is to overhaul the Internet to better serve an expected flood of 15 billion network-connected devices by 2015—many of them mobile—up from five billion today, according to Intel estimates.

The Internet was designed in the 1960s to dispatch data to fixed addresses of static PCs connected to a single network, but today it connects a riot of diverse gadgets that can zip from place to place and connect to many different networks.

As the underlying networks have been reworked and added-to to make way for new technologies, some serious inefficiencies and security problems have arisen. "Nobody really expects the network to crash when you add one more device," says Peter Steenkiste, computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. "But I do have a sense this is more of a creeping problem of complexity."

Details Here

first published week of:   01/14/2013