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Blog: Chris Harlow on ITSearch The Harlow Report Archives
It's a matter of privacy.
When I was a kid, my parents used those Thomas Guides street maps to navigate us around Los Angeles and Orange County. My dad would drive, while my mom would flip through the spiral-bound book and yell out exactly where to turn to get us to our destination.
Now, we all have Google Maps on our smartphones. It's so much more convenient to get directions from the palm of our hands, but as is the case with technology sometimes, there are certain aspects of it that can be a bit invasive of our privacy.
If you've ever used Street View, you know that you can enter almost any address into Google Maps and look at a recent image of that location …
Read full story at Cnet…
first published week of: 01/16/2023
History of drawing maps and the role they play in urban planning and design
Cartography, or map making, has played a critical role in representing spatial concepts for thousands of years. While the earliest forms of maps displayed geographic information carved into clay tablets and etched onto cave walls, the maps we use today have significantly evolved to creatively show a range of different information. These visualizations draw conclusions about population sizes, historical events, cultural shifts, and weather patterns to help us understand more about our world and how we impact it.
Some of the first known maps date back to around 17,000 BCE and were images that showed constellations of stars, landscape features like mountains and rivers, and other physical markers that helped people to navigate from place to place. In 600 BCE, the Babylonian World Map was created and is believed to be the first representation of the earth, or what people could survey of it at the time. Other ancient civilizations, like the Greeks, began to use paper maps for navigation based on observations by explorers and mathematical calculations. Maps of this time were important because they depicted Greece as the center of the world, surrounded by vast oceans. Later maps began to show two continents, Asia and Europe, largely influenced by literature written by Greek philosophers.
Read full story at archdaily…
first published week of: 01/09/2023
Tell us if you agree or disagree with ChatGPT's answer
For no particular reason, I began wondering if the OGC's standards had an impact on the GIS industry. After all, the goto file standard is Esri's Shapefile (SHP), but it is not an OGC standard.
While I could have asked any number of friends and collegues in the industry, I decded to ask Tech's latest wonder, ChatGPT. The answer was quite thorough and is presented below. Still, I wonder if my readers agree. At the end of the ChatGPT's answer, let us know by choosing agree or disagree in the short poll.
Question: “How do OGC standards impact the GIS industry?”
ChatGPT Response
OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards have had a significant impact on the GIS (Geographic Information System) industry. The OGC is an international non-profit organization that develops and promotes open standards for geospatial data and services, which includes both hardware and software.
The use of OGC standards has facilitated interoperability and data exchange between different GIS systems, regardless of the software vendor or data format used. This has greatly improved the ability of GIS professionals to work together and share information. For example, a GIS professional using one software platform can exchange data with another GIS professional using a completely different software platform, which was not possible before the adoption of OGC standards.
The development and adoption of OGC standards have also led to the creation of new software applications and tools, which has further expanded the capabilities of GIS. For example, web mapping applications that allow users to access and interact with maps and geospatial data online have been made possible by the OGC's Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS) standards.
In addition, the use of OGC standards has enabled the integration of GIS with other systems and technologies, such as business intelligence tools and sensors. This has opened up new opportunities for GIS professionals to use spatial data to support decision-making and analysis in a wide range of industries, including transportation, agriculture, and environmental management.
Overall, the adoption of OGC standards has greatly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of GIS professionals and the GIS industry as a whole. By promoting open, interoperable standards, the OGC has helped to break down the barriers to sharing and exchanging geospatial information, and has facilitated the development of innovative new technologies and applications.
first published week of: 02/27/2023
Change your iPhone or Android location to anywhere in the world
Changing the location on your iPhone or Android device involves tricking your phone into telling apps that you’re located somewhere you're not. In most cases, when you spoof your GPS location, every location-based app on your phone will be fooled.
This might seem like a weird thing to do, since most of us use GPS for tasks that need our real location, like when finding directions and weather updates. However, there are legitimate reasons to change your phone's location to a fake one.
Unfortunately, doing so isn't very straightforward. There isn’t a “fake GPS location” setting built in to either iOS or Android, and neither do most apps let you spoof your location through a simple option.
Read full story at Lifewire…
first published week of: 01/09/2023
Geospatial technology fields are not just growing, but exploding, both in the commercial and government sectors.
Tesla is building self-navigating cars. NASA is using geospatial technology to launch rockets to the moon. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is working to supply the military and its warfighters with imagery that can turn the tide on the battlefield — or avoid the battle altogether.
Students who go into geospatial technology fields are in high demand, a panel of professors, university administrators and students at a recent Geospatial Advantage Conference in Huntsville, Alabama, all agreed.
“Our kids are getting jobs with huge salaries and full-time benefits before they even have their degree in hand,” said Dr. Rob Griffin, associate dean of the College of Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and an associate professor who teaches GIS, remote sensing and other geospatial-related topics.
It’s a little bit mysterious why students aren’t flocking to our programs to take advantage of those jobs Dr. Rob Griffin
The problem, panelists said, is that geospatial technology programs are hiding in plain sight. A tech-minded student is more likely to choose something “sexy,” like aerospace engineering or cybersecurity, because they don’t realize that a GIS degree could also result in a job in the space program or military intelligence.
Read full story at Hexagon Blog…
first published week of: 01/09/2023
GISCorps volunteers met 2022's challenges determined to do GIS for Good.
Operating under the auspices of URISA, GISCorps coordinates short-term, volunteer-based GIS services to communities in need worldwide.
In 2022, GISCorps …
Read full story at StoryMaps…
first published week of: 01/09/2023