Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
More from Directions Magazine
I'm trying to remember how many years ago it was that I first heard the vision of Web services for GIS. I suspect it was in the mid/late 1990s. The big Web service on everyone's list? Geocoding, also known as “locationally enabling datasets.” With MapInfo Professional v8.5, that vision is reality.
Moshe Binyamin, senior product manager, gave me the tour, just as the product was announced for release on June 6 of this year. In this release MapInfo laid the groundwork for the desktop product to interact with Web services of many kinds, including SOAP and XML (thus RSS). This core technology allows developers to connect MapInfo Pro to existing Web services “with a really minor development effort that utilizes XML” per Binyamin.
The first example shown was a connection to Salesforce.com, an online customer relationship management service. MapInfo developers created a sample application using MapBasic that, once loaded, allows users to access data records from a Salesforce.com account and place customer locations on the map. Alternatively, the user can directly link back and display full record information in the Salesforce.com app by clicking on the map.
A second example illustrated pulling in Yahoo traffic (via an RSS feed) to a MapInfo map. Yahoo uses its own XML format for this data which MapInfo had to “decipher” to make the application work. Most feeds, Binyamin suggested, would need some sort of custom parsing to be fully useful. The MapInfo tool automatically pulled the central ZIP Code from the existing map, allowed for a magnification level (10 mile radius or more) and the ability to select traffic data based on severity. This tool and its source code will be included as one of the sample applications that will ship with MapBasic v8.5.…'' Read more
Mapping the World : An Illustrated History of Cartography – by Ralph E. Ehrenberg Mapping the World is a collection of cartographic treasures that spans thousands of years and many cultures, from an ancient Babylonian map of the world etched on clay to the latest high-tech maps of the earth, seas and the skies above. With more than one hundred maps and other illustrations and an introduction and running commentary by Ralph E. Ehrenberg, this book tells a fascinating story of geographic discovery, scientific invention and the art and technique of mapmaking. From National Geographic, 2005. Source: Directions Magazine
From time to time, we've been criticized — all in a loving manner, though — about posting items that become time sinks for those who click on the link. The Web 2.0 Awards applications come to mind. OK, we're guilty. But here comes another one thanks to Marylaine Block at “Neat New Stuff I Found This Week” http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html Copyright, Marylaine Block, 1999-2006.
Click on the link at your peril.
We recently stumbled across the following resource from the
Check out….
The Program on Networked Governance
“The traditional notion of hierarchical, top down, government has always been an imperfect match for the decentralized governance system of the US. However, much of what government does requires co-production of policy among agencies that have no formal authority over each other, fundamentally undermining the traditional Weberian image of bureaucracy. Networked governance refers to a growing body of research on the interconnectedness of essentially sovereign units, which examines how those interconnections facilitate or inhibit the functioning of the overall system. The objective of this program is two-fold: (1) to foster research on networked governance and (2) to provide a forum to discuss the challenges of networked governance.”
Also, see
“… an entry by Andrew Bond posted a few weeks ago in his blog “Analytical Visions”.
“Andy recently published a follow up on US senate voting patterns. One of the Program on Networked Governance research projects called “Connecting to Congress” is collecting a lot of data on how the Internet might transform Congress ways of connecting citizens to elected officials so we are always interested in that type of research. We will also use SNA with some parts of the data during the course of the project. Related to Andy's post is a paper by Wang/Mohanty/McCallum that draws on voting records from the US Senate and UN. Their SNA simultaneously discovers groups of entities and also clusters attributes of their relations, such that clustering in each dimension informs the other. In short, legislators many times cluster around a topic regardless of their party membership.
“Finally, if you have ever wondered who supported who's bill in congress you should check out the embedded link.
Some questionable methodology here, but still worth taking a look.
By CCAer
Interesting new tool from the folks at Google. If Sketchup follows the evolutionary line of Google Maps, we can expect to see some interesting mash-ups in coming weeks. We are looking forward to some flowchart models that can be annotated with URL and comments. But until then….
