Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
From WIRED:
02:00 AM Feb, 06, 2006
Click on the aerial view of a cityscape on Google Earth or Microsoft's Live Local, and most of us don't discern much more than a cluttered expanse of buildings and car-lined streets.
But where others see a sprawl of empty rooftops, Colin Fitz-Gerald sees a cornucopia of unused advertising space.
Fitz-Gerald, who runs a roofing business in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, wants to make a business out of posting promotional messages on top of buildings. He's started a company, RoofShout.com, and is looking for roof owners and advertisers to bring his vision to fruition.
“I'm currently launching RoofShout.com with no money, no real experience running a business on the internet, and no real solid business plan,” Fitz-Gerald said. “But I figure there's a lot of blank roofs and a lot of advertising that could go on the roofs.”
So far, the venture has attracted more interest than Fitz-Gerald anticipated. An eBay listing he posted to auction a virtual rooftop ad on his company's homepage garnered hundreds of pageviews, though only three bids. The high bid was $105.
Fitz-Gerald isn't sure how much it will cost to put an ad on a real roof, or exactly how the process will work. He's considering using housewrap, a weather barrier material, as a base and painting ads on top of it. He's also working on a technique to ensure the advertising messages are printed in letters that are clear and large enough to be picked up by aerial mapping sites.
RoofShout isn't the only firm attempting to capitalize on the same virgin ad space. RoofAds, a division of Saber Roofing in Woodside, California, runs a service for posting ads on rooftops that are close to airports and highly visible to airplane passengers. The company is currently marketing to other areas as well.
“We realized with Google Earth and this satellite imagery that it doesn't have to be near airports. It can be anywhere,” said Jay Saber, who owns Saber Roofing. Saber said he can install ads visible from 10,000 feet overhead.
Saber is also working on ads that glow in the dark. He's talking with organizers of the annual Burning Man festival about creating a 1,000-yard-long image of a burning man visible from high in the sky.”
The Canadian Cartographic Association tells us….
Read the press release on GISUser.com.”
Danny Sullivan, a long-time search engine maven, has this to say. (Newspapers? Clueless? Gasp! How can it be?)
Newspapers want search engines to pay over at News.com covers the World Association Of Newspapers planning to challenge the “exploitation of content” by search engines. Apparently search engines are taking newspaper content for free and repacking it up within things like Google News and Yahoo News. A task force to study the isssue is being formed, DMNews reports in Newspaper Group Questions Aggregation of News Content. Reuters also has coverage here.
Hey WAN. Don't like being in search engines? Tell your members to put up a robots.txt file to block the search engines, and they'll be happy to drop them. When they do, then blogs and other news sources can have the traffic the search engines were previously sending to your members.
FYI, I'm trying to finishing a rundown on what the New York Times has been doing recently to gain search engine traffic. Watch for that soon. In the meantime, see this past post about what Marshall Simmonds did for About.com and is now doing for the NYT.
This helpful posting comes from Maps-L at http://www.listserv.uga.edu/archives/maps-l.html
“Folks:
“Wonderful news. About 300 historic map images of the Gulf Coast area are now available through the Geospatial-One-Stop (GOS) portal. The maps are USGS topographic quads that were scanned, processed and georeferenced by USGS scientists. They are in UTM NAD 27 and are uncompressed GeoTIFFs.
“Here's what you need to do to access these images:
“Go to http://www.geodata.gov Search Under “what”, type in “Gulf Coast Historic Maps” You will see the site listed. Select the site, and you'll be placed on an FTP site. This site is: ftp://mcmcftp.er.usgs.gov/Katrina/508dpi/
“Log in “anonymously”.
“You will see a long listing of topo map names.
“Remember that you can always find out where these maps are located by picking up a USGS quad index from 1 888 ASK USGS or online on: http://catalog.maplink.com/usgs/USMap.html and selecting the state you are interested in.
“What can you do with these images? You could, for starters, compare the historic maps to new topos and aerials online, for example, on terraserver-usa.com, and observe the amount of landscape change from human activity and from storm surges. Has the coastline changed? If so, how much, and why?
Joseph Kerski
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Joseph J. Kerski, Ph.D. Geographer: Education/GIS US Geological Survey Building 810 – Entrance W-5 – Room 3000 Box 25046 – MS 507 Denver CO 80225-0046 USA jjkerski@usgs.gov Voice 303-202-4315 Fax 303-202-4137 http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/public/outreach/ USGS: Science for a Changing World ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Susan Smith, exec. editor of GISWeekly Review, delivers a fine overview this week of GES, “Geographic Exploration Systems.” Check it out.
Nearly every participant in our Emerging Technologies review mentioned Google Earth technology and how that might impact the future directions of GIS. Google Earth is exciting and better known to the masses right now, however, it is not the only “Geographic Exploration System (GES).”
Although it may seem that these GES are a new invention, they have actually been in the works for quite some time. Technology from lesser known companies has been used to extend or enhance software for some of the heavy hitters. Some companies have OEM'd their technology, others have been the result of outright acquisitions.
ESRI ArcGIS Explorer
ESRI has just released a beta version of its “geospatial information viewer,” ArcGIS Explorer, which offers an easy way to access geographic information but also integrates rich GIS datasets and server-based geoprocessing applications by accessing the ArcGIS Server including geoprocessing and 3D services. It is OGC-compliant, and supports WMS and Google KML data.
Some of its features include:
The Google Earth blog reports:
By FrankTaylor on Sightseeing
GoogleMapsMania recently discovered that Google quietly added a more detailed road map for the Torino, Italy area for Google Local. What is interesting is that in Google Earth we have already had these more detailed road maps. But, not just for that small area. Google Earth's more detailed road maps cover most of Europe now.
To see the roads, you just turn on the “Roads” layer, wait for them to load, and start zooming in. Another big difference in GE is that the road maps adjust their level of detail according to your zoom level, and you can adjust your view dynamically including your tilt and see the 3D terrain. You can go to Torino, Italy now and see the mountains where the Olympics will be held. Also, in Google Earth you can see the detail of the satellite and aerial photos so much better than in Google Maps.
In recent weeks a sub-set of journalists have begun working with the problem of how do we quantify and illustrate speech. Or speeches. The Cyberjournalist.net newsletter (at the American Press Institute) reports:
They list commonly-occurring words in the speeches, giving greater visual weight to those that appear more often. Arranged side-by-side, they show some interesting contrasts (and similarities).”
Sorta interesting, when it's working. We applaude the attempt as a fine beginning, but what's missing is some context and explanation, the “So what?” factor. In fairness, the site's author recognizes the shortcoming, saying: “Of course, they lack any kind of context, but who needs that? (We're kidding.)“
On the other coast, ever-inventive Matt Ericson takes another bite of the State of the Union apple and offers up a more interesting visual, “The Words That Were Used.” [Look in the left column for link to graphic. But the toned “bubbles” actually show up better in print than online, so if you can't see it well online, try this (and may the copyright gods forgive us).
See also:
2005 editions of Save This Tip: Sree | Jon
Read all 300+ Web Tips since Sept. 2001.
Web Tips by e-mail:Click here to receive (sent weekly)
We are seeing customized versions of Google Maps being used in all kinds of creative ways across the Web. When you get a chance, check out the dozens of interesting implementations at Lifehack's Essential Resources for Google Maps.
These customized maps are easy to use, but not really easy to create. Even with such guides as “How to add a Google Map to any webpage in less than 10 minutes” and tools like MapBuilder.net, creating your own customized map is something best left to ultra-techies (I am not one; I haven't tried it myself).
But there is another, easier option for creating your own maps using what I have been calling a collective media project. For several columns now, I have been asking you to to help us with the Web Tips Frappr Project — a way to show you how the free site Frappr.com uses Google Maps to create maps just for you.
More than 180 responses came in, identifying Web Tips readers around the world — the cyber equivalent of sticking color-coded pins on a wall map.
I have been using Frappr to create several different Google Maps. Among them: one to track every city that my two-year-old twins have visited; another to track the towns in India that I am taking 16 of my Columbia students on a reporting trip; a map to link members of my extended family around the world; and another for the cities that my father served in as an Indian diplomat. While these are, in theory, publicly visible, because they aren't really linked to anything, they benefit from “security by obscurity.” If a Google Map is created in the virtual forest, does anyone know?
You can see some of your fellow readers by going to the Web Tips Frappr Project right now. If you'd like to join them, when you get there, click on “add yourself” on the right of your screen.
If you live in the U.S., put in your name and zip code. Attach a photo (if you wish — optional!). Remove the “Create a Frappr Account for me” (if you don't want one) by clicking on checkbox. Hit “Add Me.”
If you live outside the U.S., put in your name, then click on “Not in the U.S.? Click Here.” Start typing your city, and a menu with your city should show up. Attach a photo (optional). Remove the “Create a Frappr Account for me” (if you don't want one) by clicking on checkbox. Hit “Add Me.”
I look forward to your Google Maps and Frappr feedback at this link or via e-mail to poynter@sree.net.
Speaking of maps, see Jon Dube's column about using a site called Placeopedia.
In a future column, Jon or I will discuss how to use the downloadable Google Earth software (now available for Macs, too) for more than just looking at your childhood home or the Grand Canyon.
Meanwhile, I am still working on my follow-up column about Social Networking for Journalists, and looking to connect with readers at LinkedIn.com.
Sree's Links
Ryan Konig, of the Arizona Republic, alerts us to the following via the NICAR-L list:
