All of our readers are hip to Google Maps, but the folks at Directions Magazine offer up a concise introduction to GMaps and the component parts.  See:

This from today's Google Earth Blog:

“Arc2Earth Released

By FrankTaylor on Google Earth News

A new product specifically targeted for Google Earth and GIS professionals was released today called Arc2Earth. Arc2Earth is an application which allows GIS professionals using ESRI's ArcGISbeen blogging about the development of the product and shown us a number of cool screenshots of its capabilities.
products to convert their data for viewing within Google Earth. This
means serious GIS information can more easily be made available to the
many millions of Google Earth users in the world. Unique data and maps
can be overlayed onto the 3D terrain and satellite photos of Google
Earth to enhance visualizations and presentations. For some months now,
Brian Flood (one of the authors of the product) has

Now they have released the product with a new web site documenting the product and its features, screenshots, and a link to purchase two versions
standard ($99) and professional ($299). This looks like a serious
product and I'm sure the GIS folks will be publishing reviews soon.
Here's an example KMZ showing a simple vegetation analysis which illustrates how symbology is maintained for polygons and graphics.

Here's an interview
with the author by Stefan Geens at OgleEarth about Arc2Earth and Google
Earth's ability to handle a variety of data and geospatial formats.

By the way, there is also another product from an outfit in Russia called KMLer which has some of the same types of features for working with ESRI products.”

The folks at CCA again point us to a helpful story.  Perhaps some concerned group — Enviromental Journalists? — could fire up a web page like this and make it available to any publication that would want to put it on its front web page.

One
of the challenges in reducing emissions and air pollutants is that
individuals have a hard time seeing how their own behaviour is
affecting the environment. The UK’s National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory takes a step in the direction of focusing the responsibility for emissions to a more local level. The NAEI offers a number of different maps of the UK
showing emission sources for various chemicals as well as providing
rather large Excel files that pinpoint the sources even further.
Emissions levels can also be searched by postal code. Data is mostly
from 2003.

In a related news story, the News Telegraph talks about a UK carbon map developed by the NAEI and the Carbon Trust.
The map(s) reflect emission levels per square kilometre which can be
deceiving as emission levels probably correlate to population density
to an extent.”

And from the creative mind of M. E. J. Newman comes this interesting collection of cartograms.  Newman's work, “Images of the social and economic world,” shows the national, proportional distrubution of AIDS, energy consumption, total national spending on health care, etc.  Also, be sure to scroll to the bottom of Newman's page and then click on the World Mapper site link.  Interesting stuff to contemplate.

The good folks at Directions Magazine  turned up this interesting mapping report.  Be sure to drill down into the explanations for the “fuzzy line” and the “blobby” algorithm concepts. 

“The algorithm for drawing neighborhoods is the “blobby”
algorithm, well known in computer graphics. You can think
of each point in a neighborhood as a little magnet, and the
neighborhood is the region where the combined attraction of
all those magnets is above a certain strength. A single
point makes a small circle on the map. The influence of a
number of nearby points will combine to make a curved blob.
Read more about blobbies:

• Implicit Surfaces
• Metaballs 
• An Overview of Metaballs/Blobby Objects”

This is one of the first references I've come across using the concepts of the mathematical idea of “fuzzy logic” applied to geography.  Perhaps some readers can point us to similar examples.

“The Neighborhood Project
compiled by Nora Parker, Senior Managing Editor 

Matt
Chisholm and Ross Cohen are working on a project to define neighborhood
boundaries, so far only in San Francisco, but eventually in other
cities as well. (If you get impatient and want to launch
this project in your city, they suggest you can download the software
and get busy.) Neighborhood boundaries? What does that mean? Generally
neighborhoods are not defined by exact boundaries – they are defined by
what geographers call “fuzzy lines” – lines that are not well-defined.
(An example of “fuzzy line” might be the line between two bioregions.
These are generalized, mappable regions, that might involve factors
such as precipitation, soils, topography, etc., but there is no defined
line
on the ground when you cross from one region to the other – the change
between regions is more gradual. This contrasts with the line between
two countries, for example, where you might literally be able to stand
at a border crossing with one foot in each country, or even closer to
home, the line between my neighbor's property and mine.)  The Neighborhood Project
is an excellent illustration of the concept of fuzzy lines – if you go
to the site and look
at the map, you'll note quite a bit of fuzziness to the neighborhood
definitions. You can even begin to perceive it in the very small scale
map included below. People living next door to each other might
consider themselves to be in two different neighborhoods.

The site uses housing post data from craigslist, which includes addresses and neighborhoods, as well as a public poll on the site, to
generate address/neighborhood pairs. Open source products (geocoder.us, Python and PostgreSQL) are used to geocode and map the data.

The Neighborhood Project's map of San Francisco. The dots are colored based on what neighborhood residents considered their “home.” Used by permission. (Click for larger view.)

---

Ubiquitous Suicide

The Canadian Cartographic Association tells us….

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.

Zeroing in on Geographic Exploration Systems


by Susan Smith

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:

• ability to seamlessly explore data for the entire globe in 2D and 3D
• integrate your local data with data and services from ArcGIS Server, ArcIMS, OGC WMS and ESRI-hosted ArcWeb Services.
• perform GIS analysis using tasks (i.e. visibility, modeling, proximity, search)
• answer queries about the maps you generate and share the results with others
• use maps and data from your own secure servers. [more]

The Google Earth blog reports:

Maps of Torino, Italy – Winter Olympics Site – in Google Earth

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.