As Anna-Maria Mende reports from journalism.co.uk:

“US: News sites playing with Google Maps

By Anna-Maria Mende

The mission of the Annie E. Casey Foundation is “to
build better futures for disadvantaged children and their families in
the United States.”  One of the ways it does that is by packaging
data about America's children in a form that reporters can easily
access and use.  Hence, the “Kids Count State-Level Data Online”
site. 


“This new database, launched in July 2005,
contains more than 75 measures of child well-being, including the 10
measures used in our annual KIDS COUNT Data Book. It includes the most
timely data available on Education, Employment and Income, Poverty,
Health, Basic Demographics, and Youth Risk Factors for the U.S., all 50
states, and D.C. Depending on availability, three to five years of
trend data is currently available for most indicators.

“This
easy-to-use, powerful online database allows you to generate custom
reports for a geographic area (Profiles) or to compare geographic areas
on a topic (Ranking, Maps, and Line Graphs).“

Tuesday, August 9, 2005

“Men and Women Seek Cartographic Intelligence Almost Equally

Men may not stop and ask, but according to a recent Hitwise study, 
49.1 percent of visitors to mapping Web sites were male for the
four-week period ending July 16, 2005.

 “Researching directions on the Web before a drive is a different
context than asking for directions once you're on the road and lost,”
said Bill Tancer, General Manager, Worldwide Research, Hitwise.
“However, the equal propensity of men to
use Internet mapping services represents not only an important
demographic attribute for marketers and mapping services, but insight
into the potential demand and adoption for mapping and driving
direction services”.

 More information for the week ending July 23, 2005 includes such thing as:

• 
  Yahoo! Maps and AOL's MapQuest dominate the online mapping category, with a combined category market share of 74.4 percent
  
• 
  Google Maps has become the third most popular map site since its launch
  in early 2005, and now claims 9.5 percent of visits to the category.  
• 
  Only 11.3 percent of Google Maps visitors departed directly for another map site, down from 17.6 percent in April 2005.
  
• 
  In the entire mapping category, 5.8 percent of visitors depart directly to a competing map site.
  
• 
  57 percent of visits to sites in the Travel/Maps category originated at a portal site or a search engine.
  
• 
  The term “mapquest” was the second most popular term (behind “ebay”)
  entered into all major Internet search engines (for the four weeks
  ending July 23, 2005.)
• 
  The term “maps” was number five and “driving directions” was number 18.
  
• 
  Visits to online map sites peak in the summer months, notes the report.
  The market share of visits to map sites increased 35 percent in June
  2004 versus December 2004. A category with a similar seasonal pattern
  is Travel/Destinations &
  Accommodation, which increased 95 percent in the same time period.
  Sites in this category include motels, amusement parks, and National
  Parks, which vacationers typically reach by car. 

From Journalism.co.uk….

Innovative software pinpoints news by location

Posted: 2 August 2005 By: Jemima Kiss

Email: jemima@journalism.co.uk

A UK firm has developed a free, innovative tool that plots breaking news by location.

To use NewsGlobe, web users must have Google Earth installed. More information is available on Daden's website.

Hey, we've been asking that question for decades now.  Turns out we are not alone.  The same thing occurred to Adena Schutzberg, Executive Editor of Directions Magazine.  In a current article, “Geographic (and Other Types) of Metadata in the Newsroom,” she writes:

“Despite the growth of the Web and the maturation of
search engines, somehow word is not trickling down to the news media
about geographic and other types of metadata. I’m seeing just as many
stories, especially on local
newspaper websites, which convey no information regarding the location
of the events in question….”

Rave on, Adena, rave on.

Steve
writes a good column, especially if you're interested in utilities that
make driving our digital beasts just a bit easier or more fun. 
From today's column:

“Maps, Maps, and More Maps

Y'all like maps–that's pretty obvious from all the e-mail I
received after “Maps for Fun and Business” hit your inboxes:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121387,tk,sbx,00.asp

* Google Earth. Tons of you complained that I didn't mention
Google Earth in that newsletter. This one's a stunner–and a time killer. Our
uberboss, Harry McCracken, describes it in detail in his blog, “First
Impressions: Google's Amazing Earth”:
http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/000748.html

Unfortunately, you can't have it: The Google folks pulled
the beta. Too many people accessing it, they said. There may still be a way for
you to get it, though. Read through the comments at Harry's follow-up blog:
http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/000761.html

You could also try going to a mirror site:
http://find.pcworld.com/48978 

And when you do get a copy, I promise, you'll kill an hour
or more playing with it (which is why this newsletter's being filed late).

* Mapdex. Jeremy Bartley wrote to tell me about Mapdex, a
“GeoGoogle” for map servers. Jeremy is the assistant GIS Coordinator
and Geoinformatics Project Lead of the Kansas Geological Survey at the
University of Kansas (hey, I get paid by the word). He explained that Mapdex
uses roughly 1550 servers, serving 26,000 map services, containing more than
400,000 GIS layers, and covering more than 3,250,000 columns. Check it out:
http://www.mapdex.org

* ESRI Conference. It's too late this year, but mark your
maps for the next “Virtual Woodstock for digital mapmakers from 110
countries around the globe.” It's the ESRI International User Conference
for GIS geeks (meaning “geographic information system”). Here's the
Web site:
http://www.esri.com/uc

The good folks at Directions Magazine today tipped us off that Geodata.gov is open for business.  Geodata.gov was spawned by the “Geospatial One-stop” program.

• “Through the Geospatial One Stop portal (www.geodata.gov), anyone can access geospatial
  information from federal agencies and a growing number of state, local,
  tribal and private agencies through one comprehensive and comprehensible
  portal
• “Advanced information on future investments in geospatial information
  can provide opportunities for collaboration, intergovernmental partnerships
  and reduce needless duplication of data investment
• “Building communities around data categories through the efforts of
  “data stewardship leaders” and teams to seek out and highlight
  new and preeminent ways to utilize geospatial tools
• “In conjunction with FGDC, Geospatial One Stop facilitates standardization
  and intergovernmental agreements on standards and interoperability”

Geodata.gov
doesn't have everything about everywhere  (yet), but it's a solid — and
very rich — data resource that should be high on a reporter's list of
“data sites to check early in the reporting process.”

Check out “Mapping Hacks,” a new book on the O'reilly list by Schuyler Erle, Rich Gibson, Jo Walsh .



“Mapping Hacks is a collection of one hundred simple techniques
available to developers and power users who want to draw digital maps.
You'll learn where to find the best sources of geographic data and then
how to integrate that data into your own creations. With so many
industrial-strength tips and tools, Mapping Hacks effectively takes the sting out of digital mapmaking.”

We agree, there can be many reasons not to run a map in the IoP
(Ink-on-Paper) version of a newspaper.  And maps are sometimes run
more as a graphic element in the page design than as a tool to tell a
story in a better way.  (Although this seems to happen less as
“design and information consciousness” has percolated through
journalism thanks to organizations like the Society for News Design.)  
Still, if a decision is made to use a map, then that graphic should
add to the readers' understanding of usually complex data.




Last week, the Palm Beach [Florida] Post
carried a map showing the home county of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. 
The problem is, the KIA map shows the number killed without taking into
account the size of the population from which those troops were
recruited.  Is there a better way?  Of course, and the folks in the newsroom trenches had produced one: a map showing
the KIA's relative to the population of the county where the soldiers
were from.  This one, of course, supplies some of the appropriate
context.  The problem was, the editors decided to publish the
traditional-but-misleading map. 



Sigh.

Here is another on the same topic:
* http://www.obleek.com/iraq/index.html

From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

City must release electronic GIS mapping data

• Publicly releasing electronically formatted
  government maps has not been shown to pose a public safety risk or
  violate a trade secret, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

June 16, 2005  ·   Electronically
formatted maps, which allow journalists to plot geographically
referenced statistical data in studying the adequacy of government
programs and performance, must be released in electronic form to open
records requesters in Connecticut, the state Supreme Court ruled
unanimously Wednesday.

The maps, created from Geographic Information System data and
showing city landmarks, including the location of “security-sensitive''
sites such as schools, public utilities, and bridges, must be open
because officials in Greenwich, Conn., did not show that their release
will violate a trade secret or threaten public safety, the high court
ruled.

Greenwich citizen Stephen Whitaker requested electronic access to
the city's GIS maps in December 2001 under the state open records law.

The town refused to give Whitaker electronic access to its GIS
system, arguing that the records qualified for public safety and trade
secret exemptions to the state's public records law. Whitaker sued and
obtained rulings in favor of release from the Connecticut Freedom of
Information Commission in 2002 and the Connecticut Superior Court in
2004. Greenwich appealed to the Connecticut Appellate Court, but the
Supreme Court stepped in and transferred the case onto its own docket
before the intermediate appellate court could rule.

Justice Christine S. Vertefeuille, writing for the court, rejected
the argument that the trade secret exemption could apply to the
electronic GIS maps. All of the information contained in the maps is
available piecemeal from other town departments, so there is nothing
secret about them, she wrote.

Vertefeuille found the town's asserted public safety exemption
equally unconvincing. Although witnesses — among them the Greenwich
police chief — had testified that public safety would be jeopardized
if the GIS data were released, little concrete evidence of that was
presented. “Generalized claims of a possible safety risk” are not
enough to satisfy the government's burden of proof on an exemption
claim, Vertefeuille wrote.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, joined by the
Society of Environmental Journalists and Investigative Reporters and
Editors, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in November urging the high
court to order the GIS data's release. In addition to its legal
arguments, the brief highlighted the issue's relevance to the news
media by compiling stories that would not have been written without
electronic mapping.

Greenwich has 10 days to ask all seven supreme court justices to
reconsider the decision, which was decided by a five-member panel.

(Director, Dep't of Information Technology of the Town of
Greenwich v. Freedom of Information Comm'n; Access Counsel: Clifton A.
Leonhardt, Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission; Hartford,
Conn.)
— RL

Related stories:

• Greenwich man wins first battle for access to town's mapping database (10/30/2002)