This is a pretty cool NYC Subway/Google Maps mashup…
Call for GISMO Coordinators/Volunteers
From Jack Eichenbaum:
Dear GISMO colleagues,
At the last GISMO Steering Committee Meeting (in July before the regular meeting) I spoke about withdrawing from much of my leadership role at GISMO. I’ve been doing this for 16 years.
I have been retired (from NYC DOF) for more than a year now and I no longer have access to property data files or GIS software. My urban interests have shifted almost entirely to teaching and the understanding of the changing city through the medium of walking tours. I still retain an engaging interest in data and its interface with reality. I will continue to be advisor to OASIS. And I can consult on related NYC urban issues.
GISMO needs additional committed leadership. Leaders should be younger and more GIS-technically aware than I am.
I told the Steering Committee that I would maintain my present leadership level through the end of the year.
Meanwhile, here are some immediate needs:
1. One or more persons who lead or co-lead meetings (I will continue to do this sometimes!)
2. A person to be listed on the GISMO website who can respond to questions about GISMO (might be George
Davis) This should be a GISMO veteran)
3. A liaison with the Fund for the City of NY- our hosts. (possibly filled)
4. An overall leader ready to deal with organizational issues and the stuff between the cracks. As I have.
Possibly this could be done by two people but I’d shudder to hear that it became a committee.
If you have an interest in these issues or in helping with GISMO in general, please attend the next GISMO Steering Committee meeting, Thursday, September 7 at 3:30pm- location TBA. It will be important to know your colleagues. If you think you will be coming please email me (jaconet@aol.com) with any ideas and so I can advise you of any schedule change.
Let me list some colleagues who continue to provide leadership and service to GISMO:
Ken Reid runs meetings and services new members.
Noreen Whysel manages our listserv and yahoo site.
Amy Jeu updates our website (@Hunter).
Mark Ryvkin manages our database.
Karen Rutberg organizes GISMO programs.
George Davis, Joel Grossman, Zvia Naphtali, Wendy Dorf and Dorothy Nash are active members of the GISMO Steering Committee.
We recently feted Greg Studwell (ran meetings) who has moved to Massachusetts.
CITI Advanced Training
We will be scheduling a CITI training for CBs and CBOs in Brooklyn this spring. The date is dependent upon the number of participants. Training will include basic GIS principles, GIS desktop software and tips for making your own maps. Contact us at citi@mas.org if you would like to participiate.
Additional information about the CITI Youth program and how to find rezoning areas can be found in the March issue of the CITI Newsletter at http://www.myciti.org/newsletters/2005-03.html.
GoogleMaps
Discussion of GoogleMaps has been lively on my User Interface design lists. Overall ratings for Google Maps are good, but I have problems with the way they locate places based on search.
GoogleMaps
http://maps.google.com/
Posters say they like that you can drag the map and that the directions appear to be more accurate than MapQuest or Yahoo! Maps. To find places on the map, you can use their search boxes on the right or enter a search in the bar above. It wasn’t apparent at first exactly how to find groups of things like hotels or grocery stores, which is organized as a layer on Yahoo (click a box marked restaurants). I had to take the Tour to figure that the search bar is the way to do this. Using the search bar you can plot places like restaurants, hotels, etc. based on info on web pages they have stored, which is sort of wild but not always accurate or complete. I prefer Yahoo!’s ability to plot items that are categorized as what they are vs having the word in its name, e.g., if you search for “Farm” you get a lot of State Farm agents.
But one thing Google does well is to tie a particular location to its “more like this” search function. If you click a search result, it will point you to the website of the entity in question or a list of websites of nearby related entities. This is less seeing it on a map than finding what may be nearby. Unfortunately, if you try to use the back button to return to the map search results, you get the default GoogleMaps view.
As for the interface, I had a tendency to reset the map back to the entire US view by accident, while using the zoom function. The Zoom and Reset buttons are a bit close and not otherwise labeled. Reset button looks a lot like “Recenter” to me. Also, if you pan off of the US and try to zoom in, you get a lot of blank images with red Xs. And don’t try to find South America, Europe or Russia. The oceans go on forever….
Here are a some similar maps in other parts of the world:
Search.ch Map (Switzerland)
http://map.search.ch/
A blogger recently suggested that Google copied the interface from this site. It uses an aerial photo layer that is fun to zoom into, but probably not entirely necessary for the purpose of the site.
Map My India
http://mapmyindia.com/
from a post on sigia-l:
Although the quality, accuracy and detail [of mapmyindia] isn’t comparable but at least in some respects such as download speed and ease of marking major landmarks, it’s actually better than Google Maps and Mapquest.
To see how it works, search for Juhu, Mumbai, Maharashtra. You can plot hotels, banks, ATMs etc on the map using the menu on right. One cannot however, link to a particular location without subscription.
The design of the site is led by a 19 years old Stanford sophomore,
Rohan Verma. http://nripulse.com/Archives/Profile_Rohan.htm
Maps Aid Community Decision-Making
February 9, 2005, Municipal Art Society
CITI map technicians Earl Dunn and Marcus Sheftall from Bushwick
Happy Birthday, STOP Sign
I love finding crossroads where my interests in usability and mapping meet. In Happy Birthday Stop Sign, Eric Reiss discusses the birth and standardization of the ubiquitous stop sign.
Newsweek features GIS
Mainstream magazine, Newsweek, includes a piece on GIS in its June 7 cover feature on wireless technology:
Newsweek, June 7, 2004
Making the Ultimate Map
http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?itemID=480037&extID=10032&oliID=213
Street Maps in Political Hues
Excerpt from Street Maps in Political Hues
By TOM McNICHOL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/20/technology/circuits/20dona.html?th
Published: May 20, 2004
The New York Times
“FOR proof that all politics is local, look no further than Fundrace.org, which follows the political money to your front door. While records of campaign contributions have long been available online, Fundrace has a twist: plug in any address and retrieve a list of all the donors in the neighborhood, the names of their favored candidates and the amount bestowed.”
GISMO blog
I am working on a new design for the GISMO (NYC area GIS user group) website and am experimenting with adding a blog.
Please take a look:
http://gismonyc.blogspot.com
This blog is hosted on blogspot.com. It is rather featureless at this point, but I think as an example of what a blog would look like for a group like ours, it is a start. I plan to move it to MovableType when I set up a new hosting account. I’ve decided to drop Brinkster & go to Netfirms. I took a class at eclasses.org in blogging and really love the MovableType interface.
GISMO Meeting July 15, 2006
The next GISMO meeting is tomorrow, May 11th from 12:00pm-2:30pm at the Fund for the City of New York, 121 Sixth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY. Michael Schill of the NYU Furman (Real Estate) Center will discuss the NY Times 2/6 Exposure of New Web site www.nychanis.com. Anyone interested in geographic information systems software is welcome to attend. No need to RSVP. Lunch is provided by the Fund.
The next meeting is Thursday, July 15: Discussion on future of GIS/GISMO/NYC/NYS.
For additional details please see the GISMO website at http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/gismo.