Category: General GIS

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Bucknell/Local Interest Events/Calendar General GIS Slideshow

Additional GIS faculty workshop added – register now for funded seats

Three GIS workshops for faculty will be offered during Summer 2011.

Introductory GIS workshop (3 days) – NEW
Wednesday, June 1st through Friday, June 3rd from 9am-2pm
(lunch provided)

Introductory GIS workshop (4 days)
Monday, August 8th through Thursday, August 11th from 9am-1pm
(lunch provided)

Advanced GIS workshop (2 days)
Monday, August 15th through Tuesday, August 16th
(lunch provided)

These grant supported workshops ($400 for each participant) will enable 12 faculty to engage in a hands-on GIS experience designed to be broadly useful to faculty, regardless of their specific disciplines and areas of research. To make the workshop experience more meaningful and relevant, both the introductory and advanced workshops will feature local data and topics of interest

If you are interested in participating, please click the link below to complete the GIS workshop interest form. Please note – there is a limit of 12 funded seats for the Summer 2011 GIS Workshops. Additional Mellon funded GIS workshop opportunities will be announced prior to summer 2012 and 2013 sessions.

Click here to access GIS workshop interest form.

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General GIS GIS in Computer Science Slideshow

GPS vs. Smartphone positional accuracy

Joseph Kerski, part of Esri’s education team had some interesting blog posts last week comparing the accuracy of GPS units to his smartphone and implications that might have for using the SmartPhone for academic purposes

Recently I wrote about techniques to use photographs taken on a SmartPhone as hyperlinks to locations where you have collected field data using ArcGIS Online as your mapping platform. These photographs are geotagged with a latitude-longitude coordinate recorded at the time and location that the photograph is taken. But how accurate are those coordinates, and how do they compare to the accuracy of locations recorded by a GPS receiver? In other words, do I really need my GPS receiver any longer, since modern SmartPhones can capture positions using an embedded GPS chip and even supplement the GPS position by triangulating off cell phone towers?

Click here for part 1 of the blog post.

Click here for part 2 of the blog post.

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General GIS GIS in Computer Science Map Apps Slideshow Videos

Your iPhone is Tracking You

O’Reilly Media published a story yesterday (on the penultimate day of its Where2.0 conference no less…)  describing Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden’s discovery of a hidden file on your iPhone and 3G iPad that keeps a running record of your device’s whereabouts. The file, part of the iOS4 release, records both latitude/longitude and timestamps – making it possible to create a detailed map of any and all movements you’ve made while having the iPhone or 3G iPad on your person.

There is a debate underway about both the significance of this finding as well as how new a ”discovery’ it is  (see links below). But I’m kinda on the same page as Alexis Madrigal from the Atlantic – as much as I’m a little disturbed by the idea of a secret log of my whereabouts, I’m also fascinated by the idea of playing around with the data my iPhone has recorded and I’m curious to see what kinds of visualizations could be created out of it. If you’re curious about this too, you can visit Pete Warden’s website to download a free, open source app that will map the data from your iPhone or iPad tracking file.  See below for some sample ‘heat maps’ that were created using the tracking data from various user’s iPhones. Click here to see a video from Pete Warden’s website showing animation of tracking data from Warden’s iphone mapped by location and timestamp.

Story from O’Reilly Media:
Got an iPhone or 3G iPad? Apple is recording your moves

Story from Alex Levinson’s Blog:
Three Major Issues with the Latest iPhone ‘Discovery’

Story from The Atlantic:
My Life According To The iPhone’s Secret Tracking Log

Story from Gizmodo:
iSpy Conspiracy: Your iPhone is Secretly Tracking Everywhere You’ve Been, All the Time

Story from zdnet.com
Your iPhone is Tracking You (And Has Been for Awhile)

Two O’Reilly media researchers, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, caused quite a stir yesterday when they published an article about a hidden file in iOS 4 that regularly records the position of your device. All iPhones running iOS 4.0 or later log your location to a file called “consolidated.db” (a plain SQL file) which contains latitude-longitude coordinates and a timestamp.

Story from The Guardian:
iPhone Tracking Prompts Privacy Fears

Security researchers have discovered that Apple‘s iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner’s computer when the two are synchronised. The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone’s recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner’s movements using a simple program.For some phones, there could be almost a year’s worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple’s iOS 4 update to the phone’s operating system, released in June 2010.

YouTube Video of Pete Warden and Alastair Allan discussing the iPhone tracker at Where2.0:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GynEFV4hsA0&p=0B2FEB8AACD826BE

Sample ‘heat map’ of Alexis Madrigal’s movements (created from data in the iPhone tracker file):

 

Sample ‘heat map’ from Sam Biddle’s iPhone:

 

Categories
Bucknell/Local Interest Events/Calendar General GIS Slideshow

2011 Student Paper Competition – URISA

June 6th is the deadline for submitting papers to the 2011 URISA Student Paper Competition.  The competition is open to all grad students and any undergraduates with 12 or more credit hours. Read below for some general information and guidelines. Click here for details:

The objective of the Competition is to challenge students to demonstrate the development and effective use of Geographic Information Systems in both their field of study and in the community.  The following types of papers are encouraged:

  • Comprehensive literature review on a geographic information science, spatial technologies and their application.
  • Application of spatial statistics.
  • Application of an implemented geographic information system or other spatial technology and its demonstrable impact on a public or private sector organization.
  • Treatment and development of geographic information systems, spatial technologies and theory.

Theses will not be accepted. A summary paper based on a thesis or research performed while completing a thesis, is acceptable.

 

 

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Crisis-Mapping Events/Calendar General GIS GIS in Political Science Slideshow Videos

Where 2.0

The 2011 Where 2.0 conference is wrapping up today in Santa Clara, CA.  Over the course of the week, many of the presentations have been streamed live over the conference website. I’m including a few YouTube videos for some of noteworthy presentations.

Jack Dangermond – CEO and founder of Esri: “Living Maps – Making Collective Geographic Information a Reality”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIbGwY3aG0g&p=0B2FEB8AACD826BE

 

Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Architect of Bing Maps and MSN at Microsoft:  “Read/Write World”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X9u4JG9H6E&p=0B2FEB8AACD826BE

 

Ben Fry – principal of Fathom: “Mapping: From Interesting to Insightful to Irrelevant” (coming soon)

 

Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping & New Media for Ushahidi: “May the Crowd Be With You: The Future of Crisis Mapping for Disaster Response”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_NguESRZ4g&p=0B2FEB8AACD826BE

 

Dennis Crowley, Co-founder, foursquare; and Robert Scoble, Managing Director, Rackspace: “Future Location: Scoble & Dens”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpTDGeLiFnc&p=0B2FEB8AACD826BE

 

John Barratt, self-described “Geo, twitter & weather web hacker”:  “Who, What, Where, When: Creating New Maps from Geo-tweets”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey_m0F_b-Vw&p=0B2FEB8AACD826BE

 

Sylvain Carle, CEO & co-founder @ Needium: “Locking Yourself Out in London (and Tweeting about it)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvcs4H_A0Wc&feature=autoplay&list=PL0B2FEB8AACD826BE&index=16&playnext=1