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Podcasts: Directions on the News
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As we head into the "back to school" season, our editors look at the state of higher education offerings in the context of today's student and employer demands. What are a student's options? How are institutions responding? Is a traditional four-year degree necessary or worth waiting and paying for when technology changes so quickly?
Do the maps we geospatial professionals put online for citizens serve their needs? Data from Denver indicate users want answers, not powerful, configurable maps.
Our editors attempt to judge the health of the geospatial tech industry based on evidence from last week's Esri International User Conference. Do they see mergers, morphing or mortality?
The editors of Directions Magazine joined 15,000 Esri software users at the opening plenary events of the 2012 User Conference. They discuss the trends, ideas and technology products that will impact users and non-users in the coming year.
A new algorithm developed by UK researchers can predict, within 1000 meters, where you will be in 24 hours based only on past location information. Add in data on where your friends are and the resolution drops to just 20 meters. What if you add in sensor data from your phone and data from your social networks and online shopping? What is possible, in terms of using these data to improve your personal life and the lives of entire communities?
In the past few weeks two companies shared details of who checks in where. Facebook detailed the top social landmarks in cities, while Endomondo compiled who is tracking their workouts and where. Is this data valuable to those companies? To marketers? To those of us trying to make sense of the check-in phenomenon?
Over the weekend the world learned that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) had informed GeoEye it will be canceling parts of the 10-year, $3.8 billion EnhancedView contract because of budget cuts. DigitalGlobe recently got the nod for at least the next year's worth of funding. What does this mean for NGA? For the commercial remote sensing marketplace? And what does the future hold for GeoEye?
Apple's new Maps offering for iOS had some expected features and a few unexpected ones. What are the implications of this new player in the mobile mapping marketplace?
Google shared some of the history of its geospatial offerings and then made three announcements about some features and technology that are "coming soon." But what was the company really saying the week before Apple is expected to announce its new mapping apps? Our editors try to read between the lines.
The Geospatial Information and Technology Association (GITA) has told its members that it will reorganize the association under a new business model, effectively ending the current professional society as we know it. Does the decline of GITA hold a lesson for other geospatial technology associations? Our editors discuss the challenges of staying relevant when so many other forms of communication are available thus displacing some of the functions of professional societies.
Journal News Removes Interactive Gun Permit Map
The Lower Hudson Journal News has been under fire for publishing a map of gun permit holders in two counties in New York State before Christma. (APB coverage 1, 2, podcast). On Friday January 18 the paper removed the interactive map. Why? Publisher Janet Hasson gave answers in a media statement and in a letter to readers.
In a statement in response to The Poynter Institute (a journalism school) she argued:
With the passage this week of the NYSAFE gun law, which allows permit holders to request their names and addresses be removed from the public record, we decided to remove the gun permit data from lohud.com at 5 pm today. While the new law does not require us to remove the data, we believe that doing so complies with its spirit. For the past four weeks, there has been vigorous debate over our publication of the permit data, which has been viewed nearly 1.2 million times by readers. One of our core missions as a newspaper is to empower our readers with as much information as possible on the critical issues they face, and guns have certainly become a top issue since the massacre in nearby Newtown, Conn. Sharing as much public information as possible provides our readers with the ability to contribute to the discussion, in any way they wish, on how to make their communities safer. We remain committed to our mission of providing the critical public service of championing free speech and open records.
In a letter to readers published on Friday she wrote:
So intense was the opposition to our publication of the names and addresses that legislation passed earlier this week in Albany included a provision allowing permit holders to request confidentiality and imposing a 120-day moratorium on the release of permit holder data.
She goes on to say that during the 27 days the map was online any one interested would have seen it and that the data would eventually be out of date. She also noted that the paper does not endorse the way the state chose to limit availability of the data.
The original map/article still includes a graphic - but it's a snapshot, a raster image, with no interactivity. Says Hasson in the letter to readers:
And we will keep a snapshot of our map — with all its red dots — on our website to remind the community that guns are a fact of life we should never forget.
I continue to applaud the paper for requesting the data via a Freedom on Informat request, mapping it, keeping the map up despite threats and criticism and now responding to state law. I think the paper did a service to the state, to citizens and to journalism.
- via reader Jim and Poynter
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