ok, I’m outta here.. gotta go do a few things before the big night (shovel, clean the basement, take the kids to a movie yadayada…) Have a Safe, happy, and prosperous New Year to all. Looking for a New Year resolution… try this one, delete your entire IN box in your email and start the year fresh… c’mon, I dare ya! Just think of how good it would feel though ;0)
Posted in Uncategorized
Oh the joy of looking for current road conditions and road closures along the Colorado highways. During the winter season in CO you’d expect that when visiting the DOT site (http://www.dot.state.co.us) the first thing you would find would be a BIG, BOLD sign alerting visitors where they can get info. My first choice was to click on a link labeled lane closures – this then takes me to another page with loads of links and many of the links bringing up PDF documents – hey DOT.. how about a freaking map??? A decent tabular report is posted at http://www.cotrip.org/ but in this day and age a map of real-time updates, maybe links to webcams and other timely info is what we want. Static maps showing links to webcams are provided but they are quite sad really, some of the maps having 300 icons which is totally freaking useless because you can’t tell exactly where the webcam is located as its so cluttered. So there you have it.. the best local source seems to be at http://www.cotrip.org/ and according to a reporter on a Denver station, the 511 call in for info number is pretty much useless as well…
The image above shows how a map of web-cams appears… can you find the camera near the I-70 US 40 intersection??
Clicking on a camera icon provides some information on current conditions.. not bad, however, a mashup providing multiple layers of info would be much more helpful.
Perhaps you have an example of an efficient road condition interactive mapper that CO DOT could use as a prototype… feel free to share details or even better, send the DOT your unsolicited proposal to help get hem going in the right direction.
I suppose as an alternative there are third party services like Weatherbug.com , MyCast, Weather.com, and Mobimate also has some useful free services – all definitely worth a looksee next time you travel in the winter.
WeatherBug Mobile alerts may indeed be worth the relatively small fee!
Did you know that Google Maps Street View now features eight more cities in the latest update – Boston, Dallas, Ft Worth, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Detroit, and Providence. That brings the coverage to 23 U.S. cities. In addition, you can now easily embed a fully interactive Street View player into your website or blog – start at http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/
Sample embedded Street View of Wynkoop St, Denver CO
Posted in google maps
Did you know you can view stats and photos on flickr that have been captured using Nokia N95 – see http://www.flickr.com/cameras/nokia/n95/ – The N95 is the #1 camera out of 46 Nokia devices being used by flickr users.
Posted in photos
Mobile post sent by gisuser using Utterz. Replies.
Posted in Uncategorized
Here’s a reminder of a great mobile app resource from Nokia – Nokia Beta Labs. Browse and download free mobile apps and tools for sharing photos, adding more GPS fun to your mobile, mobile messaging tools and much more. See http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/applications
Speaking of mobile, you developers out there thinking of porting your apps to the iPhone or other mobile environment supported by AT&T will be interested in the AT&T developer program and devcenter… Check out the new AT&T devCentral Developer Program Devices Station. Find the device information you need, export data quickly, view detailed images and 360 demos – you can register for the free DevCenter newsletter here
Share Online (Beta) is a free app from S60 enabling simple and fast access to your online photo sharing resources. You can control the file size and quality of your photos and video, add text to your posts, and browse to your page to see how it looks once you`re done. See http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/shareonline
Twitter is a fantastic resource to get almost real-time commentary from anyone around the planet… the fact that it is sooo simply to twitter via SMS makes it a must have resource for 2008 in my mind.. don’t twitter yet?? What’s wrong with you?? Anyway, if your interested in following tweets from Pakistan then see this twitterer “Teeth” for interesting comments. If you want, you can also follow me on Twitter HERE
Posted in social network
Perhaps the biggest rant about the way cool iPhone is the lack of integrated GPS. A solution… One developer seems to be almost ready to roll out GPS for iPhone users – enter locoGPS for iPhone and iPod touch. Developed using open source software, the application is reported to be set for rol-out in Feb. LocoGPS reports to provide 5-10m GPS positional accuracy and will be connected for charging via USB and it appears the keychain size device will connect directly with the iPhone for GPS use. More details over at partfoundry.
The device will sell for about $89. See also monsterandfriends for more on iPhone app development – they are also looking for developers for iPhone GPS projects.
My Tweets GISuser.com News
Anything Geospatial 