Use GPS To Increase Your Word Power
Filed under: GPS Background, GPS Curmudgeon, GPS That Isn't
“Neogeography”
Joab Jackson
for National Geographic News
April 25, 2006
Need to know where to find a mountaintop castle in Japan? How about the best fried cheese sticks along U.S. Route 66?
Now, thanks to a unique mashup of cartography and blogs, you can find what you need to know just by looking at a map….. Full National Geographic News source document here:
Since the days of my youth I have always enjoyed a very ling-running feature of The Reader’s Digest, titled
“It Pays to Increase Your Word Power.” I don’t really have a huge vocabulary and am far from a linguist but I have learned a lot over the years by taking the little “multiple guess” quiz on new or unfamiliar words.
Seems as if lately I’ve been writing my own version here … you may recall a few jabs and some agreement on Professor Dobson’s “Geoslavery“, a little about multilateration and even car dealer floor plan financing.
But today’s new word is even more kewl … Neogeography, a term coined mainly to indicate the art and science of blogs and maps.
I like it. I wrote about a new practioner just a day or so ago and you’ll see more in the near-term future, I guarantee. There are so many things from birds to Britney sightings that just work so much better with a map than with words or pictures only. Even better with words and pictures keyed to a map. I like it.
No, Not The "Birds" Is Coming, But Instead Great Ways To Use GPS/GIS and Maps
recently one of my blogging friends, Tim Hibbard pointed out a new face in this segment of the blogging world and a new business with some interesting plans on the horizon. A forward-thinker name of Ken Hoetmer has started his own business called Spatial North Technologies Inc.
Ken’s “thing” is making maps (and the geographic sciences and information behind them) useful and accessible to the “non-mapping” person. I looked through ken’s portfolio and this is one of the interesting tools he’s already had his hands on. http://geobirds.com/
As you can see (visit the site to see it live and in color) one use is simplistic yet elegant … let birders (those who search for and record bird species sightings) put their data on amp, themselves, and share it with other birders of the world.
But since there’s already an easy to use live tracking interface built into the Google Maps foundation structure behind the GeoBirds site, it’s no problem or huge investment to add features that might become useful to both hobbyist level birders and ornithologists.
What if instead of having to send out dedicated teams to tag and track birds, researchers could just send tracking devices on loan to interested parties in their area of concentration and then see the results come to life on the map? That’s just one of a whole host of thoughts that come to my mind looking at this tool, and I don’t really even know anything about birds.
A do know a useful application when I see one though, and more importantly I know an attitude of openness rather than “professionals only, closed shop” attitude that sometimes crops up in all of the sciences from time to time. Press on ken, we wish you well.