More Eye Candy With A Purpose — GPS, GIS and Maps

I only get my US mail every two weeks here at the current home of the GPS ROI blog. This is fine with me … I do almost everythig on line anyway. It does, however make the bi-weekly arrival of the courier a bit more of an event than the USPS letter carrier dropping of the dreck that passes for mail back in the USA.

While I was working on a few other projects I needed to do before I got ’round to posting on this blog, the doorbell rang and there was the courier with my mail packet. I noticed rigt away it was thick and larger than usual.

It’s as if Christmas had arrived here in September. The annual ESRI Map Book. Between that and the Sopranos DvD I got for my birthday this week, blog posting may be a little slow (er than normal)

ESRI, as many of my regular readers know is a fantastically successful GIS (Geographic Information System) company based in Redlands, California that has become the world leader in GIS. A basic description of GIS is to take graphical map data, when possible GPS-derived locations on the map and combine the “picture” side with database information. Census data to show income in areas of a city, geophysical survey data to paint a map with the most potentially successful areas to find oil, you name it … anything you have tabular data on for your business or research work almost certainly has some geographical component and almost everything can benefit from being visualized on a map.

The Map Book is a collection of work submitted by ESRI users to show the ways they have used maps and data to illustrate information … and the combination of diverse busiess and socially beneficial ideas combined with the actual artistic beauty of many of the products is simply fascinating. Fortunately, ESRI publishes the best of the Map book online. Go, look, learn, enjoy.