I am not a geocacher, but I’ve always thought it sounded like a fun thing to do when my kids get a little older. But this author has some unique insights into the hobby that I never thought about before. Thing like impacts to trails and the environment when you go off the trail, density of caches, potential hazardous terrain for people who may not be experienced in the outdoors and even bomb scares! [Source: GPS Review. Image: nicolemariella]
So last year at this time, I gave Santa my geoengineer’s Christmas list, but apparently I wasn’t good enough to get everything. I did get two things off my list, the new FHWA Drilled Shaft Manual, and the New FHWA MSE Wall Manual, but that’s about it. That’s like getting pink bunny PJ’s as a kid! So over the last year, I tried to be REALLY good, and this year I’ll just let last year’s list roll over with two additions:
This year’s hottest gift would be great for reading my growing library of geotechnical papers, manuals, reports and books in PDF format. I like the iBook app on my iPhone, especially being able to highlight and make notes and bookmarks. And you can read an eBook allright, but try reading a scanned PDF report or paper on that little screen, doesn’t work too well. I like the idea of having my entire library of technical papers, books and reports available at my fingertips!
And the coolest goodie on my list, the one I really want… […]
By way of Geology.com, the Wall Street Journal reports on some interesting news related to GPS and even our beloved Google Maps / Google Earth. Apparently there are only two games in town when it comes to data providers for online and digital mapping products that are used by the aformentioned software as well as your GPS navigation system: Netherlands-based Tele Atlas NV, and Chicago-based Navteq Corp. (Photo by Websteria)
In October, Nokia bought Navteq for …wait for it… $8.1 billion. They plan to use the technology as the basis for a business model involving selling advertising tied to your phone’s location. A month later TomTom, a maker of GPS products, beat out rival Garmin and bought Tele Atlas for $4.2 billion. Were either of these companies really worth that much money? It doesn’t appear like it. Thus concern has been raised that the new owners of the technology might be in a position to hurt competitors by raising prices. We will have to see how things pan out.
The O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference just wrapped up last week in Burlingame, CA. It is a big deal for developers, geographers, GIS developers, GPS equipment manufacturers and anyone else interested in location web services, GIS, mashups, and the so-called Geoweb. There were two presentations by some high profile players that may be of interest to the readers of GeoPrac.net. I have video versions of both after the break.
First, a presentation titled "State of the GeoWeb" given by Google Earth and Maps Director, John Hanke with some help from Jack Dangemond of ESRI. I think it gives you some interesting insights into the direction things are headed, particularly with some of the upcoming releases of ESRI GIS software and the interplay between location data that people have been producing for some time now and new ways of tapping into it using the web. Kind of a long presentation at around 30 minutes.
Second, Geoff Zeiss of Autodesk, Inc. (makers of AutoCad etc.) gives a presentation titled "Convergence of Architectural and Engineering Design and Location Technology". It deals with bridging the information created by different disciplines such as engineers, architects, trades and contractors into something more productive and usable using techniques such as 3D visualization and simulation. Length is approximately 15 minutes.
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