You know that neurotic data czar down the hall that’s always bragging about his GIS data organization skills… yah, get ready to blow his mind. Modern-day mapmakers and classic cartographers alike can now bring search 2.0 to their neo-spatial production workflows: introducing Voyager.
Voyager is a desktop crawler designed specifically for indexing a wide array of spatial data formats.  Let it loose and it catalogs everything from feature classes to layer files, giving you a holistic list of raster to mxd and everything in between.  Think Google Desktop designed specifically for spatial data.

Voyager indexing supports:” scanned maps, satellite imagery, elevation models, vector data, CAD formats; as well as server resources, such as data stored in ArcSDE© technology, ArcGIS Server© and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) formats such as KML, WMS, WFS.”

As one user reflected “it’s like iTunes for your GIS data”…

Voyager’s desktop interface let’s you search your data by keyword or type, and then drill down . Within the detailed view you can see what the dataset is, and everywhere it’s being used. Some of the benefits include:

• See what data a map document is using without having to actually open it.
• Better harness cartographic design investments that you’ve already made by finding layers from all your maps.
• Quickly find thematic spatial data on your local machine, or a network share drive.
• Determine which documents have broken datasources, dependencies, and beyond.

Creators Brian Goldin and Ryan McKinley have hit a homerun with this first super beta release. Besides the initial indexing processor overhead, it’s a totally smooth experience. Voyager is currently available in 3 versions  for personal, workgroup, and enterprise users.

One of the more interesting items that caught my eye out in San Diego was a new (sneak peek) design prototype from the folks at Touch Table .

The portable prototype is a highly mobile version of  their existing product lines, sporting many of the familiar functional aspect of their larger stationary tables. While it is a much smaller form factor, the interface is split into 2 distinct sections: one for geospatial navigation and common operational picture drilldown, and the second for tabular information query and relational data display (see video below).

The ruggedized case supports these dual touch screen displays, a dropdown keyboard/mouse panel, and all self contained computing hardware/storage components. Like other TouchTable models, this one is slated to support networked collaborative capabilities, allowing people to work together in virtual markup space.

No word on actual power source options or battery life, safe to say it will consume some substantial juice in the field.

I had a chance to get a closer look at the unit through an onsite interview with the Touch Table crew:

I hate listy blog posts, so the only time i resort to punchy point sorting is when i’m really stuck on the fence.  Yahoo’s Fire Eagle has been one of those mixed bag releases that i think has tons of potential, but also many reasons that the bird might burn….  the following is a glance at the main points of why both could happen at this point…

WIN

1. Focus on Privacy - Let’s face it, beyond technology variables the entire crux of the future LBS world is how we handle privacy. How accurate is too accurate, and in what context… Fire Eagle provides a great framework for deciding how you share the granular location data from varying location app inputs, a concept that’s going to bring users to the table.
2. Platform play - it’s a brilliant move, with sooo many LBS players flooding the marketplace why not play the platform card and help all those other potential players pull in location without having to develop it themselves. The concept is quite elegant and is the reason we will see thousands of developers flocking to it.
3. Developer focus - Provide an open platform with an elegant API and let the developers figure out what flavors of applications the market wants. Belly up to the bar, location is now on tap for everyone.
4. Granular levels of spatial accuracy - Early spatially-aware applications have courted lady location in a very monogamous manner. 1 method for assigning place, 1 result which the app uses. Fire Eagle is a departure from this relationship, in that there may be multiple levels of spatial status associated with a user at a single time. These levels of granularity further help apps appropriately provide context on a sliding scale.
5. Free from hardware dependencies - Dozens of LBS startups have stumbled trying to support the full array of hardware/device in the market today. Aligning yourself at the service tier is a very smart move,  and means FE isn’t stuck trying to configure to full spectrum of mobile platforms.

FAIL

1. What the hell does Fire Eagle do anyway? - This question has been repeated by hundreds over the past  couple days, and will continue to echo throughout the throngs of whiney comment logs. Most of the people asking these questions are end users and not developers, but a little clarity would go a long way.
2. Poor release management - Sure, it’s a developer product… But when you launch a product it really helps to have a couple sample apps to show how cool the platform really is. The lack of a native app was very confusing to many, particularly to the iPhone crowd. At the very least, the process for actually enabling LBS apps to work with FE has been very confusing. I can browse the list of 20+ applications in the gallery, but i can only figure out how to connect 3 of those (Dopplr, J2ME Mobile Updater, Outside.in) to FE. I’m perfectly happy with the apps i already have, and don’t really want to install another 10 to try and make it work, so please show me what’s supported, and not just who your’e fooling around with. FAIL…
3. Complicates LBS cross-use - Wow, seems like a serious cluster ehh? Which of my 10 current apps (on 3 different phones) are going to play well with FE? The description of FE as a “Location Wallet” for me falls a bit short, and definitely feels more like a “Huge Location Purse with way too many pockets”. Figuring out how these LBS apps can work together (or work apart) is going to be a challenge, one that could easily lose users along the way.
4. Innacuracies / Conflict of location - Let’s face it, when you rely on data sources ranging from broad travel itineraries all the way down to precision GPS devices, there’s likely to be disagreeance in just where the hell you are.  Travel plans get disrupted, manual entry relies on user remembering to do it, and GPS is not totally ubiquitous as of yet. Brightkite had me in Vegas 2 days after i departed because i forgot to manually check-in back in NYC. Dopplr had me back in NYC a day early because my first flight got canceled. As Fred Wilson observed, “That was a big realization for me. Using web services that rely on data input to update Fire Eagle makes no sense. It needs to be updated by my mobile devices.”
5. Keys to the LBS kingdom - This is a bright shiny key, one not likely to be just given away by those who have spent billions developing it.

Out at the ESRI UC in San Diego all week, just set up a stream to pull together reactions from the GeoBlogger community. Make sure to check it out and participate at:

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/esri-uc-2008

What do Water, Sunshine, and stereos blasting music at Night have in common? Thanks to MIT, not just Spring Break in Florida anymore…

MIT released news today of a “Major Discovery” that could change the way solar energy is collected and stored, making solar energy available at night and splitting water molecules in the process. The idea takes a page out of old mother nature’s book, using a conceptual approach similar to how plants manage to store all that sunlight they convert to energy.

from the article: “In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.”

Skeptics point out that the question of process efficiency still remains to be answered, as well as how they propose to store such volatile gasses (particularly in domestic settings). While the answers to these  underlying technology questions are worked on (thank you MIT beard-power), there are dozens of commercial groups trying to figure out how to monetize the evolving consumer solar energy markets.

One of the most interesting i’ve seen to date is SolarCity, a group that is rapidly installing a network of solar panels to residential, commercial, and government markets. Their approach is to offer cooperative solar panel deployments to consumers at no cost, and then charge them a monthly utility fee just like your current power company does.  On average, the monthly cost for this “SolarLease” model is significantly less than previous utility bills, and they also offer more traditional equipment purchase arrangements.

The underlying process for understanding the potential for solar energy collection is one near and dear to all GIS-heads… Spatial Analysis at it’s finest. There have been some very elegant models built for this analysis (opensource and proprietary), though they tend to be quite localized in accuracy (dependant on data resolution). The group that can turn that spatial analysis into an easy to consume web service with convenient API’s stands to become very successful.

On the government side, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has published a map service that allows site visitors to search for a location,  feed that location into a Solar Potential model, and then pull out a report similar to the one below:

First thoughts on the Wordpress iPhone app…
Like Tom Raftery, I’m writing this post via the app. Setup was ultra-easy, took less than a minute to setup blog integration. Writing screen is quite plain, to add photos you have to save and return to the homescreen…. glorified wordpad interface. I’m assuming that adding links is automated ( http://iPhone.wordpress.org ). Typing is still a little slow, but overall it’s easy for short posts with a photo or two.  I can’t really see every using it for anything other than posting some images with extended captions, or to login and make quick edits to existing posts.

this might be the most boring post i’ve ever written… thank you iPhone wordpress app.

I recently had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Joel Grossman cover a bunch of work he’s done in recent years, and as usual i was totally blown away!  Using historic maps and methodical research, he’s been able to stitch together a historical snapshot of colonial Manhattan that’s totally shattered the widely accepted geography of the early Dutch settlement. If you haven’t had the pleasure of checking out his work, do yourself a favor and view these projects now…

An internationally renowned archaeologist, he’s developed a fascinating picture of prehistoric New York and how the landscape was altered by Native Americans and the Dutch and English settlers.

Dr. Grossman has worked in such diverse places as Peru, the Caribbean, and Russia, but some of his most interesting projects have been right here in New York. Among these were the excavation of the Dutch West India Company headquarters in Lower Manhattan as well as one of New York City’s earliest municipal buildings, the 1734 Alms House, in present-day City Hall Park. Dr. Grossman has used 3D terrain modeling and historic map correlations to reconstruct the subsurface survivals of former Native American roadways and settlements throughout Manhattan Island. His work includes discovereis all over the island of Manhattan, as well as 3D  reconstructions of prehistoric and Revolutionary War-era encampments in Inwood Hill Park bordering Spuyten Duyvill in northern Manhattan.

“These archaeological applications of advanced technology serve both as high-precision “targeting” tools to locate buried sites, as well as people-friendly graphic aids which help make the distant past tangible and understandable for present generations.”

Dr. Grossman frequently presents his work around NYC, and also provides walking tours from time to time. You can contact him at jwg *AT* GeospatialArchaeology.com

Outside.in has taken another huge step down the path of location based innovation, bringing us one step closer to better connecting content with geo-context; introducing the GeoToolkit.  Launched yesterday, this beta program aims at helping content authors better pinpoint the geographic relevance of their work through a simple online toolset. The core of the GeoToolkit service takes submitted blog feeds and automatically scans them for information related to place.  It then gives the author a set of tools to better refine the levels of associated places, which includes adding place/neighborhood information, viewing stats of content locations, and the ultra-intuitive map views of where they are writing about . From their announcement:

“outside.in’s GeoToolkit New , the first service to help web publishers like you analyze and promote your local content. We’ve been using these tools here at outside.in for a while and decided it was time to share with our neighbors.”

More work you say? maybe…. but to understand the potential value of associating content with place, you’ve got to check their recent release of RADAR.  RADAR is an example of filtering information related to multiple levels of place, truly taking advantage of hyperlocal content all the way down beyond the neighborhood level.

Strangely enough,  when the toolkit processed my blog feed it skipped a number of posts that had numerous place names, and chose instead to identify others that had the same geographic descriptors for no apparent reason. It is a beta release afterall, but I hope this process gets better at identifying correct spatial context.

Digging deaper, the 5 ways they are processing place from a feed includes:

1. You can link to a Place Page outside.in place page
2. Include a GoogleMaps location in your content ( http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=NYC&ie=UTF8&ll=40.714509,-74.00713&spn=0.001441,0.002079&z=19 )
3. Add Zipcode as a tag or category: 10024
4. Add a Where Tag to the copy: [where: Manhattan, NY]
5. GeoRSS

These guys are doing some really smart stuff in the LBS space, look for them to release some compelling version of hyperlocal content delivery on the iPhone very soon.

So what do Broadswords, evil temptresses, and GIS have in common? The Governator answers…

Sifting through the transcript of  governor Schwarzenegger’s May keynote address at the Conference on California’s Future:

“… we are moving full steam ahead. A perfect example is, for instance, GIS. GIS is a form of digital mapping technology, kind of like Google Earth but better. (Laughter) During last year’s firestorm it allowed firefighters to see through the smoke, giving them a more accurate real-time view of the conditions on the ground. And because of that, many of them told me that saved lives and it saved an endless amount of homes. And this is just the start, because I have directed Teri to create a taskforce now to help other agencies and departments to tap into that vast potential of GIS.”

- excerpt Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s keynote address May 15, 2008

The era of goofy SEO hacks finally comes to an end:Google announced last evening that they are launching some enhanced crawling technology that will have the ability to better index content within Flash. Swf’s have always been a blackhole for SEO, prompting web designers to come up with numerous workarounds for making sure Flash site content is indexed.

from the Official Google Blog:
Now that we’ve launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results and snippets. There’s more info on the Webmaster Central blog about the Searchable SWF integration.

Details on the indexing technology and Q&A can be found on the Google Webmaster Blog . No mention of Silverlight indexing support, looks like this might help strengthen the case for Flashplayer over the Silverlight plugin.