L Magazine - 8 NYC Bands You Need to Hear, Roger Water's Pig FOUND (map), No Impact Man - when water becomes like gas

L Magazine does its annual 8 nyc bands you need to hear.

google image and article from The Desert Sun via Brooklynvegan

Susan Stolz called The Desert Sun this morning saying she and her husband found a glob of vinyl in their driveway yesterday at the Hideaway Golf Club in La Quinta. Not sure what it was, they threw it away. This morning, they read about the missing pig in the newspaper and e-mailed the following to Coachella organizers.

"It is entirely possible that I have at least part of your pig. My husband and I live at the Hideaway. We found a large pile of plastic yesterday morning on our driveway. It has some blue, yellow and silver paint. I must warn you that it is not in good shape. Maybe the balloon exploded or something. However, if you'd like to check it out, just let me know. "

"We went and got the pig out of the trash and put him in the garage," Stolz said. "We have laughed our heads off."
[The Desert Sun] (via)

image and text from No Impact Man

Let's start with the fairy tale that came true for the gasoline magnates:

• Once upon a time, a number of companies bought up drilling rights here and oil refineries there and eventually gained control over the USA's gasoline.
• For a while, gasoline hovered under $2 a gallon, and the companies and magnates had to console themselves with--ho hum--tidy profits.
• One day, some people began to worry that there wasn't always going to be enough gas for everyone. "Demand will grow," they said. "Supply will fall."
• But the gas companies and magnates, instead of panicking, began rubbing their hands together. Gigantic, ridiculously huge profits, they knew, come to those who wait.
• Next, developing countries started buying cars and, at the same time, world gas production pretty much peaked. In other words, demand grew. Supply fell.
• Prices skyrocket, people suffered, but the oil and gas companies and magnates made huge, unprecedented profits.
• Peak oil, it turned out, wasn't their worst nightmare at all. It was their happiest fantasy!
• So the oil companies and magnates lived happily ever after.
• Too bad about everyone else.

Now let's look at the future fairy tale that the companies who privatize our drinking water look forward to:

• Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Suez and a bunch of other companies buy up water rights around the United States and elsewhere.
• For a while, people buy bottled water for less than $2 a gallon (even though tap water is free).
• The water barons console themselves with--ho hum--tidy profits, selling their water for something like a thousand times what they pay for it.
• Then, the phrase "peak water" gets bandied about, but far from worrying that the water will run out, the water barons begin buying water rights up faster than ever.
• Next, in some future scenario, underfunding to the municipal water supplies or pollution in the aquifers means that clean tap water becomes scarcer and scarcer and drinking bottle water is not a choice but a necessity.
• In other words, demand grows, Supply falls.
• Prices skyrocket, people suffer, but the water barons make huge, unprecedented profits.
• Peak water, it turns out, wasn't their worst nightmare at all. It was their happiest fantasy!
• So the water barons lived happily ever after.
• Too bad about everyone else.

You see, it's not just about the plastic bottles. It's not just about the food miles. It's about the fundamental right of access to drinking water. Are we willing for our children to have happen to them for water what is happening to us for gas?

We can make a difference!

• Take action against privatization of water in California here.
• Support federal funding of clean drinking water here.
• Learn how to boycott bottled water here.
• Read about my ultra-cool reusable water bottle here.
• I don't know what else, do you? Please leave your ideas in the comments!

New blog: Thematic Mapping, Lacrosse practice aerial, iPhone GPS, London Transit mashup

Here's an image from a new blog; blog.thematicmapping.org. The aim of this blog is to elaborate ideas of how geobrosers and open source tools can be used for thematic mapping. My testbed will soon be available on thematicmapping.org

I stumbled upon this aerial of a lacrosse practice in the TZB/I-287 EIS Study Area near Port Chester. I thought it was pretty cool to see. At least they aren't doing line drills.

Are iPhones going to have true GPS???

Here's a screenshot from Tube JP of london's transit system mashed into google maps.

NYC Free Summer Concerts Calendar 2008

In the summer, nothing is better than free live music. Maybe free beer, but that's pretty rare.

After adding several dates/locations of free concerts (as found on Brooklynvegan, FreeConcertsNYC, and other media outlets) in my Google Calendar I realized it'd be pretty cool to post these up on the web. So starting today I'll be hosting my NYC Free Summer Concerts Calendar 2008. I couldn't find a good place to put it on the site so it's residing at the bottom of the page and there is a link to it in the top right corner of the site. Click to go to June because April doesn't have any free concerts.

In the nature of a nerdly geographer, I'll try to incorporate some sort of mapping component. Right now if you click on the event -> more details you can view a map. But I'd like to do a more intuitive sort of thematic map of free concerts coming up.

...and

It appears the Washington State is leading the way in farmer's markets.

Image and quotes from Treehugger.com

"The West Seattle Farmers Market, which last year saw $1.1 million in vendor sales -- a 300 percent increase over the previous year -- is the latest to go year-round."

Ireland is developing to be a 2.0 workforce/society. Read about it here.

Some Environmental News

image from NY Times Magazine

No Impact Man is in top 15 Environmental Websites by Time Magazine.

Also found at Time Magazine's website is an ironic story about the "greening" of the U.S. military.

A Google Search uses as much energy as an 11-watt light bulb over an hour.

Author Michael Pollan contributed to this Sunday's NY Times Magazine with an article about why we should bother greening ourselves.

Lastly, the USGS is hosting an Earth Day web expo on Earth As Art.

Von Karman Vortices

Image taken 7/4/2002 by Landsat 7

As air flows over and around objects in its path, spiraling eddies, known as Von Karman vortices, may form. The vortices in this image were created when prevailing winds sweeping east across the northern Pacific Ocean encountered Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

This image can be found on Landsat 7 Path 79 Row 23-24, center: 53.1 N, 170.4 W.

Buffalo ReUse, Brooklyn Kids Go Green, & Tom Petty's Mudcrutch Reunion After 30 Years

Just found out about a cool organization called Buffalo ReUse. I lived in Buffalo for a year in grad school and would have loved to get involved with this organization that helps reuse building materials by extracting them during demolition.

Brooklyn Kids Go Green. See the article at Green Brooklyn.

And Tom Petty has regrouped his old band Mudcrutch from his pre-Heartbreakers days. The Sunday Time's Arts & Leisure Section profiled the reunion of an old band that includes some regular musicians that will now be headlining with one of America's biggest rock icons. Tom, once again, seems like a regular guy who loves playing music and wants to bring Mudcrutch to a level of where he hoped it would be back in 1972.

image and text sample from NY Times

"Thirty-two years after the band broke up, Tom Petty has reassembled Mudcrutch, the group he started in his native Gainesville, Fla., and moved to Los Angeles, seeking stardom. Mudcrutch didn’t hit it big back in the 1970s, but out of the band’s ashes Mr. Petty created the Heartbreakers, who have generated a staggering stream of hits for three decades..."

Friday!!!!!!!!

It's Friday of the busiest two weeks we've ever had at work. Our Transit Mode Selection Report is out. Tappan Zee Bridge/287 Outreach website updates are done. Guam Transect coords, out. Columbia Univ. Review of Manhattanville Conditions Study is almost out. Got my tax return today. And I'm booking a flight to Alaska for a summer trip.

I've also been marking all of the free summer concerts I hear of in my Google Calendar and I realized it would be cool to create a mashup of Free Summer Concerts in NYC.

Check out this sweet youtube video of a goal/clear by a longpole:

Google Earth 4.3 Reviewed & some more Reviews of Google App Engine

Here are some screenshots of Google Earth 4.3. There a few differences b/n this version and 4.2 but nothing that will blow your mind. The first image is of some GIS project data exported to kml that was still in my layers menu after the upgrade to 4.3. I rarely use Google Earth so I haven't dusted it off in a while. There's a new nav tool that lets your use your mouse to tilt your axis a bit. And in the image below there's a new Google Street View layer that lets users access Google Street View that is available from Google Maps. I also changed the level of sunlight in the new sunlight tool. Unfortunately, it doesn't interact with the shadows on the aerials (just kidding) and my 3D buildings seem to not be loading properly.

Nial Kennedy's Blog has a great article reviewing the concepts behind Google App Engine.

Shapefile Connection and Man Man/Yeasayer concert review

The Shapefile Connection is a website that has mapped out points of agency's that provide GIS data. The points have a link to the websites where the data may be downloaded. It is a great idea to map these out. I've always envisioned something like this within GIS organizations I've worked for. Wouldn't it be great to have a map that shows where you have data for that is stored on your servers and have a link or path to the data?

This Friday I went to the Man Man/Yeasayer concert at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. It was great to see Yeasayer after listening to their record and hearing about their great shows. Man Man was entertaining but I'm not sure I will go out and buy their record. That said I would go see them live again. All in all the music was great and was worth the ticket price. Unfortunately, the concert was sponsored by Boost Mobile and would have preferred to have payed more money for tickets rather than seeing ads projected behind the band and being bombarded with ads in the mezzanine and bathrooms. The Brooklyn Masonic Temple could turn out to be a great venue once they get the sound/lighting nailed down.

Man Man

Yeasayer

images from Prefixmag.com

No Impact Man blogs about Congestion Pricing/Yeasayer Concert tonight at Brooklyn Masonic Temple

Colin Beavan, aka No Impact Man, commented today on his blog about the failure of the New York State Assembly to vote on congestion pricing. The blame falls on the democrats in Albany - further showing that neither party is truly in it for the best interest of the people. Feel free to email Dem. Sheldon Silver to let him know you are upset with his lack of commitment to the people that breathe and walk and/or bike and/or use public transit in New York City.

On a more positive note I'm going to see local Brooklyn band Yeasayer (with Mann Mann) at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple in Fort Greene, BK tonight. Where's the Brookyn Masonic Temple...


View Larger Map of Brooklyn Masonic Temple

Google App Engine

Google has released Google App Engine to the first 10,000 folks who signed up earlier this week.

What is Google App Engine? Click here

or from Google:

Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users.

You can serve your app using a free domain name on the appspot.com domain, or use Google Apps to serve it from your own domain. You can share your application with the world, or limit access to members of your organization.

App Engine costs nothing to get started. Sign up for a free account, and you can develop and publish your application for the world to see, at no charge and with no obligation. A free account can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month.

During the preview release of Google App Engine, only free accounts are available. In the near future, you will be able to purchase additional computing resources.

Chicago now has Google Transit

Google has teamed up with the CTA to created Chicago's Google Transit. Hopefully the next city will be New York! This is copied from Google's LatLong blog:

Google Transit arrives in Chicago

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 9:57 AM

Posted by Ron Huberman, President, Chicago Transit Authority

Today, I had the pleasure of announcing that the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is partnering with Google to bring schedule and station data for our 8 rail lines and 154 bus routes to Google Maps. Having CTA's information available on Google Maps allows us to reach a broader audience; by including our station/stop icons in maps, we can seamlessly introduce people to public transportation options as they look up locations or search for directions, and encourage alternatives to driving.

As the second-largest transit agency in the United States, the CTA serves an average of 1.6 million riders per weekday and nearly 500 million rides a year, so being able to provide this new service to our vast ridership and all of the 45 million tourists who visit this great city every year is a great stride in promoting the use and convenience of public transportation.

You can find more information about Google Transit in Chicago by visiting http://maps.google.com/chicago, or by watching this video:

And if you happen to be in the Chicago area this afternoon, Google is going to be heading to stations across the city to show off this great new feature – you can find them at:

• O'Hare Airport
• Midway Airport
• Clark and Lake
• 95th Red Line Station

With this information now at your fingertips, I hope to see you on the L soon!

Note: This is copied from Google's LatLong blog:

Kansas NCAA Men's B'Ball Champs, Congestion Pricing Goes Way Down ($0), Dylan Pulitzerized, & Location Based Services Business Projections

-Kansas beats Memphis 75 to 68 in overtime of Men's NCAA Basketball Championship.

-Congestion pricing was given the 'boot' in Albany. See the NY Times article here.

-Bob Dylan awarded a Special Citation in Music Pulitzer Prize. See pitchfork article and image here.
-And last but not least, Location-based services are expected to reach $13.3 Billion in the next five years. Read more about it here.

or from Location.net

Location-based services poised to hit $13.3B

April 7, 2008: Increasing availability of embedded GPS capabilities in mobile handsets will translate to a huge boom in location-based services, where revenue is expected to grow from $515 million to $13.3 billion in the next five years, according to ABI Research.
"This growth is driven on the supply side by WCDMA and GSM handsets increasingly joining the many CDMA-based devices that incorporate GPS capabilities; and on the demand side by surging consumer interest in personal navigation functionality," the consultancy said. ABI also parsed the LBS market into five segments: personal navigation, friend finder, local information searches, family-tracker applications, and fleet management.

Enterprise apps like fleet management and workforce tracking are expected to be the largest single revenue producer at $6.5 billion by 2013, ABI analyst Jamie Moss said in a statement. Personal navigation is the second-richest subset at $4.3 billion.

The findings track with what mobile gaming software site GetJar sees among its customer base. GetJar said Thursday that GPS will help grow the mobile applications market. "This will include both functional applications of the type we all know already, such as navigation, to much more elaborate GPS-based games, where the user location is central to game play," GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs said in a statement.

ABI also pointed to "cross-network interoperability" as a necessary element for the growth of LBS. "Once services provided by one carrier are capable of seamlessly incorporating users from other networks, then the usage of LBS will be driven virally by the desire to respond to and interact with friends and family on other networks," the researchers said.

New York City Offices Smash and Throw Out Usable Desk Chairs

Along this section of Baxter St. near Columbus Park in Chinatown New York City Court Offices have been throwing out massive amounts of old, yet still usable, office furniture. As of Sunday there was a dumpster full of chairs which were subsequently smashed one by one to fit into the container. I had no camera with me but would have liked to take a picture to illustrate the irony of what was going on versus Bloomberg's aggressive environmental PlanNYC program.

Couldn't they donate these chairs and furniture to a needy organization or even to another department within the city?

Federal Reserve Subprime Maps, Grizzly Bear with Radiohead, Greenpeace Google Earth, Theftproof bike?

The Federal Reserve released some map data on the subprime mortgage crisis.

Brooklyn Vegan says Grizzly Bear may tour with Radiohead.

New Google Earth Greenpeace layer.

And a new TheftProof Bike that probably wouldn't keep its claim in NYC.

What's the deal with Congestion Pricing?

This image is from NYC Mayor's Office - the approved plan is 60th St. not 86th St.

The New York Times released this article on congestion pricing yesterday. New York City has passed the plan and now it is going to Albany where new Governor Patterson supports it but may receive some resistance from the state senate. The plan has to adhere to a time-line in order to be eligible for federal funding.

The concept seems to make sense - limit the amount of unnecessary auto trips on Manhattan streets aiming to reduce oil consumption, improve public health, and clear our streets up for more bicycle and pedestrian traffic. The funds can be used to improve public transportation.

Implementation is what the issue is. How can you build the infrastructure to support such a concept? And what do you do about small businesses who depend on auto's or truck delivery's for day-to-day operations? How will we move commodities cheaply without trucks? I don't feel like paying more for Manhattan's already overpriced goods.

Google Email Improvements beta

Google now lets you send emails when you want them sent. An hour late, no problem. Want to send an email later in the day, no problem. Three years ago, not a problem.

Google has also released a tool to help people make it to early appointments. Sync with Google Calendar and Google Maps and you may just very well wake up where you need to be at the right time.

And ESRI is now giving out ArcGIS Server licenses for free. (as of April 1st)