What is Google Waves?

Google is unleashing a new product called Google Waves.

Check out the video on it:

NY teams sweep last Sunday

On a rare Sunday afternoon when the Jets and the Giants played at the same time — and the Yankees and the Mets had games in the early afternoon — the Jets’ 24-17 win over the Tennessee Titans generated the highest rating in the New York market.

Only two of the four games were originally supposed to start at 1.

But because of Yom Kippur observances, the N.F.L. moved the Titans-Jets game from 4:15 to 1, and ESPN shifted the Red Sox-Yankees game to 1 o’clock from its nighttime slot at 8 p.m. (but rain delayed the start until after 2 p.m.)...............................

Fahnestock State Park

An AT Trail Marker

A flash of sunlight in a gulley

I'm very excited about the new Ken Burns documentary on our National Parks. I was lucky enough to visit one of New York's finest state parks this Saturday; Fahnestock State Park. Fahnestock contains a portion of the Appalachian Trail (AT). I walked the AT segment that encircles Canopus Lake's Western shore.

Canopus Lake

Canopus Lake from the Snowshoe Trail

View Larger MapCanopus Lake aquatic vegetation

McDonald's Heat Map

The blog Weather Sealed mapped out a McDonald's heat map of the US. The data was purchased from Agg Data (they have tons of corporate retail locations available for sale).

NPR Fall Music Preview

The good folks at All Songs Considered got together to discuss the fall preview of new music. Nothing too extraordinary was revealed and there was a lot of bickering and interruption of the usually good intros by Robin Hilton. The Flaming Lips new track was really interesting and the resulting collaboration that is BlakRoc, various rappers (including Mos Def) and the Black Keys, is really great. I look forward to getting that album.

The fact that its fall already (despite the stickiness of the NYC air right now) makes me start thinking about the NYGeog Best of 2009 Compilation. So if you have any suggestions feel free to shoot me an email at nygeog@gmail.com. The rules are simple; 1. the music has to have come out in 2009 (official or non-official releases accepted), 2. sometimes good songs don't make it on (but will make effort to include up-and-coming artists other songs if their best doesn't fit) because the mix has to flow like an album (as best as I can do).

September 21, 2009 - On this edition of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen talks with Monitor Mix Blogger Carrie Brownstein, producer Robin Hilton, and Song of the Day editor Stephen Thompson about some the albums they're most looking forward to coming out this fall. Hear sneak previews of new music from The Flaming Lips, choral versions of classic Kinks songs by Ray Davies, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova of The Swell Season, a collaboration between The Black Keys and some of the biggest names in hip-hop, The Gossip, and more.

Download this show in the All Songs Considered podcast.

Ruby on Rails & Ruby

I'm learning Ruby and just finished setting up a Ruby on Rails webserver. It was very easy, now all I have to do is get the application configured and working. The two books I'm reading right now are Pragmatic Programmers Bookshelf: Learning to Program, version 2 by Chris Pine and Ruby Visual Quickstart Guide. The Prag Prog book is a entry level programming book and easy/fun to read while the Quickstart is a little more advanced (I downloaded the Kindle version to my iPod Touch) and had the section I used to start Ruby on Rails. I think I may buy a another Prag Prog book if I could only find out which one to buy next.

Zoom through features/bookmarks and export to graphics file

Author	Ken Buja
File Name	ZoomandExport.zip
Language	VB.net
Last Modified	Sep 11 2008
Status of work	Public Domain
Software	ArcGIS Desktop
File Size	554.78 kb
Downloads	988
ArcScripts is intended for the free exchange of scripts and tools related to ESRI software products. Please alert the moderator if this script is a demo, trial-version, or an advertisement for a retail product.
Summary
Created for ArcGIS 9.2, SP 6 or ArcGIS 9.3 (also requires ArcGIS .NET Assemblies) This tool allows you to zoom to each of the bookmarks in a project or each of the point, line, and polygon features of a feature layer (either all the features or a selected subset) and export the map or layout to a graphics file. The files are named by the unique attributes in a field in the layer. If several features share the attribute, the exported map will be zoomed to the extent of the features with the common attribute. If the layout contains several data frames, you can select the data frames that will be zoomed to the same extent as the active frame. This is an update to the Zoom and Export ArcScript (http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=14035) with such improvements as zooming to bookmarks, automatically creating world files for selected export formats, clipping to graphics extent, automatically embedding fonts and others. Complete instructions on how to use the tool are included in the zip file. Version History: 11 Sep 2008: 2.3 • Enhancement - Installer now works with ArcGIS 9.3 • Bug Fix - If running in the data window, an error message will appear after the images have been created and the initial conditions are not reset. 27 Jun 2008: 2.3 • Bug Fix - If an attribute contains a single quote (Bob's Boat Shop), the process will crash 31 May 2008: 2.3 • Bug Fix - If the coordinate system of the data frame is different than the layer to be zoomed, the extent of the selected features is incorrect 23 May 2008: 2.3 • Bug Fix - Installer script gives incomprehensible error message for older service packs 3 May 2008: 2.3 • Enhancement - a unique field is no longer required. The output map will be zoomed to the extent of all features sharing an attribute from the selected field. • Enhancement - other data frames can be zoomed to the same extent as the active data frame. • Bug Fix - Definition Query was not set back to its original query. 7 Feb 2008: 2.1 • Enhancement - rewrote routine to find Unique ID Field, speeding it up considerably • Enhancement - can cancel finding Unique ID fields process and Export process • Bug Fix - Output Image Quality was not set to Best 17 Jan 2008: 2.0 • Initial Release DOWNLOAD

I would like to start profiling more of the ArcGIS add-ons and tools
that I use at work. One of these tools is called the Zoom and Export
tool developed by Ken Buja of NOAA.

ESRI travels with Henry Hudson, web surfing addiction?

Henry Hudson's Travels covered by ESRI Education Community

from ESRI: Over a week ago, I discovered that this year is the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s landing at Manhattan and exploration of the river that now bears his name. More specifically, I learned that in the early weeks of September 1609 Hudson and his crew in the Dutch East India Company commissioned ship Half Moon explored and entered New York Bay and ultimately anchored off Manhattan Island—marking the beginning of the Dutch presence in North America.

The voyage and this event screamed, “Map me!” As a result, I began a hunt for mappable data and more information about what unfolded then. The result was feast, famine, and seemingly endless possibilities. So, I offer this blog post as a GIS “starter” with the prospect that others will evolve the story more fully........

Henry Hudson's Travels KML


Do you have an internet addiction? Surfing the web can be treated. NPR covers internet addiction recovery.

Google Fast Flip Newsreader & Two Students Take Pictures from Space for $150

Google has done it again. Google has created an online Newspaper frontpage web application. The Times profiled Google's new product here.

See for yourself here:

http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/

"Two MIT students have successfully photographed the earth from space on a strikingly low budget of $148. Perhaps more significantly, they managed to accomplish this feat using components available off-the-shelf to the average layperson, opening the doors for a new generation of amateur space enthusiasts. The pair plan to launch again soon and hope that their achievements will inspire teachers and students to pursue similar endeavors."

Read on here:

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-328198

http://space.1337arts.com/flight

Mac Mini Server, Portable GIS Version 2 released & new GeoServer UI

Lately I've been thinking about serving data myself (b/c of my company's strict IT guidelines) for some web mapping examples to help market potential services and what the best way to do this would be. I run Open Source apps at home (on my mac) and ESRI products at my work station. I have tried to develop a MobileMe/.Mac site with some success but it overruns the ability to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes b/c I don't have access to anything beyond the MobileMe storage structure (I think I can still do this effectively using MobileMe but a general desire to learn more about serving data and learning Ruby has lead me to believe I need my own server access to build a better site and process data). Anyway, I learned of a cheap way to build a server using the Mac Mini. See what its all about here.

Announcement: Portable GIS Version 2 is released! Download it here

The current set of software includes:

• Desktop GIS packages QGIS (with GRASS plugin), uDIG and gvSIG,
• FWTools (GDAL and OGR toolkit)
• XAMPPlite (Apache2/MySQL5/Php5),
• PostgreSQL (version 8.4)/Postgis (version 1.4),
• Mapserver, OpenLayers, Tilecache, Featureserver, and Geoserver web applications.

The packages and menu system are all open source, but each component has a separate license. Some of the components have been altered in order to make them drive-letter independent.

and

check out the new GeoServer UI