DIIA Blog

Late yesterday and this morning, the blogosphere and twittersphere have been abuzz at Twitter’s announcement that it will incorporate geospatial capabilities into the next iteration of the Twitter API to be released soon. This will give developers an opportunity to incorporate lat-log data into user’s tweets to see specific locations of where the tweets are being posted. While this will be an optional feature for privacy reasons, having this capability will open up the doors for some very interesting use of Twitter for real time events such as natural disasters, breaking news, and whole host of other uses. Students and teachers in the field can use this to their advantage as well for fieldwork and data gathering adding an entirely new context to real time microblogging. Remember, its all about location, location, location…

Read the official announcement at the Twitter Blog.

Keene

For those of you who are familiar with HASTAC, this group always has some absorbing things going on out on the Web. Of particular interest to NMC members will be a discussion starting on April 6th called Mapping the Digital Humanities. You can read about the moderators and a blurb about what is covered here. It should be interesting. Its worth joining in if you are currently doing mapping work that is tied to the Humanities (or not). I think it fits quite nicely with the Geo-Everything portion of this year’s Horizon Report.

Keene

There is a new iPhone app on the horizon called SekaiCamera. Its not out yet and some are skeptical that it can really do what it proposes, but the demos at conferences have been well received. It is being developed by a company in Japan called Tonchidot. The app uses the iPhone’s camera as a “lens” onto the world where tags pop up in the field of view showing items people have tagged in the area you are looking at. You really need to see some of the video demos to get a sense of it. If its the real deal, it will be one amazing application. Do a Google search for SekaiCamera for links and go to this one at TechCrunch for some more eye candy. Don’t trip!

The innovative group out of the Washington, DC area called FortiusOne has been hard at work on creating some great mapping tools. Today, they announced their newest product, called Maker! which enables one to quickly make maps that one would normally expect to see coming out of a dedicated GIS. Its a slick implementation (the image above is a map of Facebook users in the US). There are a number of maps you can browse in the Maker! and then of course you can make your own, hence the name Maker!. This complements their existing service called Finder! which allows you to find and use geospatial data with a miniumum of fuss. Maker! and Finder! are part of an effort called the GeoCommons that FortiusOne has been developing. They descibe it best…

GeoCommons delivers visual analytics through maps; enabling non-technical professionals to view multiple datasets, draw conclusions, make decisions and solve problems without traditional GIS overhead.

Their services are a great go between full blown GIS and neogeography which is more the bailiwick of the layperson. Best of all, data accessed through the GeoCommons is free to use under the Creative Commons License. Nice!

For faculty and students who have little time on their hands but need some quick analytical mappage of their work, the GeoCommons effort can go a long way into making your life easier (and better looking). My hats off to FortiusOne for tackling how to make analytical mapping a little easier for everyone.

Keene