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Wednesday, November 16
More JAGIS with Google Earth
by
JTJ
on Wed 16 Nov 2005 11:04 AM MST
Another nice piece of creativity and innovation comes
along in the Google Earth mashup that depicts not just the U.S.
military deaths in Iraq, but the age and location of those
killed. This, along with a pop-up of the causality's data, is the
kind of applied JOURNALISM tool university's -- and newsrooms -- should
be teaching.
"Iraq Conflict Casualties Map in Google Earth
 In
response to All Saints/Veterans Day, someone decided to collect and
post a memorial of those who gave their lives so far in the Iraq
conflict from the Americans and Coalition Forces. The author is called
'purblind_horus' at the Google Earth Community and he wanted this to be
as non-political as possible. He wanted to remember those who gave
their lives. He is also working to show the even larger number of
innocent Iraqi's who have lost their lives.
Once you download the war casualties file  , you will see placemarks showing the locations of the homes of each soldier. The information came from the official icasualties.org
web site, and includes the 2212 casualties through 27-October-2005. In
addition to the home location of each casualty, if you click on the
placemark it may contain a photo, a link to basic background
information, and links to other information, if available, such as news
stories.
This is a valuable, and sobering, effort. It has been greatly
appreciated by many at the GEC, and I hope some find it worthwhile here
at the GEB as well. Here's the original post. Good work 'purblind_horus'!
Posted by FrankTaylor at November 15, 2005 08:16 AM"
Thursday, November 10
Who's sitting on local juries in Louisville, Kentucky?
by
JTJ
on Thu 10 Nov 2005 01:06 PM MST
A nice bit of AJ done by the folks at the Louisville
[Kentucky] Courier-Journal, who analyzed the jury pool and composition
in the C-J's home county. Some good thinking and moderate
statistical-lifting drives the series.
See http://tinyurl.com/cr98h
"Jury not of their peers
In Jefferson County"
People who live in mainly African-American areas
are less likely to serve than those from mostly white areas, a
Courier-Journal analysis found.
Yes, Virginia, methodology DOES matter
by
JTJ
on Thu 10 Nov 2005 12:38 PM MST
A piece on calling the elections in Detroit:
BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF
FREE PRESS LANSING BUREAU CHIEF
November 10, 2005
What was a viewer to believe?
As polls closed Tuesday, WDIV-TV (Channel 4) declared Freman Hendrix winner of Detroit's mayoral race by 10 percentage points.
WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) showed Hendrix ahead by 4 percentage points, statistically too close to call.
But WJBK-TV (Channel 2) got it right, declaring just after 9 p.m. that
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was ahead, 52% to 48%, which turned out to be
almost exactly the ... more »
Geocoding and the GISCorps
by
JTJ
on Thu 10 Nov 2005 12:24 PM MST
An interesting piece today from CNN on the value of geographers in the hurricane rescuse and recovery business.
See http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/11/10/gis.technology/
'Geocoding' used to locate Katrina survivors
Street addresses not very useful after hurricane hit
By Marsha Walton
CNN
(CNN)
-- Police, firefighters, and Coast Guard crews may be the first to come
to mind when naming the lifesavers during disasters such as Hurricane
Katrina.
It might be time to add geographers to that list.
In
the sometimes desperate hours following Katrina's landfall, experts in
geographic information services -- GIS -- helped search and rescue
crews reach more than 75 stranded ... more »
Social Networks and Reporting
by
JTJ
on Thu 10 Nov 2005 12:03 PM MST
Our friend Sree Sreenivasan,
on the J-school faculty at Columbia, posts an interesting column on the
Poynter site today on social networking. Remember, "social networks" is/are not quite the same as Social Network Analysis, but they are close conceptual relatives.
Sree has linked to some valuable sites we didn't know about, so check out "Social Networking for Journalists" at http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=91496
Wednesday, November 9
Various "populations" of a city
by
JTJ
on Wed 09 Nov 2005 04:03 PM MST
A city never sleeps? Well, some do, at least according to a fairly recent report from the Census Bureau.
Census Bureau Releases First-Ever Data On Daytime Populations for Cities and Counties
October 21, 2005
Company: U.S. Census Bureau
Industry: Demographic Data
Location: Washington, DC, United States of America
If it seems a little crowded on weekdays in cities like Washington,
D.C.; Irvine, Calif.; Salt Lake City, Utah; or Orlando, Fla.; it's not
your imagination. Among cities with 100,000 or more people, these four
show the highest percentage increases in population during the day as
opposed to their resident population.
The findings come from the first-ever U.S. Census Bureau estimates of
the daytime population for all counties and more than 6,400 places
across the country, based on Census 2000 data.
The concept of the daytime population refers to the number of
people, including workers, who are present in an area during normal
business hours, in contrast to the resident population present during
the evening and nighttime hours.
"Information on the expansion or contraction experienced by different
communities between nighttime and daytime is important for many
planning purposes, including those dealing with transportation and
disaster relief operations," said Census Bureau Director Louis
Kincannon. "By providing information on the number of people not living
in the area, but nevertheless greatly affected by the event, the data
can provide a clearer picture of the effects of disasters such as
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita."
The places where the largest percent increases in daytime over
nighttime populations occur tend to be those with small resident
populations. For example, among medium-sized cities, Greenville, S.C.,
has a daytime population that is 97 percent higher than its nighttime
population. Palo Alto, Calif., increases by about 81 percent, and Troy,
Mich., by 79 percent. Among very small places, gains approached 300
percent in Tysons Corner, Va. (292 percent); and El Segundo, Calif.
(288 percent).
Other highlights:
- New York City has the largest estimated daytime population, at more
than 8.5 million persons. The increase of more than half a million
people over the nighttime population is bigger than that found in any
other area. However, the 7 percent increase puts New York in the middle
of the pack on percentage change among cities with more than a million
residents.
- The second highest numeric daytime increase is in Washington,
D.C., where 410,000 workers boost the capital's population by 72
percent during normal business hours.
- Other big cities with large daytime gains are Atlanta (62
percent), Tampa (48 percent) and Pittsburgh and Boston (both around 41
percent).
- Typical examples of sizable expansion of daytime populations
in small cities can be found in places such as Paramus, N.J.; Redmond,
Wash.; and Beverly Hills, Calif., among others.
- About 250,000 people worked in New Orleans prior to Hurricane
Katrina. Almost 150,000 of these workers were residents of New Orleans,
but the remaining 100,000 lived outside the city.
- One of the most extreme examples of daytime population
increase is Lake Buena Vista, Fla., which has almost no permanent
residents but swells to an employment center of more than 30,000 people
during the day.
Additional tables are available on the Census Bureau's Internet
site at . Choose the "Subjects A to Z" link at the top of the page,
click on the letter "D" and then select the link to "Daytime
Population."
Mike Bergmann (pio@census.go)
Phone: (301) 763-3030 |
Monday, November 7
Big digital doors to GIS
by
JTJ
on Mon 07 Nov 2005 12:09 PM MST
Susan Smith, editor of GISWeekly Review, reviews a new book from ESRI Press on GIS portals. See review below or check out Spatial Portals: Gateways to Geographic Information
==============================
Spatial Portals Book Review
By Susan Smith
A new book out from ESRI Press called Spatial Portals: Gateways to Geographic Information
by Winnie Tang, founder and CEO of ESRI China (Hong Kong) and
Japan-based independent consultant Jan Selwood, offers a comprehensive
look at spatial portals from an ESRI point of view, using as examples
spatial portals developed with ArcExplorer Web Services, Geography
Network software, ArcIMS for internet mapping, and ArcSDE for ... more »
Friday, November 4
More churning in the mapping API world
by
JTJ
on Fri 04 Nov 2005 02:23 PM MST
Interesting
announcement from Yahoo Maps this week. Seems as though Google,
Yahoo and Amazon (with it's A9 entry) are starting to look like three
NASCAR competitors on the backstretch of the lap before the finish
line. Here's the latest from Yahoo:
==========================
November 02, 2005
Announcing New Maps APIs
In June of this year, we gave developers the ability to overlay
geographic data on a Yahoo! Map. Since then, we've seen a lot of
terrific maps mash-ups. But you wanted more. You wanted the ability to
embed Yahoo! Maps on your own Web site. You wanted to programmatically
convert addresses into geocoded longitude/latitude pairs. You wanted
more data feeds, such as highway traffic and local data, to plot on a
map. But most importantly, you wanted a user experience that's better
than any online mapping product out there.
Today we build on the success of the Simple Maps API
by adding several new APIs for Yahoo! Maps. These products enable
developers to use Yahoo! Maps in exciting new ways — including
embedding maps on your Web site.
With this release, we are providing:
Of course, the Simple Maps API
we released in June is still there, giving developers and
non-developers the ability to plot locations on Yahoo! Maps with no
programming and no rate limits.
We're giddy with excitement about this release, and we can't wait to
see how you use the new APIs. We know there's lot to digest here, so if
you have questions, feedback, or just want to show off what you've
done, please join us in the yws-maps group.
Jeffrey McManus
Director, Yahoo! Developer Network
Thursday, November 3
Alternative thinking about the Avian Flu worst-case scenario
by
JTJ
on Thu 03 Nov 2005 05:57 PM MST
Much
of what we've seen and read about the U.S. government's plan to stave
off a pandemic bird flu suggests that everyone -- EVERYONE -- needs to
be vaccinated. Even if we knew what is necessary to produce an
appropriate vaccination, producing 280 million doses is not a trivial
task.
But
there may be another strategy that journalists should be asking about:
Isolation strategies and then vaccination of a limited number of
persons in a society. These strategies have been developed as a
result of work by the simulation modeling folks, especially Josh Epstein at The Brookings Institute.
See -- and be sure to click on the videos:
Toward a Containment Strategy for Smallpox Bioterror:
An Individual-Based Computational Approach
Joshua M. Epstein, Derek A. T. Cummings, Shubha Chakravarty,
Ramesh M. Singa, and Donald S. Burke
CSED Working Paper No. 31
December 2002
Digital detectives
by
JTJ
on Thu 03 Nov 2005 01:30 PM MST
For
those interested in the forensic process -- and in this case, computer
forensics -- be sure to check out this fine, fine piece of digital
detective work by Mark Russinovich, a computer security expert with
Sysinternals. He discovered evidence of a "rootkit" on his Windows PC.
We don't think journalists need to know how to DO this kind of
deep-diving probing, but we should be aware that it is possible
and, broadly speaking, the methods if only to know the appropriate
search terms.
Through heroic forensic work,
he traced the code to First 4 Internet, a British provider of
copy-restriction technology that has a deal with Sony to put digital
rights management on its CDs. It turns out Russinovich was infected
with the software when he played the Sony BMG CD Get Right With the Man by the Van Zant brothers.
Here's WIRED Magazine's take on the story, "The Cover-Up Is the Crime"
And here's what Dan Gillmor had to say about it, with additional links.
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AJ Digital
Tool-of-the-Week
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In
response to All Saints/Veterans Day, someone decided to collect and
post a memorial of those who gave their lives so far in the Iraq
conflict from the Americans and Coalition Forces. The author is called
'purblind_horus' at the Google Earth Community and he wanted this to be
as non-political as possible. He wanted to remember those who gave
their lives. He is also working to show the even larger number of
innocent Iraqi's who have lost their lives.