Map Hawk

USA Today used its regularly published interactive map of the flight delays to highlight where travelers may find slow going today. The map uses a simple, colored dot to show which airports are experiencing delays. The map is "powered" by FlightView.com a company that has several products for travel information. (Image used with permission)

Both CNN and the Washington Post have developed excellent online maps of the Mumbai terrorist attacks of the last week. CNN used a simple satellite image-map of the Mumbai peninsula and then used simple symbols to mark the location of the attacks but use a tool-tip approach to allow the reader to drill down for more information. The Washington Post used Google Maps mashup with much more annotation to the location of each attack such that it indicated the time of the terrorist invasion. Unfortunately, repeated attempts to articles at the Times of India met with server errors. The Telegraph (Calcutta) did not have much in the way of maps to support news reporting.

If you can suspend your geographic sensibilities for a moment, the New York Times has created a graduated symbol map of the world's fastest supercomputers in the world. The map is a bit skewed in the sense that the locations of these supercomputers are not exactly in their correct locations on the map though the Times tries their best to balance size of the symbol with geographic correctness. While the locations of the supercomputers are easier to place geogrpaphically in Europe because they are smaller in computing-power, the largest supercomputer in the U.S. lands smack dab in the middle of the map that the Times created giving the illusion that Los Alamos, New Mexico, is somewhere in the middle of the country and Oak Ridge, Tennessee is near the border with Canada. Anyway, I think I would have preferred that the Times try a little harder to maintain some semblance of geographic location. Don't we have enough trouble with geographic literacy in this country?

Today at our Rocket City Geospatial Conference in Huntsville, Alabama, Bob Baron, CEO and founder of Baron Services (also of Huntsville) gave our attendees a glimpse of TV weather forecasting in the future. OMNI , is a "Google Earth-like" interface that will allow TV weather broadcasters a visualization platform, well, like Google Earth but with stylistic changes that offer greater depth of displaying weather patterns, storms and tools to help TV forecasters. Using high resolution 3D terrain data, 3D building models, and text displays that will turn heads, Baron is delivering a new paradigm that leverages geospatial technology to the media weather forecasters.

The Los Angeles Times has created several maps of fire-damaged homes, locations of where the fires began, and animal safe shelters as the region is once again fighting fires in heavily residential areas. The maps are reminiscent of those produced by the Times during last year's devastating fires in the region. More and more, the media is utilizing mapping technology to get the news out and is in many ways becoming the primary source of information to which citizens turn to get updated and near real-time news.

The Chicago Tribune has set up a page with some great resources to take help readers take part in National Geography Awareness Week (Nov. 16-22).

So, traffic is, as some at deCarta are prognosticating, "the next killer app." And at NBC Chicago, they have launched a beta website for just such real-time information. I think this is a perfect application for TV stations to deploy. You expect to get your weather info from them; why not traffic? Radio stations have been doing it for years, but there is nothing like a picture to show the way. And with more people purchasing cell phones that are really Internet browers, like the iPhone, NBC Chicago is making the right move. Microsoft Virtual Earth is the mapping app they are using and they have integrated traffic and live roadway camera feeds as well. According to the MSFT VE blog, the app was developed by MyWeather LLC and is getting the traffic info from their "own traffic flow/incident overlay." The thumbnail maps of the 5 highest traffic zones is a nice touch and sure to be clicked on alot.