I recently completed a paper on the relationship between a governmental program known as HOPE VI and changing crime patterns in Lexington, Kentucky. I discovered some very interesting patterns that occurred as large numbers of public housing residents were relocated throughout the city. The methodology for this study was somewhat more complex than simply comparing a few maps over several years. I employed various statistical techniques to determine if the presence of HOPE VI residents could significantly predict higher rates of crime and social disorganization. For this post I am including the maps that show a significant growth away from …

Recently a friend of mine received information in the mail about becoming a Naval Officer. In the packet of information was a brochure that included information about locations of U.S. Naval bases and ports throughout the world. The location information was simply a list of cities around the world where the bases and ports are located. I thought it would be both interesting and informative to talk about how to turn a list of cities into a map. The process for creating the map is pretty simple, and can be completed in just a few easy steps. The first …

Last week's House hearing on the state of Federal geospatial data management encouraged me to search out good places for both free and inexpensive GIS data. Basically, I wanted to create a brief overview about good places to find GIS data. I will mostly likely post several blog postings on this issue as I discover new places to find data. With the growing number of users learning to use GIS in both their professional and private lives, the need for an organized data management system is apparent. Unfortunately, there is currently not a one-stop-shop for GIS data, and as more …

Yesterday (July 23) the House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing about the future of federal geospatial data management. The purpose of the meeting was to cover various issues related to geospatial data, and to talk about the need to promote better geospatial data management and a national geospatial data infrastructure. The hearing was published on the House Committee on Natural Resources website for public viewing. The hearing included a panel of mapping professionals that were at the hearing to testify about the value of geospatial data and the importance of creating a national database of federal …

I was attempting to find some Climate Change data when I came across GeoData.gov ,which is a really excellent website for free GIS data. When I was attempting to find climate data I came across some very interesting data regarding tornados in the United States. The data included an entire log of tornados from 1950 through 2006 which includes nearly 50,000 data entries. The tornado data includes a lot of information about each event including the strength of the tornado on the F-Scale, the number of injuries and deaths, how far the tornado went, how wide the path …

I found a really interesting website earlier this week that is used for tracking marine vessels around the world. The website, MarineTraffic.com provides a look at most (but not all) coastal areas around the world that have large ports and heavy sea traffic. The website gives the location of a ship on a map by providing a symbol that corresponds to the type of ship that is being represented. The user can click on the symbol and learn a lot of information about the ship, like where it is from, where it is going, what its job is (i …

The recent news of the earthquake in China inspired me to find websites that provide spatial information about earthquakes. Basically, I wanted to find out if there are websites out there that describe where earthquakes are occurring, and at what magnitude. Naturally, the first organization I found that provides such a service is the United States Geological Survey, which has a number of maps that provide not only the location of earthquakes, but also other important information like magnitude and coordinates. The USGS provides global maps as well as more regionalized maps that provide a more detailed look at Earthquakes …

I have a couple of things to write about this morning regarding Apple products and news...There has been a lot of talk around the internet about what is going on with the new iPhone and its battery problems. I have a few updates on that and a few comments about another iPhone 3G problem that has occurred with the new 3.0 update. Additionally, there was an interesting article this morning that mentions Apples place in China's roll out of a new internet filtering software that is designed to limit access to pornography and to sensitive political websites. I …

There have been reports circling the internet that the new iPhone 3G S is experiencing problems with the battery overheating. Wired.com is reporting that in some white iPhones 3G S's there are reports that the overheating is causing discoloration. The same article also hinted at older iPhone 3Gs experiencing similar problems after upgrading to the new 3.0 OS. The article also pointed out that the overheating was occurring while the users were playing games or running other applications. At this point it is unclear if all iPhone are affected, if certain apps are causing problems, or if the …

The release of the newest iPhone 3G S begins on Wednesday and reports are that it has already sold-out of phones to be handed out on opening day. Apple Insider and Information Week are both reporting that sources are saying that customers who ordered after Saturday the 13th should not expect to receive their iPhone on the opening release day. Both Apple Insider and Information Week are indicating that customers wishing to upgrade or to purchase the new iPhone will now likely have to wait 7-14 days to receive their new phone. This is a problem (If you will call …

It's been a really exciting week here at Apple's WWDC! There's a lot of information now available from the Keynote of the conference which is public, and there was a lot more disclosed in sessions that we can't talk about. However, the most important pieces of user news are that Snow Leopard will be available in September for $29 (USD) as an upgrade to Leopard, and that Snow Leopard will not support the PowerPC processor-based Macintoshes. This has very important implications for Cartographica—specifically, we will be discontinuing new feature support of 10.5, and thus the PowerPC, in new …

I had a recent experience involving the 8GB iPhone 3G that I thought really shows why Apple is such an amazing company. Let me explain. We all know this week that Apple announced the newest version of its iPhone would be hitting stores by June 17th, which will include the newest version of the Mac OS 3.0, and a number of other new features that will greatly improve the iPhone. Well, me being an Apple advocate to my friends and family, I continually support their purchasing of any Apple products from computers, to cell phones, to programs like Cartographica …

Today is the first day of the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, which should be very exciting for any Mac user. Each year a number of new products are presented at the conference, and this year should be no different. There has already been a lot of buzz about the new iPhone software that is due out very soon, and the conference should be a place to highlight the new software's capability. According to Mitch Wagner of Information Week Apple is expected to present the newest version of the iPhone, which is expected to have a …

Today, I ran into an article in the Wall Street Journal that discusses several new websites that promote information sharing between the police and the public. These websites focus on providing up to date information about crime incidents within cities by allowing the public to view various aspects related to the occurrence of a crime. The public is able to search for crimes at specific addresses and times, and they are able to focus on certain types of crime. Personally, this article is very exciting for a number of reasons... First, any time crime mapping makes it into a national …

For the past decade the National Institute of Justice has held the Crime Mapping Research Conference which focuses on advocating for policy decisions, and solutions to problems, to be guided by GIS related research. The importance of the conference stems from the fact that crime is a phenomenon that can be understood spatially, and as technology improves, so does the quality of the research that is produced. The Tenth Crime Mapping Research Conference gives the growing community of researchers and practitioners a place to present, debate, and communicate about ongoing research. The 2009 Crime Mapping Conference is located in New …

We have all heard about the outbreak of swine flu across the globe and how it has affected a great number of people as nearly 14,000 cases have been reported so far (WHO, 2009). If you are like me, then you likely have no clue where the Swine Flu has been popping up most frequently There have been many reports coming from Mexico, the U.S. and other countries around the world, but to be honest, it is very difficult to keep up with all of the reports, and to know exactly what the outbreak looks like. Naturally, I …

Fresh from his master's degree, all of us here at ClueTrust would like to welcome Rick Jones to the team. He's going to be posting on this blog (more often than I do) and doing a lot of other work here, now that we've got Cartographica 1.0 out the door. Welcome to the team, Rick!

The recent news that there is a risk of the GPS satellite system failing has raised serious concerns among many travelers, researchers and professionals. Chris Lefkow recently wrote an article for the Agence France-Press (AFP) that discussed the possibility of GPS satellites failing because the U.S. Air Force has not taken steps to maintain the currently used satellites. Additionally, it is not clear if the Air Force is going to be able to replace failing satellites at a fast enough rate. Lefkow reported that the U.S. plans to invest 5.8 billion dollars in the GPS system by …

Some of you may already know that ClueTrust (the folks who run this site) has been located in the National Capital Area since 1989 (over 30 years now), and during that time, DC has gone through a lot of changes. The District's new mayor is nothing if not high tech, and to that end announced an amazing level of data openness through the CityDW (City Data Warehouse) program this over the last couple of years. Not surprisingly, this includes a lot of geospatial data. And this continued with a large release of data about the transit system in the last …

ClueTrust is very, very pleased to announce general availability of Cartographica, the Macintosh GIS. After a 6 months of testing and enhancement, we're finally ready to put our name on a 1.0. Today, Cartographica brings with it the ability to import and export data in a huge number of formats, create detailed maps with highly-evolved styles, and access geospatial data from across the Internet. However, version 1.0 is just the beginning. Users of Cartographica can look forward to quick evolution of features in the months and years to come. In comparison to commercial packages on other platforms, Cartographica …