Apparently putting exploding die packages in with stolen loot is so 1990's. Engadget has a story of how bank employees at a Washington Trust Bank in Spokane slipped a GPS receiver in with the bank loot and then notified the police. Ironically the robber told the employees to put $40,000, but no bait bills, in a duffel bag or he would kill them. However, because he didn't say not to put a GPS receiver in the duffel they were OK. Because of this wonderful little trickery, the police were able to track down the not so swift robber, in …

Yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas Google and Motorola announced a partnership to put Google services on Motorola phones. The new feature will allow users to bring up Google search features with the touch of a button on some phones. Directions Magazine speculates that this will lead to Motorola GPS enabled phones sending locations directly to Google rather than keying in a location. More interestingly, Google is supposedly working on a way to send, and of course charge someone, for location targeted ads. Thus, it appears our phones will no longer be spam free, moreover the spam will …

Just in case you were thinking about doing it, cocktail napkins with maps on them are not to be used as navigation devices. This Darwin Award preventing piece of information comes to us via the 9th annual Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch Wacky Warning Label Contest. The label was found on a cocktail napkin with a map of the waterways of Hilton Head island on it. Thank goodness there are people out there making the world safe for the rest of us idiots.

The Arizona Republic reports that Skyline Software Systems Inc has asked the court hearing its patent infringement lawsuit to suspend access to Google Earth until the suit is concluded. The lawsuit was originally brought against Keyhole, the company behind Google Earth that was purchased by Google, and thus Google has been added to the lawsuit. Whether or not this is lawsuit has merit is not known, but if anyone has been paying attention to the patent lawsuit brought against RIM, Google may have something to worry about.

The New York Times has a brief article detailing a new service provided by Mapquest called Find Me. Running on Sprint phones with GPS capabilities, the service allows you to pinpoint your current location and view it on your cellphone. Probably more interesting is the feature that allows you to be viewable to others on your approved list. Thus the service has the ability to act like a social networking tool. Not really anymore details on the service just yet, and I am sure there will be issues with it when it goes live, but its a nice attempt at …

Its that great time of year again when the holidays are technically over but the giving keeps right on going. Next week the giving will be from the Detroit Auto Show and MacWorld, but this week the giving is from the Consumer Electronics Show. While the show really gets moving tomorrow the product announcements have started in earnest already. With that in mind Garmin jumped on it and basically released about 1,000 new or redesigned units. Changes come to the Forerunner, Nuvi, iQue, and a host of other receivers. The details are too numerous to list but basic descriptions …

The Economist has a good article discussing the rationale and controversy behind the new European GPS system that launched its first satellite on December 28th. Named Galileo, the new system promises 1 meter accuracy for users of the free service and centimeter accuracy for those willing to pay for service. Importantly, it is this accuracy that has caused some of the controversy. In particular the U.S. is worried that this type of accuracy will be used against it militarily. This fear, rational or not, is compounded by the fact that China is a major backer financially of Galileo and …

AppleInsider is reporting, and showing screen shots, of a version of Google Earth for the Mac. While still in development, AI reports that a pre-release version has been making the rounds overseas for about a month. The Mac version will reportedly have a good deal of customization, allowing for user customization of colors and some of the other features. As of now there is no release date, but AI does have some screenshots of the software. As always, Mac rumors sites are known to be wrong, but one thing in AI's favor on this is the fact that Google has …

Verizon has announced a new service called VZ Navigator that provides navigation to your phone by triangulating your cell signal to get your position an then providing directions. When you want directions you use your keypad to type in a city and address and download the necessary map data (airtime charges alert) which then works with the cell signals to give you directions. According to a PC Magazine [review](http://ccablog.blogspot.com/2005/10/review-of-online-mapping- sites.html) the system works pretty well for $10 a month or #3 for 24 hours. Other nice features include POI, voice prompts, and …

While reading through some geography blogs I saw a post about Charles Booths maps of London Poverty in 1889 and it sparked my interest in putting up a post about some of the earliest spatial analysis. In particular I thought I would focus on some of the classic examples of how spatial analysis was applied to study social and epidemiological problems in the 1800's. Specifically, this post briefly discusses the analysis conducted by John Snow, Charles Booth, and Andre Michael Guerry. With the creation of Google Maps and the other main web mapping services there has been an increased interest …

A recent article by the AP looks at the popularity of the different web mapping services and finds that the winner is not Google Maps but Mapquest. Despite the press that Google maps has been receiving the results indicate Mapquest is the clear leader with 70% of users stating they use it, compared to 33% for Yahoo Maps and 26% for Google Maps. However, the article does mention that the new kids on the block are catching up and that Mapquest is innovating because of it. The moral of the story appears to be that big press doesn't necessarily translate …

Autodesk, makers of AutoCad, have announced a partnership with the University of Minnesota to develop and enhance web mapping servers and service platforms and release them as Open Source. The new effort, hosted at www.mapserverfoundation.org, is called the MapServer foundation (after the University of Minnesota's MapServer project, presumedly, where the Enterprise version was born). Among the things that the enterprise version appears to support is the ability to modify feature data objects on the server, which would be a great step for open-source offerings.

Yahoo Maps have now come to the iPod via a free program called iWay. The program displays maps only on iPods capable of viewing photos and appears to work by creating a series of pictures of your directions that you scroll through using the fast forward and reverse buttons. Once you have entered your to and from locations on the site you download a zip file which you extract to your iTunes photo file. While not the most sophisticated method or porting your directions around with you the pictures on the website look good and the directions appear easy to …

Wired magazine has an interesting article about the decision of WABC-TV in NYC to put GPS transmitters in their news trucks. Apparently the union members of the news agency are all hacked up because they feel this is an invasion of their privacy. While not a new issue, this is one that is starting to get more publicity as more and more organizations install GPS in their delivery vehicles. Read more after the jump. With the exception of guns, beer and football, there are few things that Americans value more than their privacy. As privacy invasion goes, the use of …

As mentioned before, I tend to wonder if the people in Googleville ever sleep. The latest evidence is a Map that shows the worldwide distribution of Google searches over the period of a day. In analyzing the map it is possible to see a wave of search use as the sun mover across the earth, although it appears that use remains pretty high in the US no matter what the time. In addition to the map is an article entitled "Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall". For those who care the article is being submitted to Scientific Programming Journal …

The Daily Telegraph has an interesting article about the discovery of the oldest "western" map. The map, named the Soleto map, was unearthed two years ago in southern Italy and depicts the heel area of the boot of Italy. Dating from 500 BC, the map contains Greek script marking towns that still exist today. The article details that this map provides the first physical evidence that the Greeks were making maps before the Romans, although maps were already being created in other parts of the world (China, Mediterranean, and Middle East). Overall an interesting read about the earliest cartographers.

With the latest Harry Potter movie opening yesterday, fellow GIS obsessed blog Very Spatial has an article on whether it is possible to truly create a "marauder's map". For those of you who are not versed in the ways of Hogwarts, the marauder's map is a map which shows the current location of every living thing in the Hogwart's castle. In our modern/real world the potential to know the location of people as they moved about their daily lives could be both scary and potentially cool and lucrative. While the article doesn't discuss ethical and or civil liberties issues …

We hope you all enjoyed GIS Day 2005, and look forward to more enjoying it in 2006. Hopefully for 2006, our list will be bigger (and a bit earlier in getting out).

News.com has an interesting article about internet mapping and "mashups" that are revolutionizing the internet. As part of their series called "Taking back the Web", News.com discusses the numerous different uses for internet mapping sites and how these different mashups, most involving Google Maps, are igniting whole new economies. In particular the article discusses the potential to target local advertising based on searches of maps for things like local restaurants. In addition, there are numerous links to mashups of all kinds.

Today is GIS Day! When you look around at the information around you, take stock in what has been put together through GIS systems, and imagine how much more there could be if we processed more with them. Articles like It's about so much more than just maps in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel show that the world is starting to take notice. Even noting that it's an editorial written by a Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (William E. Huxhold), it's still interesting to notice that it was selected to be printed.