I don't know how new this is, but it's exciting news to me and my fellow sailors, so I'll share.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s National Data Buoy Center has published an interactive online map of 1003 stations (at press time), providing near-real-time marine observations such as air and water temperature, wind speed and direction, wave height and period, and much more. These data have long been publicly-available in other formats (web, text-only, or by phone ("Dial-a-buoy")). But the map interface makes searching for and comparing marine data a breeze.

The National Data Buoy Center uses Google Maps.

Hat tip to fellow sailor, planner and GISer Kelly Robinson.

        

ENTCHEV GIS Architects has been retained by Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, to assist with the assembly of an enterprise geodatabase for the Township. ENTCHEV will provide assistance with geodatabase design, data conversion, and staff training.

        

The New York Times released a very impressive interactive online map of homicides in New York City. Clear, simple, fast, intuitive, impactful. Powered by Google.

Archie Belaney, a commenter on The All Points Blog, nominates Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Marissa Mayer as the most influential people in GIS. (S)he has a point.

        

James Fee challenged his blog readers to respond to another reader's request -- "Please list all the pros and cons of ArcView 3.1". Many obliged, and collectively came up with a fairly comprehensive list of pros and cons. Several responses (three at the time of this writing) included lack of projection-on-the-fly as a con.

But how important is on-the-fly projection? For any serious GIS work one needs to project their data anyway. I think projection on the fly as a feature was introduced by ESRI in response to Intergraph’s similar feature, which Intergraph wasn’t shy flaunting in sales presentations prior to ESRI having it. It’s just sales sizzle.

What do you think?

        

An online friend shared a story about his young daughter’s visit to the optometrist. The optometrist determined that the child was farsighted and needed glasses. My friend then wrote: “The only thing that bothers me is that optometrists not only tell you that you need glasses, they also sell them!”

Of course it bothers him. It bothers me, too, when I seek (and pay for) professional advice, only to find myself on the receiving end of a product sales pitch. Without fail, the “professional” stands to gain financially from the product sale.

Yet the same practice it prevalent in the GIS industry. “Independent” consultants are routinely partnered with software or service vendors. Big surprise, then, that the consultant recommends the product (and lots of it) whose sale they stand to profit from.

I was reminded of the optometrist story as a GIS press release popped up in my RSS reader – about a New Jersey town that just bought a technologically outdated web-based GIS, on the advice of their GIS consultant. As it turns out, the doctor in this case was also the pharmacist.

People: If you ask the GM salesman, he’ll recommend a Hummer (Hummer being sold to China as I write this).

        

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The Star-Ledger serves the latest installment in the seemingly never-ending New Jersey Open Public Records Act (OPRA) saga. Standardized OPRA request forms are illegal (for now).

"UNION COUNTY -- A state appeals court today struck down standardized request forms many towns and counties require citizens to fill out to view public records; the court said that letters, faxes and even e-mails containing the specific request are sufficient under the state's Open Public Records Act."

        

[UPDATE 05/20/2009] WIRED chimes in: "Tax GPS to Save GPS?"

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cnet reports about a variety of problems that could jeopardize the continuous operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS). From the article:

"The US plans to invest more than $5.8 billion through 2013 to modernize and replenish the existing GPS satellite constellation. But facing cost overruns of $870 million and "significant" technical problems, the US Air Force, which is in charge of GPS acquisition, has struggled to build and deploy the next generation satellites on schedule, according to a Government Accounting Office report. A failure to complete development next year before old satellites begin to fail could have wide-ranging impacts on all GPS users, the report warned."

Full article.

        

New York City recently relaunched NYCityMap2.0 -- a web GIS application built in-house using the open source GeoServer plus Oracle Spatial. The effort is noted in Government Technology (hat tip to Adena Schutzberg), along with discussion of why Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth were not a good fit. No mention of ESRI or Arc anything.

        

Title says it all. Hat tip to Ron Pristas. USGS CLICK Webpage.