Google Fusion Tables for Current Affairs

[Update: I noted on many of my Google Fusion Table posts that, while the data are still on Google Drive for you to view, GFT no longer offers a polygon or heatmap option, only geocoding by country centroid in its new version. Not sure why, but on this, this, this, and another  example posted as Iframes not Scripts preserved the old GFT maps.]

Wolfram Alpha is a search tool that does statistical as well as word searches. This is powerful indeed as it allows to query across diciplines, subjects and techniques. I live in Kuwait now, and the current events made me curious about the distribution of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Having already used Google Docs and Fusion Tables here and here, I performed the following:

More maps for the rest of us

I recently updated a simple web map of my travels using Java on Google maps, to spice up my homepage of old that was just text. It's part of two map samplers here and here. Still working on getting the latter onto arcgis.com, keepya posted on how their Java API handles this map...

Transition and cleanup

Slideshare is a great venue to post presentations - it cross-posts to my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles as part of my next-gen social network - the lion's share of my recent Slideshare posts relate however to oilelefant.com I just left: I have thus moved all relevant presentations to a new Slidehsare account, henceforth managed by David Lloyd:

Mappliance (continued)

Here is one cool map of a favorite outing near where I live.

Reading Social Web Maps

Look at this map, and what it doesn't show is as instructive as what it shows. You guessed it, it's the low number of social media hits - anyone on the blogosphere or twitterverse would find those numbers on the low side, especially considering the passion current events in Egypt generated on the ground and online - and I wager doesn't reflect poor map making, but rather the fact the web was tampered with during the events in Egypt.

IQPC show in Kuwait City

Attended this small and personable show and met some friends old and new - vendors were invited into the talks and plenty of time was left in between to meet&greet.

2D or not 2D, Part Deux

As a 3D aficionado I just had to repost these two YouTube videos, courtesy of a Wired UK article: Kinect hack builds 3D maps of the real world. It goes to show how far lateral thinking can go if you let "boys play with their toys" to make Google Labs or Microsoft Research drool. I'll just let the article and following videos speak for themselves, and you draw your own conclusions...

Web maps and Skype

Brisbane floods in eastern Australia affect areas I grew up in, and where friends still live. There are many map resources online through news media, for example Ushahidi community flood reporting map on ABC News, showing maps becoming mainstream.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year

Xmas card

An excellent GIS repository

This summer I followed the ESRI User conference via twitter, which put me onto their excellent video resource page. That was great as it has not been easy, even after 25 years, to tell friends and family what I “spend just all hours of the day and days of the seasons and years”. That sound bite is from this video, which I found the best intro for “the rest of the world”.