While the election plods on, behind the scenes there is a lot of geospatial technology being used to come up with various polls, real-time election maps, and determine election polling places that are helping people get to the polls and assist in the results reporting. Candidates, local and state governments are all trying to leverage the latest geographic and mapping solutions to better inform and motivate citizens, thereby changing election outcomes.
Author Archive
ACLU Criticizes Social Media for Allowing Access to Content
Thursday, October 13th, 2016An article this week in The New York Times Police Use Surveillance Tool to Scan Social Media about Chicago company Geofeedia’s use of text, photos and videos from social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to aid in law enforcement sparks controversy about law enforcement vs. civil liberties.
The use of location technology to solve crimes is nothing new. The use of social media content in a specific location is relatively new, and a potent resource for law enforcement.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing, or is it, like all new technologies, fraught with the potential for misuse as well as for the common good? It is sort of like the case of the hammer: you can use it to build a house, or to hit someone over the head with it.
We have covered Geofeedia quite extensively in GISCafe news, for use in retail, public safety, disaster response and law enforcement etc. Additional uses for Geofeedia services remain to be seen, but it may be extremely helpful for averting violence at certain events.
Geofeedia Ads Leverages Location Data
Within Seconds, Geofeedia Customers Can Take Action on Data
It is really a case of, we have the technology, so how do we use it to its best advantage without damaging civil liberties of the individual?
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GoPro’s Karma Micro UAS to Launch in October
Wednesday, September 28th, 2016The GoPro Karma quadcopter, a new micro UAS compatible with GoPro’s Hero4 Black+Silver, Hero5 Session and Hero5 Black camera offerings, is set to be released in October.
Subaru and TomTom Collaborate on 2017 InCar Infotainment System
Thursday, September 22nd, 2016I have a new 2016 Subaru Forrester and just love it.
The GRACE Project Offers Up the Keweenaw Time Traveler with GIS
Tuesday, September 13th, 2016The GRACE Project for the Upper Peninsula (GRACE for UP) of Keweenaw County, Michigan is an amazing project-model for GIS-based education, with high school students using Esri GIS on two related real-world community projects in celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the National Parks Celebration.
A Search Engine for Congress
Thursday, September 8th, 2016The computer can show you how one senator has co-sponsored more bills of a Senate Majority Leader than any other senator over a period of years. It can also show you who has the best record of getting bills out of committee – information that took years in the making to obtain ten years ago. Today, with a dashboard platform called Quorum Analytics, a startup developed a year ago by two then-Harvard undergraduates, Alex Wirth and Jonathan Marks, customers can have this information at their fingertips for far less time and money.
Esri Web Maps Provide Forecasting for NOAA’s National Water Model
Tuesday, August 30th, 2016About two weeks ago, Esri launched a collection of web maps that display NOAA forecast streamflow data for the continental U.S. NOAA’s recently released National Water Model. Data from the Model combined with the National Hydrography Dataset and fed by NOAA’s National Weather Service data, forecasts the flow of water along the 2.7 million stream segments in the continental U.S. in ArcGIS Online.
LGS Innovations Has Proactive Strategy to Fight Network Attacks
Thursday, August 18th, 2016Network attacks of all kinds are on the rise, and it is imperative that organizations deploy a proactive, defense-in-depth strategy that addresses all layers of the network.
LGS Innovations recognizes the importance of network-level software integrity as a component of the larger network security ecosystem. With a dedication to the evolution of enterprise support born from extensive experience deploying secure, mission-critical switching solutions, LGS Innovations offers CodeGuardian™: a solution that hardens network devices at both the software source code and binary executable levels to enhance overall network security.
Through a partnership with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE), worldwide enterprise communications organization, the LGS CodeGuardian solution has been applied to ALE’s OmniSwitch family of products, to harden these network devices at both the software source code and binary executable levels within. David Lau, software engineer manager, Product, Solutions and Applications, said the company has a long heritage with Bell Labs. They recently purchased Axios, a traditional networking group.