Foursquare as a Marketing Tool
Mar 9, 2010 by Kumiko Yamazaki -- apps foursquare locationBy now, most of you have heard of Foursquare, the location-based app that lets you virtually check in to a location. You let the application know where you are and in return, you receive badges (bragging rights) and work your way to becoming the mayor of your favorite venue. You are also encouraged to leave “tips” for others letting them know what you loved or didn’t love about the particular venue.
Foursquare is very similar to visiting a website online except it’s real life. Many website owners will use analytics on their site to learn more about the behavior of its visitors for market research, so it comes as no surprise that business owners may want the same type of analytics for their venue.
This feature is now available for a few select businesses - Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses [via NYT].
It’s amazing the amount of data that is available through Foursquare and the advantages it can provide to businesses everywhere. The obvious error with these analytics is that only a small percentage of people use Foursquare. The children and elderly will most likely not appear in the data.
However, what they will receive are a core of young adults who may be social media gurus and can persuade their entire social network to visit (or not visit) your business. This new tool offers a direct personal relationship with your customers so the lesson here is to let them know they are valued customers and offer them incentives to keep coming back. Foursquare is just a location-based game for most people but is also becoming a valuable marketing tool for businesses.
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Another Google Lab Experiment: Public Data Explorer
Mar 8, 2010 by Kumiko Yamazaki -- google visualizationGoogle’s latest lab creation is their Public Data Explorer. Similar to GeoCommons Maker! and Gapminder, Google allows you to visualize data as a line graph, bar graph, bubble chart or a map. The visualizations will also dynamically change as the latest data becomes updated and available through their service.
It’s simple and can be useful but is still very limited in the number of data they currently have and is lacking the ability to export and download the data. But as with any Google Lab experiment, their Public Data Explorer is only a prototype and can easily be developed into something more powerful by their many engineers.
The following is an example of seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the US.
One thing I’ve noticed is the increase in services we’re seeing that allows us to visualize data based on cultural geographies. What I’m referring to is data separated by countries, states and cities. Despite this growth, there are still large numbers of datasets that cannot be captured by these cultural boundaries but are equally as important (i.e. climate and deforestation). Knowing how each of these are changing over time is crucial to understanding our planet yet only account for a small percentage of existing data.
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Interactive Atlas Goodness
Mar 8, 2010 by Britta Ricker -- geoweb map visualizationThe Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) is an organization that focuses on environmental issues across North America. This secretariat was formed as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to ensure that environmental degradation was being monitored fairly and carefully across the continent. 
One of the many noteworthy CEC initiatives is its new interactive atlas. The CEC works with the environmental ministries from Canada, the United States and Mexico to aggregate environmental data from across North America. They have developed an online atlas to show how environmental phenomenon does not stop at political boundaries. On this atlas you can view conservation areas, species habitats, pollution and waste depositories and other intriguing data sets for the entire continent. Check it out here. http://www.cec.org/atlas/
The CEC also has a featured video. You can see the back of my head around 2:05! Enjoy!
Kumiko is also building a beautiful open source interactive atlas that will be released soon. This atlas will be an exciting way to communicate and visualize a variety of information. The users will be able to navigate through the data at their own pace and hopefully gain new knowledge through this fun geospatial application!
Spatial Data Infrastructure: (aka) Dark Knight
Dec 15, 2009 by Britta Ricker -- web2.0Spatial data infrastructure (SDI) or any sort of data and information infrastructure lurks in the background. Users rarely think about how the information they are viewing is organized behind the scenes until it is time to use it for their own purposes.
I recently went to a stimulating talk given by Prestige Makanga from the University of South Africa entitled “SDI and sustainable settlements in developing nations.” He really did an excellent job of explaining the role and importance of a well-planned SDI. He explained how different SDIs are necessary for different levels of government, different scales, and different projects.
His talk reminded me of how important data infrastructure really is. In this Web 2.0 world we are living in, we want our ideas not to stop at one website but to be passed on, embedded in Facebook, in blogs, in Google Maps mashups. Effective data infrastructure can help make that happen. SDIs typically go unnoticed, they lurk in the background, but when executed well they can throw quite a punch. For example look at data.gov, Vancouver open data and GeoCommons Finder. The information provided is organized so well that you can find traces of their information all over the web used in innovative yet unexpected ways. This is how the dark knight packs his punch too, thoughtfully well planned and unexpected!
Prestige was a visiting scholar at Simon Fraser University. I was fortunate enough to talk with him at length about the use of volunteered geographic information and the use of Web 2.0 in Africa. Prestige attentively recommended that a process of continuous learning and iterative communication with communities and community officials is needed for robust and effective data to be incorporated into the SDI.
SDI is only one tool on the dark knight’s geographic services utility belt!!!! Beware one-way data disseminators.
Augmented Reality
Nov 15, 2009 by Britta Ricker -- visualization: ARI’m very excited and honored to be a contributor to this blog now! Thank you Kumiko!
My first post will be about what I have been reading for my PhD research this week. Augmented reality (AR) and mobile gaming with ubiquitous devices! Doesn’t that make you want to jump up and down and run around in circles with excitement?
AR has been getting a lot of press lately. New apps such as Wikitude, Layar, and Yelp have all released apps with text based AR functionality for the iPhone and Android. AR and other forms of mix reality have been in the works and have been studied for over a decade, yet very few users have had the chance to interact with AR. How many of us received head mounted displays for Christmas when we were 12? AR has not been widely accessible. Now suddenly the device we used to call our loved one on to find out if there is milk in the fridge can also be used as a monocle to augment our reality by reading restaurant reviews while looking directly at the front door of the restaurant.
I started looking for links about mobile AR development to see how this stuff is built. When I started poking around on Google for development tips and tricks, I found more job postings for AR developer jobs than websites about how to actually develop an AR app. Crazy! That tells us that there is high demand for these types of applications but we know relatively little about how mobile AR applications help or hurt spatial cognition and decision making in the wild. We do know that AR is snazzy.
More to come regarding gaming with ubiquitous devices. Has anyone checked out Parallel kingdom? Thoughts?
Apps for America
Aug 27, 2009 by Kumiko Yamazaki -- geowebFinalists for the Apps for America 2 contest were announced yesterday. I didn’t make the cut……. umm, not that I participated or anything anyway.
Check them out, they are definitely worth a look.
GovPulse.us - GovPulse is a Federal Register browser. The Federal Register is the official journal of the federal government of the United States. In it, you find any kind of notice, notification and solicitation that a federal agency puts out. GovPulse parses it and gives you a way to browse the tens-of-thousands-of-pages-log register by agency, category or date. What’s also compelling about it is the visualizations and analysis the software does on top of the register. For instance, check out the agency page to see sparklines of the notices from each agency, or the map of places mentioned by an agency.
ThisWeKnow.org - This we know is probably best described as the EveryBlock for federal data. Type in your zip code or city and state, and ThisWeKnow will provide you with details that the federal government has about your community. The depth of information in the site is incredible. You can see the mass exodus occurring in Bellevue, NE or the breakdown of people diagnosed with cancer in Los Angeles.
DataMasher - Datamasher allows you to take two different public data sources and mash them up with an operator (+ - * /). Then you can share them with your friends and comment on the mashups of others. A few of my favorite mashups include: High School Graduation vs. Guns in Household, % Total Population in Prison, and my favorite: People per US Representative.
[via nextgov]
I particularly enjoyed ThisWeKnow and DataMasher - they’re EXACTLY what the geospatial web is about. Both sites are packed with location-based data and allows the user to create and aggregate their own data and map. Give them your vote! (registration required)
We Lost Our Homes!
Aug 3, 2009 by Kumiko Yamazaki -- google mapsI spent some time working with recently released foreclosure data (January-June 2009) this past weekend [via RealtyTrac].
You almost always hear about the struggles of California and Florida, and Vegas and Phoenix but how bad is it really? They.. DOMINATED - CA, FL, NV, and AZ have combined to capture 29 of the top 30 metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates.
The Las Vegas-Paradise metro area (Paradise??) took top honors with a 7.45% foreclosure rate, or one every 13 housing units. Damn. How did your city do?
Now I haven’t actively looked for 2008 data or any years past, but I’m sure they’re out there. Depending on how I feel and the feedback I receive, I may or may not turn We Lost Our Homes! into a larger project and learn a few new things along the way — the best reward of them all!
Kumiko Yamazaki: kyamazaki@mapkist.com