EWUG Blog: May 2007

Google Street View

It looks like Google's Street View is hitting some privacy concerns. It's not often that mapping makes a Drudge Report headline.

You may recall the hoopla six years ago with the Mequon Property Assessment Photos being posted online. (Sorry, but JS Online want's you to pay for archive news items, but here's a couple of preview links to the old articles Link One. Link Two.) Basically, the problem was that some people don't like photos of their house being posted online. (Interesting enough, in other areas of the country property photos are posted online with no objections, must be a social geography thing!)

Has the privacy issue changed since the summer of 2001? (National Security issues have obviously changed since then.) What if this was available now for Milwaukee, Madison or Green Bay?

Cal. Court Rules Against GIS Cost Recovery

Directions Magazine has a write up of the court decision concerning California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) vs. Santa Clara County. I've mentioned this case before. Here's a quote from the DM article, quoting part of the the judgment:

Judge Kleinberg directed Santa Clara County to:
1. Provide CFAC with an electronic copy of the GIS basemap, and
2. Charge CFAC the direct cost for the copy provided.
The decision affirms the legislative intent stated in the CPRA (Government Code §6250) that "access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state."

Read the decision for yourself: http://www.cfac.org/content/cfac_v_santaclara.PDF

Chippewa Valley Technical College cutting GIS

According to the River Falls Journal (River Falls, Wis.), Chippewa Valley Technical College is cutting the GIS program:

He [College President Bill Ihlenfeldt] said the college is cutting three programs, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Office Assistant and Administrative Assistant, plus reworking its farm management class.

He said those programs arrived on the chopping block because they don’t “attract, retain or place” people like they should. He said the programs could return in a modified form — like a certificate program — sometime in the future.

On a side note, just two days before, Anything Geospatial was praising the success of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee GIS Certificate program.

Update 5/12/07 - WEAU Channel 13 (Eau Claire area) has a news story on it.

Those programs [that are cut] are the office and administrative assistant programs and geographic information systems. He [College President Bill Ihlenfeldt] says they were eliminated because of low enrollment and not budget crunches

ArcGIS Explorer

You may have read that there is a new build of ArcGIS Explorer out. If you haven't maybe now's the time to check it out. It is much, much, faster- and they have updated the aerial imagery. It's pretty good imagery at that. ESRI has a lot better imagery available than Google (poor resolution) or Microsoft/Live (very outdated) for my area of Wisconsin.

ArcGIS Explorer