I have added a few new features to my Office Mapping Solution.  You can now:

• Map offices or buildings with multiple floors.  Map floor plan automatically changes based on what floor the Person/IT Asset/Facility is located on.
• Labels dynamically generated from database.  The Person/IT Asset/Facility labels are now generated automatically based on the database records.  This allows for seamless updates to office plan feature locations
• Search box.  You can now type in a few letters of the feature you wish to find.  The search will locate the features and automatically zoom the floor plan to the correct location.
• Hotlinking.  You can now add a parameter to the URL string that indicates the feature to map.  This provides the ability to embed a URL link to a Person/IT Asset/Facility and have the map automatically open to the location.

Check out all the latest features here:

Office Mapping

I have been reading about a virtual world based on Google Street View imagery combined with Google Sketch Up for a while now:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/24/google-preping-a-second-life-competitor/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9783723-7.html

 I have just received some super-duper lidar 3d building models that I will be draping Google Street View Imagery over.  Has anyone done this before?  Has anyone heard anymore on Google or Microsoft creating a virtual environment using this data?

 Look forward to your comments!

Hmmm…Leave it to Adobe to come up with new GIS spelling:

This is a great article to send to your friends who have no idea what GPS is:

http://gizmodo.com/392326/giz-explains-an-easy-primer-on-gps

This is a great article discussing the potential uses of true Google Street View in 3d:

http://www.educatingsilicon.com/2008/04/18/google-street-view-soon-in-3d/

Here is a cool gadget that the GIS’ers in the mining industry might find interesting…

http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/17/laser-scanning-robot-creates-3d-map-of-silver-mine/

Great mapping project!

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36834/167/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJpj8UUMTaI

This is an interesting article outlining how Google Earth is deploying GIS to people that have no idea what GIS is…

 http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL08664025

I have just posted a new Google Maps Mashup that I think is an “outside of the box” way to utilize the Google Maps API. 

Basically the idea is to take floor plan drawings and display them via Google Maps.  Then, georeference point of interest on the floor plan.  Pretty simple.  Take a look at a couple of demos here:

http://www.laudontech.com/officeplans 

http://www.laudontech.com/mall/mall.html

Comments? 

Just over a month ago, we brought you a dozen new cities in Street View, and now I’m excited to say we’re topping that. We’ve added imagery for 13 new metropolitan areas - and a national park! We have expanded our coverage in 6 of our existing cities. Among the new areas are:

• Albuquerque, NM
• Anchorage, AK
• Austin, TX
• Cleveland, OH
• Fairbanks, AK
• Little Rock, AR
• Madison, WI
• Nashville, TN
• Rockford, IL
• Richmond, VA
• Spokane, WA
• St. Petersburg, FL
• Tampa, FL
• Yosemite National Park, CA

http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/03/street-view-expanding-our-horizons.html