Inside this issue: 
 1. BOOK REVIEW
 2. SPATIAL DATA ON-LINE
 3. GIS EDUCATION
 4. SPATIAL NEWS
 5. GIS IN CANADA, EH!
 6. SPATIAL GLOSSARY
 7. SPATIAL HOT SITE!
 8. SPATIAL WEBMASTER TIPS
 9. SPATIAL DISCUSSION
10. SPATIAL ADS
11. SPATIAL GOLD

"The Millennium Bug : How to Survive the Coming Chaos" 
by Michael S. Hyatt - $17.47 

Review from Amazon.com 
                 This account outlines an ominous view of how computer systems will be able to deal with the year  2000 problem. Power grids go dark, 911 call centers descend into chaos, Visa cards die, and the industrialized world is reduced to hunting and gathering in Hyatt's millennium nightmare. 

                 With lots of quotes popping out from the pages and plenty of bulleted lists, The Millennium Bug is  written in typical manager-book style. It's heavy with case studies, news items, and endnote references to the author's sources. Hyatt's purpose is to alert technology decision-makers to a plausible worst-case  Y2K scenario and to motivate them to do something about it. The author presents a range of possible developments, from mere annoyance with consumer services to widespread starvation as a result of  infrastructure breakdown. Hyatt also foresees a plague of lawsuits filed by shareholders, the families of deceased patients, and swarms of other people harmed by Y2K failures. 

                 Hyatt's advice: move to a small town with a volunteer fire department, stockpile food, secure access to  a reliable source of fresh water, and buy a gun and ammunition for fending off looters. The winter of  1999-2000 will be a hard one, Hyatt predicts, and the crisis may last a long time indeed--have reading  material on hand. --David Wall 

USGS Coastline Extractor http://crusty.er.usgs.gov/coast/getcoast.html

Here I will share with you one of the best finds on the net as far as free spatial data goes. If you already know about it (and many of you likely do) then I'm sure you will agree that this is one valuable resource. 

The USGS Coastline Extractor - this utility will enable you to specify your min. and max. co-ordinates (in lat./long.). You can then select the database you wish to extract your coastline from, choices include the following: 
NOAA Medium Resolution 1:70,000 - (USA only) 
World Vector Shoreline 1,250,000 
World Databank 1:2,000,000 
WCL World Coastline 1:2,000,000 

Data is compressed using ZIP, GZIP, or unix compressed and supplied in Arc/Info ungen, Matlab, SPLUS, or Mapgen formats. Note that Mapgen can be easily converted to Mapinfo MIF format by using the CRUS2MI utility found at http://www.total.net/~rparis/morecoasts2.htm
 

About the data: 

- World Coastlines and Lakes. Crude. World Wide Coverage. This data 
is suitable for map scales of 5,000,000 or smaller. 
- World Data Bank II. Fair Resolution. World Wide Coverage. This 
data is suitable for map scales of 2,000,000 or smaller. Also contains 
international and internal political boundaries and rivers. 
- World Vector Shoreline. Better Resolution. World Wide Coverage. 
This data is suitable for map scales of 1:250,000 or smaller. 
- NOAA/NOS Medium Resolution Digital Vector Shoreline . Best 
Resolution. United States Coverage, digitized from NOAA nautical 
charts. This data is suitable for map scales of 1:70,000 or smaller. Note: 
There may be a few odd data points in this version of the data set 
(September, 1994). If you see something strange, you might want to 
check the official source of this data at the official NOAA medium 
resolution coastline web site . 

Ken's Carto Korner 
http://atlas.gc.ca/schoolnet/teachkit/carto/htmle/cart000.html

One of my more recent interests has been the area of GIS in education. I think the reason why I became involved with this is because I wanted to introduce my wife's students to GIS. To my disappointment this proved to be somewhat difficult as the school she works at is very poorly equipped with computers, and to make matters worse, the only computers that were available were a couple of Macs that have likely been in the school system for as long as I've been out of it! 

So, I began by adding a page to my web site and it has grown nicely over the past 2 months. The idea here was to provide readers with a resource to turn to for identifying GIS and related resources on the web. One of the first additions and one of my favorites is Ken's Corner 

Ken's Carto Korner is a great teaching resource. There are several modules designed to enhance ones cartographic knowledge (anyone can learn something here, whether k-12 or 4th. year university!). The modules include: 
NAD27-83 conversion 
Maps - what are they? 
Map Projections 
Maps of Canada 
Glossary 
Several more not yet completed. 
More teaching resources are available from the index at 
http://atlas.gc.ca/schoolnet/teachkit/Home.html

Recently, Matt Rosenberg of the Mining Co. interviewed Steve Maskol to discuss his city's implementation of GIS. Santa Clarita is located just north of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California. The city has a population of approximately 131,000 and is composed of several distinct communities which merged in 1987 to form one incorporated city occupying much of the Santa Clarita Valley.

Check out this article and more at the Mining Co's Geography page at 
http://geography.miningco.com/

Thanks to Matt T. Rosenberg 
Geography Guide at The Mining Co. 
Author, "The Handy Geography Answer Book" 
http://geography.miningco.com
geography.guide@miningco.com
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HORIZONS EXPAND FOR THREE DIMENSIONAL TERRAIN

A freely distributable 3D map client is helping create a new audience for terrain visualisation. High Country Software Limited have embarked on a newstrategy in the real-time terrain visualisation industry that greatly expands the audience available to geographic organisations needing to present three-dimensional data.

By offering the freely distributable "Mobile Map Viewer" client, an organisation can now publish three-dimensional terrain maps to the public, or distribute them internally without the licensing restrictions of expensive terrain visualisation packages.

The Mobile Map Viewer version 1.11 is compatible with Windows 98/95/3.1
Personal Computers and is downloadable directly from the website
"http://www.mobilemaps.com/software/viewer.htm". An estimated 25,000 Mobile
Map Viewers have been downloaded to date. 

The Mobile Map Creation Tool Professional is compatible with Windows
98/95/3.1 and Windows NT, and can be purchased for $950.00 from High
Country's website "http://www.mobilemaps.com"

High Country Software Limited is a United Kingdom based development and
web-publishing company specialising in innovative applications of real-time
three-dimensional graphics in the geographic and data visualisation industries.  Established in 1996, High Country Software is the company behind the popular Mobile Maps concept, and has just released its first Mobile Map Creation Tool product.

Contact: Peter Abrahamson
peter@mobilemaps.com
http://www.mobilemaps.com
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ARCVIEW SCRIPTS & LOTS MORE
http://andes.esri.com/arcscripts/scripts.cfm

This is the site where ARC users share AMLs, SMLs, avenue scripts, cgi scripts and much more. If your an ARC user you likely have been here, if you haven't where have you been?

I also have lots of pointers to ARCView utilities on my site at
http://www.coastnet.com/~letham/gisfacts101.html

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GIS Salary Survey Results

Go see for yourself what all the commotion is about!  The new GISjobs.com Salary Survey Results from almost 1400 GIS professionals are now in.  They can be viewed at:

http://www.gisjobs.com/survey/survey_results.html

The Salary Survey form has been automated and updated with new questions.  If you submitted a survey form prior to Nov 2, 1998, please fill out our form again to be added to the new results.  The form is located at:

http://www.gisjobs.com/survey/

This section will be a regular feature on strictly Canadian topics. The first feature was brought to my attention in an e-mail which directed me to "a whacking pantload of free Canadian data in e00." - well I have to agree!

The National Soil DataBase (NSDB)
http://res.agr.ca/CANSIS/NSDB/_overview.html

The NSDB is the set of computer readable files which contain soil, landscape, and climatic data for all of Canada. It serves as the national archive for land resources information that was collected by federal and provincial field surveys, or created by land data analysis projects. 

The NSDB includes GIS coverages at a variety of scales, and the characteristics of each named soil series. The principal types of NSDB data holdings (ordered by scale) are as follows. 
 

• National Ecological Framework (EcoZones, EcoRegions, and EcoDistricts) ftp://res.agr.ca/CANSIS/ECO/
• Soil Map of Canada / Land Potential DataBase (LPDB)
• Agroecological Resource Areas (ARAs)
• Soil Landscapes of Canada (SLC)
• Canada Land Inventory (CLI)
• Detailed Soil Surveys

NTS, National Topographic System Series 
The National Topographic System series is produced by the Centre for Topographic Information (URL), Geomatics  Canada, Natural Resources Canada. The NTS provides general-purpose topographic map coverage of Canada in two series at the scales of 1:50 000 and 1:250 000. These scales allow for a detailed depiction of relief, drainage, forest cover, administrative areas, populated places, 
transportation routes and facilities, and other cultural features. Complete coverage of Canada at the scale of 1:50 000 will require 12,922 maps; of these approximately 85% have been completed. Coverage is complete at the scale of 1:250 000 (917 map sheets). 

Although heavily CAD focused, this site offers a wealth of information useful to anyone involved in spatial sciences. They market products, mostly CAD ad-ons. These include Multric which Adds rubber sheeting capabilities to AutoCAD and AutoLISP; Tralaine which Converts coordinates in data files from any defined coordinate system to another; and Hawkeye which Provides AutoCAD operators and AutoLISPr programmers with the ability to work with two or more coordinate systems while using AutoCAD. 

They always have some freebies available, this month its a polyline coordinate extractor which Converts an AutoCAD polyline into a list of coordinates in a text file. 

Lastly, if your into newsletters you can subscribe to the Casual Cartographer by jumping to http://www.mentorsoftwareinc.com/cc/current.htm

To contact them e-mail to annforte@mentorsoftwareinc.com 
If you mail them they will always personally reply to you! 

VirtualPromote http://www.virtualpromote.com
Web marketing and web site promotion 

This site has motivated me so much that I've now started my own newsletter!
I can't say enough about this site. If I had to limit my web utility section of my bookmarks to one site this would be it! The content available to you here is endless. Web newbies and web masters can all benefit from this site. Start off by subscribing to the "Gazette" newsletter. It comes every 2 weeks and is usually about 20 pages in length and jam packed with useful web marketing tips including freebies, search engine utilities, scripts, contests and more. This newsletter is likely responsible for much of what  I initially learned about building a web site and a web community. The newsletter subscription page is found at 
http://www.virtualpromote.com/gazette1.html

Other goodies here: 
- Jim Tool site submitter 
http://www.virtualpromote.com/submitter/index.html Submit you site to over 12 major search engines with one click. 
- Search Engine Forums for online discussion regarding you search engine problems http://searchengineforums.com/bin/Ultimate.cgi 
- Do all the big ones! These are the largest web search engines and directories to list your site with 
http://www.virtualpromote.com/promoteb.html
- The Keyhole. Ever wonder what keywords people are using - well here it is in real time http://keyholesearch.com/
And there's much more 

This site is the grandady of all helpware sites! To locate more go to 
http://helpwaresites.com

k12-gis discussion list 
To subscribe to the list send e-mail to 
LISTSERV@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU 
with the BODY of the mail containing the command 
    SUB k-12gis Yourfirstname Yourlastname 
    For example:  SUB k-12gis Pat Smith 

I just recently took over as owner of this list so I guess I should give it a plug. The focus here is gis education,however, even though the name of the list is k-12 I'm encouraging those involved in higher education to get involved also. In time the name of the list may change to better reflect the community. I just need to figure out how to change the name without destroying the the automated handling by listserve!  Oh yeah, about 40 new members have joined since I took over about 2 weeks ago.

GLOBAL GAZETTEER
The ultimate world gazetteer, essential for anyone requiring point data
for mapping, address correction, etc.Contains over 3.5 million places (and 35K ports and airports), but isuniquely selectable to provide the amount of data for your project orbudget. Settlement data is enriched with administrative area, population,postcode, height, area, telephone dialling code, administrative function
within country (e.g. is the place a provincial capital, or lower level seat). For a full description look at our new BETA web site, which has statistics on the data and sample files for download: www.apritchard.cix.co.uk
or the older site:
www.knowledge.co.uk/geodata
mailto: apritchard@cix.co.uk

If you have a job available or are looking for one send me a line at editor@geocomm.com and I'll list your ad here for free. 

If you're interested in upgrading to a "Gold" subscription to SpatialNews you'll be helping me to upgrade the newsletter server to a Listbot-Gold version - enabling me to do a better job of informing you and hundreds of others world-wide as to the latest on-line GIS issues.

For $20 US (payable once a year) you will be listed each issue in the Gold subscribers list with your company name, email, & url. Once a year a full write up of your business will be run (similar to Global Gazetteer ad in this issue) email editor@geocomm.com for details.

GIS and related companies need only apply

If you have experience with MR. SID and would like to share them I'd love to hear what you have to say.

SpatialNews will be sent out the first week of each month. In time, depending on the feedback received, it may come twice a month.

If you know someone who would be interested in receiving SpatialNews please forward it to them. This publication is basically "helpware" so please pass it on. To find out more about SpatialNews look through our website at http://news.geocomm.com

To subscribe or unsubscribe send email to:
editor@geocomm.com

Happy New Year to all 
Glenn Letham , editor
SpatialNews.com

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