I sell geospatial software tools. I work for a company called SpatialTEQ, and SpatialTEQ is located in Maine. This Blog will be a place where we can post exciting notes about our technology, our customers, our customers’ applications, and maybe some opinions and stories related to the world of geography.
Geography seems to be of interest to most people. Most of us enjoy looking at a map. It’s interesting. It tells us something about where we live, or where we’re going, or where we’ve been. In business, arranging your business information geographically will tell you something about your business. Some of the most interesting examples of this in my experience are:
- New England police discovering the source of a series of windshield smashings was, in fact, the windshield repair store located at the center point of all of the smashing incidents placed on the map.
- A map view of USA joblesslessness over time from 2007 through 2009 – watching the red blotches grow and grow and take over the map and then slowly begin to subside.
- Map display comparing recent home sales values with average income by neighborhood for a large US city. This analysis exposed the practice of mortgage flipping.
- GPS tracks of 6 friends and their afternoon of skying at Maine’s Sunday River Ski Resort. It reminded me of the Family Circus cartoon where the author would trace the little kids’ day in the back yard.
Maps are powerful tools. And they are fun to work with too. What if we all maintained a map that displayed every place we’d been to across our whole life? Fun for some, for others not so much…
