I stumbled acros an interesting article today about the expansion of GIS education into Middle and High Schools. The article in the Gainsville Times describes the process of training teachers and ways to discover new applications of GIS. Exposing kids to GIS seems to be the next step in the evolution of GIS as a commonly used technology. As of now it seems that GIS has remained useful only to professionals who gained training while in college. The early exposure will get more kids, and hopefully parents, interested in discovering the world through science and technology. As technology continues to invade Middle and High schools I suspect that we will see more GIS in the future. I think all people have a natural interests in maps, and it seems like a great way to get kids involved and interested in school.

The folks at Very Spatial Podcast have an interview this week with Gaige B Paulsen, President and Founder of ClueTrust, where he talks about Cartographica.

With the announcement of the open beta of 1.2, we are looking for every way we can to increase communication, so we're going to try using forums again. There's more anti-spam protection in place, so hopefully it'll still be accessible by everyone. You will need to sign up as a user to write something, but not to read.

The 2010 U.S. census began this morning in a nearly $300 million dollar attempt to count the nation's population. The census bureau is sending out forms to nearly 120 million households in hopes that they will top the year 2000 response rate of 67%.

I read an interesting article this morning about the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new study on food production on the East Coast. According to the USDA website, the Agricultural Research Service is conducting a large scale evaluation that includes researchers from "Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University, Iowa State University, Cornell University, and Pennsylvania State University. Two other USDA agencies—the Economic Research Service (ERS) and the Agricultural Marketing Service—are also contributing to the study."

Due to lack of use and the amount of time required to peruse the forums to keep them free of spam, we've turned them off.

Yesterday (July 23) the House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing about the future of federal geospatial data management. The purpose of the meeting was to cover various issues related to geospatial data, and to talk about the need to promote better geospatial data management and a national geospatial data infrastructure. The hearing was published on the House Committee on Natural Resources website for public viewing. The hearing included a panel of mapping professionals that were at the hearing to testify about the value of geospatial data and the importance of creating a national database of federal data. This panel also testified about the current state of federal geospatial data management, and the progress that has been made toward a national geospatial database. Below is a review of the hearing with a few comments about the issues mentioned.

I have a couple of things to write about this morning regarding Apple products and news...There has been a lot of talk around the internet about what is going on with the new iPhone and its battery problems. I have a few updates on that and a few comments about another iPhone 3G problem that has occurred with the new 3.0 update. Additionally, there was an interesting article this morning that mentions Apples place in China's roll out of a new internet filtering software that is designed to limit access to pornography and to sensitive political websites.

There have been reports circling the internet that the new iPhone 3G S is experiencing problems with the battery overheating. Wired.com is reporting that in some white iPhones 3G S's there are reports that the overheating is causing discoloration. The same article also hinted at older iPhone 3Gs experiencing similar problems after upgrading to the new 3.0 OS. The article also pointed out that the overheating was occurring while the users were playing games or running other applications. At this point it is unclear if all iPhone are affected, if certain apps are causing problems, or if the cases that have been reported so far represent only a small portion of the several million iPhones that have recently been purchased or upgraded. According to PC Worldthe overheating problems are apparently not just affecting the back of the phone where the iPhone's battery is located, but the glass front is reported to be getting hot on some phones as well. I know several people that have purchased the new iPhone or have upgraded to v3.0 OS (including myself), and have had no problems with overheating. Stay tuned for more updates about the phone overheating, and please add your stories if you have experienced problems.

The release of the newest iPhone 3G S begins on Wednesday and reports are that it has already sold-out of phones to be handed out on opening day. Apple Insider and Information Week are both reporting that sources are saying that customers who ordered after Saturday the 13th should not expect to receive their iPhone on the opening release day.