An amusing video that shows a young family experiencing close-up
encounters with killer whales, a polar bear and several penguins
has been making the rounds on social media. The technology has been
described as a hologram by many people posting and reposting the
video, the first on this page.
Frankly, I was amazed at first, believing that people were
really up close and personal with a 3D image in a shopping mall.
The animals, which I assumed were projected for all to see,
appeared so real that it was no wonder that people in the video
were reaching out to touch them. Unfortunately, that’s not what we
are seeing, according to observers.
I love maps — especially the new-fangled, interactive, online
ones based on geographic information systems. Click a box and roads
appear. Click another box and you get city boundaries, and so
on.
From Bainbridge Island's
new mapping application. (Click to
enlarge)
Bainbridge Island this week announced its new online mapping
application, which allows anyone to build a map to his or her
own specifications. For those focused on water issues, it’s an easy
way to locate streams, wetlands and watersheds. I do wish, however,
that the streams were named on the map.
—– UPDATE: April 13, 2010
In a story in
today’s Kitsap Sun, reporter Tristan Baurick says the mapping
system will save city staff time and improve their efficiency.
He quoted Gretchen Robinson, a geographic information systems
specialist, as saying, “A lot of people call just to find the
elevation of their property. This mapping application will answer
that.”
—–
I congratulate Bainbridge Island along with other local
governments throughout Puget Sound who have developed this way of
building maps without downloading special software.
Thurston County was one of
the first and is still one of the best to build these maps and
continue to upgrade its online mapping system.
Mason
County uses the same mapping application, with plenty of
information included.
King
and Snohomish county
maps work pretty well. I’m a little less impressed with
Pierce County’s, possibly because I have not used it enough to
understand its quirks.
I don’t believe Kitsap County has an interactive map of this
kind, except for its parcel-search
map, which works well for auditor, assessor and treasurer
information but does not include natural resource data.
