Getting Topo Maps, Compliments of the US Government

So we're planning a backpacking trip to Glacier NP for this September. This just so happens to be the first major backpacking trip outside of California since a finally started using Topo! software a couple years ago. The great thing about Topo! is that you can trace your intended route and it gives you really spiffy elevation profiles (including distance of course) so you can get a sense of what the trip will be like.

This is *especially* useful for cross country trips when you try to put one together.

Great. So what's the problem? Well, as far as I can tell you can't just purchase additional state data disks for Topo! - you have to buy the whole thing over again but for a different state. That means I gotta shell out $79+shipping (eBay price) for a new copy of the software for use in Montana. Not cool.

There are a few other options:

1. Use Google's topo maps (click on the Topo layer inside regular Google maps). This is good, but doesn't get me the elevation profiles that I really care about.
2. Use one of the other online Topo services that want you to use them for large format printing. Ok, but still not giving me everything I need.

Still unsatisfied, I started thinking - "You know these guys must all be getting the same data (Topo! included), and that data is coming from the government, and the government usually gives stuff away for free. I wonder where I can get it!?!"

Turns out you can download al the GBs of map data you want, all compliments of the USGS and NASA:

ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/

Yes, it is incredibly difficult to find what you're looking for amongst the volumes of cryptically named data, but you can also browse this data (but not really manipulate it) at:

http://seamless.usgs.gov/index.php

Then, there are some free viewers you can import the data into:

Tatuk GIS Viewer: http://www.tatukgis.com/Home/home.aspx
dlgv32 Viewer: http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/drc/dlgv32pro/

This is all pretty hacky compared to a nice commercial software application like Topo, but if you've got the time to waste, you may want to take a look.

Location Voice Tagging

Alright, this is an interesting one. I ran across a service today, Geo Graffiti, that lets its users call a number at any time to tag a given location with comments.

Confused? Consider this...

You're walking down the street in some city and see a really cool art display - think random locations in Seattle or something. You pull out your phone and call Geo Graffiti, which recognizes your number and prompts you to leave a message. Next time you go back to your computer, you see a map of all the places you've been, along with tags in each geographic location that you left one.

Now little voice tags are only so interesting. Imagine a mobile app that can access your camera phone, or the collective effect of a community all tagging in the same city. Or imagine concrete moments in time - like a certain song at a concert - that you could record and forever relive on the web.

After a while, the map becomes your digital journal organized by time, geographic location, or whatever else. Pretty cool way to chronicle your life.

ReachCards.com and Information Overload

I was reading a post on TechCrunch from last week (quite a few spirited posts and comment wars over the last 4 days, eh?!) about email overload and how communication has changed over time from the telephone days. Lots of interesting thoughts and comments on this, including my own (hopefully interesting) ones.

Until I get a chance to write it all out, I wanted to point out an interesting site that tries to deal with this problem. Check out their "About" page (linked from the site footer) for some videos about how it's supposed to work:

http://www.reachcards.com

I don't think they've got the whole story told here, but they're on the right path, IMO. More to come...

How to Save Money Running a Startup

If you're looking for an(other) insightful blog to follow, I recommend Jason Calacanis' blog which covers his experiences as CEO of Mahalo.com - an interesting collection of posts about life in a startup:

http://www.calacanis.com/

Two particularly interesting posts have been:

17 Way to Save Money Running a Startup:
http://www.calacanis.com/2008/03/07/how-to-save-money-running-a-startup-17-really-good-tips/

Large Monitors (and Many of Them) Increase Productivity:
http://www.calacanis.com/2008/03/10/large-monitor-productivity/

Converting from Strings to Enum in C#

I'm not sure why I didn't know this, but here's how to convert from a string to an Enum in C#:

Using the Enum.Parse method, you can easily convert a string value to an enumerated value. Doing this requires the type of the enum and string value. Adding the true argument will cause the case to be ignored.

Using the following enum for this example:

private enum Aircraft
{
Beech,
Cessna,
Piper
}

You can easily convert the string to an enum value like this:

Aircraft air = (Aircraft) Enum.Parse(typeof(Aircraft), "Cessna", true);

Ideally you should wrap a try-catch around the Enum.Parse statement.

... Pulled this from http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/archive/2005/04/07/832.aspx