Google Maps Mania talks of a project that is looking to crowd-source light-pollution – users load up an app on their Android phone, and are instructed to find specific stars, and note if they can see them or not. The results then anonymously feed into the GLOBE at Night database.
The same post also talks of a striking ‘night lights’ map of the world, compiled from satellite images. The keen-eyed will note the lights scattered throughout outback WA – these are actually bushfires that were burning at the times of acquisition.

A lovely quote from John Gray on Maps appears over at the thinkwhere blog:

A map can represent the physical structures of which a city is at any one time composed, but the city itself remains uncharted. This is not only because the city will have changed materially by the time the map appears. A map cannot contain the infinite places that the city contains, which come and go along with the people who pass through them. The map is an abstraction, simplifying experiences that are incomparably more variegated.

Directions Magazine have a handy “10 things you need to know about indoor location” post that should be of interest to us all – as the field is gaining prominence very quickly.

Between the Poles has a post about his recent trip to the ‘Creating the Policy and Legal Framework for a Location-enabled Society’ conference in Boston, which includes some insights on how geographic data policy is lagging behind other sensitive data policies, including a lack of repercussions for companies that track their customers (think: smartphones).

James Fee has a post that talks of choosing a title for your spatial job. Do the letters G.I.S. have a stigma against them? What should your business card say?

Remember all the hoo-hah around the 4G mobile service provider, LightSquared, interfering with GPS in the US? Well, finally there is some good news for the desperate company – they will soon start trialling spectrum-sharing with a US Agency.