Slashgeo

Cartography blog (via Boing Boing) link to an animated obesity map for the US. From the report: "The burgeoning percentage of heavy Americans has economic consequences, too. Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and RTI International estimated that 2003 health-care costs attributable to obesity reached $75 billion, with taxpayers picking up about half of the bill through programs like Medicare and Medicaid."

The EOPortal links to a SpaceMart article where we learn China will launch its first environmental satellite next year. From the short article: "In the second half of 2007, China will project its first satellite for monitoring environment and natural disasters, the "HJ-1", to improve the country's abilities in monitoring environmental changes and reducing calamities."

All Points Blog links to a National Geographic article on location-based mobile games. From the article: "In Plundr, players move within a city as their computers track their movements. They trade goods or build up their arsenals to prepare for battles with other "pirates" cruising the city streets. The roving role-playing game is an example of what have been dubbed mobile social games—games that use global positioning systems (GPS) and other location-based technologies to track players' movements within a fictional world layered on top of the real world. [...] A variety of mobile social games have been developed for cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs), although only a handful so far have achieved wide popularity. "This is really a nascent field, especially in the [United] States," Slavin said. "

GeoBloggers provides many links discussing the new Backseat Playground game in development, targeted at car passengers with a GPS and a laptop. From the site: "The purpose of the project is to design and implement a game prototype that enables kids/big kids travelling in the back seat of cars to enjoy a rich gaming experience where narrative episodes and embedded gameplay combine with the experience of traveling through the road network. The game and game story will be designed to be meaningful even when the tempo and order of the journey changes." We learn from High Earth Orbit that this project is sponsored by Microsoft and the Ordinance Survey.

Very Spatial links to a CNET article on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency which wants Google, Microsoft and other online mappers to map environmental data to raise awareness. From the article: "The agency's ultimate goal is to boost public awareness of its activities--with a loftier aim of improving public health and the environment in the process--by allowing federal agencies, companies and even mashup artists to get their hands on the data more easily. Such data can play a key role in everything from land-use planning to real estate transactions, they said."

The GeoCarta blog discuss The Shroud, a new location-based game. From this article: "The Shroud may be the first high-profile location-aware game to come to market in the United States. The offering will get the benefit of marketing muscle from Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which is acting as co-publisher, and Sprogis claims the title will get deck space—a key for any wireless game. What’s more, The Shroud is a tiered offering: consumers with less-sophisticated phones or only a casual interest can pick up the game and ward off monsters alone, while gamers looking for a more immersive experience can experiment with the multiplayer and location-aware features." From the FAQ: "Q. What do I need to play The Shroud? A. All you need is a cell phone. Check out supported device list on this site." If you have a GPS, it opens the door to much more game features. See below for additional geospatial games.

All Points Blog links to a profile about a researcher working on GIS applied to healthcare, specifically obesity. From the profile: "The availability of healthful food is a contributing factor. One example: Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Kurland has used GIS to show how difficult it is for Hill residents to get to stores that sell healthful food; the entire neighborhood is served only by convenience stores. And, with low income levels in the area, many residents don’t own cars to get to full-service grocery stores."

Slashdot discuss a new redistricting game which allow you to see the effects to districts on election results. Their summary: ""This is a cool redistricting game that was launched out of the capitol building in Washington DC last week. It was created by the USC Game Innovation Lab and has been getting lots of press. It's about time someone took on a tough issue like redistricting reform using the power of the internet." It's crazy that gerrymandering is actually good fodder for a video game."

A couple of posts at Google Earth Blog talk about the use of Google Earth for sharing and visualing scientific environmental data. The Ocean Drilling Database in Google Earth shows colour-coded placemarks representing boreholes of different drilling programs, with links to attribute information and reports. A second post talks about a special issue of Popular Science on the Future of the Environment in Google Earth. Both of these examples demostrate possibilities for using GE to integrate scientific research. If scientific journals required a subission of a KML file with research manuscripts, a global view of research activities would quickly emerge, enabling collaborations and greater synthesis of research results.

Jenny over at The Shifted Librarian discovered Stateris: "Proving that even testing your knowledge of the placement of U.S. states can be a fun game, Marylaine Block’s Neat New Stuff points us to Stateris-USA....You can also test your knowledge of Africa, Europe, France, the Netherlands, and the UK...There are some fun links in the lefthand navigation, too, that create maps with a message of your choosing using smoke signals, crop circles, and the “Hollywood” sign."

From the Statetris website: "Statetris is an interesting game mixing aspects of the popular game 'Tetris' and geography. Instead of positioning the typical Tetris blocks, you position states/countries at their proper location. Fun, challenging and educational!"

Ogle Earth has a video and summary up about a new game involving you running around your city with a cell phone based GPS device. It actually looks like something that might catch on. Here is an excerpt from his blog : "Awesome: NavBall by Dutch developers The Saint is a GPS-based game for mobile phones that pits two teams of 11 players against each other in a 45-minute quest around urban environments to "kick" a "ball" into opposing "goals" by lining up as best as possible behind said ball in the intended direction. Sounds and looks very tiring:-) Just take a look at the video:". Head on over there for the full detail and video.

Google's Lat Long blog informs us the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's is using Google Earth's KML format to publish air quality data. From the EPA Air Quality page: " State and county summaries grouped by major source sectors are available for each of these pollutants: * Carbon Monoxide * Lead * Nitrogen Oxides * Volatile Organic Compounds * Particulate Matter * Sulfur Dioxide [...] It contains facility-level information for the seven major point-source sectors listed below. [...] * Cement Facilities * Chemical Manufacturing * Electric Generating Units * Natural Gas Pipelines * Oil and Gas Production * Petroleum Refineries * Pulp & Paper Industries" Some related previous stories below. Update: 11/30 15:05 GMT by S : It seems Canada also offers that kind of data for the public, see comment below.

Ogle Earth has information on this network link. From their summary : "Clear Sky Clock forecasts when in North America your nights might be clear enough for some good sky gazing. Such forecasts are highly local, which means there is an obvious opportunity for a geosavvy solution here. And indeed:

You can drill down on your local region using a Google Map; each area has its own home page, for example for Vernonia, Oregon, from which you can additionally get a light pollution map. The very cool thing about the light pollution map is that you can also get it as a KML image overlay. This way you can find the darkest spots with precision."

To see screenshots of it and get the network link, head on over to the Ogle Earth blog.

Chris Spagnuolo's GeoScrum blog has a very nice game for the GIS professional on it. It written completely in flash and is very fun to play. It involves being given a random location on the earth, and few seconds to click that location on the map. Give it a go and post your scores here so the rest of the GeoCommunity can make fun of your low scores :). Update: 04/10 13:59 GMT by S : This game was mentioned before on Slashgeo previously. I also copied some other previous geo-games below. And since many shared their score, here's mine: 527,701 pts, Level: 12, Trav. IQ: 127 (I admit this score was not done on my first try, but I haven't played often ;-). Update #2: Thanks to Marc K. for the submission of the same story prior the publishing of this one (yours has been pending too long in our system - thanks for your efforts).