The weak US Dollar might have a slight positive effect on the United States’ economy by luring international tourists to the States in record numbers. It’s like the whole country is on sale, and for our closest neighbors it’s just a quick drive over the border. The Office of Travel and Tourism Industries (OTTI), run by the U.S. Government records data on monthly tourism statistics. For 2007, the rise in inbound tourists from Canada and Mexico can be seen in the following chart, and also downloaded in .csv, .kml or as a .shp file from Finder!:

As a contrast to the rise in tourists, the decreasing value of the USD (United States Dollar) to the CAD (Canadian Dollar) can be seen over the same time period (2007) in the following chart (data from the Bank of Canada):

This data would be fun to explore in Finder! where you can see not only the increase in tourism but also the location attributes of where tourists are coming from into the USA. If you want to see if the weakening of the USD to the CAD is really correlated to the increase in Canadian tourism to the United States, go to Finder! and download both datasets and run some statistical analyses. Finder! also has data on other currencies and more travel and tourism statistics.

Popularity: 2% [?]

This past week, Google Maps and Tele Atlas agreed to a five-year partnership. The Dutch-based mapping company will provide Google with more maps and geographic data, allowing Google to disseminate the information to over 200 countries. The agreement broadens Google Maps and Google Earth, but also allows for a mobile platform – specifically for the much anticipated Google Android.

After the release of ArcGIS 9.3 last week, ESRI has now made web help available. The help documentation is apparently very easy to understand. A few of the help features include ArcGIS 9.3. shortcuts, PDF Support and nominal scaling.

As Bill Gates retired, we take a look back at his predictions on mapping. In 1995, Gates said, “You’ll be able to jump into a map so you can navigate down a street or through the rooms of a building.”

EveryBlock, a virtual map that keeps track of news for every city block in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, just added Charlotte and Philadelphia to the list.

Popularity: 6% [?]

We got a pleasant surprise this morning with a nice piece in BusinessWeek that included us Mapufacture and OpenStreetMaps. The journalist, Rachael King, came across our blog post on the Iowa floods as well as the resulting contributed data and thought it could make a cool story. Great to see some GeoWeb companies getting mainstream press.

Popularity: 7% [?]