So, you’re planning a trip to Paris. GeoCommons can help. We have a point dataset of over 2,000 hotels in the beautiful city. So now, you can choose you hotel based on its location!

Maybe you want to choose your hotel based on the locations of tourist attractions. GeoCommons can help with that too. We have a dataset of tourist attractions in and near Paris with 59 museums, palaces and other interesting things to visit on your trip.

Looking at the datasets in Maker!, you can easily find the best location for a hotel and then actually find out what hotels are in that area. It’s even better when you choose one of Makers! cool basemaps that show metro stations, such as the Microsoft Roads option shown in the map below.

OK. So you’ve decided that you want to find a hotel that will have a view of the Eiffel Tower. You also want a hotel near a metro station, not totally surrounded by other hotels, and perhaps near the Seine as well.

Taking a closer look at the area, you might choose the Hotel Sezz. It seems to have a nice view of the Eiffel Tower from across the water, it is down the street from a metro, it is in an area with few hotels, and it is also near the Jardins du Trocadero.

Check out this map yourself!

You can use the hotels and tourist attractions datasets in Maker! to plan your trip to Paris. Also, check out the other travel datasets we have in Finder! such as our Loudoun County VA Tourism datasets, our Pamplona, Spain datasets, National Parks in Washington State, Marriott Hotels in the US, and even a dataset on Harley-Davidson Dealer Locations in case you’re planning a bike trip across the country.

You can also create your own custom datasets, upload them to Finder! and then use Maker! to plan your trip. Bon Voyage!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Every year during the third week of November begins the Geography Awareness Week. Beginning in 1987 by presidential proclamation, Geography Awareness Week celebrates the importance of geography education in the United States. This week allows for geographers to share their ideas and show off what they have been working on.

A Seemingly perfectly fit to honor Geography Awareness Week, I thought it would be a good idea to show some of the data mapping functions in GeoCommons that will illustrate where there have been a lot of forest fires in the U.S., and in particular, California.

The map below illustrates data points of active fire detection areas throughout the U.S. from last week. I also magnified the Santa Barbara area of California where fires have caused a devastating amount of damage:

To view the map: http://maker.geocommons.com/maps/1507?page=1

To view data: http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/7043

To view map of magnified region: http://maker.geocommons.com/maps/1506?page=1

To view data: http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/6999

By using the above map citizens can find out where there have been areas that have been affected by forest fires. The forest fire data is updated weekly in Finder!

Subsequently to the map above, below are two maps that illustrate evacuation centers in and fundraiser sites for forest fire damage relief in southern California:

(Click for map and data)

(Click for map and data)

The above maps thus featured some of the capabilities of Finder! and Maker!, and use geography as a medium to raise community awareness about forest fires, evacuation centers, and fundraiser sites in the U.S.

Please visit GeoCommons and enjoy making your own contributions to Geography Awareness Week.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I’m not really the romantic type but every now and again I feel it is nice to show the lady I love that she is special to me. Unfortunately, this is not always the easiest task and planning for a special night out can be frustrating. After working at FortiusOne for over a year it dawned on me that Finder! and Maker! can be used easily in making plans for my special lady.

So far my plan looks like this. On my way home from work I want to stop and get flowers, arrive home with flowers in hand, hop with my lady onto the metro, find a very nice restaurant in DC, and go to a show of some sort. My big concern is that I want places that are relatively close to one another and along the metro line. Let’s see how I do.

First I’ll start with flowers. Since I take the Metro to work, I need to find a florist that is somewhere along my commute home. My first task is to map florists in DC and compare those locations with my metro ride home. I found a website called www.locateaflowershop.com, located all the florists that they had listed in Washington DC, and mapped them using a geocoder at www.gpsvisualizer.com. I then created a map of all the DC Metro Stations that are on my daily Metro Commute. The map below shows my metro ride with the orange dots being all the flower shop locations in DC and the black squares as metro stations.

I found a shop right next to the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan station. By combining the two sets of data, I am easily able to find the ideal place to get flowers.

Now I must decide on dinner and a show. My first decision will be the show. I came across the website for the Washington Performing Arts Society, which gives a listing of venue sites. I went ahead and mapped these locations using the geocoder at gpsvisualizer (dark squares). I then paired this with a listing of the Washingtonian Top 100 Restaurants of 2008, which I again mapped by lat/lon through gpsvisualizer (yellow dots). Along with this, I mapped out the metro ride I would take from my place at Grosvenor-Strathmore to Union Station on the Red Line (white dots) and a dinner and a show in Washington DC.

From observing what I have mapped, it appears my best bet would be to see a show at the Harman Center for the Arts because of the vast amount of top restaurants in its surrounding area. Also the Gallery Place – Chinatown stop is about two blocks away and will be a short walk from the metro stop to the show.

Many other elements could be added or taken away from this situation to best find the ideal night out for you. All you need are locations of events and/or venues that you want to go to. Then you load this data onto Finder!, map all of these spots together onto Maker!, and then visually view the data to make decisions for your perfect night out.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Released this October, the MasterCard Emerging Markets Index highlights the 65 key cities that are driving growth worldwide. These countries are ranked according to their index score, derived by a panel of experts in the global economy. The report also features a look into specific factors that make each city important for corporations and others to consider. This index examines the economic trends that distinguish these 65 cities from others around the world.

This report emphasizes two compelling trends that have impacted the global economy and are critical to the development of emerging markets. The first being increased concentration of global commerce into urban areas/centers. Both demographic and economically, people and businesses have migrated to the cities of the world. The second trend is the globalization of capital, talent, information, technology, and even intellectual property. Borders and barriers have been eliminated as the world has integrated itself into one seamless economy.

As for the results, Shanghai, China is the top ranked metropolitan area to contribute to economic growth. Shanghai has an index value of 66.01, while Beijing follows in a close second with a value of 62.35. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at all of this data from a geographic perspective, to see if there were any interesting correlations.

To do so, I simply geocoded the data and uploaded the CSV file with the latitude and longitude measurements into Finder! I then proceeded to export this dataset into Maker! so that I could visualize the data. Being able to see the data on a map instantly shows a clustering of the top ranked cities. The following map uses graduated symbols correlated with the Index Value; as you can see that the Asia Pacific region dominates the Emerging Markets Index. Another notable area is in Eastern Europe, where cities like Budapest, Warsaw, and Moscow can be found having a significant impact on worldwide growth.

The Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa region represents over half of the study’s 65 cities. The primary reason for this is the dominance of China in the rankings; of the top 30 cities, 15 are Chinese. This map is zoomed in on China and highlights China’s impact on the global economy.

Please visit Finder! And Maker! to view all of the datasets on the Emerging Markets Index.

Popularity: 7% [?]

At last a visual analytic to illustrate where all the skateparks in the United States are located. By geocoding the names and addresses of all the skateparks on the SkateBoardPark.com website, and loading the point data into Finder!, over 3,000 skateparks are represented by points on a cool map brought to you by Maker!:

From this map one can see that there is a large number of skateparks along the East and West Coasts, and a large population of parks in the Midwest. This map is helpful because it not only allows for a nationwide perspective of where and how many skateparks there are, but it also sheds light on where most skateboarders might be boosting airs on ramps and grinding the rails. If you ever leave your local skatepark and are traveling to a different area you can refer to the above map as a reference to find some new ramps and parks.

Click the this link to visit the map in Maker!: http://maker.geocommons.com/maps/1409?page=

Click this link to visit the data in Finder!: http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/6049

Popularity: 6% [?]