The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has announced a viral media campaign to explain Israel's actions against Hamas in Gaza. Geography, "near" in particular are at the heart of campaign.

A centerpiece of the campaign is downloadable and customizable posters with the message, "What If Hamas Was In Your Neighborhood?" The posters use a visual of a map rendering the Gaza Strip near major urban areas in the United States to help reinforce the threat facing Israeli towns and cities within range of Hamas rockets. "No country would allow such danger on its border, and neither will Israel," read the posters.

You can see the customizable posters here.

- Press Release

I wrote the following over vacation (on Jan 2), but seeing this headline convinced me it was time to run it today: "Philadelphia Libraries Remain Open, But Staff Cuts Mean Fewer Days" (Library Journal)

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I love libraries. I'm in one now (Somerville Public, Main Branch). It's got free wireless, not just for the library, but the neighbors, too.

Back in November (yes it's been a while!) we asked how important is it that a job candidate be familiar with more than one GIS product/platform. I'm please to report 82% of the 28 respondents put it in the required/valuable category. (Note that students! And, to be clear, this need not mean you pay someone to teach you a package. There are some great tutorials and free and open source software to explore!)

58% - Valuable; it's nice to have.

25% - Required; I won't hire the person.

18% - Not important; I don't even ask about it.

Next up: Which is your biggest challenge in doing your geo-related job? Vote in the lower right hand corner of the main page.

I ran across this the other day: The GIS Use in Public Health and Health Care blog. It's written by - Wansoo Im, Ph.D. at VERTICES (who run into now and again) and Evens Salomon, a student intern from Rutgers University.

Silicon India's headline included the term "sucks" but Vice President, Partner and Developer Program Marc Naddel, who gave the keynote, didn't apparently say that. The statement above was made at during a panel discussions on LBS at COMSNETS-09, an international conference on communication systems and networks, being held in Bangalore.

Microsoft chose NAVTEQ for its Live Search, just last month. So, I guess Microsoft finds NAVTEQ's data works for that company. NAVTEQ owner Nokia got into a PR "situation" last month when outdated maps caused protests because of mobile map's depictions of Kashmir.

Naddel went on to say that there is great opportunity, but if he did talk about how NAVTEQ/Nokia will be capturing better data, Silicon India didn't report it.

Update 1/6/09 5:10 pm EST

Google's folks got right back to me with answers (Thanks!), so here you go:

As I understand it, you are not just putting some data on the mobile deployment, you are putting the whole server and all the data on it?

That's correct. The mobile drive would have a Google Earth server plus the customer's data. One thing to point out - what differentiates Google Earth Enterprise from the publicly available Google Earth is that, in the Enterprise version, the customer utilizes only their own data (which is the case with this portable technology).