W3C announced today a Workshop, Linking Geospatial Data, 5-6 March 2014, in London (UK). The event is hosted by Google.

Many of the best data-driven Web applications have geospatial information at their core. Very often the common factor across multiple data sets is the location data, and maps are crucial in visualizing correlations between data sets that may otherwise be hidden. It’s this desire to work with multiple data sets in different formats about different topics and link those with the powerful technologies used in geospatial information systems that is behind the linking geospatial data workshop.

How can geographic information best be integrated with other data on the Web? How can we discover that different facts in different data sets relate to the same place, especially when ‘place’ can be expressed in different ways and at different levels of granularity? W3C membership is not required to participate. The event is open to all. All participants are required to submit a position paper by 19 January 2014.

Zurb’s Foundation is one of the most widely-used responsive frameworks available at the minute — and for good reason, too. With a flexible grid system, a seemingly endless features-list and a community working to push new and improved features as often as possible, you can see why.

Not only that, but it’s full of scaffolding CSS to construct a wireframe model in no time at all — or even to use as part of your full-scale designs.

The latest version of Foundation — Foundation 5 — was released last week, so this is the perfect time to investigate its possibilities.

Today, we’ll go through the motions of creating a bicycle enthusiast’s website. We’ll learn how to:

• download and install the Foundation framework;
• insert content with the flexible, responsive grid system straight out of the box;
• create a “hero” panel to display featured text or images prominently;
• we’ll even add some buttons, a block grid and a navbar to complete our design.

So, if you follow along from beginning to end, you’ll have a fully responsive website in less than 20 minutes. Pretty impressive, if you ask me!

Do you use Foundation? What parts of it do you enjoy the most? Let us know in the comments.

12 Personal vCard HTML5 Templates from Flashmint – only $19!

If you’re a WordPress developer, you’ll know that there are a huge range of themes out there to build a site from. Many free ones are good, but for the very best features you need a premium theme.

The downside to premium themes is that they usually have a premium price tag, which is why we’re delighted to be hosting this giveaway from MyThemeShop.

We’ll be randomly selecting 20 winners who will each receive the premium theme of their choice from MyThemeShop’s range of over 60 premium themes.

All of MyThemeShop’s themes are responsive, so you’ll be good to go whatever the viewing platform; they’re all built with HTML5 and CSS3, so you can be sure that your chosen theme will be standards-compliant; they’re even regularly updated to keep them optimized for the evolving web.

MyThemeShop’s premium themes all come with full support, and there’s an active community on their forums.

Check out some of the themes you can choose from:

Splash

Clock

Sensational

Glamour

Boxline

TruePixel

Minimalist

Repose

How to enter:

• Browse through MyThemeShop’s Premium themes gallery, then post a comment letting us know which theme you’d like to win and why
• Comment MUST be entered with your email address as a guest (no social logins)
• One comment per person
• Winners will be contacted via email
• Giveaway will end on December 11th, 2013. Good luck!

Which MyThemeShop premium theme would you like to win? Let us know in the comments.

Imgimage: Choose Among 2 Million Stock Images – from $15!

The latest fitness-tracking wristbands need to get in better shape before they’ll earn a spot on my wrist.

At 11:30 last Friday night I was frantically doing jumping jacks in my living room, trying to hit my activity goal for the day: 4,000 points. The more I moved, the more points I got from the Nike+ Fuelband SE fitness tracker on my wrist—and at nearly midnight I had 3,957.

Ted Lawler ’99, biological sciences and psychology, was recently named to the Big South Network’s All-Decade Team for men’s soccer in the 1990s.

From Big South’s website: 

As part of the Big South’s 30th Anniversary celebration in 2013-14, the Conference is announcing its first-ever All-Decade Teams to recognize the student-athletes and coaches who excelled in their respective sport since the Conference’s founding in 1983. A committee of Big South Conference administrators served as the official voting panel to determine the All-Decade Teams, with fan voting comprising 20 percent of the overall total.

During his time at UMBC, Lawler was named Player of the Year and was two-time All-Conference.

Read more.

Find us on Facebook. // Follow us on Twitter.

Attorney General Douglas Gansler and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown both put forth campaign pledge proposals last week in what has become a hotly contested Democratic primary in the Maryland race for governor.

Gansler asked fellow Democrats to sign a pledge discouraging outside spending on the race. Brown then proposed abandoning all negative ads in the campaign.  The candidates campaign’s have gone back and forth in recent days attacking the proposals. Del. Heather Mizeur, a third candidate in the race, has largely stayed out of the disputes.

Public policy professor and chair Donald Norris was interviewed by The Washington Post for an article about the pledge proposals.

“I don’t think either one was about anything but political maneuvering,” Norris said. “It’s about who’s trying to get advantage over whom and how. . . . At the end of the day, both campaigns will have their pledge to wave around and say, ‘I asked them to behave themselves, and they wouldn’t agree.’ ”

You can read the full article in The Washington Post here.