The site lets you track everything from daily spill positions to the locations of ships responding to the crisis. State and non-governmental organizations are also collecting and mapping real-time information. In some instances the efforts include citizen-generated data from iPhone apps and photos mapped on sites like Flickr.

GeoPlatform.gov, which is designed to be a one-stop access point for location data, uses a Web-based mapping system called ERMA (Environmental Response Management Application). Its list of data layers includes spill trajectories, shoreline conditions, and the current positions of ships registered as responders. NOAA hopes to add things like wildlife impacts, field photos, and agency analysis to the site in the near future.

LA Earth (Louisiana Earth) is a Google Earth Enterprise Server operated by the state of Louisiana that provides daily oil spill trajectories, closures, and many other maps as a Google Earth layer (kml). (Download the Google Earth Client/Plugin to use the date.)

Crisis and Crowd-sourced Mapping

There are several ways that that Gulf locals are mapping and reporting spill related incidents. The Oil Spill Crisis map was created buy the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and students at Tulane University. The map shows hundreds of reports sent through SMS messages, Twitter and the Internet. The map was built using open-source crisis mapping software developed by Ushahidi.

Beyond the information collected by the government and oil industry, people are documenting their own stories. Communities are forming on photo sharing sites like Flickr where location-tagged images can be visualized using Flickr Map.

Developers can now harness the power of Quova's complex IP geolocation technology within SimpleGeo's framework for creating location apps. Quova announced the partnership today at Where 2.0 in San Jose, and said it will broaden its customer base and provide new contexts for its data. In return, SimpleGeo wins by giving developers a more complete solution for geolocation.

Quova specializes in IP Geolocation - a process that uses the IP address of a person's computer or mobile phone gateway to determine that person's location. The results are less specific than those provided by a GPS-enabled smartphone or WiFi, but is often the best available location data for many users. The data can be used to target content by region, or localize online searches. Quova has historically focused on the enterprise market, which is highly sophisticated and able to consume raw IP location data.

SimpleGeo is a cloud-based geodata company that has been building its geolocation services since May 2009. The company, founded by Joe Stump and Matt Galligan, is unique in its focus on location-based services. It announced the availability of a data storage service, an iTunes-like data marketplace, and an API to developers today at Where 2.0. These offerings are described by SimpleGeo as a "ready-to-use platform that makes it easy to store, scale and discover geodata for use on the Web and in applications."

"After discovering Quova¹s offerings, it became obvious that we needed to include their IP Geolocation data in our ready-to-use location infrastructure," said Matt Galligan, cofounder and CEO of SimpleGeo. "Quova's data will enable developers using SimpleGeo to locate their users easily, regardless of access to GPS or WiFi data. The partnership just made sense."

Essentially, the partnership creates a geolocation "failover" system for developers. Applications and services can select the best available source for location data. The level of accuracy ranges from GPS smartphones, at the high end, to Wi-Fi data from SkyHooks SpotRank, and finally to the IP address locations from Quova.

Quova benefits by increasing the flexibility of its data and broadening its market. Developers can use IP locations alongside check in data from sources including Twitter, Foursquare, or Gowalla. Access to multiple data sources adds value and creates a richer digital neighborhood for applications. SimpleGEO helps smaller developers to focus on delivering apps to end users and wraps geolocation in a simple API.

With geolocation as the current must-have technology it will be interesting to watch Quova and SimpleGeo this week at Where 2.0. If successful, the partnership will lower the threshold for developers to break into the geolocation app market.