Apple Maps Guide - America’s National Parks

In recent years, Apple has celebrated the birthday of the National Park Service which was established when the Organic Act was signed into law on August 25, 1916. Last year’s Apple festivities included donations to the National Park Foundation based on selected usage of Apple Pay—details are described here.

This year marks the 105th birthday of the National Park Service, and Apple is doing something similar. Additionally, it has provided a link to an Apple Maps Guide that was created by the National Park Foundation which can be accessed here.

There are 63 locations in this guide, one for each national park. Each national park has a brief description along with a link to additional information on the National Park Foundation website.

More information about the Guides feature of Apple Maps can be found on the Apple Maps overview page, the Maps User Guide for macOS, the iPhone User Guide, or the iPad User Guide.

LAUSD COVID-19 School Report Card

Now that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has transitioned students back to full-time in-person instruction, it is important to monitor COVID-19 cases at each school. The LAUSD COVID-19 School Report Card serves this purpose.

Upon selecting a school in the upper right corner, it provides a dashboard summary of active COVID-19 cases among staff and students and characterizes how many of those cases come from school-based transmission. It also provides data on community case rates which are broken down into staff and student case rate, community case rate, and LA county case rate. Definitions of each metric are provided in a glossary below the dashboard. Cases from school-based transmission are defined as positive test cases that were determined to be epidemiologically linked through contact tracing. There is currently no detail provided regarding contact tracing methods, but I assume this is done manually. Unfortunately there does not appear to be an option to download the entire data set.

Of interest, the reporting statuses are listed as OPEN (no active positive cases that are epidemiologically linked), OPEN (2 or more active positive cases that are epidemiologically linked; all close contacts are in quarantine), or CLOSED (school closure determined by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health). As of right now, it is not clear what the contingency plan would be in the even of school closure, and I hope I don’t find out what it is.

LA County Hotspot Locator

There are many ways to access the internet when you’re away from home. Nowadays it seems that most people have wireless plans with (often unlimited) data. But for those of you who have caps on your wireless data plans or need wireless internet on your laptop or mobile devices, your best bet is to find a wireless hotspot. If you live in Los Angeles, you might benefit from the LA County Hotspot Locator.

It is an interactive map that shows WiFi locations throughout LA County, many of which are publicly available and free. In addition to zooming to your location or destination, you can also enter an address and specify a search radius. Happy surfing!