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Frank Taylor over at Google Earth Blog notes that the city of Portland now offers up (networked) KML files of the city. Taylor puts it this way: “This is yet another example of serious business applications using Google Earth as the visualization tool.” Indeed.
The USGS has issued new guidelines for imagery aimed at helping data creators balance data sharing and security. I’ve contacted USGS for more information since I found none on the Web.
Update: Ogle Earth (this guy is in Sweden!) pointed to a Federal Geographic Data Committee final draft (pdf, 16 pages) that seems to be the ones in question. Where did it come from? Well I believe I saw this document described at a meeting of the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) in the past two years. Further, the guidelines are not specifically for imagery, nor for online issues.
An interesting court case in Singapore highlights several mapping issues. The plaintiff, Virtual Map, argued that a company had stolen its online maps without paying a license fee. Virtual Map licenses its data from the Singapore Land Authority and enhances it, thus putting its own copyright statement on the final product. The defendant, Suncool International Pte Ltd, argued that SLA should also be a plaintiff. The court disagreed. The defendant further argued that copying the maps from the website did not infringe the copyright. Again, the court disagreed. With all the free mapping data out there from commercial companies that own copyright, its amazing to me we don’t see such stories in the U.S.
Intel shared a bit more on its upcoming locating technology at its developer event this week. The technology is called Intel Precision Location Technology (PLT) and the company plans to offer it to the IEEE’s 802.11 standards team for incorporation into future WLAN products from other players. The system uses a special packet to determine the distance of the client between two access points.
There’s another description here.
