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Stefan Geens at Ogle Earth reports on a reference to some interesting tidbits about Bill Gates plans for virtual globes. It reads to me like using a geographic interface to visit places and explore and I suppose buy merchandise. “Hundreds of millions of dollars” are said to be invested in the project.
Sean Gillies at Import Carography notes that there’s a move afoot to explore a MapServer Foundation to mange the development of that open source Web mapping software. He suggests it might be overkill, but feels strongly it should not be done in secret. The first set of discussions, instigated by Tyler Mtchell, are on what Gilles describes as a “log in” required website. I read the docs with no login required.
I don’t much about foundations, but learned something about the Apache Foundation when one of its big wigs spoke at recent Open Source GIS Conference.
CNET has pictures from an RFID party at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last week. Attendees received an RFID that they wore throughout the evening. It was tracked by 4 readers in different areas and “maps” with locations of “everyone” were projected regularly on the wall. I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.
Wired reports on two recent cases were lower courts turned down Department of Justice requests for locational information associated with the phones of citizens. Both judges, one from Texas and one from New York basically said “no way” without probable cause. DOJ is expected to appeal and its likely Congress will at some point have to clarify the laws on this data.
Rafe Needleman writes a terrific article at CNET exploring which desktop software products are likely to become services. He offers both the state of the art for things like mapping, e-mail and collaboration tools. On mapping he offers:
I’ve been a big fan of Microsoft Streets and Trips for many years, because it provided a much better user experience than the first-generation online mapping tools, such as Mapquest. But new tools, such as Google Maps (which uses AJAX), show us that browser-based mapping need not be locked into the old click-and-wait model of traditional Web applications: it’s live, like Streets and Trips. The route-finding happens on Google’s machines. And the user never has to worry about updating to the latest version, since Google’s servers always provide the company’s most up-to-date product.
This is a worthwhile exploration to get one thinking about what the future of software will look like.
