FSA Staffer Accused of Illegally Selling ESRI Software

The Jackson County, Indiana, Tribune reports that a Seymour, Indiana woman has been accused of copyright infringement after selling ESRI software that was under license to the US Department of Agriculture. According to the complaint, ArcView 3.2 and extensions were licensed to the Farm Service Agency under a blanket agreement with USDA.

Julia Hensley, a geographic information systems program technician with the Farm Service Agency, 28, is alleged to have sold 41 infringing copies, made at her home, between October and December 2003. She made about $7,120 from sales via eBay and Yahoo. The software, if purchased from ESRI, was worth more than $70,000. She may face a maximum of five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. A first hearing is being arranged.

And, how might this have been caught?

ESRI staff routinely monitored Internet auction Web sites for illegal sales of its software.

Google, its data providers and edits

Says Wired, in yet another article about the “center” of Google Maps and Google Earth:

Some edits were made for security reasons: Vice President Dick Cheney’s residence at 1 Observatory Circle in Washington, D.C., is an undisclosed location, thanks to a blur, and details on rooftops around the White House have been obscured.

Google did not make the edits, the data providers did, as Google says over and over...

(A Bit of) A Day in the Life of Google Earth

Time has a “who’s who” look at Google with a little snippet on Google Earth:

When Google hires someone, it generally isn’t for a specific job. The idea is to bring in talent that can be slotted wherever there’s a need. A new Googler might be placed on a team developing search applications for mobile phones and, when that project is done, help write code for, say, a video-search prototype. Chikai Ohazama runs the team developing Google Earth, the company’s mesmerizing satellite-imagery application. Ohazama, a software engineer, was a co-founder of Keyhole, the firm that developed the technology, which Google acquired two years ago. On a recent afternoon he sits with his team in a conference room brainstorming new applications. Google Earth has to be seen to be appreciated: it seamlessly brings together images of the globe taken from above. You can zoom in to see your house or pull back for a broad view of the city or the country or the world. Google is trying to figure out how to make money from the free service, and for now it is throwing engineers at the problem. It’s similar to Google’s origins: first perfect the technology, then figure out the business plan. Ohazama gets reports from a series of team members: a woman has figured out how to superimpose U.S. hiking trails on the images. Another is adding in ferry routes. A third reports he’s struggling to get data on the terrain in Connecticut. Despite some glitches, Ohazama urges the team to press on: “It’s fine to make mistakes for now,” he says, “until the point where we have to turn it on.”

I’m most enamoured the “first perfect the technology, then figure out the business plan.”

A Touch “Coffee Table” - from HP

News.com reports on HP Lab’s in-progress coffee table/tablet PC. The idea is to have a group gather ‘round to play games, look at photos or examine maps. No word on pricing or availability yet. There’s certainly a trend here since Touch Table revealed at ESRI a few years back and Mitsubishi labs slightly different offering shown at GeoInt the year before last.

via Slashdot

Job Fair for USGS Rolla Employees

An e-mail to me announced a “Geo-Data Job Fair for Displaced USGS Employees.” It’s slated for the USGS mapping center in Rolla, Missouri on April 5, 2006. Booths are free, and there’s free parking, too. If you want further info on exhibiting, let me know. (adena(at)directionsmag.com)

The e-mail goes on: “We currently anticipate that approximately 140 employees will be terminated by the USGS mapping program between September 30, 2006 and March 31, 2007.”