Map World Forum - Hyderabad - Quick Take

Much of India’s mapping experts and some 1600 other delegates from around the Asia Pacific region and the world, gathered in Hyderabad to conduct Map World Forum 2007. The Department of Science and technology was a principal sponsor of the event that was organized by GIS Development, a publishing company based just outside New Delhi.

The conference opened with a review of the historical development of mapping and satellite technology in a video presentation. It also provided a futuristic perspective that included the prognostication that by 2012 we will see 40 cm satellite resolution available on Google Earth. And in 2018 there will be imagery on demand and the entire earth will be scanned every 4 hours with 10cm resolution.

The welcome address was delivered by Dr. T. Ramasami, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. “This is a special gathering of the geospatial community has gathered with a special purpose. The Map World Forum’s objective is to “link technology to policy and their use.” India is a country that is leading from the top down in terms of technology adoption and policy. It’s leading scientist are well versed in GIS and remote sensing, relying heavily on the technology to map remote regions, some under adverse conditions due to political strife.

The presidential address was delivered by Y. Rajsekhar Reddy, Honorable Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. It is obviously a huge deal to have the minister of the state come to deliver an address such as this but not unexpected. Andhra Pradesh, and Hyderabad specifically, have been home to the remote sensing expertise of India since the formation of the National Remote Sensing Agency and therefore quite fitting for the local state Minister to be present.

The guest address was presented by Dato’ Seri Haji Ajimi Bin Khalid, Honorable Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, Government of Malaysia. It is interesting here to note that Malaysia is a huge trading partner of India where one of India’s main exports to this country is "GIS expertise." Minister Bin Khalid mentioned more than once that he was greatful for India’s brain trust of GIS and remote sensing knowledge.

Spinney, Hotes Join APB as Contributors

Directions Media is happy to announce that Jon Spinney, a senior manager of developer relations and marketing at Openwave, and Scott Hotes, Ph.D., chief technology office of Wavemarket, have joined as contributors to All Points Blog.

Spinney manages Openwave’s developer outreach programs for handset software, subscriber profiling, content delivery, messaging, location-based services, and multimedia services. Prior to joining Openwave, Jonathan was Industry Solutions Manager at ESRI, where he helped build a developer-partner ecosystem serving various industry verticals supported by several wireless carrier partners. Prior to ESRI, Jon managed provisioning product offerings at LBS pioneer SignalSoft.

Hotes’ specialty is launching industrial-grade software implementing advanced algorithms - ranging from UNIX kernel to cryptography. Prior to WaveMarket, Dr. Hotes was at the United States Department of Defense, where he oversaw software development teams at Ft. Meade, MD and at the Army Research Lab at Austin, TX. The systems developed supported large military customers, employing the use of advanced data mining and machine learning algorithms in Internet security and traffic modeling applications.

Satellite Pic of KFC Logo in Area 51: $2000; PR: Priceless

GeoEye spokesperson Mark Brender reported that was the cost for the firm to shoot a carefully laid out KFC logo in the Nevada desert last fall.

Over at DigitalGlobe Chuck Herring notes that advertising is not a core business line. Still, the Chicago Tribune article goes on:

But because the awareness of satellite imagery has gone up drastically over the last few years, “you’re starting to see people react to it,” he said.

After the recent allegations of censorship aimed at Google/DigitalGlobe, this is a nice way to lighten things up, eh?