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When blogger Ron Pristas read the story about the UK Royal Mail delivering a letter with only a map, he decided to put the US Postal Service to the test. And when he got the letter back as undeliverable, he did not give up but tried mailing it again from a different facility. Ron’s persistence paid off! The envelope is now in the hands of its intended recipient.
Yell.com in the UK and Yellowpages.com in US recently launched their mobile local offerings within days of each other. It’s good to see ‘The Book’ incumbents step up to serve their customer base increasingly on the go.
Federal Computer Week explains how DoD and others (some named, some not) use Google Earth Enterprise (a collection of Google goodies) to fuse geospatial data. Base cost: $100,000. The good news? Client software is free.
I have a question on this:
Interviewed in the Google booth, which resembles the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, Painter [director of Google Earth Federal] said that although the public Google Earth uses commercial satellite and geospatial imagery, Google Earth Fusion allows federal agencies to manipulate and integrate their own geospatial imagery with the company’s software tools.
Imagery or software? Isn’t Google a member of OGC? Is it moving forward on implementing those standards such that it can do both with ease? Is that not the point of OGC? Is DoD pushing Google to implement such standards? See for example: NGA Announces Requirement for OGC and Complementary Standards
Nintendo has partnered with the venerable Associated Press for news and images for its new Wii News Channel. It debuts on Saturday and requires a broadband connection to the Internet and installation of the Opera browser. The free service uses a map interface to be navigated by the now famous Wii controller. Says Perrin Kaplan, vice president for marketing at Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters in Redmond:
The beauty of it is it zooms in and out of areas of the world,” she said. “So if you really want to focus on regional news or national news versus international, you just blow up the map of the U.S.
I like maps as interfaces, but is this the best interface for the job or organizing news? Or, is it the coolest interface for the remote?
- AP
Posted today at Directions Magazine:
USGS in 2007: Moving Forward
February’s Brooks Act Litigation: What Geospatial Practitioners Need to Know (updated since originally published)
Responses on the Brooks Act Litigation
OGC Demonstrates Sensor Web Decision Support Services
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