There's a barage of press releases in our industry, but I fear some people missed this one:
Geosemble Awarded NSF Grant for GeoPrism Satellite-based Direct Marketing

The National Science Foundation is funding not local search but feature extraction for marketing.

Geosemble Technologies, in collaboration with the University of Southern California, will build upon its work in map fusion and imagery analysis to automatically extract image data from satellite imagery, link it to property address data, then cross reference with open source online data to extract highly targeted marketing leads of interest to a range of manufacturers and service providers.

Gizmag provides some examples:

GeoPrism works by assessing satellite images to find houses with particular features such as swimming pools, cracked driveways, roofs in need of repair and big empty backyards. It then cross references with city data to identify the names and contact details of the occupiers of the homes. Geosemble then sells the data to interested companies such as pool maintenance operators, roof tilers, concreters, outdoor furniture manufacturers, etc. The ability to automatically extract image data and fuse it with contact information quickly creates a large volume of highly targeted sales leads for Geosemble’s customers.

This is the sort of "beyond pretty pictures" use of imagery we've been waiting for and it's heartenening that NSF is pushing it.

The numbers are from JMP, the analysis from Nathan Weinberg via SearchNewz:

A real shocker: Google Maps has surged 98% to 682 million pageviews, much more than Yahoos 397 million. Is MapQuest still number one? I wonder.

There's no reference to the document that puts forth these numbers or from when the surge occurred. Quarter to quarter? Could it be from iPhone? I doubt it.

It's been two weeks since the strike meant to take a stand against the requirement for GPS (and credit card support, etc.) in NYC cabs. Now, The New York City Taxi Workers’ Alliance, and eight drivers, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Manhattan.

Here's the odd part: the plaintiff say the rule is unconstitutional and that GPS "tracking" will give away driving patterns. The Allaince counts those patterns as proprietary.

The new law is to take effect Oct 1. The plaintiffs want to block it and to get payment for those who've already installed the devices.

- New York Business

The EPA's Office of Research & Development (ORD) will use a hybrid zero emmission PT Cruiser to study air pollutant concentrations alongside major roadways, as part of its Near Road Research Program. The car will serve as an "advanced mobile measurement platform" fitted with "specialized air quality measurement instrumentation." It's also GPS-enabled to provide "spatial and temporal mapping of air pollutant distributions."

- press release

The Huntsville Forester (Ontario, Canada) reports that District of Muskoka has renegotiated its contract with First Base Solutions to re-fly the area. The original contract was for $183,000 and is now at $21,000. Why? The original flights, completed last year, were too late in the season and foliage was already "on." I'm guessing the company won't make that mistake again!