All Points Blog: Our Opinion, Your Views of All Things Location

Friday, November 2. 2007

MapGuide Product Manager on CS-Map Donation to OSGeo

PC World Australia interviews Liam Speden, product manager for MapGuide about Autodesk's recent acquistion of CS-Map from Mentor Software and its decision to turn that code over to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Some of the more interesting comments from Speden:

- coordinate systems will soon include time (huh?)
- a common set of code will enhance compatibility and thus improve quality and reliability in mobile services
- the code can enhance things like Geonames (I'm not sure the questioner knows that that is)
- it's good MapGuide Open Source and MapGuide Enterprise will use the same code down the road
- it offers more than Proj-4 (the existing widely used open source projection library)
- donation to be finalized by end of the year
- not one, but two mentions of The Urban Forest Map in San Francisco (there's got to be another user out there to profile!)

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source, Autodesk at 08:52 | Comments (8)

Christy's Nobel Moment

We had many comments to our coverage of Dr. John Christy's keynote at the first Rocket City Geospatial Conference. His stance on global climate change as part of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stirred much discussion. Though many of you did not get to hear his presentation, you can learn about some of his thoughts and reasoning about the human impact on climate through an editorial that he published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday entitled, "My Nobel Moment."

Posted by Joe Francica in Rocket City Geospatial at 08:26 | Comments (5)

Patent Watch: Apple Applies for LBS Media Delivery Patent

The application for Location based media presentation describes a method for delivering different digital media content depending on where the user is located. Thus you get different information if you were in the U.S. vs. Spain, running uphill or down, or enterring a study hall. The location informatoin could come from GPS or be assigned.

The abstract:

Media can be presented based on location associated with presentation of media (e.g., physical location of a device that is to present media). Presentation of media can be effectively controlled in order to automatically present a first media content (e.g., a list of songs, an album) in accordance with a first set of media presentation attributes or parameters (e.g., volume associated with presentation of audible media) at a first location, while a second media content is automatically presented in accordance with a second set of media presentation attributes or parameters when the current location is changed to a second location.

via MacNN

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Patents at 07:53 | Comments (3)

Seeking Alpha: After TA Deal Done, Garmin Will Bounce Back

Dan Pritch of Seeking Alpha suggests that after the turmoil, Garmin will settle back, just NIM did after the patent threat or Vonage after its patent threat. He points the Financial Times which suggests the current situation (Garmin's bid for Tele Atlas) could put Microsoft (back?) into pondering acquiring Garmin.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in LBS at 07:48 | Comments (0)