A long and detailed article is from Tim ­Shorrock, whose new book Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence, will be published in May 2008 by Simon & Schuster. He weaves the history of the National Applications Office (the folks who'll oversee classified data can be use for domestic/homeland securitiy issues) with the role of contractors with what he saw at GEOINT.

- CorpWatch

Alabama Governor Riley will be touting the success of the state's Virtual Alabama today alongside Michael Jones from Google and Jim Walker, Alabama Homeland Security director, who spoke at our Rocket City Geospatial conference. This public private model sure seems to be working:

According to Google Earth's Web site, the program needed to be "relatively inexpensive" so it could be offered free of charge to county governments. In turn, each of the county governments would be motivated to share and upload local information to the program.

Since it was launched, Virtual Alabama has grown to about 400 users from 75 departments across the state.

- Hunstville Times

I know some of you have issues with the term "real time mapping" so be forewarned. NPR's business show Marketplace talks to "Carlo Ratti, an MIT real-time map designer."

The Crave Blog at c|net shares the details of survey that puts Garmin at #1 in the GPS lovefest.

The study by marketing research firm BrandIntel reveals that Garmin is the most discussed portable navigation system (on blogs, consumer sites, etc.) and holds the best overall sentiment score with consumers, though not by in that arena.

Based on an analysis of search results from "online consumer communities" (i.e., blogs, forums, and so forth) across the Web during July 2006 to August 2007, BrandIntel's GPS Navigation Systems Report found that Garmin made up 42 percent of the 7,000 consumer mentions, while TomTom was a distant second with 15 percent. Magellan garnered 13 percent of the results; Mio had 10 percent; Lowrance scored 5 percent; and 12 percent went to other vendors. However, the competition gets fierce when it comes to customer sentiment scores. Once again, Garmin took top honors with a 3.9, while Magellan, Mio, Lowrance, and TomTom were all close with scores of 3.7, 3.6, 3.6, and 3.5, respectively.

A press release from SubwayHotels is not really necessary. The service/mashup does just what you think - helps find hotels near subways (the transportation kind, not the sandwich shop kind) in Berlin, Paris and Madrid. (There's TubeHotels for London - a separate site.)

SubwayHotels has got all the requisite things - cost comparisons, various sources, info on the hotels, etc. and it's got that great name. Will that name be a bigger draw than say Hotels.com that also shows subway stops on its maps but doesn't make a big deal of it?

Oh, and business model? "No we are not a charity - we earn small commissions from the companies we refer you to."

It sounds like no big deal, but the European Commission wants more time for a "Phase 2" investigation. That give them 125 days (though it may not need them all) to complete the review. TomTom extended its tender until March 31 to enable that timeframe.

- Thompson Financial