Quote of the Day - Dangermond: “Fully employed for a long time”

Speaking at the opening plenary session of the ESRI Federal User’s Conference at the Washington Convention Center (Wash. DC), Jack Dangermond expounded on the many applications his user’s were employing at the federal level. But he also mentioned one key issue: lots of problems in the world, environmental, political, and health-related, create lots of opportunities for GIS. "I am certain that you and I will be fully employed for a long time."

This of course once again highlights the dearth of trained GIS professionals that many have alluded to recently, especially at the federal level and perhaps the expanding need be recognized as a GISP to provide a foundation for the required training.

New Touch Table to Rival Microsoft’s Surface?

The table, the Touch Table EES, is from ToyQuest and is 21 inches. It includes games and can play DVDs but can’t connect to the Internet. But it does include a “Google Earth”-like geography exploration tool. At $499 it’s alas just a toy, I guess.

- Tech Amok

How satellites saved the world

MSNBC offers up the article with that title and explores the satellite “shoot down” and the history of earth observation, one topic being addressed the AAAS meetings this week in Boston.

TopSat Microsatellite Helps with Disaster Relief After African Earthquake in Early Feburary

Response to a February 3 earthquake in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo include e imagery captured by TopSat. TopSat is a micro-satellite built by a consortium of UK companies.

Disaster relief operations being led by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs relies on the free imagery. In November 2007 QinetiQ, the lead on the project, agreed to include TopSat in the International “Space and Major Disasters” Charter, making it available for this type of work. The UN activated the Charter on Feb 6.

Azooptics

GPS Game Wins, Comes to Indoor Show; How Will it be Played?

Games on Deck reports winners of a mobile gaming contest, the Independent Games Festival (IGF) Mobile awards; they’ll be on display at the 2008 Game Developers Conference this week in San Francisco. Among them is KnowledgeWhere‘s PhoneTag Elite, which won Innovation in Augmented Design Award, Presented by NVIDIA. The game is described as high tech hide and seek using cell phone GPS.

According to the report, all the games will be playable in a special pavilion. “All finalists will be featured in playable form within the special pavilion on the Game Developers Conference 2008 show floor.” I wonder how PhoneTag Elite players will access GPS?