IBI Taps Google Maps for WebFOCUS Solution

Information Builders (IBI) is announcing the availablity of WebFOCUS for Google Maps and looks to catapult itself to the forefront of business intelligence (BI) tools that are location enabled. IBI is touting the ability to rapidly develop a mashup of its BI engine with Google Maps to visualize a business’ operational data and reports. This is somewhat of a departure for IBI which had looked to ESRI’s ArcIMS as their platform for geospatial data visualization.

Blue Dasher, the next Immersive Media?

Joe Francica noted Blue Dasher the other day when we chatted. The company has come out of the shadows in conjunction with CTIA and is the heart of an article in the Miami Herald. Welcome to another player in the “photograph my street and put it on a website/mobile/nav device arena! Already in: Immersive Media, Everyscape and others. Blue Dasher will offer up in photo ads for businesses, but outside that, I’m not sure of it competitive differentiator.

Fish Eye Lens for Maps

The technology is from Alps in Japan but sounds very much like IDELIX pliable display technology I first ran into in 2001. Alas the company’s site is in Japanese. But as I understand it, both technologies put a moveable lens in front of the map, providing details in the center but context to the rest of the map at the edges. IDELIX licensing it to I think BEA for use in imaging software.

via TechRadar

General Dynamics UK to Offer 3D Near Real Time Environments for Soldiers

The technology, described as an “urban intelligence and surveillance system” is called Masthead and will be announced at a special forces show in Jordan this week.

Data capture can be done with a system based on LIDAR (Light Intensity Direction and Ranging) that sits atop a jeep. Also in development: the ability to fuse data from other sensors, such as those that see through walls.

Mike Thomas, the business development manager at the company’s Mission Systems division “said that by using 3-D through-the-wall radar, thermal imaging and X-ray backscatter, you can fuse data to create a picture of a building’s external and internal structures, as well as detect objects and people inside.”

The UK developed and GD UK funded work is not subject to U.S. technology export regulations.

- Defense News

NGA Wants National Power Grid Database

UPI reports that the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency feels such a database is necessary to protect infrastructure. It’s rolled out a sources sought notice looking for such a database that might be shared within the U.S. and foreign partners.