Microsoft Research shows off its latest idea each year at TechFest. Among those of geo-interest this year were:

LucidTouch allows users to touch an alternate location to activate a touch screen. The demo showed users touching the back of a display. The big leap? Such a system gets around the fat finger problem - where a big finger hides what is of interest, or is not "fine enough" to zero in on a button or area of interest.

Another technology, unnamed, taps into cell phones, armed with accelerometers, to capture information about the commute - where potholes are, when and where horns are honked. The data is sent to a server for use by drivers to find the best route. I guess it could also be used to indentify where roads need to be repaired.

- InfoWorld

The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) commission the report titled, "Independent Study of the Roles of Commercial Remote Sensing in the future National System for Geospatial-Intelligence" early last year. It explores four possible business cases for how the government and private companies might work together to provide needed imagery for those agencies and their government clients. The suggested path is not the status quo and may have implications for the two current U.S. commercial satellite providers DigtialGlobe and GeoEye. Our editors try to tease out what the report means and its implications.

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