Wednesday, May 28. 2008

Google Earth Becomes a Browser Plugin

That from Brady at O'Reilly Radar. It's being announced today at Google I/O, a developer event. Oh, only on Windows. [Removed: "And, no imagery yet. (huh?)" I misunderstood post, as noted in comment below.]

Is this a big deal? Does making it a plugin vs. a standalone app matter that much?

The one minute intro video is below.

Gates Wants to Map Africa

In a Q & A before he retires from Microsoft on July 1, Gates mentioned that project. From C|net's coverage:

He is also involved in a project to map all of Africa, using Microsoft resources as well as contributions from Gates himself and his foundation.

I wonder if they'll use the Vexcel cameras?

The Q & A occurred before his keynote (with CEO Ballmer) at the Wall Street Journal's D conference. That's where the new touchscreen capabilities for Windows 7 were demoed. Interested in that? Video here.

via BetaNews

Quote of the Week

"Another piece of the international iPhone puzzle has been jammed into place. When we detailed the contracts signed between Apple and telcos worldwide, there was a conspicuous gap in the map, above and to the right of Western Europe."

- Charlie Sorrel in Wired's Gadget Lab blog, noting a "hole" in iPhone coverage will be filled by a new contract between Apple and TeliaSonera, to cover the geography in question, the Nordic and Balkan regions.

Rolta Looking to Buy US BI Firm

In the latest of too many articles, the Indian press notes a potential Rolta by in business intelligence, though its expertise is in geospatial technologies. It acquired Orion Technologies last year. Does this have implications for location intelligence?

- The Economic Times

Geographical Analysis Editorship Leaves Ohio State After 18 Years

As of July 1, Dr. Daniel Griffith of UT Dallas will serve a three-year term as the journal’s editor. Griffith is an Ashbel Smith Professor of Geospatial Information Sciences in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. Per a UT Dallas news article, he will be the first editor in 18 years who is not based at Ohio State University.

Also of note, this quote from Dr. Griffith: "A lot of graduate students enroll in our GIS program to complement their professional skills. The use of this technology has really taken off during the last 10 years, and will only continue to grow."

Oxford Archeology Goes Open Source

Since there are rarely open source "win" press releases, its valuable to note when organizations choose such solutions.

Per Search Enterprise Linux:

...it's only natural that the cost-conscious, nonprofit $24 million company would turn to open source software to run the heart of its operations, from capturing and storing archaeological data to running routine business functions -- even its telephone system.

...

Chief Information Officer Chris Puttick. "And open source is the best long-term cost-saver … and gives us the ultimate flexibility to adapt without restriction."
...
[The CIO begain] starting with the servers, most of which now run on Ubuntu (some 6.06 Long Term Support [LTS] and others on 8.04 LTS), and the free version of VMware, then trying the OpenOffice desktop application and the PostgreSQL open source database, which has an add-on for a geographic information system (GIS).
...

Additional changes are still under way, including migration to open source GIS packages, including gvSIG, QGIS and/or GRASS,...