Remember how when GIS was young we got very excited when the technology was noted in the mainstream media? Today it's in nearly every local and regional paper, and interestingly, Google Earth need not be referenced. Some examples from the past few days:

Detention of Gujarat fishermen and their boats by Pakistan may soon become a thing of the past. The state government is all set to roll out a cutting edge security edifice that will not only prevent vessels from crossing into Pakistani waters, but also identify each and every fisherman on the sea.
...

The hi-tech system will work on a combination of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) creating a geo-fence – a kind of virtual fencing along the IBL between India and Pakistan.

- Ahmedabad Newsline, India

The City of Dyersburg will again take advantage of the latest technology to address an age-old problem with the beginning of its pavement management program.
Using GIS and GPS technology, city officials will soon have information on street and sidewalk conditions throughout the city at their fingertips. The data can then be used to determine where problem areas like potholes, cracks and rough spots are and which streets to repair as funds allow.

The issue for some locals is that an out of town firm was contracted to do the mapping.
- State Gazette, TN

All week last week, volunteers and city employees armed with GIS mapping tools and tape measures counted, measured and made notes of every tree in three city parks.
...
The workers identified the GPS location of each tree by latitude and longitude; identified individual tree species; measured tree height and circumference; measured the amount of shade provided by each tree; and evaluated the overall health of the trees.

- Tyler Morning Telegraph

In big hardware news...The Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.5 billion contract to build the military's next generation of navigation satellites. The deal is for two satellites and perhaps 10 more, though the ultimate plan is for 32, per the Pentagon. So, that's a fine income stream for Lockheed Martin.

Boeing is not doing so well on the Air Force front. Boeing ran into delays and cost overruns in building 12 earlier GPS satellites and was not expected to take this contract. Further, Boeing lost the $40 billion deal to build refueling tankers to Northrop Grummand and EADS.

- Washington Post

It'll be announced this morning at Where, but there's a blog post about first set of apps. Only a few are particularly spatial - WeatherBug weater, Caldwell Banker home search and speed traps from Trapster. As TechCrunch notes, it's odd that to get info on the API you must send e-mail rather than say read all the details then apply for a code or something. I guess Dash hasn't been watching how the rest of the tech community is doing APIs.

The Herald (UK) tells the story of a senior walking in Scotland. He got sick and used his SPOT beacon, a satellite communications device that sends the location and asks for help. The plea was heard in Houston, TX and help was sent. The walker is in the hospital and doing well. Great story and use of technology.

The interesting part for me is the text of the message sent: "Help message. I'm immobilised but okay and cannot reach you by phone. Find GEOS on Google map and send help."

I did what it said - tried to find GEOS on Google maps - but found nothing relevant. Hmmm.

A bit of research shows that GEOS, actually the GEOS Alliance, is the name of the response company that receives the alert messages from SPOT. It's in Houston. Without searching on GEOS 911 or GEOS Alliance, I'd never have found it. The help messages sent from SPOT, like the one above, are sent to GEOS who in turn contact those people you've asked to be contacted with the message. In this case, the idea would be to confirm there is an emergency (that the person is indeed in the wild and subject to using the device, I guess). So, I guess the "find GEOS on Google maps" is redundant. BTW, if there's no answer from the contacts "at home" the service will contact emergency response personnel.

Senior executives from leading technology companies, speaking at our Location Intelligence Conference last week shared that the entire value proposition for spatial enablement is a "push" to the market rather than a "pull" or demand for the technology. Our editors ask: Are we doing an adequate job of selling the technology to more of the people that will eventually implement geospatial tools with other IT solutions.?Why is it still so hard? What are we not doing well? Will it take another "Google Earth" to push the technology deeper into corporate computing or a new crop of graduates to be more geospatially enlightened?

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.