Wednesday, August 13. 2008

Map Hawk on the Caucasus Crisis

Follow the threads on the geopolitics of the Georgian-Russian crisis on the new Map Hawk blog by Joe Francica.

SOA or WOA...Which Do you Prefer?

Do you know the difference between SOA and WOA? Services-oriented architecture and Web-oriented architecture. According to InformationWeek, SOA and WOA work at different layers of abstraction meaning that SOA works at a systems level layer that looks to implement business capabilities consumed by many applications; WOA is resource-oriented, has more limited services and focuses on data. The article provides the benefits and risks of each but argues that each are complimentary and not mutually exclusive in an enterprise architecture.

GeoEye-1 Launch Delayed Again...but only briefly

The launch of GeoEye-1 from Vandenburg Air Force Base, originally scheduled for August 22, has been delayed to September 4. According to information released by GeoEye, "This added time is needed to allow for the positioning of resources to support receipt of down-range telemetry from the Delta II booster vehicle after launch and initial flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California." 

Search Engine Watch: Microsoft Wins on Mapping Georgia Online

Nathania Johnson at Search Engine Watch did due diligence and queried Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Virtual Earth, Ask and AOL and found that Microsoft has the most information and can geocode key cities like Ts’khinvali.

ESRI Developer on Google Geoblog

Sterling Quinn from ESRI highlights how to use ArcGIS Server services in conjunction with Google Maps at the Google Geo Developers blog. Google was not as prominent at the ESRI User Conference as I expected it to be.

Hopeworks 'N Camden Completes First Print Map

Hopeworks 'N Camden has been deservedly featured at many GIS conferences. The program aims to keep Camden youth in school and on track with technology training, including GIS work. This week the program finished its first print work - a free map of the city. Funded by student-sold and sometimes student-created ads, the maps remaining from the original run of 8000 will be available for free. Another use for this newly acquired data? Perhaps it can be contributed to OpenStreetMap?

- Courier Post Online
- Philadelphia Inquirer