Pretty Picture vs. Satellite Imagery in Use

Based on coverage, the new image from GeoEye 1 of Kutztown University is getting far more play (69 hits in Google News today) than an analysis from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Amnesty international that used change detection to determine the extent of destruction in South Ossetia (41 hits in Google News today).

Now, I know that’s not a scientific analysis, but I do hope we are moving toward being as excited about what we can do with the images as just having them available.

ITC Confirms SiRF Infringement on Three Patents

Broadcom Corp. whose Global Locate Inc. holds the three patents in question stated that that the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) confirmed its initial finding of SiRF Technology Holdings Inc. (SIRF) infringement. There are three other patents that also need to be reviewed. It sounds like the court will soon impose remediation which may include a ban on imports and/or sales and use in the U.S.

- RTT News

Philippines GIS Market to Grow to $1B

When? “several years from now” according to coverage of an ESRI User Conference in Manilla. ESRI’s Chief Scientist David Maguire was on hand to tell explain that “The use of geographic information systems (GIS) ushers innovation on how organizations, enterprises and the government do business with increased productivity and efficiency.”

Update: There’s video of an interview with Maguire.

- The Inquirer

The Guardian Uses GeoRSS

Many pages have maps of reporter locations and

You can also see all the posts aggregated together on a larger map. Our intrepid reporters simply add latitude and logitude data when they file the story and we do the rest.

Here’s the technical details. We are using the GeoRSS Simple location encoding standard. This means that within our RSS feed for an item with geolocation data you will find an element like this:

51.5225 -0.1085

which contains latitude and longitude data, separated by a space, to describe a single point on Earth.

- Guardian Blog

Ordnance Survey Pushing Licensing for Planning Applications

Peterborough Today reports that those who submit planning applications with inaccurate or unlicensed data may be denied permits. The OS wants to insure that data is licensed and thus necessarily “up-to-date.”

The central message is that just as property professionals should ensure their software licences are valid and their construction tools are correctly calibrated, they should also make certain their map data is properly licensed. If they do, they will know their data is accurate and up-to-date.

OS offers this webpage on how to get such maps.