Monday, November 24. 2008

Where On Google Earth Will You Be On Waitangi Day?

Waitangi Day is New Zealand's national day and New Zealand's national indigenous broadcaster, Maori Television, is running a campaign to have nationals post message on Google Earth noting where they'll be on that day. This news, and the headline in the title, comes from a "publicity release" on the event.

Now, I have no problem with the idea or the use of Google Earth for collecting the data. I have to admit use of "Google Earth" instead of just "Earth" gives me pause. The real question is where on Earth will people be? They'll be using Google Earth to represent that location. They could use another software solution, of course. Somehow this use of Google Earth implying that Google "owns" the Earth goes just a bit too far for me. I'm ok with "google" as a verb and I applaud Google for naming Google Earth as it did. (Compare Virtual Earth/Live Maps/Live Search Maps and you can see the lost branding opportunity.) Can we just leave the "real earth" as "earth?"

Quote of the Week

"She [Catherine Litvack, executive director of the Crossroads of the American Revolution Association in New Jersey] said the groups are trying to arrange with Google Earth to snap a photograph of the light show."

The light show in question will be on Tuesday night and will cover 108 miles from Beacon, N.Y., to Princeton to mark the day 225 years ago when the last British troops boarded ships in New York harbor and sailed away, leaving behind a free nation. Xenon spotlights will be mounted atop spots that approximate the sites of Revolutionary War beacon fires (map). Tuesday is one of the Evacuation Days celebrated in the United States. Here in Massachusetts we celebrate when the troops left Boston on March 17 (also St. Patrick's Day).

- The Daily Record

Friday, November 21. 2008

NZ Firm Drops its Mapping Service for Google

TradeMe is currently offers its Smaps, a mapping app developed by Wellington firm ProjectX as a stand alone site and to power its TradeMe auction site. Smaps will shutdown December 1, and TradeMe will move to mapping built on Google's platform. A second site from the same company, TravelBug, already switched over. Smaps received high praise and stats, but the company wants to focus on its strengths.

- Stuff.co.nz

Thursday, November 20. 2008

Spatial Data Infrastructure & CIP

At the Rocket City Geospatial Conference, the Thursday plenary session focused on the relationship between critical infrastructure protection (CIP) and establishing a common spatial data infrastructure (SDI) both at the national and more local level.

Continue reading "Spatial Data Infrastructure & CIP"

Doherty on the past, present and future of GIS technology

Mark Doherty has been with Intergraph for 20 years, and has spent a lot of time steeped in technology in general and geospatial technology in particular. This focus allowed him to give a detailed overview of where the technology of GIS has been, where it is now, and where it is going, during his keynote presentation on Thursday morning at the Rocket City Geospatial Conference in Huntsville, AL. He reviewing the history of GIS from its early mainframe days, up through the relatively near future of 3D, cloud computing, and software as a service.

Doherty's conclusion asked, where does all this leave us? "We will have a new era in computing in the maybe not too distant future." Four trends are converging to create a potentially unique opportunity: 1) SOA and standards; 2) cloud computing; 3) orchestration (e.g., taking services and chaining them together in a logical fashion); and 4) thin clients/rich Internet applications (RIA). What might these unique opportunities be? We will have to stay tuned, said Doherty.

Baron demonstrates the future of weather reporting

Bob Baron, president and founder of Baron Services, gave a special presentation at the Rocket City Geospatial Conference on Thursday morning. He started by showing clips of himself and other weathermen from as early as the 1970's, which were wonderfully amusing and sometimes downright silly. He was a TV weatherman during the "grease pen on a chart" days. This experience was the impetus behind the founding of Baron Services, he explained. "In 1984, an F4 tornado came through Huntsville; there was no warning. A police officer down near the golf coarse reported that his car was overturned and that was our first warning. We lost 23 neighbors that day. We had little timely and accurate data that day - we had nice weather graphics but no weather tools. I incorporated my company two months later, and we focused on how we could do better."

Baron took the audience through the history of technology his company has developed and provided to TV stations, ending up with the company's newest product, OMNI. Baron explained OMNI: "We’re actually at the beginning of being able to show people the weather as they would actually see the weather." The company works with more than 200 TV stations around the country, so it's likely that you will see the OMNI system in the next few months.