Thursday, January 15. 2009

OGC Survey (prizes!); RFQ Withdrawn

Survey

Researchers from the University of Illinois (Dr. Mu Xia) and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Dr. Kexin Zhao) have developed a survey to research standards development organizations and standards effectiveness, and help the Consortium to improve its ability to address geospatial interoperability needs. Please help us with our interoperability mission by taking the survey.

The survey should take 15 to 20 minutes to complete. Your participation is strictly voluntary but critical to our research. Your response will be only used for research purposes. It will be kept strictly confidential to the two university researchers. Data gathered from this survey will be summarized in the aggregate, excluding all references to any individual responses, and made available to the OGC leadership. An executive summary will be provided to survey respondents after we analyze and interpret the data.

If you have already participated in a similar survey for OGC TC members conducted in the summer 2008, you do not need to answer this survey.

As a gesture of our appreciation, we invite you to register to win one of three technology prizes that will be awarded randomly to those who complete the survey. The three winners get their choice of: (1) Seagate Xtreme Black 1.5TB 3.5" Hard Drive - 7200, USB 2.0, FireWire-400, eSATA; (2) Apple iPod Touch 16GB MP3 Player; (3) Able Planet NC1000CH Clear Harmony Noise Canceling Headphones.

Visit survey site

Withdrawal

The Request For Quotations and Call for Participation (RFQ/CFP) to solicit proposals in response to requirements for the Empire Challenge 09 Pilot (EC09 OGC Pilot) has been withdrawn (Jan 9) due to lack of funding. The PR came out in December for the Request and responses were due yesterday. The pilot was to "examine the suitability and performance of OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) and OGC Web Services (OWS) standards for providing open management of and access to sensors of varied types and Web service access by analysts to the resulting data and products."

Autodesk Restructures, Lays Off 750, Sells LBS Group

Autodesk will reduce its workforce by approximately 750 employees, about 10 percent of the company's global workforce. Some facilities will be consolidated.

That means a pre-tax charge in the range of $65 million to $75 million divided between the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 with most of the remaining charge will be taken in the first quarter of fiscal 2010.

Autodesk reset expectations for net revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 in the range of $475 million and $500 million.

The company has an agreement to sell the Location Services business to Hale Capital Partners, a private equity firm. Per the release: "Autodesk believes this move will help position the Location Services business for greater success in the wireless industry, while allowing Autodesk to focus its on its core business." No info on the price of the sale. LBS, Autodesk Geospatial, has been very quiet of late.

Intergraph announced layoffs just yesterday.

- press release

C|net: Google Killing Geosocialnet Dodgeball, Messaging tool Jaiku, more

C|net reports these Notebook, Video and a few others are shutting down or their tasks are finding new homes.

Dodgeball, reports the article (actually from Webware) has mostly been supplanted by Twitter. Jaiku will be ported to the App Engine, but may live on as a standalone product via Google volunteer effort. It will be turned open source. The MashUp editor will also die.

Update: All 43 Police Forces in England and Wales offer Online Crime Maps

Update: 1/15/09: The Guardian provides a link to the listing of the 43 forces (though not to the mapping page of each). In an article today it highlights how the maps are but a first step. Timely as I take crime maps in Directions today.

Continue reading "Update: All 43 Police Forces in England and Wales offer Online Crime Maps"

URISA Offers Strongly Worded Feedback on ASPRS Draft Procurement Guidelines

URISA posted its comments to ASPRS' draft Guidelines for Procurement of Professional Aerial Imagery, Photogrammetry, Lidar, and Related Remote Sensor-based Geospatial Mapping Services on its website. Comments are due today, Jan 15.

URISA makes five points in its comments, highlighting areas of disagreement with the draft.

Continue reading "URISA Offers Strongly Worded Feedback on ASPRS Draft Procurement Guidelines"

Washington State Legislators Propose Studying Implanted GPS for Sex Offenders

Since bracelets are not working the Washington State House of Representatives is considering a bill to study the cost and feasibility of implanting GPS devices in the worst offenders. Civil rights supporters are expected to advocate against the bill. Jerry Dobson's term "geoslavery" always creeped me out; so does contemplating this type of tracking.

- King5