How to Lose Two Cars in One Night - with GPS

The story goes: Man drives to NY restaurant. Gives Mercedes to valet. Keys are stolen from valet stand. Thief sees Porsche (typo corrected) keys in stolen car. Uses in-car GPS to determine owner’s home address. Steals second car from driveway. Entirely possible scenario I guess.

InfoWeek blogger Eric Zeman goes on after telling that story and how the cars have not yet been found:
“For the victim’s sake, I hope the police are able to use the GPS information in the Mercedes to find it before it is completely stripped by the thieves.”

A Review of OSM from Manilla

Chin Wong, writing in the Manila Standard Today just found OpenStreetMap. He gives it a realistic review and cites why he feels, despite suggestions from an OSM contributor to the contrary, that it’s not yet “nailed Manilla.” More articles like that mean a better OSM.

ESRI’s Defense Business Manager Joins ESRI New Zealand Distributor

Defense News has a profile of David Swann, until last year ESRI’s international defense business development, and the 40 year old company, Eagle Technology Group.

TomTom Lowers Debt, Raises Stock Price, Lowers Expectations

Among the announcements today:

TomTom reduced net debt by 16 percent in the past quarter. (That drove stock up 8% in Amsterdam.)

The company dropped revenue expectations for 2008 to 1.66 billion euros ($2.16 billion) to 1.68 billion euros, from as much as 1.85 billion euros.

Total sales last year were about 34 million, lower than the expected 36 million.

TomTom will take a charge on the acquisition of Tele Atlas. No word on how much, but it won’t impact loan agreements.

- Bloomberg News

Podcast: Cuts in Geospatial Jobs and Products and a Push for GIS for the Nation

This past week the geospatial technology community saw layoffs and product disruptions at Autodesk, Intergraph and Google. At the same time the community learned that industry players were taking the case for GIS for the Nation to capitol hill advocating it be part of the incoming administration’s stimulus package. We explore the downside of layoffs and product disruption and the possible upside of geospatial stimulus.

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