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It’s rare that a politician can wax prophetically on geospatial technology. Maybe it’s his training as a lawyer, but Shri Kipal Sibal, India’s Minister of Science & Technology, can articulate better than most any geospatial technologist a vision for what’s needed to expand opportunity in his country.
The comments of the Vice President of India, Shri M Hamid Ansari, were sobering. While recognizing the true benefits of geospatial technology, he offered as many cautions as kudos. The full text of his speech to the Map World Forum delegates is recommended reading because it not only points to the advantages but the dangers of more open access to geospatial information.
News out this morning that SiRF Technologies will merge with CSR, a company engaged with developing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology products.
You might want to plan ahead if you need anything from USGS, map prices are going up for the first time since 2002, some will rise 40%!
Here are the details from the Feb 3 USGS Document in the Federal Register:
(1) 7.5 minute 1:20,000-scale, 1:24,000-scale, 1:25,000-scale,1:63,360-scale, and 7.5 minute x 15 minute 1:25,000-scale, 1:63,360-scale, 1:100,000-scale and 1:250,000-scale primary series quadrangles from $6.00 to $8.00 per quadrangle.
(2) Thematic maps and small scale National Park maps from $7 per sheet to $9 per sheet.
(3) National Earthquake Information Center maps bearing private sector copyright from $10 per sheet to $12 per sheet.
(4) Large format and poster maps from $7 per sheet to $10 per sheet.
The good news: orders postmarked by March 2 will be a the “old” prices.
Recently Flickr reported it had 100 million geotagged images in its repository. Now the site offers a way to take advantage of that location information: a tool to find images taken “near” an image of choice (announcement). The result is a map with images found; they can be filter by type of contact, date and sorted as you like. Flickr turns 5 tomorrow.
- via ReadWriteWeb
