Monday, March 9. 2009

Video: Jane Goodall - Presentation at the Map World Forum

I captured a portion of Jane Goodall's keynote presentation where she describes how she came about to use GIS technology for monitoring chimpanzee habitat and the general ecosystem near the Gombe National Forest as part of the work going on at the Jane Goodall Institute.

Seeking Alpha: GeoEye Not Communicating

As Chris Fernandez at Seeking Alpha predicts what the world will learn when GeoEye finally announces earnings for the last quarter and 2008, he notes what went right and wrong with the company over the past quarter. Right: more deals signed, NGA signs off. Wrong:

Lack of communication!

While GeoEye’s management team is competent, and even at times very good, this has been a pervasive problem in the past, and it looks like GeoEye is slipping into old behavior patterns by not communicating well with analysts , Wall Street, and simply the investors like us that own shares of the company’s stock and just want to know what the heck is going on from time to time.

After USGIF Ponders Lack of Coverage of GEOINT, Pres Quoted in Boston Globe

A few weeks back the world was abuzz about how UCLA professors had used remote sensing and geospatial tools to predict where Osama Bin Laden may be hiding. (APB coverage) Later that week a discussion on GotGeoint? the blog of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation pondered why there was so little coverage of GEOINT in the traditional media.

Today, Keith Masback, USGIF president, got some mainstream attention in a story on the topic. (I'm not sure why this is turning up in the Globe so far after the story broke.)

Specialists in high-tech spying say the UCLA study deserves attention.

"This is serious research that should be considered by the US military and intelligence," said Keith Masback, head of the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, an organization of academics, business representatives, and military officials interested in satellite surveillance.

- Boston Globe

Oracle Spatial GeoRaster Gets Open Source Support

Oracle Spatial GeoRaster, the function within the Oracle's Enterprise database edition to manage and query raster data, is now supported with an open source driver to export or import data in many formats, such as GRASS, GeoTIFF, IDRISI, etc. Geospatial Software Integration (GSI) wrote the GDAL driver, which, according to the company, can executve Map Algebra or other image processing query functions.

DC/Nextbus Take Down Test Bus Tracker When Users Use It

Metro contracted with California's NextBus to implement a bus tracking system in 2006 for at least $2 million. At first there was a beta that residents could use. Then the beta was closed when accuracy of predictions fell. But, the company apparently left a version of the site up and openly available, so clever users found it and used it. Now, Metro and NextBus are closing the backdoor and making residents wait for the July official launch. Metro says it doesn't want complaints and anticipates higher cost for the site which is now 80% accurate versus an earlier 92% accurate it its time of arrival predictions. One of four Metro busses are late per the most recent figures available. Riders are campaigning to get the service back before the July launch.

Bottom line: If you don't want people using your website, don't make it publicly available! If you want to be like Google, make it available and take lumps and improve it. It works for Google.

- DC Examiner

Changing Landscape of Religion Map

USA Today has a cover story on the changing face of religion. The story references a well-done graphic showing regional change from 1990 to 2008 based on data collected over 18 years from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS).