MSN Direct Service Under Review

On Tuesday Microsoft let go 3,000 employees, the second wave of a promised 5000 person cut announced earlier this year. While no products were removed from the product line, one with implications for location-based services is under review: MSN Direct. That’s an FM data service used to send traffic, weather and other real time data to GPS receivers (from many vendors) and the less-than-successful SmartWatch.

The official statement on MSN Direct:

While the group was impacted by yesterday’s job eliminations, they will continue to maintain the current MSN Direct service and invest in developing a low cost receiver for multiple devices.

- Channel Register
- ZDnet

Implications for Google Ads in Panoramio Placemarks

Frank Taylor, writing at the Google Earth blog, reports that he’s seeing actual adds in Panoramio placemarks and suggests they may have been there before and he just noticed them. His take on the potential implications:

If the results of this test are good, maybe Google will allow other KML developers to add Adsense code in their files. This might give incentive to some organizations and individuals to devote more attention to the quality of their KML files. Or, it could mean we’ll get even more ad-filled content detracting from the quality of our experience. Only time will tell.

I love the idea of higher quality data and perhaps ad revenue might encourage that. On the other hand, it might just encourage poor data that support ads (spatial splogs?). I’m still waiting for a more effective uptake of KML as tags for geodata. I suggested that if this became a de facto way to geotag data sets, then KML search could underlie many geodata Web searches.

Situational Awareness on a Surface

DRS Technologies offers a Global Situational Awareness solution that includes all the buzzwords: multiple data overlays including “UAV videos, schematics, photos, SAR, IR” and a touch screen built into the table display. But, it has some twists I’ve not seen in similar devices.

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Open Source GIS Alive and Well in Massachusetts

There’s another of those local paper stories about how GIS is good at explaining how Sudbury, MA is taking advantage of the technology. It has the quotes from local officials about how they use it and plans for future use. It even cites pricing:

To create the fly-over, the aerial photograph, and the GIS data development used for the different data layers, Sudbury paid about $100,000. Additionally, the town pays $3,500 annually for unlimited use of MapsOnline.

The one thing that’s not noted in the article which focuses on PeopleGIS implementation of MapsOnline in Sudbury and Weston is that the underlying code is open source. The reason it’s not noted, I’d guess, is not because anyone is trying to hide anything, but because it doesn’t matter. The software does what it’s supposed to, the company hired to implement it supports the implementation and town workers and citizens use it. The Sudbury app is available to the public here.