Tuesday, July 21. 2009

Senate Committee Approves "Small Satellites" for 2010 Intel Bill

The Senate Intelligence Committee approved a plan backed by Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and ranking member Kit Bond, for smaller, less advanced satellites. The plan is part of the fiscal 2010 intelligence authorization bill.

- GovExec

Oracle Hikes Oracle Spatial Price: Why? Success of Google Maps and ESRI

Of interest to the geospatial community: "the price of its spatial database pack for the management of location-based data from US$11,500 to US$17,500" between June 2008 and June 2009. Also up: database diagnostic packs, database tuning packs and database configuration management packs which went from US$3500 to US$5000.

Continue reading "Oracle Hikes Oracle Spatial Price: Why? Success of Google Maps and ESRI"

Apple Patent App: Better Estimation of Travel Time

MacNN reports on the application filed in 2008, but only recently revealed. As I understand it, the system uses crowd sourced information, along with specific information about the vehicle in question, for better time prediction. Titled, Adaptive Navigation System for Estimating Travel Times, the patent is authored by Brett Gregory Alten.

via Apple Insider

Tube Style Map for Tourism - Does this Make Sense?

Somerset now offers a "tube style" map of the tourist destinations in the area. The idea is to play off the famous London transit map and drive visits. There's one challenge: there's no "tube" in Somerset. Further, the longest "line" on the map is 85 miles and requires a vehicle, so far as I can tell. And, as you might expect, the map itself does not lend itself to navigation for a car. The "guides" for each line have no streetmaps, either.

BBC

County GIS Bid Snapshot

I just find like this interesting. This county is in Missouri.

Armloads of book-sized bids and maps were opened during Thursday’s Newton County Commissioners meeting.

The GIS mapping and publication bids came in as follows: Marceline Mapping of Lathrop, Mo., $185,850 without web publication and $200,850 with Web publication; Great River Engineering, Springfield at $138,359; VillaGIS, Inc., Hollister, Mo., $80,600; Midland GIS Solutions $211,500; and The Sidwell Company, St. Charles, Ill. $167,505 and $2.25 a plot.

So, the range for something like the same set of tasks runs from $80K to $211K.

- Neosho Daily News

Podcast: First Half of 2009: State of the Industry

We are halfway through 2009. Directions Media editors have been to about a dozen user and specialty conferences in the U.S. and around the world, including ESRI's huge event last week. What themes are emerging? What can we tease out about the future? Our editors try to make sense of five key themes they've identified.


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