Wednesday, July 29. 2009

Update: Wind Atlas of Spain - Which Open Source Platform?

Those who know more than I have commented and confirm:
(1) It's an ESRI Web ADF implementation and (2) there was a mis-translation in the article.

Continue reading "Update: Wind Atlas of Spain - Which Open Source Platform?"

Garmin Puts Toe into Crowdsourcing - New Nuvi Firmware Enables Rating POIs

Rich Owings at GPS tracklog shared a new feature in the new firmware for Garmin Nuvis.

In addition to providing a star rating [for a POI] you can also report an error and have the item removed from future searches.

Trimble Cites Positive News in Second Quarter Report

Trimble's CEO Steven Berglund reported guarded optimism about his company's "return to year-over-year revenue growth by late 2009 or early 2010." Such remarks have become rare these days and it sent Trimble's stock up over 14% by mid-day today. Berglund also stated that the Field Solutions business (generally the GIS sector for Trimble) experienced an 11% decline year-over-year but that decline should be tempered by the fact that in 2008 this segment demonstrated a whopping 63% growth in sales.

So, even though Berglund still believes there is significant risk in the market, the numbers represent "more stability in the second quarter than the prior two quarters."

We'll take any good news we can get at this point.

Why OpenStreetMap is Brilliant

Jonathan Bray at the PC Pro blog explains why. He does hit a challenge that many folks do: OpenStreetMap is one word, not three.

India's Indigenous Satellite Imagery Analysis Software

"Buy local" is big when it comes to fruits and vegetables, but it's also a popular sentiment when it comes to technology and software. So, India is very excited about homegrown IGiS, "a completely indigenous seamless geomatics application, which includes geographical information system (GIS), image processing and its integration with the real time information, using the global positioning system (GPS)." The system took seven years to build and the impetus was to cut costs by avoiding the purchase of expensive software from overseas. Ramesh Sojitra, Managing Director of Scanpoint, the company who built it in partnership with ISRO, said, "By using the IGiS, a cost saving of up to 40 percent can be achieved." Sojitra is a bit of a hero; the launch of his software prompted an article about how he got to his current position.

- Silicon India

Media GPS Coverage Trend?

This is anecdotal, but I think it's true: media outlets are doing far fewer stories on "people driving around and capturing geospatial data" stories and more "what do I do if my house is mislocated on MapQuest/in my GPS" stories. The latest one I saw was in the Kansas City Star and to the Watchdog column writer's credit actually cited NAVTEQ MapReporter (alas there was no live link to the page, but then many papers are still just dumped print text on the Web). The response didn't note Tele Atlas' MapInsight and/or TomTom Mapshare. Perhaps its time for data collection companies (and even OSM) to do some outreach on those efforts?