Thursday, July 30. 2009

Report: State Stimulus Tracker Websites are Mediocre

Good Jobs First, a Washington research center released a report (pdf) on Wednesday that give mediocre grades to state efforts to be transparent about the flow and impact of federal stimulus dollars. The report found particular issues with coverage of job creation, contract awards and geographic location of projects. The average grade was 28 out of 100.

Among the findings: "states failed to use widely available Web tools, such as geographic information systems software." One suggested reason? Philip Mattera, the center's research director and the principal author of the study suggests site developers may not be aware of states' GIS capacity.

A statement from Deseret News notes that all states have access to a GIS template for mapping: "The most transparent state is Maryland, which uses software created by ESRI, a company specializing in geographical information systems that has contracts with all 50 states and provides a template to each state for free."

Some states did well: "Among the handful of exceptional states that scored 50 or higher were Maryland, which scored 80, and West Virginia, which earned a 60." Others, not so well: Illinois and Utah received "0." Maryland and California were noted using GIS to juxtapose "the geographic disbursement of funds with patterns of economic distress, such as county unemployment rates or foreclosure levels."

- NextGov

Agreement Cuts Red Tape on Indian Launches of U.S. Satellites

Representatives from the US and India signed a technology safeguard agreement (TSA) which allows the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to launch US made satellites from India without case by case approvals. The document was signed during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to India,

The current agreement allows foreign built non-commercial satellite launches; a separate ommercial space launch agreement (CSLA) is expected to be signed soon to allow the launch of commercial satellites.

- Express Buzz

Education Tidbits

Clark State Community College in Ohio announced a new geospatial technology associate degree program to begin this fall in Beavercreek. It was created through a partnership with Advanced Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC), CACI and Woolpert and is partially funded through the Ohio Board of Regent’s Future Jobs’ grant.

- Springfield News Sun

The Virginia Space Grant Consortium received an $894,228 grant from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education program for the Geospatial Technician Education through Virginia's Community Colleges project. Three community colleges will establish "academic pathways in geospatial technology" and serve as model programs for other schools. Project partners include the Virginia Community College System; Virginia Geospatial Extension Program at Virginia Tech; and John Tyler, Tidewater and Virginia Western community colleges.

- Daily Press

As the latest cube-shaped disaster imaging satellite from Surrey Satellite Technology Limited launches today, there's a project aboard from UK students. Called Poise and developed by pupils at Shrewsbury School, in Shropshire, the experiment will measure variations in the ionosphere - the outermost layer of the atmosphere which can impact GPS signals.

- BBC

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.