Thursday, August 6. 2009

Let's Define Geospatial Cloud Computing

Yesterday, when I published the notice on putting a focus on geospatial cloud computing I did not provide information on exactly how we would do this.

At the Location Intelligence Conference we'll have two panels:

The first will be to define the architecture and available platforms, such as Amazon's EC3, to consider

The second will be to put clarity on geospatial cloud computing, the business models and companies already investing in cloud services such as GeoEye and DigitalGlobe, for example.

But what is even more basic than defining architecture or services is to cut through the jargon, nomenclature and acronyms. Wikipedia's definition is rather clear to but I've come across four terms that particularly stand out as those that may confuse the issue:

SaaS: Software as a Service in some ways defines the business model of cloud computing. You offer an application that perhaps provides a "pay as you go" model.

Virtualization: The idea of purchasing 10 licenses that are shared among 100 people is not new. In the old days, many software companies issued a "dongle" to share between machines that had the software loaded. This is a little different because the software doesn't reside on a local hard drive.

Web Service: Isn't cloud computing just a more nebulous way of defining web services? What's your thought?

SOA: I'm going to defer to ZDNet that just published a brief article today on how SOA and cloud computing are becoming synonymous. I'm not sure I see it that way but since both terms can have as many definitions as the people that use them, it's still up for discussion.

Please add your comments to keep this discussion going here or @geocloud.

Oregon Chooses Consortium including NAVTEQ for Broadband Mapping

There have been a few press releases about Connected Nation and ESRI winning broadband mapping contracts in Texas and Nevada. Yesterday Oregon chose a consortium headed by One Economy, including New America Foundation, BroadMap, NAVTEQ, and BCT Partners to do the work in that state. The same consortium has won bids in Hawaii, Guam and Samoa and includes use of crowdsourcing for the projects.

- Public Knowledge

EFF Report: On Locational Privacy, and How to Avoid Losing it Forever

That's the title of a new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that examines the state of the art and recommends action now for those developing systems that use location information.

- via ReadWriteWeb

Falcon Eye: Bing Maps, Windows 7 Touch App

Toronto-based Infusion Development has rolled Bing Maps with Windows 7 and put the whole thing on a touch screen. Called Falcon Eye, it's touted as yet another single, intuitive interface for all kinds of geospatial data and thus all kinds of applications. future structure.

Since Windows 7 supports multi-touch an app like this can run on desktop computer in addition to specialized hardware such as Microsoft's Surface.

- IT Business (Canada)

EFF Civil Liberties Director: We Need Tech for Privacy Protection; Laws are Not Doing the Job

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick put it a bit more elegantly at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium held at the University of Washington in Seattle yesterday.

"We need technology. Citizens need technology to protect themselves because the law is not doing it."

The most well-publicized privacy invasions revolved around location tracking. She explained how the 4th amendment to the constitution (against unlawful search and seizure) only applies at home, leaving many places where tracking can legally occur. Some states do require a warrant to use a GPS for tracking.

- PC World

Quote of the Week III

"GIS has been around since the cave days when hunters drew pictures of animals they hunted. Their animal drawings and the animal migration routes are the early records that imitate today’s modern GIS images."

- Althea Blackwell, writing about GIS in the DC Government Technology Examiner