Thursday, August 27. 2009

FGDC Executive Committee Endorses Imagery for the Nation

The committee made its decision known via a Record of Decision (pdf) which states its understanding of the imagery program and outlines recommendations for management, contracting, funding and other matters. Once topics are resolved, the plan will go to the FGDC Steering Committee for approval.

A number of organizations endorsed the program earlier this summer. MAPPS issued a press release renewing its endorsement of the concept of IFTN and encouraging a resolution of outstanding issues the day the Record of Decision was made public, August 20, 2009.

The FGDC IFTN page does not have any information about this document as of now.

- via @mappsorg

Dept. of Homeland Security Sole Sources NSGIC for RAMONA

How nice that NSGIC's efforts to provide a single point for state GIS inventories is getting some support. DHS is looking for "access to and enhancement of the RAMONA GIS Inventory, as well as research and development of best practices guidance."

- Fed Biz Online via @JeffHarrison

Sunlight Labs "Apps for America" Finalists Announced; Vote

The Sunlight Foundation sponsored the contest (V2) to encourage developers to take advantage of the newly opened datasets from the federal government including data.gov. Have a look at the three finalists - all with maps - and vote for your favorite.

Finalists include:

GovPulse - a Federal Register browser, it includes maps of places mentioned by an agency.

This we know - "the EveryBlock for federal data"

Datamasher - "allows you to take two different public data sources and mash them up with an operator (+ - * /)."

Steve Coast on Free Maps and More

Pocket Lint has an interview with the OpenStreetMap founder. And, a reminder, Coast will be among the speakers at this year's Location Intelligence Conference. We are offering some very affordable registration options just now...

Amazon Launches Private Cloud Services

Amazon is launching private cloud services as part their Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) offering. Reason? Security. The Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) will integrate with the corporate IT infrastructure through "a set of isolated Amazon Web Services (AWS) compute resources" via an encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN). The objective is to make this a "seamless" transition between internal network security and resources available through Amazon's private cloud services.

TomTom, Garmin See Glass Half Full with PNDs

"In the summer period, we’ve seen quite a good development in demand. We’re becoming more optimistic."

- TomTom Chief Executive Officer Harold Goddijn

"We don’t believe that PND is dead. We think it’s going to continue to grow a couple more years through 2011 and possibly flatten out at that point as the GPS-enabled smart-phone market increases."

- Kevin Rauckman, chief financial officer of Garmin

TomTom already has an iPhone app, Garmin will not pursue one, but is offering its own branded nav phones.

- Bloomberg