Friday, October 30. 2009

Augmented Reality Player Layar gets $1 million+ in funding

That's the word from VentureBeat. The company boasts 250,000 downloads and acknowledges all the funders in the current round are from Europe. Also: the app launched on Symbian.

National Map Elevation and Imagery Funding Available

USGS has 15 discretionary grant opportunities to collect and process imagery and elevation maps to be included as part of the National Map. The funds are part of the Stimulus aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Awards run up to $500,000 are are open to institutions of higher education and non-federal government agencies.

A funding opportunity notice from the U.S. Geological Survey states: "Many organizations including state and local governments, private and non-profit firms, as well as many Federal government agencies use these data to support their applications and requirements planning, infrastructure improvements, resource assessments and scientific studies. The data collected under this announcement will become available to the public through The National Map. Priorities for the program include collecting elevation data over those coastal areas of United States most susceptible to storm and hurricane flooding, earthquake damage, and coastal erosion and also increasing coverage and availability of leaf-off high resolution orthoimagery."

The funding opportunity number is 10HQPA0014 (CFDA 15.817). It was posted Oct. 27 with an application closing date of Dec. 1.

via Targeted News

OSM in Uganda

Just yesterday I noted AfricaGIS was held in the capital of Uganda, Kampala. Google had quite a presence in part because of new efforts to map the country. Today, there's word that OpenStreetMap is also active in country as part of a DevelopmentSeed effort. Locals are using QGIS for mapping and uploading data to OSM.

Ironic that the final line in Jonathan Bennett's report is: "Now imagine if some proprietary software company or mapping data provider had got involved?"

- ZDnet Blog

Podcast: A Hallway Conversation with Philip O'Doherty, CEO, eSpatial

Adena Schutzberg interviewed eSpatial CEO Philip O'Doherty about Web GIS, its implementation challenges, editing capabilities ("CAD-lite") and future. This is the second in a series of interviews with geospatial insiders and outsiders.

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Thursday, October 29. 2009

MapQuest Updates Look and Feel

After all the myriad announcements from Google about its changes to maps and mapping apps, it's nice to see MapQuest update its look and feel. Sources tell me the company behind the new look is Cartifact, who did a similar update for Yahoo! in 2007.

- MapQuest Blog

Quote of the Week

"27 members of Google’s staff and around 200 people from around the world and Africa (I’ve heard conflicting reports of higher numbers) descended upon the capital city of Uganda for a technology conference dedicated to the topic of geospatial data and information systems."

- Jonathan Gosier writing in his AppAfrica.Net blog about the AfricaGIS conference this week. The review covers the venue and social media participation. This effort could explain the huge number of Googlers at the event.