Thursday, November 12. 2009

Time Magazine's Top 50 Inventions for 2009 Lacking in Location Intelligent Design

Time Magazine's Top 50 Invention's list for 2009 seems to lack a entry that was at least location-aware. Unless you count the "Smart Bullet" or "Teleportation" there are no inventions that leveraged location technology or data. Even those reach a little far. Seems odd given what seems to be a busy community of developers and entrepreneurs using location-based technology. What's your take? Check out the five worst inventions, too.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence at 15:05 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |

Friday, October 23. 2009

Podcast: Press Conference of Vice Admiral Robert Murrett at the #GEOINT Symposium 2009

This podcast is a recording of a press conference by Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) at the GEOINT Symposium 2009 on October 21, 2009 in San Antonio. Murrett discusses the new NGA charter, the situation with aiding and supporting both domestic and military missions and other issues related to the agency's work.

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Posted by Joe Francica in Remote Sensing, Location Intelligence, Special Topics Podcast, GEOINT 09 at 14:16 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, September 14. 2009

Would the ideas of Gov 2.0 work for business?

Watching the Gov 2.0 Summit presentations this past week tweaked my mind about what technology should do, not just for government agencies, but for business. Tim O'Reilly's model of "government as a platform" goes directly to some of the business process improvement methodologies that businesses have longed to attain.

O'Reilly uses the analogy of the Apple iPhone as a platform for applications developed by programmers outside of Apple as his vision for what government should be able to facilitate for citizenry: build the platform...let the citizens take it from there. And he is not just hoping that federal agencies will find ways to work better together but for intergovernmental agencies as well such as federal to state, state to local, local to citizens, etc.

Would this model work for business? Would businesses share data and some of their internal IT platforms with partners, perhaps in a cloud computing environment? Some already put data "outside the firewall" for sharing but how many businesses build their IT model with the idea that shared data is a foundation for business expansion and efficiency?

Walmart was first recognized for using RFID technology to monitor inventory and "advising" their suppliers to adopt ways to conform with its inventory and logistics control procedures. Inventory data was shared with suppliers; orders were automatically placed and shipped to distribution centers. But for O'Reilly's vision to be transformed into standard business practice I think an entirely new level of trust might have to be developed between business partners.

That's not to say that it can't be done and in this economic climate it may be a necessity. It's a model that needs more thought and exploration. Andrea DiMaio of Gartner provided the reasons why government cannot act as a platform and you can use these arguments as a check list as to why business platforms may or may not work.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence, Apple, Cloud Computing at 11:12 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, August 13. 2009

Register for the Location Intelligence Conference for $199...limited time offer

Attendees may register for the Location Intelligence Conference for just $199...a savings of $600. This is a limited time offer and the deadline is Aug. 24 or the first 200 registrants.

Our offer to you is simple. Register for the full conference for $199, which includes meals, workshops and our conference social event. You will need a special code to receive this special offer...it is listed below.

Use the code: db4e9281.

The Fine Print:

• The offer is good until August 24th and limited to the first 200 registrations.
• All payments must be made by credit card.
• No refunds. Registration is transferable to someone else.
• After August 24th or 200 registrants, attendees will pay the regular registration fee of $795 (still a great deal!).

Also, we will give you a $50 rebate to those attendees that stay two nights or more at the conference hotel, the Westin Westminster, just for showing us your hotel receipt.

We're putting a focus on cloud computing and our distinguished speakers will touch on this as well as their enterprise IT implementations that have helped their company become more "location intelligent." I hope you will join us in Westminster, Colorado, for #LI2009 (follow us on Twitter @locationintel) October 5-7. You can join our LinkedIn Group that now has over 1000 members.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence, Geospatial Business, Cloud Computing at 10:36 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, July 13. 2009

MapIt: Enterprise Solution for Putting Dots on Maps

Perhaps that's putting it a bit too simply, but that's how I understand the new enterprise offering MapIt (software + Web services) developed by ESRI in cooperation with Microsoft. The idea is to put spatial data in SQL Server or Excel spreadsheets into "smart maps" and to integrate with SharePoint. The app is licensed per Web server at $4,500 (U.S.). The resulting maps are delivered via Sliverlight or WPF.

My hunch is that this is really aimed at Microsoft users who don't yet have GIS or use location intelligence, but do have an enterprise need for spatial visualization. The use cases focus around businesses, but include first responder needs. It basically puts all the pieces needed (data, geocoding, charts, etc.) for basic business uses into a single server/services package. This is a big step beyond the old basic mapping functionality found in Excel! It may also be a step into a Microsoft-built BI solution.

- video
- demos
- press release

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Location Intelligence, ESRI UC 09 at 16:50 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, June 22. 2009

Real Estate, Real Estate, Real Estate….Wait…Parcels, Parcels, Parcels

First American Spatial Solutions (FASS) will be announcing this week that they have taken a huge step in creating the largest private, national parcel database. The product released today is called National Cadastre. The new product captures “parcel information and points” from more than 120 million parcels in approximately 2000 of the over 3600 counties in the U.S. (see image at right; click for larger graphic). In conjunction with the company’s PxPoint geocoder, clients can now achieve highly accurate parcel-level geocoding.

Now the big question. Why has a private company decided that they wanted to create a nationwide cadastre? Isn’t this something that the national government should have spearheaded? Or, have the problems associated with the fiefdoms of local government necessitated that only a private company could have got it done? When they first started, there were many questions about why FASS was doing this, according to Scott Little, executive vice president. Some agencies acted defensively and questioned FASS’ objectives. One of the things that FASS has been doing over the last two years is working on multiple committees in the government considering a national cadastre. Recent discussions have changed over time where it is now a very positive relationship once it was understood that FASS’ parent company could maintain and update the information over time.

How do you maintain a national cadastre?
FASS has individuals working to collect data in every jurisdiction in the country. That’s been the case for many years as sister company, First American Title, has become the premier title company in the country. First American has been collecting and maintaining parcel data in local communities well before the company even thought about turning these data into a spatial solution. For many years, applications in title searches, flood data, tax information, and other data associated with property ownership have been captured. According the Little, the infrastructure has been in place through its corporate affiliates. FASS is now able to bring spatial and database capabilities as a value added service to both its internal affiliates and outside clients.

How do you price parcels?
Pricing is another normal process within First American. In the mortgage and insurance markets, those industries have daily requests for information related to valuation and risk.  Pricing related to value added information is nothing new to a company that regularly deals with thousands of daily transactions.

Applications
Apart from the typical applications in insurance, banking, real estate, and tax, the availability of a national parcel database could have the same impact as we saw when global satellite imagery was released through Google Earth. We just don’t know what some entrepreneurs might do when certain spatial data become available. But, we are about to find out.

Posted by Joe Francica in Location Intelligence at 08:26 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |