Google Geo Tidbits
The Guardian talks to Ed Parsons, Google’s Geospatial Technologist about Street View and the latest images being added this week for areas in Brazil, Ireland and Antarctica.
- The Guardian
The NGA has confirmed a contract with Google for $26 million for visualization.
$26.79 Million Federal Contract Awarded to Google WASHINGTON, Sept. 29—Google Inc., Mountain View, Calif., won a $26,785,711.47 federal contract from the U.S. Defense Department’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Reston, Va., for geospatial visualization enterprise services. Place of performance will be in Mountain View, Calif.
- TCM
Researchers put together a tool to capture data being shared on the Android operating system. What did they find?
Specifically, the researchers found that two-thirds of the 30 apps in the sample used sensitive data suspiciously, half share location data with advertising or analytics servers without requiring “implicit or explicit user consent,” and one-third expose the device ID, sometimes with the phone number and the SIM card serial number. In all, the researchers said they found 68 instances of potential misuse of users’ private information across 20 applications.
A paper on their work will be presented at the USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation in Vancouver next week. There’s a video of the tool, called TaintDroid, here.
- C|net
Greater Greater Washington readers have helped the blog pin down exactly when new imagery of the area was captured for Google Maps. It’s from August and went live on Google recently.
- GGW
Google now offers mobile ads that tell the distance between you and an advertiser, if you share your location.
