All Points Blog

Lockheed Beats Boeing for GPS Contract

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 16 May 2008 08:07:55 -0500

In big hardware news...The Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.5 billion contract to build the military's next generation of navigation satellites. The deal is for two satellites and perhaps 10 more, though the ultimate plan is for 32, per the Pentagon. So, that's a fine income stream for Lockheed Martin.

Boeing is not doing so well on the Air Force front. Boeing ran into delays and cost overruns in building 12 earlier GPS satellites and was not expected to take this contract. Further, Boeing lost the $40 billion deal to build refueling tankers to Northrop Grummand and EADS.

- Washington Post

3D Walt Disney Tuesday on Google Earth

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 16 May 2008 07:56:59 -0500

The map began with eight photographers who canvassed every inch of Disney World for 10 days. Then their images were rendered in 3-D.

Click on Space Mountain, for instance, and you can view a video of the ride and get information such as height requirements. Put your mouse on the Grand Floridian and a video of the resort pops up. You also can check availability and rates and make a reservation.

It will cover Walt Disney Parks and Resorts will make it easy to take a virtual trip to Walt Disney World's Epcot Center, Animal Kingdom, Disney's Hollywood Studios and 22 Disney hotels and resorts, that's some 1500 rides, restaurants and attractions. It's all outside scenes for now, but indoor and other Disney properties are on the list for the future.

- USA Today

Jane's Puts Global Incident Map Behind Pay Wall

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 16 May 2008 06:26:24 -0500

We posted this press release yesterday. The Inquirer isn't too keen on Jane's, the media star for defense and industry news, interactive map.

Using software called ESRIs ArcIMS Geographical Information System (GIS), which apparently is the thing to use if you want dynamic maps on the Internet, Janes says it has built an integrated intelligence picture by exporting events and geospatially fusing them to third party content".

The resource, however, isnt a free service and to use it, one has to subscribe.

So if the company you work for is planning to ship you off to Colombia, or Nigeria in the near future and is unwilling to pay for a subscription, you might want to either cough up the cash yourself, or find yourself a free Global Incident map somewhere else.

Jane's is well-respected, but can it parlay that into a specific pay service for this map? It'll be interesting to see the uptake. In the meantime, here's a free global incident map built on Google Maps. The Guardian calls that mashup more of a demo.

Schwarzenegger Calls for Task Force in California for expanded GIS Use

(Adena Schutzberg) — Fri, 16 May 2008 06:08:19 -0500

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday called on his CIO, Teri Takai, appointed last December, to create a task force to help agencies and departments use of geographic information systems to improve public safety. What is the technology like?" kind of like Google Earth, but better."

I thought California was going to get a GIO. What's the status on that? From the California GIO webpage: "Please note that California does not currently have a formerly established Geospatial Information Office (GIO). This page was put up at the request of the acting State CIO, Clark Kelso, in anticipation of the day when this might become a reality." Sounds like this is a good time!

- Government Technology
- San Jose Mercury News
- press release

Podcast: Oracle's Spatial Game Plan

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:09:00 -0500

In this podcast sponsored by Oracle, the company's Spatial technology game plan will be discussed. Jim Steiner, Senior Director of Oracle's Server Technology and Dr. Xavier Lopez, Director of Oracle's Server Technology will provide an overview of Oracle's product status, its application strategy and future technology directions.

Listen to this podcast for the latest information on Oracle's spatial and location technology. Oracle product management discusses the Oracle Locator, Oracle Spatial and Oracle Fusion Middleware MapViewer, and shares their vision for how these technology tools will continue to play a larger role in enterprise business processes and applications.

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Other resources mentioned in the podcast:

Oracle Spatial

Oracle MapViewer

Oracle Spatial 11g Book

The podcast lasts 20 minutes.

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.

Quote of the Week

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:31:41 -0500

"Google Maps is evolving from a driving directions and business search tool, to a comprehensive representation of all the world's information, on a map."

- An unnamed Google employee quoted on the Google Operating System blog in response to the addition of more options on Google Maps (houses for sale, Wikipedia entries, geotagged photos...). If Google makes more and more content available on Google Maps will that push mashupers to more analytic offerings?

Dangermond on TomTom Acquisition Approval

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:59:26 -0500

"The world needs utility companies that create and manage geospatial data," he said. "And these are companies that have fought their way to the top and they're very good: they serve their data and sell their data to our users in the private domain."

That's part of an somewhat confusing article from C|net. The approval of the deal part is ok, but when the author mentions Google Maps being a company and the new deal between ESRI and Google, things get a bit mixed up.

One company that has teamed up with ESRI is Google Maps, which now use digital maps from both Navteq and Tele Atlas. John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth, said that there is a vast amount of geodata locked up in different government agencies that should be made publicly available.

FOSS4G2008 (Cape Town, South Africa) Call for Presentation Extended

(Adena Schutzberg) — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:24:38 -0500

This from the Chair of the event. I generally don't post such notes at APB, but I feel strongly about this event. If you've not been to FOSS4G you are missing something. Further, if you've never been to South Africa, this is a great chance. Finally, GIS is now part of the curriculum in Joberg.

Due to demand, the Where 2.0 conference starting on our previous deadline and a website glitch with the original cut-off date, we are pleased to announce the EXTENSION of the deadline for Paper, Presentation and Poster abstracts AND the deadline for Workshop proposals to the *** 23 MAY ***. Go to http://www.foss4g2008.org and click on 'Call for Papers'.

You can also view the Call for Papers at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2008_Call_for_papers
and the Call for Workshop proposals at: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2008_Call_for_workshops

Thanks to those of you who have submitted so far. As of 14 May we already have an exciting selection of Workshops and Labs (32), Academic Papers (50), Presentations (85) and Posters (10). The previous Announcement gave you a taste of the Workshops. As far as papers and presentations go, a small sampling gives us An Integrated Water Resource Decision Support System built from OSS tools, Characterisation of tsunami affected areas using remote sensing and GIS, Modus Operandi of a FOSS GIS project in India, Challenges in GIS education and training, Using Python and wxWidgets to build custom GIS applications, Using KML and Google Earth to interact with SA water resource data, Easing Transition to Open Source Geo-Spatial Data Manipulation in GML, A Free GIS Book, Open-source based market information systems - one option for Developing Nations, A year of full-speed FOSS- winning the hearts, minds, and business case, Senegalese land register modernization through OpenSource software, BeeGis: digital field mapping that just works, The use of FOSS GIS in Integrated GIS in Local Government in South Africa, GIS in the Geography Curriculum: Teacher Training. Topology support in FOSS4G solutions, TerraLib as an Open Source Platform for Public Health Applications, Google Earth Powered by MapGuide Open Source, GDAL/OGR Project Status Report and this list goes on.

Remember: Early-bird registration now closes on 20th June and hotel specials will be released soon after, so register soon!

Submit your abstract or proposal soon. Come and have a bash in Cape Town.

Gavin Fleming
FOSS4G 2008 Conference Chair
www.foss4g2008.org

Where 2.0 on Twitter

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 12:04:56 -0500

To my amazement there are very few folks following the where2008 thread on Twitter. Just 70. Perhaps folks are all all on the backchannel IRC? (IRC channel #where2008 on irc.freenode.net)

I guess this is reinforcing my sense of Twitter use in our community which is confirmed, thus far, by the current poll.

UK Starts to Map Every Plant & Flower in the National Trust

joe.francica@directionsmag.com (Joe Francica) — Wed, 14 May 2008 09:14:18 -0500

The BBC reports that the National Trust is mapping every plant in its gardens using a handheld device supplied by Magellan. Magellan tells us that gardeners of the National Trust are using their MobileMapper CX with DigiTerra Explorer software. Watch the video of how they will do it.

Dash Opens API

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:16:20 -0500

It'll be announced this morning at Where, but there's a blog post about first set of apps. Only a few are particularly spatial - WeatherBug weater, Caldwell Banker home search and speed traps from Trapster. As TechCrunch notes, it's odd that to get info on the API you must send e-mail rather than say read all the details then apply for a code or something. I guess Dash hasn't been watching how the rest of the tech community is doing APIs.

TomTom Acquisition of Tele Atlas a Go

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:57:29 -0500

The word came today from the EU. Basically the Commission said there was no reason fear unfair strategies:

"The Commission found that the merged company would be unlikely to pursue these strategies because its ability to restrict access to digital maps ... would be limited by the presence of an upstream competitor, Navteq," it said.

The new company "would have no incentive to restrict access to digital maps because the sales of digital maps lost by Tele Atlas would not be compensated by additional sales of personal navigation devices," it said.

- Bloomberg
- BusinessWeek

As we celebrate new options for finding geodata...Greenwich Stirs

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:51:00 -0500

Everyone remembers Greenwich, the town in Connecticut that went through a FOIA and several lawsuits only to lose its bid refuse sharing GIS data with a consultant. Now, even as we all ponder the goings on Google and ESRI and their vision to make geospatial data more findable and potentially useable over the Web, the court cases continue.

Fairfield County Weekly

Google/ESRI Announcement in Plain English

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:49:51 -0500

The announcements out of Where 2.0 from John Hanke of Google and Jack Dangermond regarding integrating neogeography with professional GIS (perhaps not the best terms, but I'm confident readers understand) are quite a lot to digest. (Video available here.) But that's ok, both companies are resetting their visions with regard to the other, to data and to services and it's certainly time for that.

Here's the substance of the relevant announcements teased out of coverage from Where 2.0, where the two geotechnologists shared the stage yesterday.

- ArcGIS Server 9.3 (available in about 4 weeks, per Dangermond) will make its metadata service "scrapable" into KML and thus findable via Google's geographic search (once known as KML search). Further, ArcGIS Server will be able to publish not only that data as streaming KML (and GeoRSS) but also related services. Dangermond showed finding data from a Portland, Oregon service, visualizing it and then performing analysis, all from Google Earth. Said another way, all data and services served by ArcGIS Server could potentially be findable and usable in any Google mashup. Further, the resultant KML can be used in app that supports the OGC standard.

Continue reading "Google/ESRI Announcement in Plain English"

Backpacker Goes to Where

(Adena Schutzberg) — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:00:00 -0500

So, if you are a bit bored of geo folks and tech folks covering Where 2.0, check out coverage from Backpacker Magazine. (I have to confess at one time it was my favorite publication; even borrowed the name of the editorial: The View from Here.)