Friday, September 30. 2005

Imagery Hosting for Fed, State, Locals via TerraServer

At NSGIC this week, George Lee of USGS shared that Microsoft and USGS, who signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) in 1996 to develop TerraServer, are ready for more. In particular, they are inviting federal agencies, states and local governments to publish their imagery via TerraServer. States, including New York and Florida, are already developing pilots, though the New York one, which he hoped to demonstrate, was not yet ready.

Lee explained that the public domain data would stay in the public domain (just as the current data served by Microsoft does) and that administrative tools would be in place to “turn off” data that might be considered sensitive. Beyond that, he noted these benefits to those who might participate: free hosting, free Internet browsing by the public, free OGC-compliant Web Map Service, free backup of data, acknowledgment of ownership and more. Frankly, the whole thing seems too good to be true. And there is a twist: the data is part of TerraServer, now part of the MapPoint Business Unit, and thus part of Microsoft Virtual Earth. So, it’s entirely possible it might end up in a “local search” done for local pizza joints. Details are being worked out (contact your local USGS liaison to discuss) but this is most intriguing.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 07:49 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1) |

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to	[ Top level ]
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information?   Subscribe to this entry