Tuesday, August 5th, 2014
The justification behind free and open municipal data largely centers around improved transparency between government and citizens, and the means for the citizen to create apps to better serve their own and other people’s needs. While this ambition is being fulfilled, there are also those aggregating open information in larger datasets with the intent to
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2014
At the rate that earth observation platforms are advancing, daily and even more frequent images of our world are becoming available. These regular updates are coupled with more automated processing tools as well as an increasing number of digital tools for cartography and artistic mapping. The continuum for more accuracy in our work has been
Monday, July 14th, 2014
The wearables are certainly coming. We’ve seen the future in Google Glass, and the Android wear watches that are extending our handheld devices to be more hands free. We know that there is great value in extending technology to be more in tune with our actions, and less intrusive to our navigation.
Tuesday, July 1st, 2014
We’re on the eve of the launch of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory – 2, a direct copy of a satellite that was lost in a rocket failure more than five years ago. This sensor’s promises to accurately account for the global measure of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere, both for CO2 emitted, and
Monday, June 16th, 2014
Last week was a remarkable one for earth observation announcements. First was the news that Google would purchase Skybox Imaging and their low Earth orbit satellites and planned constellation for more than $500 million. Then there was the news that the Commerce Department was lifting imagery resolution restriction on DigitalGlobe, opening up what the company
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014
At the recent International Space Symposium, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Letitia Long, set forth the mapping agency’s mission to move beyond integration and toward immersion through next-generation mapping and location technologies. This bold future direction is being made in an austere budget environment where programs that don’t meet this mission will lose
Monday, May 19th, 2014
There’s an evolution occurring that blends the move toward hosted services in data centers with our always-connected devices, morphing from ‘the Cloud’ to ‘the Fog’ as our devices start to interconnect rather than to route all interactions through networks to large data centers. This more distributed model is deja vu in terms of past network
Tuesday, May 6th, 2014
Wide Area Motion Imagery is a growing data source in the geospatial intelligence arena. There are a number of interesting platforms and programs from the Gorgon Stare that captured several square kilometers to the Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance (ARGUS) system with coverage of more than 100 square kilometers. The Air Force Distributed Common
Tuesday, April 29th, 2014
Nokia was on the ropes before the Microsoft acquisition of its device and services business, and now that the deal has closed it’s focusing strongly on its future. The new organization is much leaner, with a focus on networks, location and aligned technologies. With this new birth comes a new strategy that could well make
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released their latest report, warning that delaying action will raise risks and impact economies. This mission to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to ensure stability means that global participation will be necessary. The path to a cleaner and more sustainable world will require greater monitoring and
