Slashdot Mirror

Slashgeo (a site for us geospatial types) reported this in May. You can see it here.

Anyone intereted in the geomatics of car navigation will probably find (shameless plug) slashgeo.org very useful. There's a Transportation topic. Using this story (slashdot's dupe ;-), will get more links regarding geocoding photos. And you can read this interesting story about Navigating using photos.

But I know /. readers are sometimes lazy.. (I am! ;-) here's a part of the article (from last March! slashdot's late ;-): "Navman's latest wheeze is this GPS in-car Sat Nav device that will take you to your destination using only the power of photos. Snap a photo of - say - your mum's house on your next visit using the in-built camera, and the unit will record the co-ordinates."

Anyone intereted in the geomatics of car navigation will probably find (shameless plug) slashgeo.org very useful. There's a Transportation topic. Using this story (slashdot's dupe ;-), will get more links regarding geocoding photos. And you can read this interesting story about Navigating using photos.

But I know /. readers are sometimes lazy.. (I am! ;-) here's a part of the article (from last March! slashdot's late ;-): "Navman's latest wheeze is this GPS in-car Sat Nav device that will take you to your destination using only the power of photos. Snap a photo of - say - your mum's house on your next visit using the in-built camera, and the unit will record the co-ordinates."

Anyone intereted in the geomatics of car navigation will probably find (shameless plug) slashgeo.org very useful. There's a Transportation topic. Using this story (slashdot's dupe ;-), will get more links regarding geocoding photos. And you can read this interesting story about Navigating using photos.

But I know /. readers are sometimes lazy.. (I am! ;-) here's a part of the article (from last March! slashdot's late ;-): "Navman's latest wheeze is this GPS in-car Sat Nav device that will take you to your destination using only the power of photos. Snap a photo of - say - your mum's house on your next visit using the in-built camera, and the unit will record the co-ordinates."

Anyone intereted in the geomatics of car navigation will probably find (shameless plug) slashgeo.org very useful. There's a Transportation topic. Using this story (slashdot's dupe ;-), will get more links regarding geocoding photos. And you can read this interesting story about Navigating using photos.

But I know /. readers are sometimes lazy.. (I am! ;-) here's a part of the article (from last March! slashdot's late ;-): "Navman's latest wheeze is this GPS in-car Sat Nav device that will take you to your destination using only the power of photos. Snap a photo of - say - your mum's house on your next visit using the in-built camera, and the unit will record the co-ordinates."

I would not be surprised to see Yahoo! instant messenger to integrate with Yahoo! Maps. That's a trend that MS, Google and Yahoo are definitely focussing on. You can already map your Jabber contacts on Google Maps or Google Earth. Yahoo! Maps licensing restrictions were also alleviated considerably during last week's Where 2.0 conference.

I would not be surprised to see Yahoo! instant messenger to integrate with Yahoo! Maps. That's a trend that MS, Google and Yahoo are definitely focussing on. You can already map your Jabber contacts on Google Maps or Google Earth. Yahoo! Maps licensing restrictions were also alleviated considerably during last week's Where 2.0 conference.

The story is misleading. I feel like the submitter does not know what GeoRSS is. Which reminds me, there has never been any story on slashdot regarding GeoRSS at all, which surprises me (and yes, I did submit some but they all got refused :-)

The first place to start is on georss.org, but you can also read the buzzy OGC press release. From which you'll learn: "A number of organizations have already implemented GeoRSS in open source and commercial mapping, blogging and other software products. Yahoo and Microsoft have expressed interest. Raj Singh, Director of OGC's Interoperability Programs and one of the original team that created GeoRSS explains why, "We designed GeoRSS to be easily implemented in software. Once GeoRSS is part of an application, it allows just about anyone to point a GeoRSS enabled feed at GeoRSS enabled software and instantly make a map.""

But this doesn't tell you what GeoRSS is and why the story's summary is misleading. You can read this article about GeoRSS and read more about the georss standard woes here.

GeoRSS is geospatially-aware RSS. There is a lot of applications, see the links above, like geotagging news items or sensors or podcasts or... I haven't seen any georss in the links above, only mashups and funny pictures. (maybe I should look harder? :-)

This is very interesting. An important part of the "web-mapping war" relates to two important characteristics: (1) how the API are complete and easy to use and what's the licence, and (2) how well Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Ask, etc. successfully integrates many services together. It is not only about satellite imagery resolution, it's also about the API and licenses and services integration.

About the new commercial use for Yahoo! Maps and API (from slashgeo):
" Yahoo! Maps now allowing commercial use. From Yahoo!: "Until today, the APIs were available only for non-commercial use unless you applied for an exception. The concept of commercial and non-commercial has gone away and exceptions are no longer necessary in most cases. We have given you explicit Usage Policies to help guide you. Whether on your business website, blog or personal site, you no longer have to ask for permission." There's also a new Official Yahoo! Maps blog "

But that's not the end. Starting this week, the new Google Earth licence does not allow you to install Google Earth at work at all, even for personal use. Again from slashgeo:
"The Ogle Earth blog indicates that if you use Google Earth at work (the free version), you're in illegality. From the site: "1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties. "

Oh yeah, and unrelated to the story but still very interesting, you can geocode your Picasa photos using Google Earth. I'll stop there. See my sig to learn more ;-)

This is very interesting. An important part of the "web-mapping war" relates to two important characteristics: (1) how the API are complete and easy to use and what's the licence, and (2) how well Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Ask, etc. successfully integrates many services together. It is not only about satellite imagery resolution, it's also about the API and licenses and services integration.

About the new commercial use for Yahoo! Maps and API (from slashgeo):
" Yahoo! Maps now allowing commercial use. From Yahoo!: "Until today, the APIs were available only for non-commercial use unless you applied for an exception. The concept of commercial and non-commercial has gone away and exceptions are no longer necessary in most cases. We have given you explicit Usage Policies to help guide you. Whether on your business website, blog or personal site, you no longer have to ask for permission." There's also a new Official Yahoo! Maps blog "

But that's not the end. Starting this week, the new Google Earth licence does not allow you to install Google Earth at work at all, even for personal use. Again from slashgeo:
"The Ogle Earth blog indicates that if you use Google Earth at work (the free version), you're in illegality. From the site: "1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties. "

Oh yeah, and unrelated to the story but still very interesting, you can geocode your Picasa photos using Google Earth. I'll stop there. See my sig to learn more ;-)

This is very interesting. An important part of the "web-mapping war" relates to two important characteristics: (1) how the API are complete and easy to use and what's the licence, and (2) how well Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Ask, etc. successfully integrates many services together. It is not only about satellite imagery resolution, it's also about the API and licenses and services integration.

About the new commercial use for Yahoo! Maps and API (from slashgeo):
" Yahoo! Maps now allowing commercial use. From Yahoo!: "Until today, the APIs were available only for non-commercial use unless you applied for an exception. The concept of commercial and non-commercial has gone away and exceptions are no longer necessary in most cases. We have given you explicit Usage Policies to help guide you. Whether on your business website, blog or personal site, you no longer have to ask for permission." There's also a new Official Yahoo! Maps blog "

But that's not the end. Starting this week, the new Google Earth licence does not allow you to install Google Earth at work at all, even for personal use. Again from slashgeo:
"The Ogle Earth blog indicates that if you use Google Earth at work (the free version), you're in illegality. From the site: "1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties. "

Oh yeah, and unrelated to the story but still very interesting, you can geocode your Picasa photos using Google Earth. I'll stop there. See my sig to learn more ;-)

... you can't even install it.

I know I'm a little off-topic, but (from my own slashgeo website):
The Ogle Earth blog indicates that if you use Google Earth at work (the free version), you're in illegality. From the site: "1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties."

The EULA changed with the new version launched this week. You simply have to buy one of the other 3 (paying) available versions of GE.

IF you go to this WindWindCentral page, you'll learn that Google Earth's open source competitor is readying Linux and Mac versions of NASA World Wind. You can learn a lot about WW here and a lot about GE here.

"NASA is currently making plans for World Wind 1.5. This version will be available for multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux and the Macintosh."

IF you go to this WindWindCentral page, you'll learn that Google Earth's open source competitor is readying Linux and Mac versions of NASA World Wind. You can learn a lot about WW here and a lot about GE here.

"NASA is currently making plans for World Wind 1.5. This version will be available for multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux and the Macintosh."

The only reference in TFA about ask.com maps is "Its map and image search products, too, offer distinct advantages over the competition. Not much. However, see the maps tools and read a review of it. If these maps-topics is of your interest, see also http://slashgeo.org/ :-)

I invite you to slashgeo.org. Quite smaller than slashdot (and only 6 months old), but it reach thousands of geospatial professionals and has over 8000 daily hits right now. It has an active GPS section that will undoubtly interest you and of course, the usual Ask Slash section.

"As a side note, I already purchased Microsoft Pocket Streets 2006"

Stories in other sections, such as web mapping, might also interest you since it includes stories such as Open Source Alternatives to Consumer Map Programs. A part of the story: "Open source tends to be lacking in consumer map programs ala Microsoft Streets and Trips and Delorme's Street Atlas. There are several efforts to repair that situation. GMap, Roadster, and RoadNav are three examples. [...]"

I invite you to slashgeo.org. Quite smaller than slashdot (and only 6 months old), but it reach thousands of geospatial professionals and has over 8000 daily hits right now. It has an active GPS section that will undoubtly interest you and of course, the usual Ask Slash section.

"As a side note, I already purchased Microsoft Pocket Streets 2006"

Stories in other sections, such as web mapping, might also interest you since it includes stories such as Open Source Alternatives to Consumer Map Programs. A part of the story: "Open source tends to be lacking in consumer map programs ala Microsoft Streets and Trips and Delorme's Street Atlas. There are several efforts to repair that situation. GMap, Roadster, and RoadNav are three examples. [...]"

I invite you to slashgeo.org. Quite smaller than slashdot (and only 6 months old), but it reach thousands of geospatial professionals and has over 8000 daily hits right now. It has an active GPS section that will undoubtly interest you and of course, the usual Ask Slash section.

"As a side note, I already purchased Microsoft Pocket Streets 2006"

Stories in other sections, such as web mapping, might also interest you since it includes stories such as Open Source Alternatives to Consumer Map Programs. A part of the story: "Open source tends to be lacking in consumer map programs ala Microsoft Streets and Trips and Delorme's Street Atlas. There are several efforts to repair that situation. GMap, Roadster, and RoadNav are three examples. [...]"

I invite you to slashgeo.org. Quite smaller than slashdot (and only 6 months old), but it reach thousands of geospatial professionals and has over 8000 daily hits right now. It has an active GPS section that will undoubtly interest you and of course, the usual Ask Slash section.

"As a side note, I already purchased Microsoft Pocket Streets 2006"

Stories in other sections, such as web mapping, might also interest you since it includes stories such as Open Source Alternatives to Consumer Map Programs. A part of the story: "Open source tends to be lacking in consumer map programs ala Microsoft Streets and Trips and Delorme's Street Atlas. There are several efforts to repair that situation. GMap, Roadster, and RoadNav are three examples. [...]"

The article discusses NASA WorldWind but several interesting links are missing. Amongst them: Punt, a WW fork. Heck, you can also see Microsoft Virtual Earth data in NASA WorldWind itself. Even Mars 3D in WW. (I stop here, if this interests you, read slashgeo.org ;-))

I don't know if Stellarium counts as "software for space exploration", but it's worthed. Celestia too.

Here's a copy of a story on slashgeo.org earlier this morning, there's a link to see "Google GeoAds".

Remember this story about location-aware AdSense? Google is still working on various ways to geolocate ads. All Points Blog shares their patent application for Wi-Fi location ad delivery and Google Local ads. Shimon Sandler explains the link between Google Base and those GeoAds and adds: "Wanna see it? Go to Google Local and type in the search box, booksellers nyc. You should see a little coffee cup in addition to the little red ballons. Click on the coffee cup, and an ad appears for Barnes & Noble with their logo, hyperlink, street location, and phone number."

This is a direct copy of this related story:
Vector One discuss national mapping and the UK Ordnance Survey and link to a The Guardian article. The OpenGeoData blog has a podcast with Ed Parsons, CTO of the Ordnance Survey. While GIS User host an announcement by the OS about advanced spatial address data access. From the Guardian article: "Sir Tim Berners-Lee told an Oxford University audience last week getting "basic, raw data from Ordnance Survey" online would help build the "semantic web", which he defines as a web of data using standard formats so that relevant data can be found and processed by computers."

"For example news.google.com gives news of all types, maps.google.com gives maps to the whole country."

You could add Jabber (Google Talk) mapping to the bunch, which is closer to social networking, such as this joga.com is, than Google Local.

This confirms Yahoo! want to be a serious provider of Location-awareness tools, such as Google and Microsoft are.

Spatially enabled Yahoo! tools now includes:
- This Local News announcement
- Yahoo! Maps, including APIs (more reading).
- Flickr (/. story about the acquisition) maps (undoubtly a similar service will soon be provided by Yahoo!)
- Probably other I forgot?

I doubt Yahoo! will join the Virtual Globes frenzy. With Google Earth, Windows Live, NASA WorldWind (and Punt), the competition is already fierce.

The only added-value this comment will provide is a (shameless) link to slashgeo.org. It is an ad-free community-driven slashcode-based website for geospatial technologies, including Remote Sensing. If you're reading this article, well, you probably have a serious interest in satellites, remote sensing, GIS and stuff alike, thus you could also be interested in slashgeo itself!

Cheers -

In fact, NASA also has good news for us.

Two weeks ago, the important Landsat-8 was confirmed while NASA also saves a lot of money by simply adopting interoperable practices.

Now, if only NASA Worldwind (and Punt) could get more popularity over Google Earth...

I like what one of our users said:
"To summarize:
RFID for inventory tracking ==> Good idea
RFID for security ==> Stupid idea"

Here below I copy parts a previous comment on another story (which wasn't moderated and thus, probably not read a lot):
Anyone interested in RFID could also start with the excellent wikipedia.org entry.

Of interest, Slashdot already discussed RFID production increases before. Yes, RFID can be scary, especially in a bank or in passports. Imagine, even Sun cares for RFID. MobileMag have a small article about a 100% organic matter RFID chip developed in Korea, costing only 0.5 cents.

And if RFID and geospatial tech seriously interest you, see my sig ;-)

I dont know how much a9 is a competitor for Google

That's what Google might want to add to Google Local/Maps/Earth: Amazon offers street-level mapping, which no competitor does (yet, of course). You can read more about Amazon A9 mapping service here and here.

I dont know how much a9 is a competitor for Google

That's what Google might want to add to Google Local/Maps/Earth: Amazon offers street-level mapping, which no competitor does (yet, of course). You can read more about Amazon A9 mapping service here and here.

In the Y! family, along with flickr mapping, I forgot Yahoo Messenger contacts mapping as a future feature. I'm not telling you this out of the blue... you can alraedy do this with Jabber contacts. The story will be out tomorrow on slashgeo.org, but I know /. readers can't wait, so here it is:

Ogle Earth discuss Talk Maps, a site to map instant messaging contacts (Jabber network, including Google Talk) to Google Maps or even Google Earth. From the blog: "You add a bot to your friends list, so that it knows when you are available, and you also enter your coordinates on a special form once. Bingo, yet another way to meet new people from all over the world."

Flickr and del.ici.us have a bright future at Yahoo! With the convergence of technologies and the explosion of geospatial technologies, expect a lot in the coming years. To keep myself on-topic, here's some links about flickr and del.icio.us

To start with flickr, it could/will be integrated with Yahoo! Maps (review):
http://maps.yahoo.com/
Right now, we already have a similar tool, named flickrmap:
http://www.flickrmap.com/

As for del.icio.us, combine it with, again, Yahoo! Maps, you get something close to social mapping, which you get with Platial:
http://www.platial.com/

That's only a start. We'll get more. And there's a lot of competition: Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft (and even Amazon with their mapping service) all want a piece of our mindshare. Competition mean, probably, we'll get better consumer-level tools (of course, there's a price tag, but that's another story).

To get back on-topic, my hopes are we'll see more open source flickr and del.icio.us projets. Take a look at Firefox extensions, you'll find del.icio.us wannabes. We're living in an interesting time...

Oh, yeah, my shameless plug... if geospatial technologies is within your interests, which includes mapping in general, take a look at the link in my signature.

Flickr and del.ici.us have a bright future at Yahoo! With the convergence of technologies and the explosion of geospatial technologies, expect a lot in the coming years. To keep myself on-topic, here's some links about flickr and del.icio.us

To start with flickr, it could/will be integrated with Yahoo! Maps (review):
http://maps.yahoo.com/
Right now, we already have a similar tool, named flickrmap:
http://www.flickrmap.com/

As for del.icio.us, combine it with, again, Yahoo! Maps, you get something close to social mapping, which you get with Platial:
http://www.platial.com/

That's only a start. We'll get more. And there's a lot of competition: Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft (and even Amazon with their mapping service) all want a piece of our mindshare. Competition mean, probably, we'll get better consumer-level tools (of course, there's a price tag, but that's another story).

To get back on-topic, my hopes are we'll see more open source flickr and del.icio.us projets. Take a look at Firefox extensions, you'll find del.icio.us wannabes. We're living in an interesting time...

Oh, yeah, my shameless plug... if geospatial technologies is within your interests, which includes mapping in general, take a look at the link in my signature.

The Great Stellarium (open source):
http://www.stellarium.org/
Celestia (also free):
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
NASA's astronoly picture of the day:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/

Stellarium is really a must-download for anyone even slightly interested in astronomy. It's another open source software success.

There is always the moon from our overlords... but moon through NASA's WorldWind too.