Sean Gillies Blog

Dave Smith, at Surveying, Mapping and GIS has an interesting geospatial LoB debriefing. It all still seems pretty murky to me (no fault of Dave's). Were there any journalists present to get interviews or comments from the participants?

Gabbo-like buzz for ArcGIS Explorer is building again (here for great picture). Does ESRI really need such an application to stay competitive, or is it more of a vanity project? I'll be an ArcGIS user again, but only on the desktop, and for selfish reasons I'd like to see the company not expend resources building a geospatial cathedral. On the other hand, an ArcGIS Explorer that is a viable alternative to Google Earth and WorldWind could help convince people that ESRI really gets the modern web platform.

URISA, the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, has weighed in on the Federal Geospatial LoB RFI. In section 2.4 (page 15), the authors state:

"No New Funds": Not Realistic.

They have plenty of other serious recommendations as well. I don't agree with all of them, but I do appreciate their objection to rigid, top-down, governance, and emphasis on investment in geospatial infrastructure.

URISA's document mentions FEMA, but doesn't get into particulars. Here's the deal with FEMA: One of the Federal Government's most appreciated entities was reorganized into the Department of Homeland Security, where, through a combination of revolutionary thinking, cost-cutting, and cronyism, it was completely eviscerated. Congress is now discussing whether the agency should be given a burial. Could we be seeing another application of the same anti-patterns to our geospatial domain? Revolutionary thinking is clearly at work in the LoB: "Think big, propose big ideas". The cost-cutting is there, too. The Reverse Midas Touch is so common in the Federal Government these days that it's hard to be optimistic. I'm hoping that the GSA gets many more responses like this one from URISA; our geospatial infrastructure needs to be led by sober practitioners rather than by visionaries and revolutionaries.

Update: to avoid confusion, understand that the editorializing about FEMA and the Reverse Midas Touch is mine, not URISA's.

Just read on All Points Blog that ArcGIS 9.2 will be ESRI's biggest release ever. Nevermind the version number. In my humble opinion, if Dangermond really wants to get customers fired up he should go to 11.

Net neutrality suffers a blow in the House of Representatives. Are our representatives in Congress just cavemen, unable, as Ed Parsons writes, to distinguish between freeway traffic and TCP/IP traffic?

ESRI and other businesses are being drawn into an investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm.

From the AP:

Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc., located in Lewis' hometown of Redlands, Calif., received a subpoena seeking records of its dealings with the Washington, D.C., firm of Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton & White, a person with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday.

A couple things I'll note, which Adena did not, are the $55.4 million earmarked for ESRI in 2004 and 2005, and that the company is referred to by the AP as a "defense contractor". I'm not sure whether the writer is unware of their large software business or not. Earmarking, for readers outside the US, is not illegal, but is a practice inconsistent with responsible government.

La Quinta is Spanish for America West and US Airways screwed me. The worst decision I made last night was trying to get onto the last flight to Denver by hook or crook instead of cutting my losses and calling James Fee to see if he wanted to go out for a beer and a taco. At least the airport has free wireless so that I can catch up on email and continue to publish the new scandal-loaded tabloid edition of import cartography.

Via All Points Blog: are all geo patents this dubious?

21. A storage medium for storing computer code to encode a computer system that plots a boundary on a map from a metes and bounds description and to generate latitude and longitude coordinates of corner points of said boundary by performing the following steps: generating bearing and distance information with respect to the location of a cursor on said map; displaying said bearing and distance information; using said bearing and distance information to generate said boundary from a metes and bounds description; generating UTM coordinates from said boundary; generating latitude and longitude coordinates from said UTM coordinates.

22. An electrical signal for encoding a computer system to plot a boundary on a map from a metes and bounds description and to generate latitude and longitude coordinates of corner points of said boundary by performing the following steps: generating bearing and distance information with respect to the location of a cursor on said map; displaying said bearing and distance information; using said bearing and distance information to generate said boundary from a metes and bounds description; generating UTM coordinates from said boundary; generating latitude and longitude coordinates from said UTM coordinates.

They invented a new storage medium and a new electrical signal? I'm a bit skeptical.

Here's a talk I'd like to see: GeoDRM: Keeping Free and Remaining Open. An excerpt from the abstract:

One of the most important use cases involves assuring that free and open data in fact remain unencumbered, for example by liability or derivation claims.

The open data movement needs GeoDRM? To me, this is prima facie nonsense. I'm interested to find out what Jo and other open data advocates attending the conference take away from this talk.

Public service announcement.

Regardless of your personal party affiliation -- if you're interested in whether or not your vote counts in future elections, you owe yourself a viewing of the video at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, wherein it is demonstrated that Diebold's poorly engineered system makes stealing an election trivial. The USA's completely borked electoral college system makes us particularly vulnerable. Via Boing Boing.

Brian Timoney has good news for people who weren't sure about paying full admission:

Mike Greer, chair of GIS In The Rockies, has generously agreed to allowing anyone who would like to come to Thursday's meeting (at 11:15AM, Rm. 423), to attend under the $25 Exhibits-only admission price.

See you tomorrow at Invesco Field.

Good sense prevails! A task force reviewing federal GIS recommends that the best strategy for consolidation is standards not centralized services. Like the web itself. Via All Points Blog.

The shift is well underway. And I, for one, welcome our new open source overlords.

Congratulations Russ, Jean, and crew! Check out the lower right corner of this map. Does this officially make I-cubed the biggest little Mom-and-Pop shop yet?

BTW, that's the Fred Hutchinson Center, site of the upcoming Plone sprint.

Autodesk has one. Now ESRI has its own. Who will be next?