SketchUp co-founder last day at Google is today

In a tip from AECnews, apparently SketchUp co-founder Brad Schell has decided to leave his post at Google. The story simply notes that Brad has decided to take some time off and that he may pop up somewhere in the cAD industry down the road.. stay tuned on that one! See http://aecnews.com/news/2007/03/29/2308.aspx

Google Maps pre-Katrina imagery misleads Google Map users, angers New Orleans residents

This one comes to us from the "hard to believe" category. According to a CBS news report, Google has turned back time in the south by serving up pre-Katrina imagery to Google maps. According to the article, Chikai Ohazama, a Google product manager for satellite imagery, said the maps now available are the best the company can offer. He said numerous factors "go into the databases, everything from resolution, to quality, to when the actual imagery was acquired." This is a rather interesting statement since we all know that data gathering efforts post-hurricane were a high priority and no doubt there exists many high-resolution data products that would accurately document the city's altered landscape. Residents of the city are up in arms (with good reason) as they feel people looking at the imagery may be under the impression that life is back to normal and the city is rebounding just fine. Check out the article for yourself at http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/topstories_story_089091239.html

quote of the day from CTIA

Kudos to Tele Atlas for coming up with a witty slogan used on a button they passed out at the CTIA conference this week in Orlando. It read the following... "without the L its just BS"... too funny!

CarbonArc Lite extends ArcGIS to use with OGC web services

This item of interest came through to me today from Jeff at the Carbon Project... CarbonArc Lite extends ArcGIS to use Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) services and is the first module of the CarbonArc interoperability extension platform for ArcGIS. With CarbonArc Lite ESRI users around the world can now easily plug into Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) data services, including both OGC Web Map and Feature Services (WMS and WFS).  To get CarbonArc Lite see  http://www.thecarbonproject.com/carbonarc.php. According to the company The release of the free CarbonArc Lite will immediately benefit government agencies and other ArcGIS users by providing them the ability to access to up-to-date, accurate, consistent framework data and other information.