Imagery for Everyone from the USGS

You know I'm big into free data, so here's a reminder about a cool data initiative from the USGS, coming soon - From http://landsat.usgs.gov/ here is something that may be of interest: A reminder, this came out of the USGS [see news] on April 21, 2008 - Imagery for Everyone By February 2009, any Landsat archive scene selected by a user will be processed, at no charge, automatically to a standard product recipe and staged for electronic retrieval. In addition, newly acquired scenes meeting a cloud cover threshold of 20% or below will be processed to the standard recipe and placed on line for at least three months, after which they will remain available for selection from the archive. Details can be found in the USGS Technical Announcement - .pdf (66.8 KB). See more here or For further information on Landsat satellites and products, see http://landsat.usgs.gov
Speaking of imagery, the USGS has just released this RFI -- the DOI seeks information and capability statements for a "Satellite Ground Station Services for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM)."

New York Times TimesMachine archive

An amazing online archive from the New York Times... check out the "TimesMachine". Start reading the "Times" from volume 1, edition 1 or see the coverage when the Titanic sank! Impressive... http://timesmachine.nytimes.com

Comms down for a bit and update from Windsor, CO tornado

Sorry about the lack of updates but my comcast has been down since yesterday and isn't expected to be back up for a bit due to the tornado that hit about 1.5 mi east of where I am. All is cool, although the beautiful little town of Windsor, Colorado looks a total mess! Luckily loss of life was minimal here but people are pretty shaken up. Everyone seems to have a story, mine is that my wife was in a salon on Main St in Widsor huddled in a bathroom while the tornado passed and destroyed buildings about one block from where she was... needless to say she was pretty shaken from the experience. The car looks like it was parked on a driving range as a result of the hail... a few picks are posted on my flickr. Anyway, more to come later and indeed we have a renewed respect for the power of mother nature. Once again communications were a story around here as people turned to their mobiles to try and communicate with others around them. Later, hopefully I'll be back up and running soon. Later... Thanks to all the emergency responders around here for doing a great job - this is an amazing community!

Webinar - Fast! Catalog and Deliver Terabytes of Imagery

An event reminder for those who missed this morning's webcast... ERDAS announces Fast! Catalog and Deliver Terabytes of Imagery, a free webinar on Thursday, May 22 at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. (EDT). This webinar will highlight ERDAS Image Manager, a solution for efficiently storing and quickly sharing imagery throughout the enterprise. See www.erdas.com

Good data, good fences, and who owns what

A tip on an article by Peter Huber in the latest Forbes... Who owns what? From the article - "The next big web thing is a vast network to answer that question... The private sector (with a big boost from government surveyors and military satellites) now has the dirt-space mapping and locating well in hand. Mayors and governors should now be scrambling to digitize every scrap of information already stored in their dirt-space registries, along with every administrative and judicial record that addresses related rights. Federal agencies should do the same for the vast expanses of land and sea that they own, lease and manage, and for the many regulations that affect private dirt-space, too. Rules are needed to standardize the registration of every significant claim of interest. The objective should be a system so wired that courts won't enforce any claim that isn't digitally recorded and linked to every sliver of dirt-space it targets."
See http://www.forbes.com/opinions/free_forbes/2008/0519/104.html

Nokia releases Nokia Maps 2.0 - Drive, Walk, Discover

Finally out of Beta, Nokia Maps 2 is here for symbian smartphone users. Updates include enhanced pedestrian navigation, new satellite images and support for integrated compass orientation. Nokia Maps 2.0 has improved its optional Car Navigation, enhanced its pedestrian navigation, added multimedia city guides, now offers satellite images, and is sporting a redesigned user interface. Nokia's mapping and navigation solutions give people navigation features, local content and world maps directly on their mobile device, in a way that only connected devices can. The tagline from Nokia... Drive, Walk, Discover... see http://www.maps.nokia.com

Crime Analysis Summer Institute

I was asked to pass this along... The Departments of Geography and Psychology at the University of Regina are hosting the 4th annual National Summer Institute (NSI) for the Statistical and GIS Analysis of Crime & Justice Data from June 22-28, 2008. The NSI is an intensive, hands-on workshop that covers advanced topics in statistics as well as an introduction to crime mapping with GIS. Participants should have some background preparation in statistics, such as a university course, however, no background in GIS is required.

The NSI is open to approximately 40 participants from across the country, including academics, researchers, graduate students, and practitioners in the field (such as police, justice workers, etc.). The only cost for the NSI is a non-refundable reservation fee of $150 ($75 for students). Funds are also available to help subsidize participants' travel and accommodations (based upon need). In addition, inexpensive newly-constructed university housing is available to keep costs to a minimum (approx. $47 per night). More details and a registration form can be found at www.uregina.ca/arts/NSI.

The Enterprise 2.0 market and increased collaboration

No huge surprise here but it looks like Web2.0 has infiltrated the enterprise, the goal - increase collaboration. Here's details from some recent research findings... According to recent research performed by AIIM of over 400 businesses, 44% of respondents said that Enterprise Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 technologies are “imperative” or of “significant importance” for their organization. Another 27% positioned Enterprise 2.0 technologies such as RSS, blogs and wikis to have an impact on business goals and success. For more on this see www.aiim.org