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Franco's Noteworthy News
IPad coming to Canada in late April
Sat, 03/06/2010 - 16:23Shared by SpyD
Whoop de fricken doo. An overgrown Iphone prorpietary platform with no real improvements is coning to canada. Well those folks who love iphone, can soon get thier iFlop I mean iPad.
Apple says its iPad tablet device will be available April 3 in the U.S., and in Canada and some other countries later next month.
Whoop de fricken doo. An overgrown Iphone prorpietary platform with no real improvements is coning to canada. Well those folks who love iphone, can soon get thier iFlop I mean iPad.
Categories: News
CFIA forced to detail flight by swine flu-infected agent
Sat, 03/06/2010 - 01:44The Canadian Food Inspection Agency tried to withhold specific details about a commercial flight taken by an inspector who was infected with swine flu and was carrying samples of the virus, CBC News has learned.(author unknown)03380561266646046818
Categories: News
Animation of Giant Iceberg Collision as Seen From Space
Fri, 03/05/2010 - 23:30An animated series of satellite images show the collision of a massive iceberg with the floating tongue of an Antarctic glacier in February.Betsy Mason0368051506201638299505987657707764706293015114499414525005971842484703953227019104598643192646386746114080200948059739330238117163485609816903380561266646046818
Categories: News
Android Phone Grows Up, Becomes Brain for Real Robot
Fri, 03/05/2010 - 22:44Two hobbyists have created a simple, autonomous robot that uses an Android phone as its central processing unit.
Miran Pavic1275757174665268504201572269963963680298068832970474732292941201375527128660212916294841181541695558011454147428656598980266902130609689680002545667378888076799018122102944892473611788457412559849094108248625724801834957031893752403820333091181203672549614333603380561266646046818Categories: News
National anthem won't change: PMO
Fri, 03/05/2010 - 22:16The federal government, which sparked controversy after suggesting it might make changes to the lyrics of O Canada, has decided to leave the national anthem alone.(author unknown)10324832254395605118162503778065740061201201375527128660212912226872123556955724178597855155740094180338056126664604681816651732722206438538
Categories: News
Our Favorites: Geo Mobile Web Powered by Google Maps
Fri, 03/05/2010 - 18:52Social networks came into existence thanks to our instinctive need for sharing. Facebook grew out of college campuses by allowing students to share photos or "faces", while Twitter grew by enabling users to share short and quick "tweets" or status updates. As smartphones like iPhone and Android led to the rise of the mobile web, location signature of GPS-enabled devices added a new twist. Users could share locations and activities, opening up a wide range of possible applications, and creating brand new specialty social networks.
As I recently moved from OpenSocial to the Geo APIs, I'm very excited to see that Google Maps is the default platform to power this fast growing segment of what I call the Geo Mobile web. In this post I'm going to highlight this emerging trend by sharing a few of my favorite examples.
Let's start with FourSquare, which is all about sharing the location and activities of users. When a user signs in from a mobile device, FourSquare detects the current location of the user, performs a reverse geocode to fetch a list of places nearby and sends them back to the user, who can opt to check in at one of the places and share it with others. In this snapshot the Google San Francisco office is shown on Google Maps using the Google Maps JavaScript V2 API. Users can check-in to a place, see check-ins by others, explore places nearby, and build up social contacts by adding friends, all the while having fun by earning badges.
Gowalla by Alamofire is another application building on this same concept of user check-in and sharing location and activity. When a user chooses a place of interest, activities by others at that location are shown and the user can choose to add people as friends, discover new places, pick up, drop off, and trade items with others.
Gowalla's web app version uses the Google Static Maps API to show a map view of a place while the iPhone native app uses the MapKit framework to render a map.
It is interesting to note that users of these apps initially start out without a built-in social graph but can gradually build them up by sharing their own whereabouts and discovering the location and activities of others.
This kind of viral sharing has boosted the growth for Facebook and Twitter in the past and it is once again driving the creation of these specialty social networks on the new frontier of the Geo Mobile web.
Established social networks like Twitter have taken notice. They recently enhanced their APIs by offering geotagging for tweets and local trends, which have spawned innovative mash-ups like Trendsmap.
The rise of these specialty social networks on the Geo Mobile web is predicated on the introduction and wide adoption of smart mobile devices, the viral spread in user sharing check-ins, as well as the availability of geo data sources and services. Google Maps is the developer solution of choice for many of these applications in regards to data source of tiles and places and services like geocoding, and I'm looking forward to seeing more innovations in this exciting arena.
Posted by Shawn Shen, Developer Relations
Categories: News
Ottawa firm's bomb suit gets Oscar attention
Fri, 03/05/2010 - 17:24An Ottawa military technology firm is keeping an eye on the Academy Awards after one of its products nabbed a starring role in The Hurt Locker - a film that has earned nine nominations, including best picture.(author unknown)
Categories: News
Opticks 4.3.3 Released
Fri, 03/05/2010 - 17:20kstreith writes "Opticks 4.3.3 is now released along with a new Spectral processing capability and Python scripting capability. Also includes updates to the existing IDL scripting. The release highlights include better support for scripting and support for loading FITS data. The new Spectral Processing extension provides algorithms to work with hyper-spectral and multi-spectral data and visualize and perform signature matching. The new Python scripting extension allows a user to combine the power of Python with the visualization power of Opticks. The IDL scripting extension now supports IDL 7.0 and IDL 7.1." We mentioned the open source project Opticks before, see previous stories below.
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.
SatriCategories: News
Powerful Taiwan quake injures dozens
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 17:06A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked southern Taiwan on Thursday, terrifying residents, disrupting communications and triggering at least one large fire(author unknown)
Categories: News
Google Says Your Desktop GIS Apps Will Be Irrelevant
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 16:15Oh S#*t!
Why is it companies want to be so disruptive when all you want to do is make maps? Says John Herlihy of Google
“In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant.”
Bam, game over. We’ll be working our GIS magic on Androids and iPhones. I know, I know… We’ve heard this all before from Messrs. McNealy, Ellison, but now that Google is saying it (again?) we’d be get our act together or we’ll be irrelevant. Heck old Larry bought himself a trophy on the backs of those making desktop irrelevant.
Devil is in the DetailsOK, so what does this talk really mean. We all know damn well we’ll be using our desktops to perform GIS analysis for years to come. Consuming data is what Google is talking about. Unlike Sun or Oracle, isn’t focused on content creation, but enabling people to discover and use it. The operative word is mining for data. Google is talking about the world (who most of the time is searching for information on their mobile devices) performing a search and then visualizing that information. Yep, you are thinking what I’m thinking, that is GIS in a nutshell, visualizing information. Content creation will still be performed on desktops around the world, but it will remain a niche marketplace. The “magic” we’ve been taking about will happen on mobile clients.
Cloud/Servers/SaaSSo right, ESRI is “cloud ready”. Everyone is either developing a cloud plan of action or executing it. We want to host our data with providers who scale as the need arises. We want to pay monthly (or hourly) for these services and not have those annoying maintenance agreements. But wait, where are we down Google’s path of mobile nirvana?
We’ve got some efforts into web visualization from Geocommons (who is probably at the forefront of web browser vizualization), but alas their client is flash based so it isn’t really designed for mobile apps. You can bet your last Amazon gift certificate that they’ve been working damn hard on one. ESRI has also moved into this space with two feed. Their Map a Map service is right up that Geocommons alley. I keep waiting for the the announcement that they’ll link Make a Map to their ArcGIS Online service and bam, ESRI users have a way to visualize their data online. But like Geocommons, their client is Flash (see a trend here) and isn’t usable on most mobile clients. Change is coming though. We’ll see their effort at the ESRI Developer Summit realized with their ArcGIS for iPhone API. Right to the front of the line goes ESRI with consuming geo-content on mobile devices.
Of course there are hundreds of others competing in this space. Cloudmade (I think this month they are mobile), SimpleGeo, Twitter (with their GeoAPI), and countless others.
Back to the FutureYea so go about your business. Desktop Geo isn’t going anywhere. But clearly if you don’t provide mobile versions of your web apps you are going to be as irrelevant as every stupid MapGuide 6.5 Active X junk mapping site out there. All yawls standardizing on ESRI’s Flex API better be planning because Google is spot on, we’ll be visiting your website working with your data on our mobile devices. Good data not accessible on mobile is going to be devalued completely.
It’s dead Jim!
Categories: News
US reveals Internet security efforts
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 15:07Thursday, March 4, 2010
The United States announced the declassification of a portion of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a major part of the US's efforts to thwart cyber warfare, on Tuesday.
The announcement came at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, and was given by Howard Schmidt, who is the current US cyber-security coordinator, having been assigned the position in December.
More... (author unknown)02685050240833249143Categories: News
Wave kills two on Mediterranean cruise
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 15:07Thursday, March 4, 2010
Two passengers on a Mediterranean cruise ship were killed by a rogue wave on Wednesday. The incident occured off the north-east coast of Spain. The ship, named the Louis Majesty, had left from Barcelona, Spain and was headed for Genoa, Italy.
The giant wave broke the windows on deck five of the ship, resulting in two fatalities as well as another fourteen injuries. The two victims were German and Italian citizens. Following the incident, the ship returned to Barcelona. The ship, carrying over 1300 passengers, is expected to continue its journey after the injured are moved from the ship for treatment.
More... (author unknown)Categories: News
Taiwan rocked by 6.4- magnitude quake
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 02:35A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked southern Taiwan on Thursday morning causing buildings to sway hundreds of kilometres to the north.(author unknown)07215304438811007362
Categories: News
Fire Behavior Research and Operational Fire Behavior Considerations
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 00:00Keynote Address 2: 4th Plenary Fire Paradox Meeting, 9-13 June 2008Martin E. Alexander
Categories: News
Prediction of Spotting in Wildland Fires
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 00:00MITACS/GEOIDE Conference on Forest Fire Modeling June 22-23, 2009 - Hinton, ABMartin E. ALexander
Categories: News
O Canada lyrics to be reviewed
Wed, 03/03/2010 - 23:28Parliament will be asked to review the "original gender-neutral wording of the national anthem," the throne speech says.(author unknown)1272206035904518808208658594908994292354042700287612373030461565812370422361532504300685123983636058096058719700479727760745659095063288531816651732722206438538
Categories: News
Dive into Google Earth with marine scientists
Wed, 03/03/2010 - 19:55
Have you ever dreamed of being a marine scientist? With today's release of a Google Earth tour by the Pew Environment Group to introduce the 2010 Pew Fellows in Marine Conservation, you can put on your virtual scuba gear and join them in the underwater ecosystems, coral reefs, and shores around the world.
Narrated by actress and philanthropist Isabella Rossellini, the Google Earth tour introduces you to the work of the new Pew Marine Fellows: Daniel J. Conley, Omar Defeo, Beth Fulton, Peter Mumby, and Ben Sullivan.
The prestigious fellowship is awarded each year to five outstanding global leaders or teams for working tirelessly to preserve and protect the world’s oceans and marine species. For the next three years, these marine scientists will work on their original, research-based marine conservation project.
Each Pew Marine Fellow will communicate his or her results widely, so check back for more information about the program and the fellows at www.pewmarinefellows.org, or you can learn more about the fellows now by viewing the Google Earth tour on the 2010 Pew Marine Fellows website today!
Posted by Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Google Earth Outreach
Categories: News
Drupal 6.16 and 5.22 released
Wed, 03/03/2010 - 19:18Download Drupal 6.16
Download Drupal 5.22
Drupal 6.16 and 5.22, maintenance releases which fix issues reported through the bug tracking system, as well as security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. Drupal 6.16 also fixes other smaller issues.
Upgrading your existing Drupal 5 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 6.x release series, consult the Drupal 6.0 release announcement, more information on the 5.x releases can be found in the Drupal 5.0 release announcement. Drupal 5 will no longer be maintained when Drupal 7 is released. Upgrading to Drupal 6 is recommended.
Gábor Hojtsy14637547450736519743043513192323156739271250951730743148311814275998109745114952073914072453612992621312690543140756663817117920194225307924004529404573427442361413924468878241958210126611708754156311062904301641886767180440560739488606080710894913491305136658Categories: News
GeoMOOSE 2.2 Released
Wed, 03/03/2010 - 17:46The open source project GeoMOOSE 2.2 has been released two weeks ago. Since it's been a while we mentioned the GeoMOOSE project, here's a reminder of what it is: "GeoMOOSE is a Web Client Javascript Framework for displaying distributed cartographic data. GeoMOOSE has a number of strengths including modularity, configurability, and delivers a number of core functionalities in its packages. GeoMOOSE is also very light weight for servers making it easy to handle a large number of users, with a large number of layers, and a large number of services without stressing a server. The GeoMOOSE core is written using JavaScript and HTML. It is entirely possible to run GeoMOOSE with nothing more than a basic webserver (Nginx, Apache, IIS). But besides the basic client core, GeoMOOSE also comes prepackaged with a number of built in services written in PHP. These services add the ability to perform drill-down identify operations, selection operations, and search datasets. If you have existing scripts that perform similar functions, GeoMOOSE can be tuned to work with those services, no matter which language they were written." See also related stories below.
Read more of this story at Slashgeo.
Satri1201375527128660212906215876587412639762Categories: News
Ford's US auto sales spike, surpassing GM
Wed, 03/03/2010 - 14:53Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Ford Motor Company said on Tuesday that its sales in the United States rose 43% in February compared to the same period last year, as the automaker outsold rivals Toyota and General Motors.
Ford said that total sales improved to 142,285 units, compared to 141,951 units sold by GM. Additionally, Ford said that its share of the total US car market rose to 17%, up from 14% a year ago. The increase was better than analysts had predicted, and Ford's stock rose to a five-year high in morning trading, before declining later in the day. Ford's sales were significantly influenced by a 74% increase in fleet sales to businesses. Rental car agencies alone accounted for around 30,000 units sold. Sales to retail consumers increased only 28%.
More... (author unknown)Categories: News
