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Japan completes quartet of spy satellites with latest launch; will now be able to photograph any point on Earth once a day
If the radar satellite continues to perform as planned, Japan's compliment of four spy satellites will be able to photograph any point on Earth once a day...
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International experts call on Swiss government to ensure more coherent land use policy
Their comments come at a time of increasing debate on urban sprawl in Switzerland, with opponents hoping to bring the matter to a nationwide vote...
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Detailed maps of UK created by KGB go on sale
It wasn't just the UK that was treated to such detailed attention - most of the rest of the world was put under similar scrutiny, albeit not to such an in...
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Students from St. Thomas More School win 2007 National Engineers Week Future City competition
Bentley has provided the first prize for the St. Thomas More School team – a trip to US Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. All regional winning teams...
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OSGeo celebrates 1st anniversary
The foundational purpose of the organisation was to help promote and continue to develop open source tools in the geospatial sphere. Since that...
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WORLD THIS WEEK
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MapInfo releases demographic insights into consumer behaviour in USA
“Using MapInfo’s geodemographic services to identify where in the country consumers are spending the most and who these shoppers are, we are able...
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Map shows distribution of singles in Germany
GfK GeoMarketing has created a map which shows the distribution of singles in Germany (Data Source: GfK GeoMarketing, GfK Population Structure Data...
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Satellite images show river pollution threatening Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of roughly 3,000 individual reefs and 900 islands, that stretch for 2,600 km...
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Survey aims to show 'fancy technology on its own will never save lives, it's how you use it'
Despite the ubiquity of these tools, not much work has been done to explore how useful they actually are to the people who use them. There has also...
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Ordnance Survey to provide greater choice in spatial addressing across Great Britain
"This will enable more customers to access the value of consistent and authoritative address information for England, Scotland and Wales, and...
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EDITORIAL
'SPY satellite'- is a term that brings memories of the cold war, the Cuba missile crisis, the KeyHole series and the awe about the ability of these invisible eyes in the skies to see all that you want to hide. I remember a rumour about the so called photograph taken of newspaper headlines by these orbiting spooks. So what qualifies to be a 'Spy' satellite? - is it the resolution of the data collected? or is it the secrecy about the launching of the satellite, its orbital parameters, its payload...or is it the manoeuvrability and ability to specifically and continuously (well, almost) monitor a particular area? The much announced and written about launch of the Japanese spy satellites finally happened last week. The media reports about this launch have raised issues about its very need since better data is available on the commercial market and that the Japanese government may continue to be dependent on others for high resolution data. It has been reported that these satellites have an optical resolution of 1m. So do these satellites qualify to sit in the haloed ranks? According to available information, the KH-13 of the US is apparently the technologically most advanced (from a resolution point of view) Spy satellite with a suspected spatial resolution of 0.04m – well, that still makes reading the headline of a newspaper on terra firma from high up their almost a 'myopic' attempt. We are keen on hearing your views on 'What should qualify as a spy satellite?' and about this second leg of the space race where launching satellites by every nation is almost mandatory.
The recently announced new offering from house of Google - the 'kml search' has been much debated. Explanations and tutorials about how to use this have also been offered. The mashup of this capability by matrimonial sites and by the maps showing distribution of 'singles' like the one made by GfK Geomarketing in Germany has interesting possibilities.
Dr. Hrishikesh Samant
hrishikesh@gisdevelopment.net
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 ARTICLES OF THE WEEK
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Analysis of Process Variance in Remote Sensing Applications
Squadron Leader Mudit Mathur, Wing Commander Yeshwant Andurkar
Indian Air Force
A broad range of concepts, to describe and prescribe the process of decision making needs to be developed, to bring co-ordination in the chaos of data and information. Considering the uncertain environment...
Creative approaches for augmenting two-way spatial communication and GIS
Kheir Al-Kodmany, Ph.D.
Director of Graduate Studies,
Associate Professor, Urban Planning and Policy
College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs
University of Illiniois Chicago
kheir@uic.edu
While commercial GIS software provide basic two-ways capabilities of interaction, this paper argues that these capabilities are inadequate for effective communication...
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CORPORATE
Autodesk reports record revenues of $497 million
Autodesk's performance was driven by robust increases in revenue from model-based 3D products, maintenance revenue from subscription, and...
Credent Technology launches Credent Advanced Technology Sdn Bhd
"Credent Advanced Technology will be our research and development host for geospatial applications and incubator supporting new geospatial...
Tele Atlas commissions J.D. Power and Associates to conduct digital map accuracy study
Through both field research and testing, the study would offer navigation and location-based solution providers and consumers a comprehensive source of...
Norwegian utility to provide ASP services using ArcFM
Most of the utilities in the area are smaller municipals that may not have the infrastructure or manpower to support a GIS system on their own. Since...
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NEW PRODUCTS
New enhancements and capabilities for ERDAS IMAGINE 9.1 announced by Leica Geosystems Geospatial Imaging
The File Chooser has been enhanced to allow for rapid selection and opening of image files. The creation and reading of JPEG2000 format...
Digital map of Thailand now available from NAVTEQ
With the addition of Thailand, NAVTEQ offers robust digital map coverage in nine countries or territories within the Asia Pacific region, with plans for...
Intergraph offers Geospatial Enterprise Integrator
A complete geospatial resource management system, organizations can leverage customer information, emergency and service dispatch, compliance...
MetaCarta announces support for KML for MetaCarta GTS and MetaCarta geOdrive
For the first time, companies and governments can now search unstructured text documents for geographic locations and visualize these references on a...
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READERS' OPINION
News Title :India's Department of Science & Technology, Survey of India and Ministry of Urban Development join hands for comprehensive data infrastructure for Delhi
It is a good start for India but other countries of Asia should also invest in promotion of GIS to be able to manage crisis. India can take a lead as I emphasised to an Indian delegate in Colombo during Water Conference. I still doubt my point of view was really understood. Let USA, Europe and Russia come forward to face the global challenges like Tsunamis and earthquakes.
M. Shahjahan Bhatti, Pakistan
News Title :Way cleared for faster implementation of India's NSDI; 4,800 Survey of India maps to be released into public domain
This is what I have been waiting to hear all my life. This is excellent for my mother-land.
Sanjib K. Ghosh, Professor Emeritus, USA
This is best effort the country has made. This info will be very helpful to town planners, NGO's disaster management groups and a hordes of others.
Sutanu K. Ghose, India
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